American, 19, Among Gaza Flotilla Dead
The first of many narratives that will emerge.
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"They [Israeli commandos] were trying to land on the boat. So obviously there was this hand-to-hand combat and during that process the people on the boat were basically able to disarm some of the soldiers because they did have guns with them," Burney told Reuters. "So they basically took the guns away from them and took the cartridges out and threw them away."
Asked if anyone had used the guns against the Israeli commandos, Burney said, "No, not at all."
"Yes, we took their guns. It would be self defence even if we fired their guns," Bulent Yildirim, chairman of the IHH, said.
"We told our friends on board we will die, become martyrs, but never let us be shown... as the ones who used guns," he said, adding that people shouted that the weapons should not be used.
"By this decision, our friends accepted death, and we threw all the guns we took from them into the sea," Yildirim said.
We didn't do anything, but if we did it would justified.
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"Turkey will never forget such an attack on its ships and its people in international waters. Turkey's ties with Israel will never be the same again," Turkish President Abdullah Gul told a news conference. "Israel made one of the greatest mistakes in its history. It will see in time what a huge mistake it made," he said.
On the British domestic political front ...
In an article in the Spectator, Flotilla Follies, Daniel Korski states that ...
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Two groups in the Conservative party that have worried most about Con-Lib government are the social conservatives and the neo-conservatives. The latter have been particularly worried about UK relations with Israel. There is a real concern in parts of the Conservatives Party that three factors would come together to sour Anglo-Israeli relations: what the neo-conservatives see as the Foreign Office’s knee-jerk Arabism, the presence of many supposed Arabists in Cameron-Hague’s teams, and the anti-Israel bias exhibited by many leading Liberal Democrats. Whatever the truth of these allegations, they are held with considerable fervour.
But Nick Clegg’s reaction to the conflict shows that the Lib Dem leader is both holding to the middle-of-the-road line put out by the Foreign Secretary and shedding the anti-Israel sentiment of old. The deputy Prime Minister, who campaigned against the Gaza blockade before joining the coalition government, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme Israel had "every right" to protect its people from terrorist threats. His addition -- to ask if it was “in Israel's long-term security interest to have so many people confined in that way” -- is hardly radical. David Cameron himself called the raid on the Gaza aid flotilla "completely unacceptable" and deplored the loss of life.