Israel Intelligence News Digest 2

...if Israel and Turkey are not at war, then it is Turkish law which is applicable to what happened on the ship. It is for Turkey, not Israel, to carry out any inquiry or investigation into events and to initiate any prosecutions. Israel is obliged to hand over indicted personnel for prosecution...

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/06/02/more-spi...rael/
More Spin from Israel
by Philip Giraldi, June 03, 2010
(Phillip Giraldi is a former officer of the United States Central Intelligence Agency)

The Israeli commando assault on a flotilla bringing aid to Gaza which killed at least nine civilians should be a wake-up call for those who want to believe that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s government is capable of making rational decisions. The flotilla, consisting of nationals from as many as twenty countries, was unarmed and carrying relief supplies that had been carefully inspected by the Turkish authorities. It was in international waters when it was attacked. More than 600 passengers and crew, apart from those who were killed, were subsequently arrested by Israel for refusing to identify themselves. If all that is correct, then Tel Aviv is guilty of piracy, kidnapping, and murder while the armed attack on a Turkish flagged vessel might be construed as inviting a military response from NATO. One of the vessels bore an American flag and there were at least eight US citizens on board, including a former ambassador and a USS Liberty survivor, suggesting that a strong reaction from Washington would not be inappropriate

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http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/05/the_lega....html
May 31, 2010
The Legal Position on the Israeli Attack
Craig Murray
(Craig Murray is a human rights activist, writer, former British Ambassador, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Lancaster School of Law.)

A word on the legal position, which is very plain. To attack a foreign flagged vessel in international waters is illegal. It is not piracy, as the Israeli vessels carried a military commission. It is rather an act of illegal warfare.

Because the incident took place on the high seas does not mean however that international law is the only applicable law. The Law of the Sea is quite plain that, when an incident takes place
on a ship on the high seas (outside anybody's territorial waters) the applicable law is that of the flag state of the ship on which the incident occurred. In legal terms, the Turkish ship was Turkish territory.

There are therefore two clear legal possibilities.

Possibility one is that the Israeli commandos were acting on behalf of the government of Israel in killing the activists on the ships. In that case Israel is in a position of war with Turkey, and the act falls under international jurisdiction as a war crime.

Possibility two is that, if the killings were not authorised Israeli military action, they were acts of murder under Turkish jurisdiction. If Israel does not consider itself in a position of war with Turkey, then it must hand over the commandos involved for trial in Turkey under Turkish law.

In brief, if Israel and Turkey are not at war, then it is Turkish law which is applicable to what happened on the ship. It is for Turkey, not Israel, to carry out any inquiry or investigation into events and to initiate any prosecutions. Israel is obliged to hand over indicted personnel for prosecution.

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http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2010/06/01/this-is-winning/
This Is Winning?
The American Conservative
Eunomia Blog
June 1st, 2010
Daniel Larison

This reminds me of Cato’s line from the series Rome, “So, this is not a humiliating defeat at all, but rather a rare species of victory!” Count me as part of the “counterproductivity corps” if you like, but if this is what Israeli victory looks like they will not be able politically to endure many more such victories. Up to a point, Israel can keep acting with impunity regardless of what the rest of the world says as long as the U.S. continues to back it. However, at some point Israel will alienate enough other U.S. allies in sufficiently provocative ways that the U.S. will have to start choosing between keeping on good terms with those other allies or continuing to back Israel uncritically and automatically.

The forged passports connected to the Dubai assassination badly damaged Israel’s relations with a number of European and other Western governments, and this has wrecked relations with Turkey. Israel is fast running out of friends to betray. Turkish FM Davutoglu has said that his government expects America to show solidarity with Turkey. He is going to be disappointed, and Turkey’s alliance with the U.S. is going to become so unpopular that we have to start wondering how long it will last. In case anyone has missed it, U.S.-Turkish relations were already fairly poor before this, and the administration’s sorry response to this attack has only worsened matters after it had earlier slapped down the Tehran nuclear deal. The chasm widening between Washington and Ankara is temporarily useful to Israel, but ultimately it is going to start showing people in Washington that the price for automatically backing Israel is not worth it.