www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/i...

I agree!!!

This, excerpted from (LINK)May 2010 Huffington Post.

"A soldier identified only as a sergeant told reporters at a military  briefing that the activists on board "were armed with knives, scissors,  pepper spray and guns." He said he was armed only with a paintball  rifle. "It was a civilian paintball gun that any 12-year-old can play  with," he said. "I saw my friends on the deck spitting blood."

The high-seas confrontation was a nightmare scenario for Israel,  which insisted its soldiers were simply unprepared for what awaited them  on the Mavi Marmara, the ship carrying 600 of the 700 activists headed  for Gaza. Instead of carrying their regular automatic rifles, the  Israelis said they went in with non-lethal paintball guns and pistols  they never expected to use.

Israel intercepted the six ships carrying some 10,000 tons of aid for  the isolated seaside territory, which has been blockaded by Israel for  three years, with Egypt's cooperation. The Israeli government had urged  the flotilla not to try to breach the blockade before the ships set sail  from waters off Cyprus on Sunday and offered to take some aid in for  them.

Israel has allowed ships through five times, but has blocked them  from entering Gaza waters since a three-week military offensive against  Gaza's Hamas rulers in January 2009."

It's well known that guerilla's, militants, etc... will ensconse themselves in the midst of non-combatants (or "innocent" civilians), because the non-combatant cover that affords also helps when there is a strike against enemy targets there, because the subsequent civilian casualty count then makes the aggressor side look like murdering savages of innocent people. So the negative PR for the offensive side, strikes deep and reverberates in the Press and as a means of bolstering the resolve of their enemies. This tactic was employed by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam war, with regularity. And very often the civilian population had/has no say in the matter, because objection can result in death.

In this case of the "aid ship", it appears to be the same tactic. And why not? What better cover than an aid ship, wherein one thinks good will, humanitarian efforts, first aid and a rescue mission. Not, armed to the teeth Palestinian guerrillas ensconced amid the band-aids.

Given the above excerpted report of events that transpired when the IMF attempted to board the vessel from a helicopter, I'd say the Israeli's had every right not only to find the ship suspicious, but when their suspicions were confirmed on descent to the deck, opening fire to save their asses that were imperiled by Militants bearing clubs and knives. It's a matter of self-defense and superior force.
Don't want to get dropped by a hot bullet? Don't try to gut an IMF soldier!

How does Israel apologize for this, in the first place?

"Ohhh, we're sooo sorry! We stopped a ship that was suspect as bent on a mission more than simply offering aid, (though arming an enemy is indeed aid!). And we're especially sorry that we killed a bunch of armed militants who attacked IMF soldiers with weapons, intending NOT to give us warm hugs and kisses upon our arrival, but instead thought that the bad math of club/knife vs gun adds up to a superior and victorious outcome! Please please please forgive us FOR LIVING THROUGH IT!"

Screw that! Martyrs? Well, OK. How's that a bad thing that needs apology when, if they didn't want to teach 72 virgins how to get busy in an afterlife, "Pro-Palestinian activists passengers" (Yeah, that sounds like the epitome of pacifism, doesn't it?! Aid ship. Unarmed) shouldn't have tried to take IMF soldiers lives, when those armed militants had no right to be on an aid ship in the first place or in International waters, approaching an Israeli Gaza blockade!
Who apologizes for facing down an enemy and living to tell about it!? Not Israel, I hope.

Oct 17, 2010 -- 1:49AM, habesor wrote:

I wonder what the reaction would be if Osama bin Laden demanded an apology from the USA for the deaths of its "martyrs" who were killed on 9/11. 

Habesor

Correct me if I'm wrong but the Turkish aid workers were not terrorists??

If they were armed many Israeli soldiers would have been killed*

Oct 17, 2010 -- 10:49AM, Dostojevsky wrote:

If they were armed many Israeli soldiers would have been killed*

A three foot length of metal pipe is not a weapon?  Knives are not a weapon?   Fists and shod feet are not weapons when a man is rappelling down a rope or lying on a deck?

And innocent 'aid workers' have no reason or need to take hostages as the 'activists' who'd taken control of the MM did.