"one of the ships violently attacks the israelis after they legally boarded"
Armed soldiers were invading a humanitarian ship in international waters and without the permission of the ship. There is no legal justification for this, and pretty much every crew would try to defend themselves with whatever they can find if their ship was being attacked.
I know that a ship sailing under the flag of my country is being regarding as sovereign territory of my country if the ship is in international waters. And I suppose that's rather international law than national law, so from a diplomatic point of view, this incident might eventually even be considered as israel invading turkey. I agree that sounds a little far fetched, but just imagine armed iranian soldiers were trying to board and take over a U.S. ship in international waters without permission. The U.S. could easily interpret this as a declaration of war by iran.
"it would appear that only one boat contained the previously mentioned terror activists"
The other ships were very small and as such much easier to take over by the israelites. I don't know if that really was the case, but another possible explanation could be that the big ship was first attacked, and when the people on the other ships heard over radio about the massacre they decided it would be best not to defend themselves. And calling them "terror activists" is just ridiculous.
"eventhough attempting to break the legal blockade was a pretty stupid idea in the first place"
Sure, the blockade may be "legal" - regarding israeli laws that is. Just like imprisoning jews in warsaw ghetto or concentration camps was actually perfectly legal too - regarding Nazi laws. The United nations on the hand have called upon israel to end the blockade more than once.
And while the blockade in general may be legal regarding israeli laws, the actual attack still was in international waters and as such definitely illegal.
"especially after the isreals said they would deliver all possible humanitarian aid over land"
The trick of this argument lies in the phrase "all possible humanitarian aid", as few people know that israel has a completely different understanding of "all possible humanitarian aid".
Israel is trying to spread the impression that the whole blockade is only about stopping weapons from being imported into Gaza. The truth however is that israel forbids pretty much everything to be imported. Here's just a few examples of things that cannot legally be imported into Gaza:
- fridges
- washing machines
- clothes and cloth
- shoes
- light bulbs
- candles
- matches
- books
- music instruments
- pencils
- mattresses
- blankets
- cutlery
- animals
- building materials
You can of course get most of these things in gaza too, but they're usually smuggled and therefor highly overpriced. To be fair, these goods were taken from a list from 2009 which might be slightly outdated meanwhile. Israels unbans certain things from time to time, for example they unbanned toilet paper, swaddling clothes, sanitary napkins, soap, shampoo, salt, margarine, vegetables and yeast last year. Pasta was also unbanned last year, because during a visit to gaza John Kerry somehow heard that Pasta was not allowed, which he just couldn't understand.
Looking at the huge list of things that are forbidden, it's almost impossible to believe that the blockade is really about weapons. Instead one gets the impression that israel simply tries to harrass the palestinians as much as possibe.
Now the whole point of the convoi was trying to deliver several goods that israel usually doesn't allow to be imported into gaza: wheelchairs, cement, childrens toys etc. So letting israel deliver the goods to gaza themselves was never really an alternative, because israel would only deliver parts of the shipment.
And it was absolutely clear that none of these ships was actually delivering weapons, as the convoi was publically announced days before. Imagine you really wanted to smuggle weapons into gaza - would you inform israel days in advance that you're planning to do something israel may not like and exactly where and when you will arrive? Of course not, because it was absolutely clear that israeli military will already be expecting the convoi when it arrives. Hence the whole use of weapons and violence was completely unneccesary in this particular case.
So if it was clear that israeli military would be awaiting them, why did they do it anyway? The Hasbarats will say that it was simply provocation, but that's nonsense. Delivering the goods indeed wasn't the only reason. I'm sure that the other (maybe even the main) motivation was to draw some public attention to the poor situation of the palestinians, especially the fact that israel does not allow even basic goods to be imported into gaza.
They knew that israel would try to stop them, but I'm sure the activists never ever even expected that israel would actually do something like this, as it was clear that attacking an unarmed humanitarian ship would look be condemned by the public opinion. It's like the greenpeace ships: it's rather unlikely they actually get attacked because of the bad reputation that would lead to.
Like most israelis as well, I still don't understand how the IDF could act so stupid. Even from the israeli point of view it was just plain stupid, there would have been other ways of dealing with the situation that would not have led to such a desaster in public opinion.
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