Like a malevolent Fred Dibnah tribute act.

"Video: Football fans show support for pro-Palestinian demonstrators"

From The Evening Standard:

Football fans outside a pub in central London can be seen showing their support for pro-Palestinian demonstrators in a video being shared online.

The group of men appear to be Leeds Football Club supporters who have travelled to the capital to watch the team play Millwall on Saturday.

On the same day a huge protest took place across the capital to demonstrate against military action in Gaza.

In the video, shot outside The Green Man pub in Euston Road, the football supporters can be heard shouting “Free Palestine!” and applauding the protesters.

The swords of a thousand men

Balanced coverage of the Middle East?

Over at ShareCrazy.

Possible military application of bungee ropes (2)

Pogo outlined a fatal flaw in my bright idea of yesterday:

... on a practical note [the bungee ropes] have to be tensioned to cope with the weight of a fully-loaded soldier. Once he lets go of the bungee it's going to emulate a "flicked" elastic band (for that's all it is) and fly up and either tangle in or damage the rotor blades of the helicopter. There's also a chance of them flailing about and hitting the tail rotor. Neither action is likely to improve the airworthyness of the chopper! Back to the drawing-board Mr W. :-)

OK. How about this: the soldier drops down using a normal rope which is coiled round a spring loaded drum that emulates the bounciness of a bungee rope, i.e. he is in free-fall for most of the way but then slows down to a gentle halt just before he lands on the ground/deck of ship. The soldier then lets go, or unhooks himself using a patented single-handed release mechanism, leaving his other hand free to tote his gun.

To prevent the whole rotor/entanglement nastiness, the drum has a ratchet in it so that the rope does not bounce back/rewind itself until a soldier in the helicopter releases it and then the rope coils back in a controlled fashion, like a cable-wind inside a vacuum cleaner; or even better, the rope rewinds itself by about ten feet (so that people on the ground/deck of the ship can't grab it) and then stops.

Update: EKTWP in the comments describes the idea thusly: "Why bother with ropes & springs? I'm sure there are self belay units that you can use when climbing or ice climbing if you don't have a partner that could be used the other way around. You descend rapidly until you get to desired length, when you decelerate and when you unclip, the rope is retracted into the drum automatically (but not too quickly or it would catch in the rotors, etc)." That works for me.

Possible military application of bungee ropes

In the footage of those Israeli soldiers trying to board a ship by sliding down ropes suspended from a helicopter, the whole operation seems very clumsy;

a) the rope has to be dropped first, so the people on the deck know where the soldiers will land;

b) the people on deck can drag the end of the rope to one side to slow down the vertical descent and force the soldier to jump the last few yards; and

c) the soldiers need both hands to hold the rope, so can't have their weapons at the ready*.

What I would invent, if I could be bothered, would be a bungee rope with a single-handed release mechanism**. All you have to do is judge how much bungee rope you need so that the bottom of your fall is a few feet above where you want to land and to clip the other end to the helicopter; plus a bit of training in when to release yourself when you hit that nadir. I suspect that the dread of slamming into the deck and breaking both ankles would focus your attention on getting the length of the rope right; and the dread of missing the nadir and ending up dangling in mid-air would focus your attention on releasing yourself at the right moment.

This would make it much more difficult for those being descended on to judge where you were going to land; each soldier could have his own bungee rope for mass attacks; and most importantly it would leave you one hand free to hold your weapon, or indeed to enable you to fire at people on the way down.

What's not to like?

* As an afterthought, with a bungee, you wouldn't need to wear thick gloves to prevent rope burns.

** At its simplest. this would be a loop at one end of the rope to which you cling with one hand, letting go at the opportune moment, it would have to be a very springy rope to not pull your fingers off or break your wrist, of course.

A Lesson In International Law

Note: I'm JP, not Mark.

Here are parts of the San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea that are relevant, and show that Israel has complied with international law entirely. Paragraph 47 lists ships that are exempt from attack. Presumably, the flotilla organizers consider themselves to fit under sub-paragraph (c)(ii):

(c) vessels granted safe conduct by agreement between the belligerent parties including:

(ii) vessels engaged in humanitarian missions, including vessels carrying supplies indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, and vessels engaged in relief actions and rescue operations;

The flotilla does not meet the minimum requirement because it was not granted permission by the other party of the blockade, Israel. Even if it had been, the next paragraph mentions a major exception:

48. Vessels listed in paragraph 47 are exempt from attack only if they: (a) are innocently employed in their normal role;
(b) submit to identification and inspection when required; and
(c) do not intentionally hamper the movement of combatants and obey orders to stop or move out of the way when required.

In addition, such actions in international waters are legal:

96. "The force maintaining the blockade may be stationed at a distance determined by military requirements."

Also,

98. "Merchant vessels believed on reasonable grounds to be breaching a blockade may be captured. Merchant vessels which, after prior warning, clearly resist capture may be attacked."

103. "If the civilian population of the blockaded territory is inadequately provided with food and other objects essential for its survival, the blockading party must provide for free passage of such foodstuffs and other essential supplies, subject to: (a) the right to prescribe the technical arrangements, including search, under which such passage is permitted; and (b) the condition that the distribution of such supplies shall be made under the local supervision of a Protecting Power or a humanitarian organization which offers guarantees of impartiality, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross."

Israel does all of these. Last week, Israel delivered more cement to Gaza than the flotilla wanted to provide - but Israel gave the cement to UNRWA under strict conditions and ensuring that they are used only for the purposes they are earmarked for.

I'll quote another blogger on the claims of "piracy"...

"Let’s go to the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, Article 101:

Piracy consists of any of the following acts:

(a) any illegal acts of violence or detention, or any act of depredation, committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or a private aircraft, and directed:

(i) on the high seas, against another ship or aircraft, or against persons or property on board such ship or aircraft;

(ii) against a ship, aircraft, persons or property in a place outside the jurisdiction of any State;

(b) any act of voluntary participation in the operation of a ship or of an aircraft with knowledge of facts making it a pirate ship or aircraft;

I don’t think even the Gaza flotilla defenders claim that the IDF raid was “committed for private ends.” (Just the opposite, actually). And, in general, piracy cannot be committed by a national ship, only by private ships or by national ships that have been taken over by their crews.

So can we drop the stupid piracy meme? There are some very hard legal issues here: Is Israel’s naval blockade legal? (Probably). If so, was the boarding in international waters legal? (Maybe). And even if so, did the IDF use disproportionate force? (I have no idea). This last question is really the key issue here, and it is also the one that is never going to be resolved with any certainty given that it is dependent on neutral factual determinations that will never happen here."

If this was not a massive PR stunt, then the "peace" activists would have followed the peaceful channels of getting aid to Gaza legally - through the Red Cross and the UN in Israel.

"The so-called humanitarian aid was not for a humanitarian purpose. Had it been for a humanitarian purpose, they would have accepted our offer to deliver all humanitarian supply through the appropriate channels which are used on a daily basis, as we make sure that Gaza will not be in short of humanitarian supplies. On a daily basis, we do that. We ask them to send this through the appropriate channels, whether it's the U.N., whether it's the Red Cross, whether it's our people, but to no avail.

In fact, what they said was that it's a humanitarian campaign, but they said repeatedly that their intent and purpose was to break the blockade, the maritime blockade, on Gaza. The maritime blockade on Gaza is very legal and justified by the terror that Hamas is applying in Gaza. Allowing these ships to go in an illegal way to Gaza would have opened in fact a corridor of smuggling arms and terrorists to Gaza, with the results, inevitable results, of many, many thousands of civilian deaths and violence all over the area.

After these repeated calls where not heeded by the organizers, we told them that they will not be allowed to break the blockade, as according to maritime law we have the right to do that. Unfortunately, they also, people, the organizers upon the ship, did not heed the calls of our forces this morning to peacefully follow them and bring a closure, a peaceful closure, to this event.

No sovereign country would tolerate such violence against its civilian population, against its sovereignty, against international law."

(Israeli Foreign Minister)

Victimhood Poker

From the BBC:

Israel has ... been building a controversial barrier in and around the occupied West Bank in recent years. It says it is needed to defend Israeli citizens from attacks by militants. Palestinians, however, consider it a land grab. In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory ruling that the barrier was illegal and should be removed.

Egypt is meanwhile building an underground barrier along its border with Gaza to stem the smuggling of weapons through tunnels.

Fun Online Poll Results: The Middle East Conflict

On a surprisingly high turnout of over two hundred votes in the last four days, the final results are:

All in all, my sympathies lie with ...

The Israelis - 64%
The Palestinians and Hamas - 12%
Neither. They're as bad as each other - 25%

I do not know whether people took this seriously - I admit to having wavered between "The Israelis" and "Neither. They are as bad as each other." - but assuming you did, this confirms my original suspicion that most people have made up their mind one way or another anyway, thus rendering the acres of newsprint and hours of TV footage with which we've been bombarded* over the past fortnight pretty pointless.

BTW, thanks to the 88% of you who don't sympathise with Hamas. A special commendation goes to Charlie B who said he sympathised primarily with the Czechs.

* Deliberately inappropriate choice of word? You decide!

Fun Online Poll: The Middle East Conflict

Acres and acres of newsprint and the 'blogosphere* have been devoted to discussing the current spat between Israel and the Palestinians/Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Not much of it adds to the debate because commentators have actually already made up their minds where their sympathies lie and are merely re-hashing existing prejudices.

So here's your chance to say 99% of what you have to say** in one mouse-click and get it over with (or use the widget in my side-bar).

* To the extent that the 'blogosphere can be measured in 'acres'.

** I voted "The Israelis", FWIW, to get the ball rolling.

Results

They've left it a bit late, haven't they?

Wherein The Israeli National News throws its weight behind McCain, or at least portrays Obama in what they hope is a supremely negative light.

I doubt whether this will work. Yer average US voter is probably heartily sick of GWB's wars in the Middle East and might well think that leaving them alone to sort things out by themselves is a perfectly sensible plan. I can hardly imagine them heatedly discussing the pro's and con's of this in the queues at the polling stations.

The party never stops!

Having started the Yassir Arafat third anniversary celebrations in fine style, the festivities continue unabated.

Yassir Arafat

They certainly chose a very appropriate way of commemorating* the third anniversary of the death of the multi-millionaire terrorist. His family must be so proud.

* At the risk of labouring the point, imagine the FT's headline without the words "at Fatah rally".

"Feud hurting Palestinian rights"

As some wit once said "Don't see this as a Middle Eastern crisis; see it as Middle Eastern culture."