Those funny-looking IDF guns again

The top picture is, of course, a still taken from the released film of the IDF boarding the Mavi Marmara.

The bottom picture is the same image, only we've edited out the "machine gun" in the original and replaced it with a common design of paintball gun as seen in the bottom righthand corner before adjusting the amount of blur and darkening it to match the original.

We'll make no apologies for our lack of Photoshopping skills, but the two look strangely similar don't you think?

Mavi Marmara Guns

Have a look at the "weapon" seen above, in a still taken from the video of the IDF storming the IHH-owned Mavi Marmara (which can be seen in full here, fast-forward and pause at 0.51 if you've already seen it more times than you've seen Grease). Odd-looking sort of gun, isn't it? What on earth is that peculiar thing stuck on top of it?

The so-called peace activists who were onboard the ship claim that they were attacked with machine guns. The IDF, meanwhile, claim that they used paintball guns - non-lethal devices used in riot dispersal situations by them and many other military/law enforcement organisations - and only began to fire live ammunition from their handguns after it became obvious that the situation was going to be as violent as it turned out to be.

Now have a look at the paintball guns below. All of them - says Acid Rabbi friend and supplier of links to dubious websites Lenny, who would quite like to be a soldier only he hates the idea of killing anything and is too old (and fat) - the type of guns he sees often when he goes paintballing.

The peculiar things stuck on top of them, by the way, are magazine-like containers called hoppers that store unused paintballs, feeding them into the gun's breech prior to firing. Lenny says he's willing to bet £5 that the gun in the video is in fact a Brass Eagle T-Storm, which he assures us is the second of the guns in the photographs seen above and is popular as it can easily be used either with either one or both hands (the commando in the video is holding his gun in one hand too).

Our expertise is not great in these matters, but we think we'd put a fiver on it too. That's what two pints of beer cost in our local, and for that reason believe us when we say it's a sum we wouldn't risk unless we were extremely keen on the odds of winning the bet.

Was the humanitarian aid useless?

As if the whole situation wasn't sorry enough, there are a few reports floating about that miasmic whirlpool of filth that we all love and know as The Internet suggesting that the cargo of humanitarian aid halted en route to Gaza by the Israeli Navy was as good as useless.

Arutz Sheva - an Israeli radio station the impartiality of which we would not and could not comment on - claims that following inspection a large amount of the medicine on board was found to be past expiration dates and in a disorganised state, making it practically unusable. Much of the equipment onboard is said to have been in very poor condition.

The flotilla was halted by the IDF on Monday. Some reports now suggest that the aid onboard was as good as useless.

As many of you who regularly read this blog - not that there are many of you - already know, Mrs. Rabbi is employed by a certain very well-known international charity and, on occasion, has the chance to get her perfectly-manicured paws dirty by helping to sort out the donations that members of the public deliver to the organisation's shops. She is often shocked by the utter rubbish she finds therein, with soiled underwear, household rubbish and electrical equipment damaged beyond all repair and often scorched as a result of fire all being a lot more common than anyone would like to think - and it seems from the Mary Queen of Charity Shops television show that this is a common occurrence in charity shops across the land. Such is the low quality of many donations that she has come to the conclusion that some people see charity shops as a simpler means of disposing of their rubbish, especially now that electrical items cannot be simply left out for the bin lorry and, as charity shops are generally in town centres and civic amenity centres (what we used to call dumps) are generally some way out of town, very often a cheaper option too.

However, in the case of the flotilla, simply dumping the rubbish on Gaza is neither simpler nor cheaper due to the logistical challenge of organising a flotilla comprising ships and crews from an assortment of nations in the first place and the cost of fueling those vessels as they schlep their freight across the Mediterranean. It would, doubtless, be a far easier and cheaper act to get rid of waste using the standard methods already in place in those nations from which it came.

So if it turns out that the "aid" was in fact rubbish, why was it being taken to Gaza? Middle Eastern states (with the exception of Israel, which facilitates the delivery of around 15,000 tons of aid to Gaza each and every week) have demonstrated time and time again that they care little about the Palestinians (why else would those Palestinians living as refugees in states surrounding Israel exist in such appalling conditions, shifted around like unwanted cattle, otherwise?) but even they wouldn't go so far as to risk causing innocent people to die by foisting dodgy medicines on them (or at least, we don't think they would. They are human, after all). We have an innate suspicion of conspiracy theories because they A: RE almost all a steaming pile of bupkis and B: almost always contain a political agenda but if the aid is shown to have been useless as well as what seems to be the deliberate provocation of Israel by some of the activists, their refusal to allow their cargo to be inspected and the involvement of the Turkish "charity" IHH - who are widely suspected of maintaining links with Hamas and Al Qaeda - are all taken into account, one cannot help but entertain a sneaking doubt that this humanitarian aid exercise was not intended to help the people of Gaza at all but was, in fact, a propaganda effort aimed at demonising Israel.

One thing's for certain - as is always the case with any event involving Palestine and Israel, the situation is a lot more complex than a large part of the Western media would have us believe, and we all need to ask questions and think for ourselves rather than swallowing any old tripe served up to us.

IDF attacked

No time to write a proper post at the moment, but here's some rather interesting footage that appears to show the IDF being attacked with metal bars as they board the "peace protestor's" ship...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYjkLUcbJWo

Those evil Israelis - shocking what they put Gaza through

Israel's foreign policy - especially with reference to Gaza which is said to be a virtual prison state where the population lives in abject misery due to the evil Jewish state - is once again in the news following the latest Israel Defense Force actions in the Palestinian nation.

An IDF soldier directs one of the 637 truckloads into Gaza

As part of its ongoing COGAT operation, large numbers of IDF forces entered the region - and distributed 637 truckloads of humanitarian aid, according to a report in the Jerusalem Post. The aid, weighing some 14,069 tons, included four trucks loaded with medicine and medical equipment, 897 tons of cooking gas, hundreds of thousands of litres of fuel, 148 truckloads of food, 21 truckloads of formula milk and baby food, 38 truckloads of clothing and shoes, 117 truckloads of animal food and 37 truckloads of hygiene equipment. In addition to this, 781 people requiring medical treatment were allowed to enter Israel so that they can be treated in the country's modern and well-equipped hospitals.

30-40 Palestinians homes were bulldozed in Gaza. Guess who drove the bulldozers?

Meanwhile, over in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, Hamas police armed with clubs beat and evicted residents before bulldozers moved in to destroy their homes, says the Palestinian Telegraph. Hamas rulers claim the buildings, believed to number between 30 and 40 in total, had been illegally constructed on government land. 56-year-old Nazira Abu Jaba says that veiled police women beat her family with clubs until they had no option but to leave their home. "Neighbours help us get by with charity," she says, "we can't afford to build again."

Issa Nashar, mayor of Rafah, has promised those made homeless alternative housing; but Gaza's housing minister Yousef Al-Mansi says that he has no information on such housing. More demolitions are expected next week.

It would appear things are not quite as clear-cut as the British media would have us believe, wouldn't it?