Lemmy attracts personalities that don’t get along with IRL communities.

It was a fantastic web video series. That was before YouTube was a thing.

I mainly block communities that only repost subreddits automatically. I don’t get the point of these.

A blockade can be enforced in international waters. A ship that’s heading straight towards territorial waters and doesn’t change course when hailed, can be intercepted before it enters.

If you want to actually learn about this, start reading here.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/leiden-journal-of-international-law/article/use-of-force-against-neutral-ships-outside-territorial-waters/56CF204865927A59302B21DCB66D9428

The International Law Association’s Helsinki Principles on the Law of Maritime Neutrality (1998) regulate the same question in Paragraph 5.1.2, which largely overlaps with the provisions of the San Remo Manual. Subparagraph 3 allows attacking of neutral ships that ‘are believed on reasonable grounds to be carrying contraband or breaching a blockade, and after prior warning they intentionally and clearly refuse to stop, or intentionally and clearly resist visit, search, capture or diversion’.

The San Remo Manual and the Helsinki Principles both contain provisions that permit the use of force against neutral ships that are ‘believed on reasonable grounds to be … breaching a blockade’. Blockades are ‘a belligerent operation to prevent vessels and/or aircraft of all nations … from entering or exiting specified ports, airports, or coastal areas belonging to, occupied by, or under the control of an enemy nation’.Footnote 18 Blockades are indiscriminate, in that they must be ‘enforced against every vessel of every nation’

EEZ is not the same as territorial waters.

Blockade Running is a hostile act. Intercepting a blockade runner is not piracy.

Piracy means stealing the cargo, the ships, and holding the crew and passengers for ransom. Israel did nothing of these. The ships were returned, the prisoners released, the aid cargo was delivered by truck to Gaza.

Here’s a video of what happened back then.

1. The ship was boarded by Israeli soldiers rappelling down ropes from a helicopter. They were armed with paintball guns.
2. A number of Islamist activists attack the soldiers with metal poles, knives, and other improvised weapons. Several Israeli soldiers are injured, one thrown down to the next level.
3. Second wave of soldiers comes in with guns. Nobody on board that was peaceful got killed.