Are 9 deaths justified by a blockade only Israel believes in?

Yesterday the world responded with horror to the news that at least 9 people were killed when Israeli troops boarded a humanitarian aid vessel bound for the Gaza Strip.  The spontaneous crowds which rose up in protest and the ambassadors called to give an account was hardly surprising...

The Gaza Freedom Flotilla which left Cyprus to flout the Israeli blockade on Gaza had 10,000 tonnes of goods for Palestinians.  Its direct course to Gaza was a contravention of the Israeli boycott of direct shipments to Gaza in an attempt to stall supplies of weapons to the region.  No one is surprised that the Israelis would stop the vessel and the evidence is that formal warning was given.  And given the strength of feeling on the issue it’s not improbable that there would be some degree of disapproval – if not resistance on board the vessel.

So once again the world is doing a political balancing act on Israel. Everyone realises the psyche of a relatively small nation which still lives under the shadow of the Holocaust and is surrounded by people committed to their extinction.  And equally we recognise the unacceptable levels of humanitarian injustices which Palestinians endure in the name of national security.  Before we jump to final conclusions we should take Obama’s advice and wait for “all the facts and circumstances around this morning’s tragic events....”

But this kind of situation also leaves me with a personal dilemma: as a Christian with a theological bias towards Israel’s survival I’m still struggling to know how to be pro-Jewish and remain devastated by its injustices.

We absolutely need an urgent independent enquiry on the issue. It must help us determine just whether Israel’s response was ‘reasonable and proportionate.’  And it must also try to settle the larger question of whether 9 dead people is a price worth paying for a blockade which nobody apart from Israel can justify.