YOUR VIEWS

I assume that Mr Fleming's background for judging guilt and innocence is based on English common law.
If this is the case, is it not customary, to first collect evidence, and reach a decision based on this before declaring one guilty, as opposed to a rush to judgement following the mob within 24 hours of the event?

Note that I do not generally support Israel in its relationship with the Palestinians. On the other hand the government of Gaza has declared war on Israel, not the other way around. The primary duty of every government is national survival and the safety of its people.

Hamas, has either encouraged or failed to stop missiles from being fired from Gaza into Israeli territory.
Israel gets into trouble when it goes in after the source of the attacks, so a blockade is the only other alternative.
The flotilla's publicised aim was to run that blockade. If they were merely being humanitarian, they would have accepted
Israel's offer to offload in Israel and, after being inspected, had the supplies delivered overland.
The fact that there were nine deaths is sad, but if these people were not involved in attacks on Israeli soldiers, they were at least guilty of associating with bad company who did.

The international waters thing is a false issue. Do you think that all the non-military ships sunk by the allies in WWII were in territorial waters?
How many more deaths would there have been if the Israelis allowed the flotilla to get close enough to land.
So why not take the position of Obama that one should see the evidence before jumping on the bandwagon.
True, Israel probably could have done a better job of planning, say, simply putting their ships in the way of the floatilla. But considering the fact that the British caused the problem in the first place, should not its government, have taken Obama´s position of having the trial before the verdict.

Richard Goss
Porreres

DEAR SIR
RAY Fleming's point about Israeli piracy in international waters highlights an increasing problem.
The Royal Navy, assisted by the US Coastguard, has been stopping and sinking boats after forcibly removing their crews in the international waters of the Caribbean for years, merely because they carried a few tons of cocaine. EU warships are intercepting boats in international waters hundreds of miles off the Somalia coast just because they carry a few guns and grenades. Can nothing be done to stop this gross interference in other people's business?

A.Barkhuysen