This is an incredible and candid admission of just how Israel thinks, even when it is trying to do PR damage control, now going as far as invoking 9/11 by talking about "box cutters". Israeli embassy spokesman just cited "hands" as "national security risk" in response to a question about the ship's content.
Question: The weapons cited by the IDF--metal poles, knives, etc.--don't look to be threats to Israel's national security. Rather, they look like fairly standard maritime tools, no?
Jonathan Peled: Weapons are weapons. Knives can kill, iron bars can kill, even hands can kill. We've seen in America the damage that simple boxcutters can cause. The issue was not the people onboard, but the need to ensure that no weapons or terrorists enter the Gaza Strip, reaching the hands of Hamas. This scenario would, in fact, pose a national security risk to Israel, and this is the reason for the blockade.
Jonathan Pelad, Israeli Embassy spokesman, June 1, 2010.
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The Israeli PR machine is in full damage control. But it looks like they forgot that haste brings misjudgments.
Let's analyse this for just a second.
Knives can kill, iron bars can kill, even hands can kill.
It's not just rhetorical sophistry. It's the answer to the question "what weapons?"
There are none. You have a bunch of unarmed civilian peace activists shot dead by the IDF. No amount of smearing and "linking" them to scary sounding words will change this.
[update: Wow, Thank You for your support everyone. I knew this community wouldn't let them get away with this. ]