Victoria's secret

I could not resist this title. After the IDF sayeret 13 naval commando unit intercepted and boarded the ship Victoria, in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea this week, they found that it had a big secret, namely it was loaded with 50 tons of munitions. There was no resistance to the Israeli action and the crew, as strange as it seems, claimed not to know anything about the actual cargo. They thought they were transporting foodstuffs, according to the manifest, that was a forgery, from the Syrian port of Latakia, via Turkey to Alexandria, Egypt. But, actually the military cargo was en route from Iran via Syria to Gaza. But with good intelligence, Israel detected the nature of the ship's purpose, and like its predecessors, the Karin A (in 2000) and the Francop (in 2009), it was boarded and taken to an Israeli port where the weapon's cache was confiscated, although the ship and crew was then subsequently released.

There were several crimes committed in this case, the transportation of arms to Gaza, contrary to UN resolutions, the use of a false manifest, contrary to the international law of the sea, putting the crew of the ship into danger, unknown to them, and finally bringing arms into an area of war. As a result of these offences, Israel has made a complaint to the UN Security Council against Syria and Iran. The armaments found on the ship were displayed at Ashdod port, but they received little press attention. Perhaps this was because of the dire situation in Japan, the fighting in Libya, and the blase nature of the press when it comes to anything that puts Israel's enemies in a bad light. Also, Israel's PR machine backfired, because PM Netanyahu visited the port at the same time that the press was supposed to be there, and the stringent security arrangements prevented much of the press from seeing the actual confiscated arms, and so it was poorly reported.

To show how international this incident was, the arms were from Iran and Hizbollah in Lebanon, they were tran-shipped from Syria via Turkey, the Victoria was German owned and carried a Liberian flag. What was most disturbing was that containers labelled cotton and wheat were found to contain deadly land-to-sea missiles that were intended to be used by Hamas in Gaza to hit Israeli naval vessels and possibly oil platforms off the Israeli coast. Now if anyone believes that Israel had no reason to intercept the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara last year, think again!