""( gelitin, margerine, etc are used as base materials for some explosives)""

They are also foodstuffs used to prevent starvation. And tell me how you think cement fits into any weapons scenario. Maybe they're making it into cannon balls?

Ther are a couple of points being obscured by all this back and forth about trivia.

1. An act of piracy did take place in international waters, and had it been committed by any organisation other than the Israeli Defence Force, not one voice would have been raised in trying to defend the action.

2. Those on board of the ship which was attacked by armed men, tried to defend against the incursion (as was their legal right), using only such weapons as came to hand. They were obviously not spoiling for a fight, or one might have expected them to be better armed.

3. Of those defenders, eight died of multiple wounds, inflicted at short range, by nine millimetre sidearms, and one was shot in the head with a round commonly used in shotguns.

4. None of the attackers were killed. Even when the defenders managed to acquire handguns from them, these were discarded without being used.

None of the above suggests that the defenders were doing any more than defending their vessel against government sponsored pirates.

I don't much care for Hamas, but it is only a political faction, and collective punisment for all citizens of Gaza is clearly forbidden under international law.

Israel is, and for a long time has been, flouting that law.

Don T.