from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. A small fleet.
- n. A fleet of small craft.
- n. A U.S. Navy organizational unit of two or more squadrons of small warships.
- n. A similar unit in the navy of another country.
- n. Informal A group of vehicles owned or operated as a unit: "Now [the limousine service] has a flotilla of about 150 cars, more than 200 uniformed chauffeurs” ( People).
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. A small fleet of warships (usually of the same class), or a fleet of small ships.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. A little fleet, or a fleet of small vessels.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A little fleet; a fleet of small vessels.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. a fleet of small craft
- n. a United States Navy fleet consisting of two or more squadrons of small warships
Obviously, if there were, the flotilla is to blame for the violence.
One of the primary reasons the Turkish Government has been so angry in its denunciations of the Israeli attack on the flotilla is because many of the dead were Turkish citizens.
In other words, the flotilla is more about a show than about reality.
Then, since they know that the goal of the flotilla is not delivering goodies, they could do that by letting the Israelis inspect the boat, you avoid civilian deaths as much as possible.
Last campaign, the word flotilla was misunderstood.
If not, I don’t see how the flotilla is supposed to immediately distinguish between being boarded by a state acting legitimately versus a violent attack.
By the way, the more I read, the more I am convinced that the flotilla was an example of how perhaps well-meaning, American and European leftists/peace activitists, who thought they were on a humanitarian mission, were being used by much more militant, violent activists who wanted to provoke Israel to achieve a major propaganda victory on behalf of Hamas.
I do personally think that a positive impact of the flotilla is the prospect of increasing the political space occupied in Palestine by nonviolent resistance to the occupation, and the fact that the flotilla last year had this impact is a matter of public record I give the direct quote from the Hamas parliamentarian below.
Israel calls the flotilla a provocation and has stepped up diplomatic efforts to block it.
We do not believe that the flotilla is a necessary or useful effort to try to assist the people of Gaza, said Clinton.