Pakistan, Oct. 3 -- It should not require repetition, but here we are. International waters are not supposed to belong to anyone, aid convoys are not supposed to be treated as contraband, and most heart-wrenching of all, children are not supposed to starve because one state says so. Yet a flotilla carrying food and medicine to Gaza was stopped in full view of the world, its passengers detained, its cargo seized, and the most powerful governments on earth looked away.

More than forty vessels, five hundred people from dozens of countries, parliamentarians, trade unionists, and ordinary citizens had set out to deliver wheat flour and baby formula to a strip of land where the UN has certified famine, nearly twelve thousand children under fiv...