The seven Irish human rights activists due home in Ireland this afternoon at 2:25 pm were at the last minute prevented from boarding their flight out of Ben Gurion airport by Israeli armed guards. They had been taken last night to a holding cell and were ready to board their 7:40 am flight to London this morning when at the last minute they were prevented from doing so by Israeli security forces and returned to Givon prison. All seven are now being detained indefinitely, with no further news available from Israeli authorities or the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs about when they will be released.

An Irish Ship to Gaza shore team coordinator spoke briefly on the phone with Fintan Lane before communication was abruptly cut off. Lane said: "This is a deliberate and calculated attempt by the Israelis to break our spirit. It won't succeed."

Lane also reported that the seven had been subject to "continuous harassment and repeated, humiliating body searches" and were shackled and "denied sleep".

Gay Lawlor, Zoe Lawlor's brother, spoke briefly with Zoe, who described what was happening as "sheer malice" on the part of the Israelis.

The families of the detainees are phoning member of the Irish Ship to Gaza shore team this morning in great distress.

Laurence Davis, Irish Ship to Gaza spokesperson, commented: "We are outraged by this latest attempt by the Israeli authorities to break the morale of the human rights activists, their families and their supporters, all of whom had been looking forward to the homecoming this afternoon in Dublin. This is yet another example of the cruelty and arrogance that the Palestinians face every day."

Irish Ship to Gaza spokesperson Claudia Saba added: "It is particularly distressing for the families to learn that their loved ones won't be coming home as they had expected, and distressing that they have no update as to what exactly is happening or when they will be finally freed."

Contact:
In New York: Felice Gelman, (917)-912-2597
Jane Hirschman, 917-679-8343, 212-222-6721
In Turkey (with ground crew): Medea Benjamin, +90 531 888 8927
@palwaves and @usboattogaza

New York, NY 11/4/11 - Canadian and Irish ships, the Tahrir and the Saoirse, sailing with Freedom Waves to Gaza have been illegally boarded by the Israeli military in international waters, about 50 nautical miles from the coast of Gaza, around 9:30 am EDT. The IDF spokesperson confirmed that the vessels were taken to the port of Ashdod, and the passengers were taken into custody by the Israeli police. Although the IDF spokesperson claimed they took "every precaution to ensure the safety of the activists," Freedom Waves to Gaza organizers have been unable to communicate with the ships since soon after the vessels were approached by Israeli warships earlier this morning.

U.S. Coordinator Jane Hirschmann commented, "Had the passengers been permitted to proceed to Gaza rather than being stopped on the high seas by armed force, there would have been no threat to their safety. The IDF's statement is like the mugger promising to escort his victim home safely."

The Canadian boat Tahrir confirmed that the Israeli navy had contacted them asking for their destination at around 7 a.m. EDT to which Ehab Lotayef, an activist on board the ship, replied 'The conscience of humanity'. When the Israelis again demanded to know the destination of the ship Lotayef replied; 'The betterment of mankind'.

Ann Wright, one of the organizers of the Freedom Flotilla that attempted to sail to Gaza in June, said "It's a little hard to imagine how 27 unarmed civilians on two small boats carrying medicine and letters threaten Israel's security. Israel is simply determined to maintain its policy of collective punishment against the 1.6 million civilians in Gaza. This is a crime against humanity and violation of international law. Despite Israel's consistent use of military force against nonviolent protests and demonstrations, activists around the world will continue to challenge the occupation of Palestine and the blockade and Gaza."

Passengers on the boats are citizens of Canada, Ireland, the US, Australia, and Palestine. The US citizen on the Tahrir is Kit Kittredge of Quilcene, Washington. She is a massage therapist and emergency medical technician.

---

http://ustogaza.org/

To follow on Twitter go to: @palwaves or @usboattogaza

Video link: http://youtu.be/XW8_LY2me_Q

Two Gaza-bound boats carrying pro-Palestinian activists are within 50 nautical miles of their destination, but reports are emerging that Israeli Navy ships have intercepted the "Freedom Waves to Gaza" flotilla. Communication with the boats has largely been cut off. Prior to losing contact, we received two exclusive video reports from aboard the "Tahrir," the Canadian ship. Speaking to Democracy Now! correspondent Jihan Hafiz last night, passenger Ehab Lotayef said, "We are approaching the 100-nautical-mile point away from Gaza, which is usually the point where Israel declares—starts the blockade ... Will they try to come and board us? All these questions are now at the moment of truth. The major preparation we did is to prepare that we don’t want anybody to act in any violent way or in any way that can even induce violence by the Israelis."

Source: democracynow.org

2 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Ramallah

Palestinian youth join boats set to challenge Israel’s siege of Gaza

• Irish and Canadian boats in international waters on their way to challenge illegal siege policy
• Palestinian activists call for end to international complicity in Israel’s crimes
• Support actions taking place throughout the West Bank and inside Israel

Two civilian boats, the Canadian Tahrir (Liberation), and the Irish Saoirse (Freedom), carrying 27 people from nine countries, are currently in international waters making their way to the beleaguered Gaza Strip to challenge Israel’s ongoing criminal blockade of the territory. A Palestinian youth activist from Haifa has joined this renewed international mission to challenge Israel’s unrelenting stranglehold on Gaza via the sea. The message they carry is one of unity, defiance, and hope, in spite of Israel’s policies that have physically separated Palestinians from each other. The “Freedom Waves to Gaza” organizers chose not to publicize the effort in advance given Israel’s efforts to block and sabotage Freedom Flotilla II last July. The boats, which set sail from Fethiye, Turkey, are expected to arrive in Gaza on Friday afternoon, sailing from international waters straight into Gaza’s territorial waters without entering Israel’s waters. The boats carry symbolic cargo – $30,000 in medicines, along with a diverse group of passengers, all committed to nonviolent defense of the flotilla and Palestinian human rights.

“Israel has caged Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, prohibiting physical contact between us. We want to break the siege Israel has imposed on our people,” said Majd Kayyal, a Palestinian philosophy student from Haifa on board the Tahrir. Kayyal added, “The fact that we’re in international waters is already a victory for the movement. Israel’s siege of Gaza is untenable and it’s a moral responsibility to put an end to this injustice.”

Meanwhile, a statement signed by Palestinian youth urged the international community and the U.N. in particular “to take urgent action to protect this mission as well as to end its compliance with Israel’s criminal blockade of Gaza.” They condemned the U.N. Secretary General’s previous declarations calling for aid to Gaza to go through “legitimate crossings and established channels,” despite the U.N.’s own admission that Israel’s failure to own up to its responsibilities has created an unprecedented crisis of human dignity.

Throughout the week Palestinian activists in the West Bank and inside Israel are organizing solidarity actions with the Freedom Waves mission, including a presence outside the UN compound (Tokyo Street, Ramallah) and rallies across West Bank towns.

This is the 11th attempt to break the siege of Gaza via the sea, with five missions arriving safely in Gaza between August and December 2008 and the remaining violently intercepted by Israel. On May 2010, Israel attacked passengers of the Freedom Flotilla in international waters, killing nine civilians and injuring over 50. Israel’s actions were widely condemned and led to protests around the world. Efforts to bring a second flotilla to Gaza were foiled by the government of Greece last July following pressure by Israel and Western governments, as well as by acts of Israeli sabotage.

Israel has intensified in the past days its aerial bombardments on Gaza, underlining the need for international initiatives of deterrence similar to this one.

Organizers say: "It is time to lift the siege of Gaza."

The Canadian ship Tahrir and the Irish ship Saoirse have successfully reached international waters, initiating the "Freedom Wave to Gaza." The boats have embarked from Turkey and are on the Mediterranean Sea. In all, the 2 boats carry 27 passengers from Canada, Ireland, U.S., Palestine, and Australia.

Freedom Wave to Gaza: Irish ship Saoirse

Ann Wright retired US army Colonel and former US Diplomat says, "We carry inspiration from the Arab Spring and the worldwide "Occupy" movements that are demanding freedom and justice. Where governments fail, civil society must act. As Americans we are fed up with our government's unquestioning support of Israel no matter how violent, illegal and oppressive its actions. We will not stand by and watch $30 billion of our tax money committed to buying Israel weaponry used to carry out this illegal occupation of Palestine including the blockade of Gaza."

Jane Hirschmann added, "Our sailing coincides with UN agency UNESCO's recognition of Palestine as a member state, defying US threats to cut off $80 million of US funding in retaliation. This shows the growing strength of opposition by the international community to U.S. and Israeli policies in Palestine. We call on the international community to go further and take effective action to lift the siege of Gaza. Hirschmann was one of the organizers this past summer of the U.S. Boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope, which is still captive in Greece.

2 November 2011 | International Solidarity Movement, Gaza

Two boats, called "Freedom Waves to Gaza," are now traveling on the high seas to the besieged Gaza Strip. Their civilian passengers include people from five countries, including Palestinians from 1948. This is another non-violent attempt to break Israel's siege, an illegal policy that has forced Gaza's Palestinian residents into subsistence on international aid and subjected them to severe travel restrictions to and from the territory.

"Freedom Waves to Gaza" has been kept secret until now for fear of Israeli sabotage and obstruction, as happened with Freedom Flotilla 2: Stay Human. Now we have to make sure that Israel does not attack "Freedom Waves to Gaza," preventing its arrival in the Strip, as happened with the first Freedom Flotilla, in open violation of international law and with the silent complicity of the Western world. To avoid this we need your help.

You are asked to act in favor of this initiative in any way you consider effective in your context. In particular, we propose:

• Spreading the news of this initiative as much as possible, and demand that the media report about it. Israel may act less violently if it feels the world's eyes fixed upon it.
• Pressuring the United Nations and the international community, following the example of young Palestinians in the West Bank, who will hold a sit-in at the UN complex in Ramallah, asking the international body "to take urgent action to protect this mission as well as to end its compliance with Israel's criminal blockade of Gaza."
• Organizing protests if Israel's reaction threatens to prevent the activists from reaching the port of Gaza.

We appeal to your humanity to act, and act with urgency. The boats have already left port and the success of this enterprise, depends on the support they receive from the outside.

Updated on November 2, 2011

Israel and the US outsourced the siege of Gaza to Athens last summer by preventing 8 boats in the Freedom Flotilla 2-Stay Human from sailing from Greek ports to Gaza. Despite this we were able to bring world-wide attention to the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Our efforts in Greece only fueled our determination to challenge the imprisonment of the people of Gaza. We said we would continue to sail and so we are!!!

At this moment, two boats are in international waters in the Mediterranean heading to Gaza. One boat, the Saoirse from Ireland, includes parliamentarians among its passengers. The other, the Tahrir, carries representatives from Canada, the U.S., Australia, and Palestine. The U.S. Representative on the Tahrir, Kit Kittredge, was a passenger on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope mission in Athens in July. A journalist from Democracy Now is on the Tahrir also. Civil society organizations in Gaza await their arrival, and look forward to the delivery of letters collected from thousands of U.S. supporters in the To Gaza With Love campaign.

We need your help to make this mission a success. Please take these actions immediately.

1. Check these websites for updates: - US to Gaza, Irish Ship to Gaza and Canadian Boat to Gaza, watch or listen to Democracy Now for live coverage from the Tahrir.. Look for twitter hashtag #Freedomwaves.

2. Spread the word far and wide - send this alert to your contacts.

3. Call the State Department and the White House- demand that they take immediate action to ensure the safe passage of these boats and to put an end to the siege of Gaza.

Call the State Department:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 202-647-5291
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro 011-972-3-519-7575
Office of Israel/Palestinian Affairs Paul Sutphin 202-647-3672
Office of Consular Affairs, Kim Richter 202-647-8308

and the White House: 202-456-1414

email President Obama at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Here are some talking points or suggested messaging:

Gaza has been under siege since mid-2006, depriving 1.6 million people of their liberty and basic human rights. Although the siege has been condemned by the United Nations, the Red Cross, and many national governments, nothing has been done to ease the plight of these civilians. Civil society has had to act where governments would not. Two ships with 27 passengers from 5 countries are sailing to Gaza to confront the Israeli naval blockade, and to bring medical supplies and letters of support.

As Americans we insist that our government (which sends Israel $3 billion in military aid every year), demands that Israel insures the ships' safe passage and ends its illegal blockade of Gaza. There is absolutely no excuse to subject 1.6 million people to collective punishment. Ask your local press to cover this story. Up-to-date information will be available at www.ustogaza.org, www.irishshiptogaza.org and www.tahrir.ca

Olympia, WA. A lawsuit, filed Friday in Thurston County Superior Court, aims to punish the Olympia Food Co-op for enacting a boycott of Israeli Goods. Plaintiffs, including several candidates who's recent Co-op Board of Directors campaigns failed by large margins, threaten financial harm unless the local food cooperative rescinds its boycott.

An ultimatum from the plaintiffs sent to the Co-op before the lawsuit was filed reads: "If you do what we demand, this situation may be resolved amicably . If not this process will become considerably more complicated, burdensome, and expensive than it has been already."

Groups opposed to the boycott of Israeli goods have repeatedly refused to bring the issue to a vote of the Co-op membership - a democratic option available to any Co-op member - and have instead turned to the court system, prompting some to question the legality of bringing suit at all. Laws prohibiting "strategic lawsuits against public participation" or SLAPP suits aim to protect individuals and organizations that participate in protected speech. SLAPP suits have frequently been used as means of repressing public participation by way of legal and financial intimidation.

According to leaked documents, the Northwest chapter of the international pro-Israel and anti-boycott lobby group StandWithUs and Akiva Tor, the Israeli Consul General for the Pacific Northwest, have been working closely with the plaintiffs to bring the lawsuit forward. In an interview with the online news publication The Electronic Intifada, director of StandWithUs Northwest Robert S. Jacobs acknowledged advising the plaintiffs to focus on procedure rather than substance, noting that trying to persuade the Co-op Board to reverse their decision on the basis of political and moral arguments would "probably not very successful."

StandWithUs Northwest is also actively combating community boycott initiatives at several other food cooperatives, including a local initiative in Port Townsend, where StandWithUs recently brought Israeli Deputy Consul General Gideon Lustig to speak against the proposed boycott.

When asked about the lawsuit, Olympia Food Co-op Staff Representative Jayne Kaszynski remained focused on the Co-op's commitment to social justice: "We can assure you that this lawsuit will not diminish our commitment to the rule of law and universal human rights for all people."

The Co-op's boycott of Israeli products was enacted on July 15 last year by a consensus decision by the Board of Directors. The boycott urges Israel to comply with international law, end its occupation of Palestinians, and respect the rights of refugees. The Co-op's decision to boycott Israeli products sparked several months of constructive discussion on the store's relationship to social justice, on Jewish identity, anti-Arab racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Last November, the election for the Co-op Board demonstrated widespread support for the boycott among the membership when five publicly pro-boycott candidates won by a large margin in a record turnout election.

"As as Palestinian refugee and a member of the Olympia Co-op I wholeheartedly support the boycott, as a way to save Israel from its own excesses, and to end the continued dehumanization of the Palestinian people under Israeli control," says Farihan Bushnaq, Co-op member since 1983.

The Olympia Food Co-op is a cornerstone of the community in Olympia, WA, bringing healthy food to over 15,000 members. The Co-op draws connections between food sovereignty, local production, democracy, and collective management, and strives to "make human effects on the earth and its inhabitants positive and renewing and to encourage economic and social justice". The boycott in question is follows various other boycotts and measures intended to promote these values.

The plaintiffs, who allege that procedural violations on the part of the Co-op's Board led them to "sustain irreparable injury," are seeking "an award of damages in an amount to be proved at trial" and that the Co-op's boycott of Israeli goods be "declared unenforceable, null, and void." The Co-op, an organization largely supported by community engagement and volunteer work, could be economically devastated by such a process.

"We're all just shocked that the boycott opposition would risk closing the store just to make their point. It's disgraceful," says Andrew Meyer, a member of the local activist group Olympia BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions).

Contact:
Olympia BDS
Andrew Meyer: 360 628 3087
David Langstaff: 919 260 8209
contact@olympiabds.org
www.olympiabds.org

Pro-palestinian activists from the Gaza-bound flotilla hold flags of the participating coutries in front of the Greek parliament in Athens on Tuesday. AFP

By Richard Lightbown * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Some aspects of the Gazan reality

In order to set the context I would like to begin by stating a few facts about Gaza.

1. The United Nations Relief and Workd Agency (UNRWA) annual report for 2010 found that the unemployment rate in Gaza is 45.2 per cent, which is believed to be the highest in the world.

2. For those in work the purchasing power of average monthly wages fell by 7.9 per cent during the last half of 2010. Purchasing power of workers has declined by 34.5 per cent since 2006.

3. It is estimated by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) that 300,000 Gazans live in abject poverty, subsisting on less than one dollar per day.

4. Ninety-five per cent of the water supply is considered unsafe for human consumption.

5. In June 2011 the deputy health minister of Gaza reported a major crisis in the health service of the territory which was receiving only one third of the required medicines and medical supplies. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that 178 types of medication, including many necessary antibiotics, have run out and that 123 types of necessary medical supplies were unavailable to various departments. On 13 June 2011 it reported that the Gaza Strip had not been supplied with medications and medical needs since the previous February. A Norwegian study in that month found that 100 out of 260 cancer patients were unable to receive treatment because the necessary drugs were unavailable.

6. Electricity supply is insufficient for the territory, resulting in frequent blackouts. OCHA reported in mid-2010 that less than half of the primary health centres were equipped with back-up generators: three of which were out of commission while a further eight centres were frequently out of fuel. This left a total of 15 centres out of 57 with back-up electricity supply. This situation is particularly dangerous for dialysis patients who have to be urgently disconnected from treatment during power cuts in order to avoid the formation of blood clots.

7. On 23 June 2011 the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that "The easing of the closure in June 2010 has had little impact on the daily lives of the residents in Gaza who continue to face many challenges as a result of the collapse of previously prosperous branches of the economy."

This extreme situation has been brought about by the Israeli closure policy on the Gaza Strip, to which the response of the international community has been woefully inadequate. On 2 July, for example, the Middle East Quartet merely described the desperate humanitarian crisis in Gaza as "unsustainable conditions facing the civilian population". The statement went on to note the "improved conditions over the last year, including a marked increase in the range and scope of goods and materials moving into Gaza, an increase in international project activity, and the facilitation of some exports".

"Some exports" indeed! The Israeli organization Gisha, which campaigns for freedom of movement for Palestinians, reported on 29 June that not a single truckload of export goods had left Gaza since 12 May. This is despite Israel being a signatory to the 2005 Crossings Agreement providing for up to 400 truckloads of Gazan exports per day to be processed through the Karni Crossing by the end of 2006. In other words, the Crossings Agreement had anticipated that Gaza would have been able to export up to 19,000 truckloads of produce (amounting perhaps to more than 250,000 tons) during this recent 48-day period during which no exports have in fact been permitted.

Meanwhile, the total amount of goods passing into Gaza via Kerom Shalom Crossing has been the equivalent of about 2.6 kilograms per person per day for the 12 months since restrictions were eased in August 2010. Not only is this "unsustainable", but it is totally insufficient for the maintenance of a healthy economy, which has been the intention of the Israeli government all along of course.

Some unreal responses to this reality

This is the reality, denied by world political leaders who know the facts better than anyone, that has led to the formation of yet another flotilla for Gaza. The response to this initiative has been both nefarious yet predictable. Israeli government spokespersons have described the Gaza-bound flotilla aid ships as being intended to undermine Israel's right to defend itself, and a violation of Israeli law. Victoria Nuland, from the US State Department, called the organizer's actions "irresponsible and provocative". The British foreign secretary, William Hague, also called the flotilla "provocative" in a parliamentary reply on 29 June. The Middle East Quartet and the UN secretary-general suggested that assistance and goods for Gaza should be channelled through "legitimate crossings" and "established channels".

But to what end would they do this Mr Ban? It would appear that all the construction materials from the last flotilla, amounting to more than half of the 10,000 ton cargo, has never arrived in Gaza. Some of the cargo from that flotilla was reported to have been sent to landfill in the Negev Desert. It would also appear that the sewage pipes which the MV Spirit of Rachel Corrie tried to deliver to Gaza are lying in a warehouse in Egypt instead. Meanwhile, spare parts legally purchased by Palestinian utilities for the electricity, sewage and water systems in Gaza are deliberately delayed by Israeli bureaucrats at these "legitimate crossings", while insult is added to injury by charging for the storage of the same items in Israeli warehouses. Where is the "legitimacy" of any of this?

And why do the Quartet and EU Foreign Affairs Representative Baroness Ashdown insist on linking the Gaza flotilla to appeals for the release of Gilad Shalit? The Israeli prisoner of war has indeed been deprived of his human rights for a very long time now. Mr Shalit, however, is not a child, neither has there ever been any suggestion that he has been tortured or sexually abused. In October 2010 the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoner's Affairs reported that 6,700 Palestinians were held in Israeli custody, of whom 283 were children and 35 were women. A total of 192 were imprisoned without charge, while 820 were serving life sentences. A long catalogue of institutional abuse reported by Defence for Children International/Palestine includes sexual abuse and electric shock treatment used against Palestinian children in Israeli custody. (On 29 June 2011, at a meeting in the British House of Commons, Lord Alf Dubs was heckled by a journalist from Israel Radio when he described personally seeing two teenage boys, one of them bewildered and crying, in leg shackles, without legal representation or family support, being brought before a high security military court in the West Bank.) Where is the reference to any of this in international diplomatic comment on the Gaza flotilla?

The Israeli spoilers

The flotilla is in fact being demonized and harassed by an orchestrated campaign from Israel that is seriously worried that the bad publicity of last year will be repeated this time around. Then, in a psychopathic attack on the last flotilla the Israeli government managed to do what the Free Gaza Movement had failed to do for two years, by publicizing the attempts to break the illegal siege of Gaza across the front pages of the world's media. Attempts to stop the current flotilla have been more subtle, and so far more successful. Techniques used on the MV Spirit of Rachel Corrie to disable the propeller have again been used against the ships from Ireland and Sweden. Lies have been put about by Israeli diplomats and others, asserting that there are links between the flotilla and terrorism, that the flotilla is unnecessary, that Israel is the victim in all this and is only doing what any reasonable state would do in the same circumstances. The bigger the lie the better of course. Thus the consul-general in New York, for example, declared to Amy Goodman that the entire southern region of Israel has been paralysed by 45,000 rockets that have been fired at it since 2005. At the same time he responded to several questions by saying that he did not have details of events happening in the Mediterranean, and cut short the interview to conveniently go to another appointment.

This time around there has also been more subtle harassment, although an attempt to frighten off journalists by threatening them with a 10-year expulsion from Israel was quickly retracted as a counterproductive measure. More insidious, however, has been the activities of Shurat HaDin, the Israel Law Center which is being backed by the Christian Zionist leader John Hagee (who on his own account has sent letters to Americans travelling to Gaza to tell them their voyage could be in violation of US criminal law). Shurat HaDin claims to be a civil rights organization and a world leader in combating terrorist organizations, although Israeli state terror does not seem to one of its targeted activities. Instead the centre has targeted maritime insurance companies, informing them that they could be legally liable for any future terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas. It also submitted a claim to the Greek Coast Guard suggesting that seven of the ships might have been lacking insurance or were improperly registered. (One French company is understood to have declined to insure a boat that was due to join the flotilla from Marseilles, as a result of this mischief.) The global satellite company INMARSAT was also told that is might be liable to massive damages and criminal prosecution if it were to provide "communication services to ships used by suspected terror organizations in the Gaza flotilla".

Other rougher tactics, more familiarly associated with Zionist criminality, are also suspected. News reporters with the ships have had their equipment vandalized and a computer infected with viruses when their hotel was broken into. The captain of one ship was beaten up by attackers wearing motorcycle helmets in the early hours of the morning. Passengers have had their mobile phones stolen, and suspicious individuals have been seen loitering near the French ship and outside of a hotel taking photographs of the vessel and passengers.

International pressure

But the biggest difficulties faced so far by the ships has been the activities of the Greek and Turkish governments along with those of the Republic of Cyprus. Or as Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman put it, "the Quartet, the governments of Greece and Cyprus object to the flotilla, understand the needs of Israel and are acting effectively." Exactly what manoeuvres have occurred behind the scenes can only be speculated on. In the case of Turkey, the charity IHH withdrew its support and its ships in June, citing more urgent concerns in Syria resulting from the unrest there. Political input has almost certainly been involved here, although rumours that the ruling AKP party has been bribed by American inducements to support Turkey as mediator in the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks sound far-fetched. Reports in the Israeli news website Debkafile that Turkey may be considering an invasion of western Syria in order to set up refugee camps there and prevent the influx of more than 100,000 refugees fleeing persecution in Syria sound more credible. There are already in the region of 30,000 people in Turkey who have fled Syria and creating a safe haven for them in their own country would be an easier proposition for Turkey to deal with. However, invading the sovereign territory of another country would need the support of powerful friends, particularly that of the United States, and this would inevitably come at a price. So it would seem possible that the sudden withdrawal of the Mavi Marmara from the flotilla did indeed have some connection with events in Syria and humanitarian concerns for the people there.

The behaviour of Greece has been easier to decipher. The economic problems besetting the country mean that the government there is unlikely to want to fall foul of Israel or its friends in North America and Europe. Natural antipathy between Turkey and Greece have also meant that as Turkish relations with Israel have cooled in the last two years, diplomatic opportunities for Greece have improved. In response, the government of Binyamin Netanyahu has been making overtures to European leaders asking them to provide financial aid to their new ally. As a result, Mr Netanyahu was able to learn on 30 June that the Greek government would be imposing a ban the following day preventing the flotilla from sailing to Gaza from its ports. The threatened use of Greek commandos against the rebellion of the US ship, The Audacity of Hope. and the mistreatment of her master, John Klusmer, who is reported to be held in shocking conditions in jail while being denied food and water and a visit from the US embassy, indicate that the Greek government is serious in applying this ban.

The compromise offer to ship the cargos in Greek ships to a port in either Israel or Egypt for shipment to Gaza under UN supervision is not an attractive one. While warmly embraced by the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, it does not address the siege of Gaza and would merely let Israel off the hook. It is unlikely to be accepted, and a better alternative may yet be available, possibly through a legal challenge. Professor Richard Falk, the specialist in international law has declared "Greece has no right to detain foreign-flagged ships in its ports other than for purposes of assuring seaworthiness via timely inspection. And they cannot interfere with 'innocent passage' through their territorial waters, and this passage is definitely innocent."

With ships threatening to run for the high seas (possibly aided by sympathetic harbour masters),the possibility of a legal challenge, and one French boat already on the high seas, destination Gaza, the game of chess may not yet be over. Mr Netanyahu may have won the first round, but his government faces determined opponents who are not only convinced of the righteousness of their cause, but also backed by an increasing body of public opinion that is likely to favour the courageous underdog. The spectre of an Israeli public relations disaster may not yet be over, and the hope still remains that the bureaucrats in the US and Europe may be shown that power of the people can still be a match for immoral political expediency.

* Richard Lightbown, studied the impacts of the Rwandan civil war on four Ugandan forests for his Masters dissertation. He has been a volunteer in Gaza and the West Bank, and assisted with a forestry proposal for the Arab areas of the occupied Golan.

By Stephen Lendman* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Freedom Flotilla II participants demand their lawful right to deliver vital humanitarian aid to Gaza. However, an Israeli/Washington/Greek conspiracy block them. Nonetheless, they persist, trying to overcome imperial ruthlessness and succeed.

A June 27 Jerusalem Post (JP) editorial called their mission "Ships of fools," saying:

Organizers "seem to be foolishly throwing caution to the wind, and appear bent on pushing ahead with plans for a confrontation on the open seas with the Israeli Navy."

Of course, they want nothing of the sort. Israel's Navy plans confrontation with them if they sail, perhaps intending another high-seas massacre like in May 2010, and regularly through air and ground attacks against occupied Palestinian civilians.

Instead of blaming the villain, JP blames victims, including saying Israel now lets "most everything into Gaza," when, in fact, critical needs go unfulfilled. Virtually all exports are prohibited, and Israel's siege is ruthlessly lawless.

Operating as a pro-Israeli front group, the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor (NGOM) is equally biased, disseminating propaganda and hate. Moreover, it debases legitimate human rights groups, independent journalists, and other advocates for truth, equity and justice.

Its director, Gerald Steinberg, is a Bar Ilan University political science professor, a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a steering committee member of the Forum on Antisemitism at the Office of the (Israeli) Prime Minister, and various other organizations promoting a one-sided pro-Israeli agenda.

On June 29, NGOM's Jason Edelstein headlined a Ynet.news article, "Gaza flotillas fill no great humanitarian void, clearly designed to provoke Israel," saying:

The "latest crop of flotilla participants - a fringe group of extremists working alongside terrorists - is more concerned with their own PR and promoting hate, violence, and chaos, rather than with working with Israelis and Palestinians to find peaceful solutions to the conflict."

What shocks is that Ynet News or any other publication would publish this rot instead of trashing it where it belongs, and barring further NGO Monitor submissions. They're long on hate and disinformation, while scorning truths, rule of law standards and justice.

In contrast, an April 7 Haaretz editorial headlined, "The blockade is the problem," saying:

The siege and plans to interdict flotilla aid "underscore the folly that serves as the foundation of" Netanyahu's policy. Moreover, Israel is "addicted to occupation and is unable to liberate itself...."

In addition, the blockade "only perpetuates the conflict and the hatred, and casts light on Israel as a cruel, occupying power....Halting the second flotilla does not compensate for the total failure of Israel's policy toward Gaza."

Haaretz writer Yitzhak Laor agrees, calling Gaza's siege "a moral blockade of Israel" in his July 5 article. Moreover, on June 3, Haaretz's Gideon Levy said today's Israel is "a society of force and violence," masquerading as a free and open democracy for all its people equitably. In fact, it never was and isn't now, nor is America, governed by powerful monied interests, operating with a license to steal.

So far, Greece prevents Flotilla II vessels from sailing, except the French boat, "Dignite al Karama," at sea en route to Gaza. Expecting to arrive in a day or two, its July 5 statement said:

"They are going to break the blockade in the name of the Freedom Flotilla, in the names of all those who have supported this mobilization, for justice and the law."

In Athens, however, police harassed and arrested US boat participants for protesting and fasting in front of Washington's embassy.

On July 4, six were arrested "for sitting on a park bench across from" the US ambassador's residence. "(P)ut into squad cars," Ray McGovern, Linda Durham, Debra Ellis, Ridgeley Fuller, Ken Mayers and Carol Murry were placed in "police station custody."

Earlier its captain, John Klusmire, was arrested. At noon Athens time, a July 5 hearing was held. Reports say he's free, though no doubt warned not to sail or receive much harsher treatment next time.

Greece, of course, is an Israeli/Washington enforcer, breaking the law for its masters after selling out its sovereignty to foreign bankers, despite mass public opposition. As a result, whatever legitimacy it once had is lost, a nation state reduced to a shameless imperial tool.

On July 4, the Canadian boat Tahrir defied Greece's prohibition and sailed from Agios. However, four miles short of international waters, it was intercepted, boarded and returned. Back in port, it's denied electricity and permission to start its generator.

As a result, its sanitary facilities are affected, punishment for supporting international humanitarian law, in contrast to Greece trashing it for Israel and Washington, using thuggery on their behalf.

On July 5, the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) headlined, "Greece is the Hero - and Maybe Harbinger of Better Days for Israel," saying:

Acting on Israel's behalf, both countries "have become very much closer recently....deciding (they) have the most in common and the most to gain from cooperation....The demise of the 2011 flotilla isn't the end of (Israel's troubles), but it is a welcome success engendered by (Greece's) willingness....to do the right thing."

Meanwhile, Gaza TV said 500 overseas Palestinians plan a "mass (July 8) fly-in" to Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport in solidarity with others trapped by occupation, especially Gazans under siege.

Fifteen organizations, including the International Solidarity Movement, organized the initiative, believing flotillas aren't enough. A July 3 press release said they hope to reach Gaza via Israel, adding:

"Most of us are frankly a bit scared because of one decision we've all made: to tell the truth that our plan is to visit Palestine."

In advance, they were warned they'll face "probing questioning" on arrival, won't be allowed entry, and likely will be harshly treated, then deported.

On July 5, in fact, Israel's Public Security Minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, said said "fly-in hooligan" activists will be confronted and deported, adding:

"In the coming days, hundreds of radical activists from Europe (and elsewhere) are expected to arrive in order to cause provocations, to demonstrate illegally and to damage our legitimacy in our country. I want to make it clear that....we will not allow public propaganda, incitement and illegal demonstrations to occur, not at the airport and not in any other place."

On July 5, Maan News said Israel made preparations to block them on arrival, including by diverting European flights to a separate terminal, then carefully screening all passengers. A statement from Netanyahu's office said:

"This planned event is a continuation of the attempts to undermine Israel's right to exist and to attempt to breach its borders and sovereignty by sea, land and by air."

Nonetheless, some flotilla participants also hope to reach Gaza via Ben-Gurion airport. It's not clear how many, when they plan to leave, or if Greek authorities will let them.

Israel, of course, is a rogue terror state. Its 44 year occupation and Gaza siege are illegal. So are decades of land theft, home demolitions, targeted killings, mass imprisonments, torture, and other brazen abuses against Palestinians for not being Jewish.

Whether or not flotillas reach Gaza, Israel lost the war. The whole world knows what America's media won't report, and what growing numbers of Jews condemn. Many, in fact, express disgust about a lawless nation in their name. Sooner or later perhaps every Jew will know, including fed up Israelis deciding to leave and renounce what no one should tolerate.

A Final Comment

On July 3, the Free Gaza movement and Flotilla II organizers learned that Greece offered to commandeer and deliver their aid. In a July 5 statement, they refused, saying:

It "shows collusion with Israel's blockade as well as a complete disregard for Palestinian human rights, reducing the issue of Gaza and Palestine (to) one of humanitarian aid," not why it's needed.

If Greece wants to address that, they explained, their "officials certainly know where to find us."

Also on July 5, the Palestine Telegraph headlined, "Public initiative invites flotilla 2 to sail from Egypt ports," saying:

On Tuesday, Egypt Today newspaper launched "a public initiative inviting the Freedom Flotilla 2 to sail toward (Gaza) via Egypt ports. Its statement announced:

Sailing "from Egypt ports will not only contribute in breaking the Israeli naval blockade....but also create a new hope for Egyptians and all Arabs."

The publication asked Egypt's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and all Arab states to back the initiative. Most, however, including Egypt's ruling junta, partner with Israel, Washington and other Western governments, not beleaguered, isolated Palestinians.

As a result, they're on their own with millions of global supporters to keep working for what Israel and complicit regimes won't allow, perpetuating their legacy of injustice.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

By Yousef Munayyer * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Earlier this year we watched with amazement as hundreds of thousands of Arabs charged into the streets of their cities demanding reform. The uprisings led to the departure of several leaders who had ruled for decades and also tested (and continue to test) several others.

But what led to this outpouring is much the same as the motivation behind the flotilla initiative which seeks to challenge the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

When fundamentally unjust situations are left unaddressed by states, the people must step in. That is precisely what happened in Tahrir square when hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Egyptians lost all faith in the government's ability to reform.

That is also precisely what drives the flotilla and the activists aboard it. They have watched as the collective punishment of 1.5 million civilians lingers with no objections coming from states that can change the situation. In fact, the siege of Gaza has been supported by Israel, the United States and Mubarak's Egypt (though post-Mubarak Egypt promises to be different).

The blockade of Gaza is just one part of a multilayered siege on the Gaza Strip. The layers include control of land entry and exit points for commercial and humanitarian goods, control over the amount of electricity and water available to the people of Gaza, control of the air and sea lanes, and so on.

The vast majority of water in Gaza is not fit for human consumption. The vast majority of people live on less than $2 a day and rely on daily handouts from aid organisations due to rampant unemployment.

The Israelis try to whitewash the devastating effects of the siege by ignoring the exhaustive documentation by aid organisations and human rights groups, and by claiming they facilitate the entry of hundreds of trucks a day into Gaza. This is tantamount to justifying the encaging of an innocent person by claiming to shove some bread and water through the bars once a day.

In reality, the number of trucks getting into Gaza are far below what the UN believes is necessary to meet the minimum standards of the population.

Exports, which are commercial goods leaving Gaza, have been stymied as well. In fact, in 2005, Israel agreed to allow 400 trucks of exports per day out of Gaza by 2006 yet less than 200 trucks of exports were permitted exit throughout all of 2008-2010! There is yet to be any rational argument from the Israelis as to why they prevent exports from leaving Gaza, and the only plausible explanation is that they want to emaciate the Palestinian economy in the strip.

It should also come as no surprise that Israelis are working around the clock in an attempt to vilify the people on these boats, just like the when the Mubarak regime attempted to do the same with the Egyptians that challenged his rule.

But the passengers on the flotilla realise that nonviolent disobedience is key to the success of their mission to raise awareness about the unjust blockade. The Israelis have even been caught distributing fake videos accusing the flotilla organizers of homophobia, alliances with terrorists and even suggesting the passengers might use chemical weapons.

For a state that claims to be a "democracy", their response to nonviolent disobedience is as irrational as any neighbouring autocrat's.

Vilification is, of course, the first step to justifying violence, and there has been no shortage of violence used against nonviolent activists during the Arab Spring. It seems Israel is laying the groundwork to apply similarly repressive techniques against the good-willed passengers of these boats.

So what will the reaction be?

As the flotilla approaches Gaza, another January 25th moment presents itself. You either stand with members of civil society who have challenged the unjust practices of states, or you stand with those states and their unjust practices.

About 40 brave Americans have cast their lot with civil society by setting sail on the American-flagged ship to Gaza, the "Audacity of Hope". Among them are men and women, elderly, and many Jewish-Americans as well. They will be joined by about ten ships and 300 other activists. They simply refuse to sit idly by like their governments as the crime of the siege of Gaza continues.

As the collective punishment of 1.5 millions civilians persists, it's time to ask yourself: which side are you on?

* Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

This article originally appeared in AlJazeera.net.

Pulitzer prize winning author, poet, and activist, Alice Walker, speaking at a press conference about why she will be on the "Audacity of Hope."

Drawing from her own experience of living under segregation and witnessing the solidarity in the Civil Rights Movement in America, she said, "when black people were enslaved for 300 years, it took a lot of people in the outside of our communities to help free us." Speaking about the American boat to Gaza, Walker said, "I am going to Gaza because my government has failed to understand or care about the Gazan people, but worse than that, it is ignorant of our own history in the United States."

Video link: http://youtu.be/SCKpMzCRPbQ

Source: Democracy Now!

Also read "Alice Walker: Why I'm sailing to Gaza."

Auntie, I Simply Can't Imagine It!

Joining the Freedom Flotilla II To Gaza, Aboard The Audacity of Hope

By Alice Walker | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Editor's note: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker will join an international flotilla of boats sailing to Gaza to challenge Israel's blockade of the territory. Here, Walker, best known for her 1983 novel "The Color Purple," explains why she will be taking part.

Alice Walker

Some of this narrative I have written before, but in the interest of completion, I will reiterate here: On December 27, 2008, one of my two sisters died, just as the Israeli military began massively bombing the Gaza strip, an assault that would continue for 22 days and nights. She was older than me, and had been sick practically all her life. Stress of many kinds had separated our spirits, though love remained. Even with so much distance between us I felt, when she died, as if I'd lost part of myself. It was amazing, the grief. And then I learned, that same day, of a woman in Gaza who had lost five of her daughters to the bombing; she herself was unconscious. Immediately I felt: I must go to her and tell her that even though I am an American and paid with my taxes for some of the grotesque weapons of mass destruction rained on her family, I did not sanction devastation of her life, or, if she survived, her grief.

That was my first trip to the Israeli dominated territories of Palestine.

What I found left me speechless and helped inspire a small book: OVERCOMING SPEECHLESSNESS: A POET ENCOUNTERS THE HORROR IN RWANDA, EASTERN CONGO, AND PALESTINE/ISRAEL. For months I found it impossible to talk about what it had felt like to walk among the rubble of what had been people's homes, hospitals, libraries, and schools. I found old people sitting in the pulverized remains of homes they'd sacrificed generations of labor and love to create, and was told of people wounded so badly they were rotting (from the tungsten DIME contained in the bombs) from the inside out. The water system had been destroyed, the sewer system also. What remained of The American School was a mountain of rubble. I sat there in its ruins, in despair. Five things besides people and animals one must never assault, I believe, are: water, homes, schools, hospitals and the land. The Israeli military had deliberately destroyed or made impossible for the Palestinian people to use, all of these.

About a year later, I was on my way to Gaza a second time. In Cairo I accompanied Jodie Evans of CODE PINK to talk to an official of the Red Crescent. We begged this official to permit entry to Gaza of the 1400 people who had come from all over the world to march for peace with the Palestinian people, who had been "put on a diet" by the Israeli government and denied food and medicine or the ability to escape their confinement on the tiny Gaza strip. The official was a nice man, a good man, I felt. I don't think it was easy for him to tell us we could send only a few dozen of the 1400 people into Gaza, one bus, and very little of the millions of dollars worth of humanitarian aid CODE PINK and other organizations had gathered. Though the children of Gaza are dangerously malnourished (those who haven't died) because of the years long siege and blockade, we were not allowed to send much sustenance to them, including items such as milk or juices, "because" we were told "they are liquid."

This year, watching news of the Spring uprising at Tahrir square in downtown Cairo, I've often wondered if our man from the Red Crescent was there; whether he recalled our visit; Jodie Evans' relentless haggling to be permitted to help a sick and desperate people, whose children were being destroyed before their eyes, as well as before the eyes of the informed world. I hoped he was one of those who rallied in the street, and who testified later, after the deposition and arrest of Hosni Mubarak, that, yes, indeed, we must open the (Egyptian) Rafah gate (the only exit from Palestine not controlled by Israel) and let the people out.

How are the people to rebuild their bodies and their homes, their hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, ministries, water systems, sewerage system, their greenhouses, if they are denied materials sent to them from people outside their prison? That is the question. Illegally controlling the waters of the Mediterranean approaching the Gaza strip, the Israeli military, against all international law, unilaterally attacks boats and people trying to break the embargo of goods and materials.

My last visit to the Palestinian people was in April 2011, when I was invited to speak at a TEDxRamallah program that took place in Bethlehem. After this astonishing daylong event of meeting and listening to Palestinian activists and artists, available I believe on Youtube, I joined Palfest, the Palestine Literary Festival that takes place each year, bussing a caravan of writers, poets, musicians, artists, from town to town in the occupied West Bank to interact with whoever shows up. As I did this, I was almost returned to speechlessness by what I experienced there.

First of all, my partner, Kaleo Larson, and I entered Palestine (which one can only do by going through Israel) by way of Jordan. Already, in Amman, in our hotel, my computer mysteriously vanished: it would be returned to me later, while I was in Ramallah, with all references to future activity regarding Israel removed. Then there was the experience of the Allenby bridge border crossing. There, as we approached the first check-point with our Arab driver, we felt the change. He became more cautious and tense. Sure enough, he was coldly informed by one of the armed soldiers that he could not drive us, and our bags, to the bus waiting on the other side of the building that would take us hopefully into Palestine, but must put us out on the street. Which meant we had to drag quite heavy bags a good distance, without our driver's help or guidance. We had no idea where we were exactly or even what we were to do next. However we did know that if we ever visited Palestine again, and it was still not liberated from Israeli control, we would not bring suitcases but backpacks.

I have a niece who startled me once by saying: Auntie, I simply can't imagine what you all went through, under segregation. She and her husband live in the American South, apparently in peace, in an integrated neighborhood that would have been unthinkable only forty years ago. They are blissfully the parents of twins, recently born, and, with the exception of floods, droughts, tornadoes and windstorms, life appears to be vastly different and better for black people, now that Jim Crow laws are history, than it was when I was young.

However, beginning at the Allenby Bridge crossing, on our way into Occupied Palestine, I began to want my niece, bogged to the neck with her twins as she is, to observe the scene with me. Because it was tantamount to stepping back into our own past of segregation (United States apartheid) with its, for us people of color, rigidly enforced brutality and fifth class "citizenship."

First of all, we quickly realized we had somehow chosen the entry into Israel's occupied "territories" that primarily Arabs use. We, being among them, were not to hear or see a kind word or look for the next many hours. We were treated immediately as if we were stupid if we didn't understand whatever they were speaking: for a long time Hebrew and Arabic were indistinguishable to us. We were pointed here to this window, there to that window, by women and men who spoke to us in snarls and barks. All of these windows extracted cash. Finally, we made it to the bus that had been waiting for quite a while already; there in the hot sun, motor idling, people sitting inside fanning, some of them with small children. No place for the children to pee, if they had to, either, the mother in me noted.

After a long inexplicable wait, the bus moved. It proceeded through no less than six check-points, stopping each time to be inspected, before cruising slowly to the next check-point until at long last we reached the terminal. Confusion. Our bags went one way, ourselves the other. If this is a bridge, where is the water? The Aquarian in me wanted to know. At some point we, and our luggage, were checked thoroughly by rude, hostile young people who also lifted from my wallet every bit of my Jordanian currency. The women especially were a shock: they yelled at the Arabs (men, women, grandparents, children, it made no difference) almost as if they'd forgotten how to speak to humans. They ordered them about in ways I hadn't seen done to people of color for a couple of generations.

With our passports already taken from us by someone on the bus, we were directed to join long lines already formed, all Arabs, before a number of windows. This we did, sitting, when we could, for about nine hours. Without Jordanian money I was unable to purchase even a bottle of water. Fortunately a Palestinian woman bought a bottle for me, and refused the American bills I asked her to take. Our wait was interrupted by fruitless attempts to understand what was being asked of us. Were we to stand here or there? Would there be a bus? A boat? (Still expecting a river since we were on a bridge). We tried to explain that someone sent to pick us up would likely leave if we did not emerge soon. Our wait was also interrupted by four hours of interrogation.

In the Southern United States when I was a child, they would have said: Boy, or Girl, I want to talk to you. And that could mean nobody would ever see you again. Or it could mean they'd see you so badly beaten they'd wish they hadn't. Or it could mean…. Anyway. A young woman who had seemed attractive to me until she began harassing me (in English) about where I was going and who I was going to see, had seemed to make a sport of taking my passport here and there behind the partition that separates the waiting area from the rest of the building. I had already filled in a form that told everything I knew myself about my trip. But I had left off my email address because, I thought, who around here is going to want to email me? But no, an annoyed young man arrived and demanded this information. I lied: I don't have email. Which I said partly to save us both the embarrassment of a woman old enough to be his grandmother having to say: I don't want to give it to you. But I needn't have worried. He commented that he had ways to get the email address and didn't really need my help. I said: But why should I give my email address to you? To which he replied: Because if you don't we won't let you into the country. He said this so nastily that I wondered: Does his mother agree with how badly this kid was raised?

It was this "kid" who would interrogate me for four hours. Waving me into a room behind the waiting area, and not telling my partner, Kaleo, where I was being detained, which of course stressed him out. He grilled me about everything; scrolled up activist statements I'd made on his computer even I had forgot. He reminded me a lot of a Jewish artist friend named Wendy Cadden. Dark haired and slightly built, he could be her younger brother or perhaps her son, or grandson, I thought: I concentrated on this possibility while he went on and on, more politely now, but still in charge since he had my passport and had demanded I leave everything but what I was wearing outside his office.

At some point I said to him, seeing him really as I might have seen my own (misguided) son: Don't you realize this behavior, of making old men, mothers, little children, wait in long lines pleading with you to visit their families, is wrong and is bad for you? I couldn't bring myself to use the "N" word, but I did say: Don't you think this behavior - insulting, threatening, humiliating - makes you all seem rather German-esque? I meant the old German-esque, of the late Thirties and Early Forties, not the current German-esque. He didn't seem to care. Alas.

After leaving his office, and having asked his name, which was Near but pronounced Nay-ear, I was disdainfully waved over by another young man, this one in uniform. He held my passport and started asking me the same questions I had spent four hours answering. By now hot and hungry, I said in exasperation: You know what? I agree. You don't want me in your country and I don't want to go there. Give me my passport and I will go home. I also said: Doesn't your rudeness to a guest to your country make you ashamed? He looked about eighteen years old and appeared confused by my comment. Has the notion of shame so completely disappeared? I wondered.

Later on, it would be explained to us that all the rudeness, the waiting in long lines, the absence of water, and, apparently, of toilets once one boarded the bus, the harassment and the fact that buses might wait hours before moving, was all part of a plan to keep anyone coming through that gate from ever coming back!

And I remembered Nay-er asking me: why didn't you go through Tel Aviv? As if I might have saved myself a bit of Arab torture. But actually I was glad we'd gone the Arab route, it was like sitting with my own parents and grandparents in segregated waiting rooms, bus and train stations all over the South. I was even glad Kaleo and I hadn't known there was a VIP lounge, which many younger, more affluent Arabs made use of. Some of them had come out to us, wanting an autograph (!) and explaining how, for a fee, we could sit with them in comfort, on sofas, inside a small room that appeared to have a snack bar.

By the time we were allowed out of the "Israeli Terminal" as Palestinian friends call the Allenby Bridge crossing, the van sent to pick us up had left. It was late at night. We climbed into a taxi and sped off. We had no idea where we were but the moon was nearly full and stunning. The moon, especially when I don't know where I am, always reminds me of Sojourner Truth, whose children were sold away from her during her enslavement: I look at the moon and you look at the moon, she said to them in her prayers, or words to that effect.

Perhaps after the Flotilla II experience, I will be able to write about the solidarity and friendship we experienced with the other poets and writers, most Arab Palestinians but also some Jews, Palestinian and American, we encountered. I like to think about some of the unusual discoveries we made: like how many Palestinian Christians there still are in "the Holy Land," and how kind some of them were to us. How extraordinary it is to see people from all over the world flocking to the spot in Bethlehem's "Manger Square " and The Church of the Nativity where Jesus is said to have been born, with little concern apparently that in the form of his present day compatriots, Jesus, a Palestinian - is still being crucified. The tackiness of rampant commercialism makes "the Holy Land" a small area to market, and it is marketed relentlessly. Mass produced trinkets produced in China and Taiwan flood the area. Many of the Palestinian owned shops have been pushed away from the most lucrative sites. The land itself, from millennia of being considered the only "holy land" there is, is battered, beaten down. My heart ached for it. What a catastrophe to be so famous; a footprint on your face every minute. The true holy land is within the heart itself, is my view, as is the true Jerusalem. Not to mention that all of the Earth is holy, which means one can freely worship wherever one is. (Of course you can't make any money off of that idea!)

But I digress.

I thought of my niece as I found myself approaching Jews Only roads with a van filled with Palestinian Arabs. Our driver conscientiously pulled over to wait for the appropriately colored license plate (on another van, into which we moved) that would permit us to continue. The Palestinian license plate color is green: the Israeli one yellow. In fact, on the night of our arrival, we had noticed our driver had turned off the big, new American looking highway onto a poorly constructed and congested road that in fact was blocked at the top of a steep hill. The driver, muttering, had turned around on a dangerous curve and continued on the main road. Nervous, I now realized, because it was illegal for him to be on it.

Now here, I thought, was something even white Southerners had not thought to segregate, the very roads! Though I did recall how my grandparents in Georgia, in their mule drawn wagon, when I was a very small child, had had to pull over, almost into the ditch, if a white driver in a car roared past.

Always somewhat grumpy in the early morning I found myself our third or fourth day unable to bear conversing with a prominent Palestinian historian who sat down beside me, drinking coffee and blowing cigarette smoke. I moved to another seat. However, I soon felt very small as this same man, whose work is lauded and loved in Palestine, quietly got up, gathered his things, and moved to the front of the van to be let out. In the middle of nowhere, it seemed, by the side of the road. He explained to a poet at the front of the bus that he did not have the right permit to be allowed even to ride on a bus through the city of Jerusalem, where it seemed we were heading.

I think one reason it is so hard for people to deal with the Palestine/Israel issue is that so much of it is unbelievable. Even when you're standing there, in the middle of it, the mind has to struggle to grasp what is happening. What has been done for the past sixty-odd years, and what is being done now. Just as my niece finds it impossible to imagine what a segregated American South felt like, I find it hard to believe Israelis assume they can live through generations of brutally oppressing the people whose lands they occupy. The greatest, most obvious expression of their intent to do this is THE WALL.

Once when I fell in love with the works of the great Chinese writer Ding Ling I went to visit her in Beijing. She was in her Eighties and magnificent, thinking fondly of her Sixties as really extraordinary years, though she had been badly abused by the Cultural Revolution. While there I went with our group to visit the Great Wall of China. What I liked was that every once in a while an artist had managed to etch a flower in the wall (maybe I imagined this!) but also: it was explained to us that the wall never worked properly to keep out the invaders because many of them simply bribed the gatekeepers who, for money, let them in. Hummm.

The Israeli built apartheid wall is HUGE. It is incredibly tall and thick. It must be at least twenty feet tall and sometimes it is installed atop a three to five foot platform that increases its height. It is also sunk several meters into the ground. It has cost so far three and a half billion dollars (a bit over the amount US taxpayers send to Israel each year); it is everywhere, and it is indescribably ugly. On the Israeli side we learn it is "prettified" with tiles of various colors, but on the Palestinian side it is bare concrete. To their credit, Palestinians have given graffiti artists free reign, and there is often moving and arresting art.

One of our new friends, a poet, took us around to show us the wall in action. First, we went to a shop that sells Palestinian books and crafts. Unfortunately for the owner, a beautiful, middle-aged, stressed out woman, her shop was "too close" to Rachel's Tomb, so the wall was built practically on her doorstep depriving her of a view of anything except its menacing presence. The woman was so trapped by the wall she reminded me of a small animal frantic in its cage.

Our second visit was to the tiny home of a family of four: a mother, father, and two small boys. The ditch for the wall's placement was being dug while we had tea; the noise of it so powerful it shook the house. When the wall is completed, the man's house will be completely cut off from his fields, depriving him of a livelihood; his small boys will have to cross three check-points each day to reach their school. They were gracious to us, even cheerful, this small, isolated family, in a way that reminded me very much of the days of segregation and soul torture in the South. The boys played as if they understood nothing of their family's crisis, as we had played as children, well loved by our over burdened parents who never had the heart to tell us how viciously we were all being oppressed. (Kaleo later reminded me that the little boy I thought was playing hide-and-seek was actually hiding. He had been severely beaten by an Israeli soldier a few weeks before).

The last visit was to the poet's own house, which she shares with relatives. When the wall is completed just behind her house, she will lose the sunrise. The morning sky. I will call her Fatima. Being with her was almost exactly like being with poor black people in Mississippi in the Sixties: wherever she took us to look at the wall, where it was newly being constructed, where it was planned to stretch next, where it would steal another football field size area of farmland from her family and from other Palestinians, we were trailed by men in big white trucks, silently, slowly, menacingly, to let us know they were aware of and hostile to our presence. Instead of white sheets they have white trucks, I thought, new ones, bought no doubt with American money and, in fact, come to think of it, I believe they were American made trucks. I noted that the machines used to dig ditches for the wall were made by Volvo. I thought of the beautiful red Volvo I'd owned when we lived in Mississippi as civil rights activists (the safest car we could find) and how I would now never own another one.

On the last day of Palfest, the Israeli military tear- gassed the tent in which the evening's event was to take place. My partner and I had left Palestine by then and did not experience it. Though, because we had bonded with our "tribe," as we thought of the other artists, we felt it very much. Our tribe, true to the audacity of artists, carried on, as we knew they would.

Getting out of Palestine through the Allenby Bridge exit proved as stressful as coming in had been. Though we rose early and hailed a taxi outside our hotel, and though we speedily made our way to the bridge's check-point, and even though there were only a few other vehicles waiting to be permitted entry, we were forced to languish for three hours as giant tourist buses were waved through on one side of the two-lane entry and those taxi or van drivers preferred by the border guards were permitted to pass ahead of us. All around us, as traffic backed up, we noted people, women and men, who were being forced to wait, emerge from their cars and vans and make use of the trees and grass to relieve themselves. Finally, exasperated but also worn down by this treatment, I felt, our driver asked my partner to appeal to the border guard to let us advance. This my partner did, though tempers by this time were so tense among all the held-up drivers that he was almost assaulted by an irate driver who felt we were being permitted to move ahead of him. He had recently arrived and had no way of knowing we had been there for hours.

Inside the terminal my partner was permitted to pass to the other side; I was held up. My passport again taken behind a partition. Again, I felt confusion about what I was supposed to do. At that point I noticed a young Jewish man who looked like the son of a former teacher of mine. I stopped him and asked what was going on. He didn't know, but he courteously showed me where I should sit until all was sorted out. My partner soon returned and eventually we were on our way. With this young man's face, dark hair and thoughtful eyes, his simple and as yet undestroyed kindness, still warming me.

I have never believed in the Israeli/Palestinian peace talks. Whenever I saw the men gathering to talk about peace I was reminded of what the Indians said to the white colonizers of America who came to talk peace with them: " Where are your women?" An occasional woman has appeared to take part in the talks, but overwhelmingly the process has been male driven. I like to think if women, in equal numbers to men, had been at the table things might not have turned out so badly. But perhaps, recalling the disrespectful young Israeli women at the check-points, this is naive. In any case, it is when one sees the Israeli settlements, after hearing about them for decades, that the final "Aha" moment arrives. They are colossal, and, like the wall, they are everywhere. It is obvious, looking at them, gigantic, solid, white and towering, that they have been constructed to completely devour the rest of Palestine, and that the peace talks have been a ruse to continue their growth so that Jewish Israelis can claim the land by possession alone. Possession is nine-tenths of the law is one of the dictums I learned from my Jewish lawyer former husband. This belief might even be enshrined in the Torah. In any case it is a very old idea, and Israelis have made good use of it.

Dispossessed of land and houses, poverty stricken, refugees in their own country since the catastrophe of 1948, when Zionist terrorists drove them from their villages, towns and cities, Palestinian laborers have been forced to build these settlements for the Israeli settlers and, having built them, are rarely permitted inside them, except to service them. This is similar to our own history, in America: the genocide and enslavement of Native people, and the forced black and Indian labor that built so much of America, including The White House. Sometimes one wonders if this greed that devours the very substance of other human beings is part of human DNA. I don't think it is; and, in any case, I hope not!

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all it's cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?

There is a scene in the movie Gandhi that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming. And that is how, I suspect, it will be with us. The tide is turning on this issue that people around the world have agonized over or tried to ignore for generations, and nothing can stop the tide. Like the ocean's waves, whatever the opposition, we must retain our non-violence (it is more beautiful than violence) and we must keep coming.

Alongside this image of brave followers of Gandhi there is for me an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the South in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help - our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protestors- and came to stand with us. They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few "good ole' boys'" of Neshoba County, Mississippi and were beaten and shot to death along with James Cheney, a young black man of formidable courage who died with them. So, even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.

And what of the children of Palestine, who were ignored in our President's latest speech on Israel and Palestine, and whose impoverished, terrorized, segregated existence was mocked by the standing ovations recently given in the U.S. Congress to the president of Israel? I have witnessed their bravery, as they attempt to protect their communities and homes using stones, their only ammunition, against the armored Israeli tanks (American bought) that destroy their land, neighborhoods, houses and families, and, like much of the world, have been profoundly moved. I have noted that their arms have sometimes been broken by Israeli soldiers for throwing these stones, and that nine and ten year olds have been tortured and left to become dejected and hollowed out teen-agers in prison or jail.

I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left. One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe; to do so is to extend the world's disasters. As adults, we must affirm, constantly, that the Arab child, the Muslim child, the Palestinian child, the African child, the Jewish child, the Christian child, the American child, the Chinese child, the Israeli child, the Native American child etc., is equal to all others on the planet. We must do everything in our power to cease the behavior that makes children everywhere feel afraid .

Finally, thinking of my niece who can't imagine what segregation in the US was like, there is the memory of my own surprise to discover, in the Southern Freedom Movement, what solidarity between black and white was like. Like her, I had not been able, prior to moving to Mississippi, to imagine it. This was so true that when I arrived in Jackson I was annoyed to see white people, working daily under great stress, and on our side, already there. I once asked my best friend and husband of that period, who was as staunch a defender of black people's human rights as anyone I'd ever met: how did you find your way to us, to black people, who so needed you? What force shaped your response to the great injustice facing people of color of that time? I thought he might say the speeches, the marches, the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. or of others in the Movement who exhibited impactful courage and grace. But no. Thinking back, he recounted an episode from his childhood that had led him, inevitably, to our struggle. He was a little boy on his way home from Yeshiva, the Jewish school he attended after regular school let out. His mother, a bookkeeper, was still at work; he was alone. He was frequently harassed by older boys from regular school, and one day two of these boys snatched his yarmulke, and, taunting him, ran off with it, eventually throwing it over a fence. Two black boys appeared, saw his tears, assessed the situation, and took off after the boys who had taken his yarmulke. Chasing the boys down and catching them, they made them climb the fence, retrieve and dust off the yarmulke, and place it respectfully back on his head.

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put - without delay, and with tenderness - back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

That is why I sail.

Source: alicewalkersgarden.com

Video link: http://youtu.be/Hnyh-lZDLVw

Up to 50 Americans are set to sail from a Greek port on a U.S.-flagged ship that is part of an international flotilla carrying humanitarian aid and letters of support for Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian residents. Its fate is now in limbo under the weight of U.S.-Israeli pressure and Greece's economic turmoil. Israel insists it will enforce its blockade on Gaza, which it says is aimed at stopping weapons from reaching the Hamas government. "The Israelis do have a right to interdict arms traffic. We're bearing letters," says Ray McGovern, former senior CIA analyst and passenger on the U.S. aid ship. "How can these letters be considered a threat to the security of Israel?" Democracy Now! producer Aaron Maté is in Athens to cover the journey of The Audacity of Hope, named after President Obama's bestselling book. He and fellow producer, Hany Massoud, are the only journalists with the U.S. delegation. They file this exclusive report.

AMY GOODMAN: Amidst the uncertainty awaiting them at sea, flotilla passengers are now facing a new challenge, even before setting sail. The Greek government has refused to grant permission for The Audacity of Hope and two other ships leaving port, citing anonymous complaints that later turn out to come from an Israeli group. The Greek government's move comes amidst heavy international pressure to resolve a fiscal crisis that sparked massive protest and a general strike scheduled for this week.

The Israeli government, meanwhile, is also warning journalists not to cover the aid mission. On Sunday, Israel said reporters who board Gaza-bound ships will be barred from Israel for 10 years and have their equipment seized. In response, the Foreign Press Association said the warning, quote, "sends a chilling message to the international media and raises serious questions about Israel's commitment to freedom of the press." On Twitter, former U.S. State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley responded, quote, "Israel is working against its own self-interest by pressuring journalists not to cover the Gaza flotilla, clearly a newsworthy event," he tweeted.

Well, Democracy Now! is in Athens right now with our exclusive report. Democracy Now! producer Aaron Maté is in Greece covering the journey of The Audacity of Hope.

AARON MATÉ: We're in Athens, Greece, where delegates from across the U.S. have gathered to board The Audacity of Hope. It's one of 10 ships in the Freedom Flotilla 2, the aid mission to the Gaza Strip. But the journey is facing uncertainty. The Greek government is facing heavy pressure to thwart the aid mission, and the State Department is calling on The Audacity of Hope to abandon its voyage, just issuing a statement calling it "provocative and dangerous."

Well, we spoke to some of the delegates that are going to be boarding the ship and asked for their response.

JANE HIRSCHMANN: I'm Jane Hirschmann. I'm one of the organizers of the U.S. boat to Gaza called The Audacity of Hope. We're here tonight, as you see, with not only our delegation, but delegations from all over the country. We're part of the international Freedom Flotilla-Stay Human. We are going to sail to Gaza. We are over 22 countries and 10 ships that are going.

AARON MATÉ: So, right now, the Greek government is facing a huge internal revolt. There's protests every day, strikes for this week. Are you concerned that opponents of the flotilla are going to exploit that to try to pressure the Greek government to stop the sailing?

JANE HIRSCHMANN: Yes, I think that's happening right now. You know, our boat, right now, is ready to go, as I said. There has been a complaint that's been, you know, lodged against our boat. It's totally bogus. And they are trying to slow down the process. Tomorrow, our lawyer is going to try to deal with it, and we hope that we will be sailing very, very soon.

AARON MATÉ: The State Department is calling the flotilla "provocative." It's urging Americans not to take part. What's your response?

JANE HIRSCHMANN: I think we should see-turn that around a little and ask the State Department who's being provocative, when a group of unarmed civilians, civil society, the civil society, is going to a country that's been totally under siege, where this highest unemployment in the world is in Gaza, when they don't have sanitary water conditions, they don't have medicines. And you really have to ask, being occupied, which is the country that's really being provocative. And I think that's Israel. And of course the United States colludes in that, because we give Israel $3 billion a year of our tax money to do this to the people of Gaza.

AARON MATÉ: Now, you're Jewish. I'm seeing a lot of Jews here. Are there any non-Jews here?

JANE HIRSCHMANN: Twenty-five percent of this boat, of the delegates on this boat, are Jewish, yes. And there's a reason for that, because we want to say to the world that the Israeli government does not speak in our name.

RAY McGOVERN: My name is Ray McGovern. And I've seldom met 35 closer friends now, and are really eager to get on that boat to get to Gaza. What Barack Obama wants to avoid is having to decide: do I call Netanyahu and risk being rebuffed, as he is accustomed to doing, or do I just let these Americans suffer whatever fate awaits them at hands of the Israeli navy? Tough decision. That's why they're focusing on Greece, to make sure that we never leave here, lest he have to face that decision.

Never-never, ever-was it our intention to sail into Israeli waters, OK? Gazan waters are Gazan waters, under Israeli law, because they pretend not to be an occupying power anymore. So, either we go into Gazan waters, where we cannot be intercepted under international law, or the Israelis say, "Well, no, we were only kidding about not occupying Gaza. We still occupy Gaza." Then the Israelis do have a right to interdict arms traffic. Now, you know, we're bearing letters, OK? My grandfather from Ireland, he was a letter carrier. So was my other grandfather. It's very much in my tradition. We're carrying letters. Now, what, in God's name, can letters-how can the letters, these letters, be considered a threat to the security of Israel?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: I'm Medea Benjamin with the group CodePink. I'm from Washington, D.C. This is not a provocation. This is following the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King. It's following the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi. It's following the footsteps of Palestinians who resist nonviolently day after day. And it's in a great global tradition of standing up against injustice.

AARON MATÉ: Six members of Congress have signed a letter asking the U.S. government to protect the passengers. What do you want from the White House, from Congress, from the State Department?

MEDEA BENJAMIN: Well, first I want to say that when you look around here at representatives from other organizations, they have members of their parliament going with them. There is a member of the Spanish parliament here, European parliament here, Swiss parliament, Norwegian parliament. And they ask us, "How many members of your Congress are going on this U.S. delegation?" And I laugh, because I'm so ashamed to even say, not only is there not one member going, but we didn't even bother asking any of them to come, because we knew it would be impossible. It was hard enough to get six people to sign a letter that said that our government should protect us. And we are U.S. citizens, you know. So, it is so embarrassing when you see how far removed our government is compared to other governments around the world in standing up for what we say that we go to war for in Iraq or in Libya: people's basic human rights.

AARON MATÉ: So, we're on our way to a square where there are some protests taking place?

LISA FITHIAN: We're heading to the heart of the resistance here in Greece, in Athens right now, Syntagma Square.

AARON MATÉ: So people have been gathering there-

LISA FITHIAN: Mm-hmm.

AARON MATÉ: -daily?

LISA FITHIAN: The square is actually occupied. People, you'll see when we get down, they've set up a whole community there. Each quadrant has tents set up. There's a media area, a healthcare area. And then, in the center of the plaza is where they have the assemblies every night. So there's a popular assembly every night, basically a decision-making process about the different agendas that they do. And right now, they're dealing with the political position around these austerity measures that are going to be voted on on Wednesday and preparing for the general strike on Tuesday and Wednesday.

AARON MATÉ: We're at Syntagma Square, the epicenter of protests in Greece right now. And we're with Lisa Fithian, who's sort of the unofficial tour guide for Democracy Now! in activist hotbeds. You were with us in Copenhagen, gave us a tour there during the climate protests. And now, tell us what's going on here.

LISA FITHIAN: As you can see, as we come down into the main center of the plaza, right across from the parliament is the popular assembly that's taking place right now. So what you have is folks from every walk of life that come to the center here in Athens. You know, all different ages, from all different professions, from classes, different political ideologies, are all coming here to participate in this incredible democratic process.

I mean, I think I've seen, as I've come down here, you know, people take it very seriously. There's a voting process, and they set their agendas. And it's in the heart of this incredible community that's been here for over a month, where you have medical areas, media areas, art areas, cultural areas, and then people that are camping out. And so, every day this goes on. And each night, starting from anywhere between 7:00 and 9:00 'til midnight or so, the plenary happens.

And really, on the strike, this is, you know, the center where a lot of the conflicts happened two weeks ago. And when the strike comes Tuesday and Wednesday, this will continue to be the center. Wednesday, the general strike is calling for people from all around Greece to come here to surround the parliament building. So we can only imagine what that's going to be like. So, it's really an incredible moment here. And as you've seen, talking to people from Greece, they have such great hope and such belief in what they're doing here, that it's really democracy.

MARY: Well, I'm Mary. I came here like everybody came. It was something like a spontaneous call on Facebook saying everybody who is upset with this situation, Greek, come to Syntagma Square at 6:00. It was Wednesday, 25 of May. And I came to see what this thing is. And I thought that, like usual, we were going to stay here for two hours, look at each other, yell a little, maybe have a fight with the police, and go back. But we are here over a month. Yesterday we have our birthday of one month. And we managed to make a small, self-organized community. It's not-some people say it's a political movement. OK, I don't know, maybe it is. It's a demonstration. That's what it is. Everybody thinks that the political system in this country is very corrupted. So we don't follow any party, any political party. This square says parties, political parties, are out.

AARON MATÉ: And this week, there's a general strike being called?

MARY: Yes, for 48 hours, 48 hours. We already voted and posted on the internet to this government and to the police that we are peaceful, that we won't cause any problems. Protect us. Don't hate us. I hope they will do it, because it's going to be bad for us, but worse for them. We know that.

LISA FITHIAN: We are so proud to be here at a time to see this incredible uprising of democracy in Greece and to be here in solidarity with you. And we know right now that Greece is being screwed by the IMF and the Europeans and the United States and Israel to try and crush your economy. And we believe that is wrong, and we will be with you in the streets during the strikes on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Last year, when the international flotilla tried to challenge the blockade, Israel came out 70 miles into international water and killed nine of our allies around the world, from Turkey and the U.S. Now we are concerned that Israel thinks they can come to the shores of Greece to stop us. And we say no. They are trying to stop our boats, and they're trying to stop this flotilla to Gaza. And we did not come here just to be in Syntagma Square or to be in your strikes. We came here to break the blockade of Gaza, and that is what we are going to do.

AARON MATÉ: Greece is being threatened by these governments who are pointing to its financial crisis and saying, "You could be punished further, unless you stop these boats." What do you think of that?

MARY: I think it's a shame. I have no words about these things, where we stop what? We accept pressures to stop what? Help people that needs help? It's-I don't have words to express my anger about this. And not just me. I think everybody is angry about that. It's insane.

AMY GOODMAN: That exclusive report produced by Democracy Now!'s Aaron Maté and Hany Massoud in Athens, Greece.

Source: Democracy Now!

Aaron Maté, Democracy Now! producer reporting from Athens, Greece, on the U.S. aid ship, The Audacity of Hope, and the 2011 Gaza Flotilla.
Jane Hirschmann, organizer with the U.S. ship in the Gaza Flotilla.
Ray McGovern, former senior CIA analyst and passenger on the U.S. ship in the Gaza Flotilla.
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink and passenger on the U.S. ship in the Gaza Flotilla.
Lisa Fithian, longtime progressive organizer and passenger on the U.S. ship in the Gaza Flotilla.
Hany Massoud, Democracy Now! producer.

By James M. Wall * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

We need look no further than the politics of the state of Israel to see what extremist religion can do with power. The Tea Party in the US, which will determine the winner of the presidential Republican nominating process, is ready to show the world that God wants a final say in US political decision-making.

The Tea Party has emerged as a carbon copy of ultra right wing Zionist forces in Israel. The Tea Party and right-wing political Zionism share a single-minded religious worldview that religious ideology can, and should, exercise absolute control over its citizens.

On June 3-4, at Ralph Reed's annual Faith and Faithful gathering in Washington, speakers praised God and Israel in equal measure. Only a few weeks had passed since the leader of a foreign nation came to Washington at the request of Congress.

That leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, showed Americans how to combine religious ideology with political power. The peoples' representatives cheered mightily to demonstrate their loyalty to a foreign nation operating under a religious ideology that served the interests of political power.

Roy Reed invited Republican presidential aspirants to speak to his organization of Christian faithful. Sure, they were also there to talk politics. But their politics are inseparable from their ideological devotion to the modern state of Israel.

Philip Giradi discovered how closely Reed's speakers adhered to the script of political power and religion.

Support for Israel was on the menu du jour in nearly every speech and for every panel. It dominated the conference. One panel had as its subject "Israel: surrounded yet undaunted in the face of evil."

Michele Bachmann

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's oddly named Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, spoke for fifteen minutes about Israel, saying "If we want God to bless America, then we have to bless the Jews. God gave that land to his chosen people forever. That issue is settled by God almighty...Michele Bachmann produced a standing ovation when she cited a "shocking display of betrayal of our greatest friend and ally Israel." She added "I stand with Israel...President Obama...does not speak for us on the issue of Israel."

The Reed gathering was just one of several recent Washington displays of love for Israel. Soon we will know what impact that love will have on two major international events.

The first is the arrival of a flotilla of peace-oriented ships off the coast of Gaza. The second is the September meeting of the United Nations General Assembly where Palestinians will seek admission, as a state, to the UN General Assembly.

The last effort of a flotilla to breach the blockade of Gaza led to the deaths of nine passengers, May 10, 2010. One of the passengers killed by the Israeli military was Furkan Dogan, who held dual Turkish-US citizenship. There was no official American objection to any of the killings, including that of Dogan, who was born in Troy, New York.

One year and one month after the Israeli raid that killed nine passengers in May, 2010, a much larger flotilla sails this week to Gaza.

Ali Abunimah, writing about the flotilla in the Electronic Intifada, was dismayed by Hillary Clinton's response:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seemed to lay the ground – indeed almost provide a green light – for an Israeli military attack on the upcoming Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which will include the US Boat to Gaza.

Among the passengers aboard the American boat will be 87-year old Kindertransport survivor Hedy Epstein, and author and poet Alice Walker. In all it is expected that about 10 ships, carrying 1000 people from over 20 countries will take part.

Here's what Clinton said in remarks at the State Department on 23 June:

"Well, we do not believe that the flotilla is a necessary or useful effort to try to assist the people of Gaza. Just this week, the Israeli Government approved a significant commitment to housing in Gaza. There will be construction materials entering Gaza and we think that it's not helpful for there to be flotillas that try to provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves."

Clinton must know that Gaza is not part of what any country recognizes as 'sovereign' Israeli territory, and therefore neither are Gaza's territorial waters. Any boats entering Gaza's waters would not in fact be entering 'Israeli waters' as Clinton claimed."

Clinton's attitude toward the flotilla does not portend a favorable US response when Palestinian UN membership comes before the General Assembly in September.

If the GA does vote to refer the membership issue to the Security Council, the US will most likely veto the proposal. The US has no veto in the General Assembly, which is why Israel is working feverishly to persuade European Union nations to vote against the proposal in the GA, and to put pressure on smaller nations to vote against it.

Meanwhile, while the flotilla heads to Gaza waters and diplomats face the September vote, Prime Minister Netanyahu holds three trump cards, any one of which would derail any future peace agreement.

First Card: Israel will not negotiate in any forum with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas. Since there can be no Palestinian government that does not include Hamas, negotiations are impossible.

Second Card: Netanyahu insists there can be no "right of return" for Palestinian refugees who wish to move to, or be compensated for, former Palestinian land in what is today the state of Israel. No Palestinian leader could survive as a leader if he or she gives up that right before any final negotiations begin.

The right of the return of refugees is codified in international law. It is also one of those sacred rights symbolized by the keys retained in Palestinian homes wherever Palestinian refugees currently live.

Third Card: Israel will not negotiate with the PA until it recognizes Israel as a "Jewish State". This is the card Uri Avnery has correctly dismissed as "nonsense". This demand for a "Jewish state" was not a part of any Palestinian-Israeli negotiation until it was introduced into the conversation in 2007.

Yonatan Touval was a senior policy analyst with the Geneva Initiative, an Israeli nonprofit organization, when he wrote in a New York Times op ed column, May 12, 2009:

While the demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel's right to exist was unique (after all, it is non-states that customarily seek such recognition from already existing states), the more recent demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state is dangerous. It must be resisted by those who care about Israel's long-term strategic interests.

Israel's leaders had never sought such recognition from any party, friend or foe. The 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, which Begin signed, only expresses mutual recognition of the "sovereignty," "integrity" and "political independence" of both parties. The peace treaty with Jordan that Yitzhak Rabin concluded in 1994 uses the same language. No mention of Israel's Jewishness appears in either treaty.

In fact, it was only on the eve of the Annapolis conference in November 2007 that then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert first trotted out the Jewish card, conditioning his participation on Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Fortunately, the international community did not respond and Olmert abandoned his demand.

Not only is this recent addition to Israel's demands without precedent in the international community, it also ignores the fact that 1.4 million Palestinian Arabs live as citizens within the boundaries of Israel.

In their book, Israel's Palestinians: The Conflict Within, Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman write (page 19):

All too often, people are completely unaware of the large number of non-Jewish citizens of Israel–around 1.8 million people–who make up a quarter of the country's total population of 7.5 million. One in four Israelis, in other words, are not Jewish.

The vast majority of this significant non-Jewish population are Arabs, who at the end of 2009 numbered 1,526,000, more than 20 percent of Israel's population.

Pelig is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Government and Law at Lafayette College and servesas a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC., His co-author, Dov Waxman, is associate professor of Political Science at Baruch College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Their book is a rich resource for information on "Israel's Palestinians", the designation, by the way, preferred by Palestinian citizens of Israel instead of the official Israeli government terms, "Arab Israelis" or "Israeli Arabs".

Peleg and Waxman write specifically on the impact that defining Israel as a Jewish state, would have on Israel's Palestinians. They resist it. According to the authors, "The redefinition of the state has become the central demand of the Palestinian minority [within Israel]."

As the state's Jewish identity has become a major point of contention domestically, it has also been inserted into the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by Prime Minister Netanyahu's insistence that the Palestinian Authority officially recognize Israel as a Jewish state in a final peace agreement.

Such recognition, however,is unlikely to be granted against the objections of the Palestinian minority in Israel–underlining the connection that we emphasize in this book between Israel's external and internal Palestinian problems.

President Obama grew up as a member of a minority community. Existentially, morally, and intellectually, he knows that the rights of a minority must be respected in a democracy, if that democracy ever expects to become "a state for all its citizens".

* James M. Wall is currently a Contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine, based in Chicago, Illinois. From 1972 through 1999, he was editor and publisher of the Christian Century magazine. Jim launched personal blog April 24, 2008.

The picture of Prime Minister Netanyahu is from the Palestinian Ma'an News Service. The picture of Michele Bachmann is from the New York Times.