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Flotilla Set for Final Leg of Gaza Blockade-Busting Bid
NICOSIA - Hundreds of activists on Friday braced for the final leg of their attempt to bust the Gaza Strip embargo, a bid Israel vowed to defeat as each side accused the other of violating international law.
Banner reads:'No to the Gaza embargo'. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) Two cargo ships and five smaller boats loaded with thousands of tonnes of supplies and hundreds of passengers steamed towards a rendezvous off Cyprus where they planned to regroup before setting out for the Palestinian territory.
Organisers said an eighth ship, the Rachel Corrie that had left from Ireland, was lagging behind and would travel towards Gaza separately.
The ships will meet in international waters, they said.
"The Cypriot government does not want us to leave from Cyprus. I can only assume pressure was put on them," said Audrey Bomse, a member of the Free Gaza Movement (FGM) that organised the flotilla.
A Cyprus government official said of the flotilla that Nicosia had not received any formal request from the Palestinian Authority for humanitarian aid.
Bomse told AFP that a plan to ferry about 25 multi-national MPs from Cyprus to one of the ships also had been abandoned.
"This is a group of MPs waiting to be ferried to another boat. The government said if we kept it quiet we would be able to do it but there was a huge amount of pressure and I suppose they gave in to Israel," she charged.
Bomse added that the plan had been modified, and the group would now try to get the MPs on board the flotilla from the Turkish-occupied northern part of the island.
"We will now have to go to the north and lose the Cypriot and Greek politicians, but we have members of parliament from Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Norway and Bulgaria. We are going to put them on a boat in Famagusta," she said.
Greece and Cyprus regard the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, where Famagusta is the main port, as an illegal entity.
Bomse said that the new arrangement had now delayed the flotilla's departure for Gaza until later on Friday.
Israel earlier told the ambassadors of Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, and Ireland -- the countries from which the ships set sail -- it "issued warrants that prohibit the entrance of the vessels to Gaza" and that the flotilla would be breaking international law.
Israel made it clear it intends to halt the vessels and detain the hundreds of people aboard in the port of Ashdod before deporting them.
Bomse suggested this may just be "sabre rattling."
"We are planning on getting there and staying in Gaza for two days," she said.
But Israel has stepped up its warnings in recent days and readied naval forces.
Organisers dismissed the claim that their blockade-busting bid is illegal.
"Most despicably of all, Israel claims that we are violating international law by sailing unarmed ships carrying humanitarian aid to a people desperately in need," the FGM said in a statement.
"These claims only demonstrate how degenerate the political discourse in Israel has become."
Israel imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Hamas -- an Islamist movement committed to the destruction of Israel -- violently seized power in the impoverished, overcrowded Palestinian territory.
Because of the blockade, only limited reconstruction has been possible in the wake of the devastating 22-day offensive Israel launched on December 27, 2008.
In New York, UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday appealed to all sides to act with care and responsibility.
"We strongly urge that all involved act with a sense of care and responsibility and work for a satisfactory resolution," Ban's spokesman said.
Pro-Palestinian activists have landed in Gaza five times, with another three attempts unsuccessful since their first such sea voyage in August 2008.
To date, the aid has been largely symbolic, but organisers say the flotilla now under way is laden with 10,000 tonnes of aid, ranging from pre-fabricated homes to pencils.
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Show AllYOUR HUMANITY IS A WITNESS TO ALL PEACEMAKERS!!!
MAY YOUR LIGHT BURST INTO THE ISRAELIS, ENLIGHTENING THE REMNANTS OF THEIR HUMANITY, AND IGNITING A DESIRE TO REJOICE AT BEING FULLY HUMAN, BEING AT ONE, LIVING IN PEACE WITH THEIR SISTERS AND BROTHERS.
PEACE TO THOSE WHO SEEK PEACE AND MAKE PEACE!!!
CommonDreams Editor: Please allow the above to remain on this comment section, depite its violating your ALL CAPS rule.
Phawkeye has posted a passionate prayer. We need prayers for the Flotilla humanitarians risking their lives far more than editorial/posting rules right now.
Thank you for your sensitivity on this issue.
Cee Miracles/Carol K. Littlebrant
If the rules are wavered for Phawkeye's views, CD would need to drop the silly rule altogether. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair. And besides, aren't rules are designed to be broken?
To CD editors:
If I see something in all caps and I don't want to read it, I don't read it. Why is this such a HUGE problem, so ostensibly destructive, annoying, or whatever, that CD must wipe ALL CAPS off the face of the comments section. WEIRD!
This rule reminds me of children PLAYING SCHOOL. You broke the RULE! You must sit in the CORNER now.
Lay down on your floor, stretch out your body, breath deeply. Now, think about what we face as rulers - granted, only temporarily - of OUR planet. Now think about ALL CAPS! Is it really so great a THREAT that you feel the need to censor the comment?
"Israel imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Hamas -- an Islamist movement committed to the destruction of Israel -- violently seized power in the impoverished, overcrowded Palestinian territory."
my recollection is that they were elected in a free and fair election, then were attacked by the loser, who was ultimately summarily booted out of the area.
I wish the media would just stick to the historical facts that exist in their own libraries of reportage.
hahaha... jinx! Nice call GGOTG!!!
"...attacked by the loser" - in fact Hamas was subjected to an attempted putsch orchestrated by Israel and the US - their puppet, Mohammed Dahlan, was defeated and Hamas retained its elected position.
Exactly. M$M isn't even creative in their smearing of Hama. The different M$M outlets cut and paste the exact same words everytime they mention Hamas. This isn't a coincidence, as it would take little effort for them to go back into their own news archives to see the story is the way you stated it Chet380.
"Israel imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Hamas -- an Islamist movement committed to the destruction of Israel -- violently seized power in the impoverished, overcrowded Palestinian territory."
Ummmmm... This statement is false. Hamas was democratically elected. They didn't seize power violently.
AP uses the same words, "violently seized" control... M$M is all following the same script, even if they have to ignore their own archives of when Hamas was elected and Israel & the US supported bring in arms into Gaza to support Fatah's attempt to overthrow Hamas.
The activists, among them a Nobel peace laureate, are trying to draw attention to a 3-year-old Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip — imposed after Hamas militants violently seized control of the territory.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100528/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_ships_to_gaza
"...Hamas -- an Islamist movement committed to the destruction of Israel -- violently seized power in the impoverished, overcrowded Palestinian territory."
I believe this to be unnecessarily provocative and propagandistic in view of Hamas' creation as "an uprising against Israeli rule in the Palestinian Territories" and its elected position as political governing authority in Gaza. Whether it still wants to place Israel and all its possessions under a Palestinian authority is unclear.
If I can get this from Wikipedia*, why can't journalists do a little research, too? Too bad so much of our present-day media is subject to outside influence or just common laziness and prejudice.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas
From the wikipedia article that you mention:
The Hamas charter (or covenant), issued in 1988, calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories,[51] and the obliteration or nullification of Israel.[52][53] The charter's advocacy of an Islamic state in the territory of the Palestinian territories and Israel is stated as an Islamic religious prophesy arising from Hadith, the oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.[54] In this regard, the charter states that "renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith..."[55][56]
And their chances of realising this dream are... what exactly? I'd say nil. Political entities promising to achieve impossible goals sooner or later lose support, or change their goal to something more realistic. Just ask the IRA.
The Zionist government in Israel says exactly the same thing, just replacing "Islamic" with "Jewish."
Regarding the courageous attempt by a Flotilla of Humanitarians to Bring Needed Help to Palestinians in Gaza:
George W. Bush called for/insisted upon a Democratic election for Palestinians. He got his wish, but HAMAS was elected rather than the puppet Palestinian leader the U.S. wanted and expected.
Of course, the win for HAMAS was immediately not recognized by the U.S. and the Palestinian puppet preference of the Fatah government was. If not reinstated formally, the Fatah leadership is the one that the U.S. recognizes for arbitration purposes. How very democratic.
In reading the TALMUD, I was horrified that various sections are devoted to cultivating an attitude to those who are not Jewish, the GOYIM. Evidently anything goes, whether stealing from them, cheating them, not helping in an accident, etcetera. [Probably why Jesus a Jew included in his stories, the one about "The Good Samaritan." Jesus was all about: It's time for a change of attitude.]
In reading excerpts from various Zionist Congresses, it is gratifying to note that Israel represents a land of universal brotherhood and sisterhood, and tolerance, and all that good stuff. Words can be very uplifting, but actions are more telling them words.
Wikipedia's reference posted above about HAMAS may or may not be correct as Wikipedia's information is written and corrected by the internet public at large. It sounds correct, however. Yet I would ask why wouldn't organizations be formed to do away with Israel at this point, as the whole of Israel since its founding when it declared itself a nation, was to get rid of Palestinians?
Palestinians, in the 1947 UN agreement, accepted the division of what was called Palestine. Palestinians ended up with the short end of the stick on that agreement, but they did accept it. However, by that time and after, Palestinians were systematically uprooted from their ancestral lands and ended up in refugee camps or worse.
The UN agreement was obviously never taken seriously by Israeli leaders from Ben Gurion on. Reading their journals indicates that strongly. Israel's intention was to have it all for themselves and their feelings about the GOYIM ... the Palestinians [who happen to be Semitic people also] and others ... were ones of contempt.
The Zionist Israeli government is led by people who are hateful and unfair and unjust and inhumane to Palestinians, just for starts. They have the psychopath's characteristic of indifference to human suffering, and seemingly have no conscience and no remorse and blame everyone else for their crimes against humanity, yet see themselves as the poor victims in almost any matter, but also, by golly, they do see themselves as superior and deserving and the hell with everyone else.
I just signed a petition on Jewish Voice for Peace asking major figures in the Jewish "Community" to speak out to major Jewish Groups representing Jews and Israel. It is requested that they condemn the abuses of the Israeli government against the Palestinians and Israel's becoming an apartheid state.
The Jewish Voice for Peace organization stands for what I always believed and generally experienced as the qualities inherent in Judaism, which are the finest of qualities of what it means to be a good human being, including humane interactions with and policies toward all other human beings who happen to be non-Jewish. That's why I joined.
When the United States' government projects to its population that there is a terrorist under every Bush et al., it is because by our egregious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other middle-eastern countries that it is more than likely that groups will form with the intention of fighting back. And let's face it, our corporate laissez faire capitalistic "free market" system demands that we gobble up from everyone everywhere what is wanted so there can be buying and selling and PROFITS made for those whose only intention and purpose, it seems, is to have Power, Control, and the Money that makes permanent the ability for Power and Control.
Why is it a surprise that people of a particular nation or area fight back when another nation makes war on them?
Why is it a surprise that there is a HAMAS in Palestine or a Hezballah [sp.] in Lebanon when Israel decimated Beirut with bombings and continues to expel Palestinians from their own homes and lands and steal from them what is rightfully theirs by a 1947 UN agreement that both parties made?
Sanity prevailing would be a good thing at this time in human history. I, for one, am exhausted from the same-old, same-old of the good guys and the bad guys, with the good guys being the good guys because they have more and better ways to kill the so-called bad guys.
A higher consciousness and awareness about what it means to be a fully mature human being and trying to be that would also help greatly.
Given the latest and on-going catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico which brings with it a threat to all human beings and life on this planet, it is really time to grow up from the juvenile kind of leadership, predominantly male because of ongoing patriarchal systems, that is clearly on the verge of destroying us all by relying on a show of strength [armies, bombs, guns, etcetera] and WINNING something or other.
What you are doing, Israel, what you are doing, the U.S. of A., what you are doing those of you who love Power ... is not strength. All you are showing us is what it is to be Bullies with bigger fists to beat up others for the heck of it or to get your way because it's your particular vision.
Do we have to wait for an earth-wide catastrophe to bring us together at the last few moments of what we call Life on Earth to realize what we have done?
Please, it's time to GROW UP!!!
Oh, Israel, Let the Flotilla of Humanitarian Aid land on Gaza's shores!!!!
/cm
I don't think that the UNGS Resolution 242 was ever Ratified by the UNSC.
The partition of Palestine and the 'state' of Israel have no basis in international law.
This is driving the Zionist Scofflaws to Biblical cruelty and averice. Criminally insane!
"Palestinians, in the 1947 UN agreement, accepted the division of what was called Palestine. Palestinians ended up with the short end of the stick on that agreement, but they did accept it."
Poppy cock! Learn your history first.
My field is history. What's yours?
Here's a different reading for your comment, Lucitanian. Just in terms of land area on the maps, it is obvious the Palestinians got the short end of the stick.
And Humbama is right. The agreement was never finalized, and for reasons that are in the same reading site below. But you might want to start with the beginnings of Zionism, and the role Great Britain and other countries played in all of this regarding Palestine and the Palestinians and the whole Middle East area. So much complexity, and so much arrogance and wheeling and dealing and wars and battles and horrors and all that.
www.representativepress.org/IsraelHistory.html
I've read some history on the Net of the Israeli version by Israelis. I've listened up to my ears of Benyamin Netanyahu's revisionist history of the last few years of the victimization of Israel and the reasons Israel must "protect itself" from the Gazans.
Just like what's happened in Texas, with revisionist history in text books insisted on by members of the State Board of Education that U.S. history has to be written from the point of view of its being a Christian Nation which the Founding Fathers wanted. ... We know that's not so. The Founding Fathers were scrupulous about the separation of "Church and State." Several of the Founding Fathers were Deists and even George Washington wasn't a member of a Church. The Constitution makes room for atheists and being a member of a particular religion according to the individual's free choice.
I've read enough of the journals of Israeli leaders themselves, some of whom became Prime Ministers, and I am certainly not impressed by their opinions or intentions regarding Palestinians.
In past posts I've occasionally referred to my shock and awareness when I was about ten years old and watching the Movietone News in a neighborhood movie theatre.
The World War II years will always be vivid for me for so many reasons, especially having many relatives in uniform, including my 17-year old brother at Pearl Harbor the day it was bombed by the Japanese.
The Holocaust images will always remain vivid ones too, along with documentaries about Jews, as well as Gypsies, and others of the intellegentsia, political groups, ethnic groups, national agroups, disabled people groups, all of whom were imprisoned, with the vast majority exterminated.
So,...just a very few years later from the end of The War ... when I saw in that theatre the pictures and the report of Palestinians losing their homes and their farms and olive groves, and looking at the lines of people -- men, women, children, the old ones -- with their possessions in little push-carts or wagons or on their backs, trudging along a barren, dirt road and being herded along to refugee camps with their skinny little goats because the Jews of Israel had a right to their homes and property, whether I was ten or 110, something was very wrong with this picture, and I cried.
The sad, grim, fearful expressions in the faces of the Palestinians matched the sad, grim, fearful expressions on the faces of the German/Polish/from-wherever Jews with their suitcases walking along sidewalks or dusty, dirt roads and standing in lines waiting to board box cars to go to their new home at the Camps.
My ten-year-old self certainly knew that something was very wrong when I saw those Movietone newsreels whether it was before The War ended, just after the war or just a couple of years later.
Any enmity Israel has earned from its treatment of the Palestinian people is well- deserved, and certainly since November of 2009 in the matter of the decimation of Gaza.
In other words, the victims became the beasts in short order, and for that there always is and will be a price because that's just the way it works. And I am not suggesting that Palestinians have never done anything wrong, but in this it is a matter of degrees and reasons.
My country of the U.S.A. has a history also, and a good portion of it is not very pretty. There is and will be a price for that too because that's just the way it works.
DENIAL is not just a river in Egypt [and I forgot who said that great line], but DENIAL as a way of life has a price ... because it works that way.
Poppycock? No. I was born early enough to see the effects of the Great Depression on the family I had and the neighborhood I lived in ... and the rest is history lived, seen, heard, questioned, and understood ... with a lot of scholarship involved along the way and tremendous soul-searching and growing as a human being because, as I see it, that's the way it's got to work too ... to find the truth, understand the truth, to live with truth.
peace, cm
> Palestinians, in the 1947 UN agreement, accepted the division
> of what was called Palestine. Palestinians ended up with the
> short end of the stick on that agreement, but they did accept it.
If your field is indeed history, then you should know that the palestinians did not accept any agreement in 1947. They rejected completely the partition plan. Instead their militias, backed by the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon waged a war whose purpose was to crush the newly formed Jewish state.
amused_to_death:
Oops! - I've done it again. Answering with more than 1,000 words. I could easily write 5,000 on this, but I've said most of what I want to say and inferred the rest. But there will have to be a Part I and a Part II, and you may never even read it. Che sera sera.
+++++++
amused_to_death. I'm not looking for the last laugh, but one thing I have learned as my many years have gone by is that the Truth is very elusive. It depends who writes the history and what perspective they have. And finding any kind of absolute Truth is very, very difficult.
Certainly, I think you would agree, that when this land, now called the United States of America, accommodated the first immigrant settlers, it was only a short time ... a year after the pilgrims were helped through the winter by the native inhabitants, who were generous and friendly for the most part, that these same pilgrims were at war because the natives would not sell them land for their very own. Selling land was not a Native American concept. Anyway the settlers turned on these people and burnt to death five hundred or more of the tribal members, now heathens and evil savages, who had helped them. And according to historical accounts it was cause for an actual celebration as these people were burnt up. The people who burnt them up, of course, were Christian and many fanatical about their religion, and already God was being thanked for giving them this beautiful land.
The settling of this country has long been depicted in good guy/bad guy scenarios, with the Native Americans decidedly the Bad Guys and the settlers the brave, courageous and true Good Guys. We've grown up some since, but just in the decades since the late 1960's and on. Now Native American spirituality and Indian perspectives about nature and humans and all other living things representing a Oneness of life and living it that way, with the earth and all its living things treated with the utmost respect, is a viewpoint that many people who are not from that cultural origin have come to appreciate and try to live by. "All our relations" is a beautiful way of acknowledging that no one or nothing is superior, but all things are interconnected and necessary and important to the whole.
Perhaps if we of a different background had gotten a little smarter earlier, we wouldn't have the kind of catastrophic event we are having now in the Gulf of Mexico. According to a mathematician commenter, we are talking about billions of gallons of oil and more to come turning the Gulf into a sea of oil that cannot sustain life. This event may end up doing us all in.
Now to your point in your post above with a quote: [CONTINUED]
"Numerous records indicate the joy of Palestine's Jewish inhabitants as they attended to the U.N. session voting for the division proposal. Up to this day, Israeli history books mention November 29 (the date of this session) as the most important date in Israel's acquisition of independence, and many Israeli cities commemorate the date in their streets' names. However, Jews did criticize the lack of territorial continuity for the Jewish state.
"Mehran Kamrava says Israeli sources often cite Jewish acceptance and Arab rejection of the U.N. partition plan as an example of the Zionists' desire for peaceful diplomacy and the Arabs' determination to wage war on the Jews. But he notes that more recent documentary analysis and interpretation of events leading up to and following the creation of the state of Israel fundamentally challenged many of the "myths" of what had actually happened in 1947 and 1948."[77] Simha Flapan wrote that it was a myth that Zionists accepted the UN partition and planned for peace, and that it was also a myth that Arabs rejected partition and launched a war.[78]"
"(#77 Kamrava, Mehran. The Modern Middle East: A Political History since the First World War. University of California Press. pp. 79–81. ISBN 978-0520241503.
# 78 The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, by Simha Flapan, Pantheon, 1988, ISBN 0-679-72098-7, Myth One pages 13-54, Myth Two pages 55-80)"
++++ The above was part of a very lengthy, comprehensive and complex entry about the UN Partition Plan of 1947 and on through the wars between Arabs and Jews/Israel.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine
Those conflicts were in the movie theatre newsreels too for years and years and years.
[CONTINUED ... on a personal/philosophical note]
Part II:
As a personal note, amused_to_death, I attended a high school in Brooklyn just over the border of the borough of Queens, where I came from, in an essentially white, Christian neighborhood. This high school was a melting pot of races, ethnicity and religions. It was the best education I could have had. The teachers that I had, some super excellent, were predominantly Jewish: Singer, Epstein, Goldstein, Goldman, Steinberg, Steinfeld, Aronson, Rubinstein, Salz, Reich and lots more. These represent teachers of science, math, chemistry, biology, history, English, French, physical education, and I forgot my Latin and Spanish teachers names, but they were Jewish too. So was the principal and other staff members of the Administration, and a good percentage of the student body were also Jewish, and many became good to close friends of mine.
My mother had a fit, but I am so grateful that I had such an opportunity to become so much more of a human being in terms of a broader perspective as a human being than if I had gone to another high school that reflected just my own neighborhood's vast majority makeup of WASPS. My high school's primarily African-American basketball team were champs and great guys, and the first Black president of the Ford Foundation was Captain of that high school basketball team. But this was the early to mid-1950's, when the terms African-American and Black were not used yet, it would have inconceivable to think that Frank would someday be the President of the Ford Foundation.
It is interesting now that the mantra I remember during those high school years in response to the conflicts between Israelis and Arabs was "Yo-Yos for the Arabs. Guns for the Jews!"
What did I really know about people other than WASPS when I first entered high school? ... What did we know about the Arabs or the Palestinians? They wore white sheets and turbans and various other head gear in the desert. And women wore particular head-gear all the time. And they had an unfamiliar, strange religion with calls to prayer by someone in a tower and everybody stopped what they were doing and prostrated themselves in prayer several times a day.
And they were sneaky. Films began to depict Arabs as oily, sneaky, dishonest, etcetera.
And then there was "Exodus," a highly romantic film with Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint, and an Arab son of a Sheik, John Derek, I think, who had been a boyhood friend of the Paul Newman character. Now they were enemies. Of course, the film ended with the dream of a peaceful Israel and a righteous Israel.
It is obvious that Israel has had the backing of the United States since Truman immediately acknowledged the Nation of Israel when it was first declared so in 1948.
Israel has the backing of the Rothschild Dynasty money and other monies, including quite a tidy, steady sum from the U.S. And certainly Israel's arsenals and war planes, which came from various key players, proved and prove superior to the disorganized and poorly armed Arabs.
For the 1948 presidential election which he was not supposed to win, but did, Truman's remark of "There are more Jews in New York City than Arabs" was politically correct, and his getting on the Israel bandwagon was certainly a prime factor in his election that fateful year. Since then we have many dual-citizen Jews in Congress and in the presidential administrations, dedicated to the protection and well-being of Israel.
Israel does what it does and obviously has become strong with nuclear weapons also, all kinds of other armaments, and a well-disciplined military, but that does not mean what it has done and continues to do is right or righteous or those who back Israel are concerned about right or righteousness.
Think of "Lawrence of Arabia" with Peter O'Toole, and the chicanery of the British. Think of "Avator," and clearly it is about Native peoples anywhere, and what happens to them when the Powers decide to do what they want to do ... and who they want to support and why.
The viciousness and ugliness of Israel is more apparent everyday. I would suggest that we are children of God/the Creator/the Universe/the Great Unknown with nobody special under the sun, unless someone declares it so. And always individuals and/or groups perceiving themselves as very special and set apart from others because of some kind of superiority is very dangerous to all of life, especially right now.
We may never get to the Truth; never be able to live the Truth, and never know what peace and harmony really is on earth. And that is such a waste of lives and a beautiful planet. And all because we stayed stuck in our own juvenile-level truths and couldn't grow up past them.
/cm
In fact the delegation appointed by the British Mandate who could not be termed “representative” of the Palestinian people in any way but the pure colonial sense in which they were appointed, did not accept the partition in the terms dictated.
The creation of Israel was a Zionist and British Colonial enterprise which gave no option, consultation or possibility of rejection to the Palestinian people and thereby denied them their rights. To say the lie that “Palestinians, in the 1947 UN agreement, accepted the division of what was called Palestine. Palestinians ended up with the short end of the stick on that agreement, but they did accept it.” is to perpetrate an absolute and fundamental lie while accepting the legitimacy of the fraud perpetrated by the Zionists on the Palestinian people which is the body and core of the present injustice. You are spreading Zionist propaganda and are ignorant of history.
>>
When the United States' government projects to its population that there is a terrorist under every Bush et al., it is because by our egregious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other middle-eastern countries that it is more than likely that groups will form with the intention of fighting back. And let's face it, our corporate laissez faire capitalistic "free market" system demands that we gobble up from everyone everywhere what is wanted so there can be buying and selling and PROFITS made for those whose only intention and purpose, it seems, is to have Power, Control, and the Money that makes permanent the ability for Power and Control.
<<
Cutting to the quick! Articulate. Precise.
>>
it is really time to grow up from the juvenile kind of leadership, predominantly male because of ongoing patriarchal systems, that is clearly on the verge of destroying us all by relying on a show of strength [armies, bombs, guns, etcetera] and WINNING something or other.
<<
testosterone and the reptilian id, a deadly combination
PACHAMAMA!!
http://www.pachamamaofilme.com.br/trailer_Pachamama.htm
Go into GAZA and deliver your goods, folks. You have all power and authority from up above to do so. ye shall pass.
To the state of Israel: As the messenger of Yahweh for this time, i hereby ORDER you to cease and desist from your CRIMES or face unimaginable punishmnent in this world and in the NEXT for your humanitarian SINS and transgressions.
Inshallah,
Jonas the Prophet
Messenger of the Covenant
Jedi Command
Colorado USA
http://blueplanet774.20m.com
-------------------------------------
For: Cee Miracles
Congratulations on a well-thought out contribution. It is refreshing to receive and read articles such as yours, particularly in the midst of so many that do nothing except expose the writers' ignorance.
Thank you, busterkikki. I just posted an addition just about five minutes after you wrote. Hope you'll read it.
/cm
Why is the U.S. media not giving this story the attention it deserves?
You're kidding right?? How about because Zionists own all US media,
that's why.
Push Israel into the sea. That's what a nation of Nazi's deserve. Heil Netanyahu!
I'm sure the Israelis will use those nice little boats full of activists for target practice. The assault on the USS Liberty back in 1967 demonstrates their mentality.
The orgy of hate below demonstrates what the flotilla is all about.
The orgy of hate below could very well have been instigated by the Israeli propaganda machine.
Hi Amused,
You are defending a government that commits daily crimes, including war crimes against the people of Gaza and the West Bank. The blockade of Gaza is a classic crime against humanity. It's killing people and ruining other people's lives. Read a book and educate yourself. Start with Behind the Wall, to find out how your government's actions affect real people's lives.
Excellent posts Cee Miracles/Carol K. Littlebrant.
When the economic sanctions against Iraq, that continued after the first Gulf War, were considered by many to be causing genocide, someone asked why there are no rules about the injustice of economic sanctions, imposed upon nations, bombed into the stone age and nations with high populations of people suffering dire poverty, included in the Geneva Conventions.If the U.S. and Israel respected International Law, it would be worth pursuing international laws against blockades.
"Most despicably of all, Israel claims that we are violating international law by sailing unarmed ships carrying humanitarian aid to people desperately in need," the FGM said in a statement. " These claims only demonstrate how degenerate the political discourse in Israel has become."
If anyone is breaking international law, it is Israel with its blockade. It is certainly not the flotilla or the nations from which they are sailing. The only one they, the members of the flotilla, are answerable to is the Palestinian Authority, not Israel.
Blockades are a Geneva Convention act of war.
Blockades have been acts of war for centuries.
It is a War crime to Bockade or War on a nation you are occuppying.
> Blockades are a Geneva Convention act of war.
No! Really?!
And I thought that 8000 rockets and mortars launched from Gaza were a sign of good will, a model for how peace should look like. And the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit was a friendly gesture.
"an Islamist movement committed to the destruction of Israel -- violently seized power in the impoverished, overcrowded Palestinian territory."
Wrong... wrong... wrong.... little "facts" that get repeated on Fox, CNN, and others perpetuate the "Hamas are Nazi" cliche.
I agree that there is little coverage in the States on this.
Paul McGeough, a reporter for the Sydney Morning Hearld is on one of the ships heading to Gaza on the Free Gaza Flotilla. I understand that boat he was on (MV Amal) malfunctioned (sabotage is suspected) and had to be rescued by a Turkish ship in the Flotilla yesterday.
Belwo is a link to Paul's most recent story: http://www.smh.com.au/world/uncertainty-reigns-as-blockade-breakers-set-off-20100528-wlgg.html:
BTW, as this is going on Friends of Tent of Nations North America (FOTONNA), a non-profit corporation, with a mission to support the nonviolent resolution of conflict and peaceful coexistence between all faiths and nations reports that:
"The Nassar Family Farm/Tent of Nations Project is in immediate jeopardy because of actions taken by Israeli authorities on Thursday afternoon, May 27, when two officers from the Israeli Civil Administration, guarded by Israeli soldiers, came to the farm and gave the family nine demolition orders for structures built without a permit from the Israeli Military Authority during the last two years. The orders are set for execution this Sunday, May 30. The Nassars’s attorney has initiated emergency legal action to stave off disaster.
We are asking you to be prepared to take every possible action, if conditions worsen, demanding that the orders not be executed. In the meantime, please sign this petition with your phone and email and forward this E-mail to your friends asking that they do likewise. "
There has been nothing in the News on this but you can see the info at the site:
http://www.fotonna.org/urgent_message/urgent_message.html
Perhaps someone knows how to get this message out too to support a peaceful approach to life there.
"In New York, UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday appealed to all sides to act with care and responsibility."
Ban Ki-Moon ought to be on board himself if he really wanted to ensure there was a peaceful settlement.
And where's CDs live feed from the flotilla?
Here is a live feed from one of the Turk boats
http://intifada-palestine.com/2010/05/live-feed-from-gaza-freedom-flotilla/
I am however unable watch more than a few seconds before my browser crashes anyone else have this problem?
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
thanks for the link! Haven't had any problems with it crashing.
These people are real heroes. They are going up against a rogue nation which machine guns life boats in the water (as in the attempt to sink the USS Liberty with all hands) and has no compunction about lining people up against a wall and gunning them down as they did at Deir Yassin.
My hat is off to the Gaza Blockade Runners. Hip Hip Hooray!
Encourage everyone you know to join the International BDS Movement. For Liberty's sake do it.
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
"Israel imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Hamas -- an Islamist movement committed to the destruction of Israel -- violently seized power in the impoverished, overcrowded Palestinian territory"
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: The blockade, incidentally, was implemented before Hamas came to power. The blockade doesn’t even have anything to do with Hamas. The blockade came to—there were Americans who were sent over, in particular James Wolfensohn, to try to break the blockade after Israel redeployed its troops in Gaza.
AMY GOODMAN: The former World Bank president.
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Correct. The problem all along has been that Israel doesn’t want Gaza to develop, and Israel doesn’t want to resolve diplomatically the conflict. Mr. Indyk well knows that both the leadership in Damascus and the leadership in the Gaza have repeatedly made statements they’re willing to settle the conflict in the June 1967 border. The record is fairly clear. In fact, it’s unambiguously clear.
Every year, the United Nations General Assembly votes on a resolution entitled "Peaceful Settlement of the Palestine Question.” And every year the vote is the same: it’s the whole world on one side; Israel, the United States and some South Sea atolls and Australia on the other side. The vote this past year was 164-to-7. Every year since 1989—in 1989, the vote was 151-to-3, the whole world on one side, the United States, Israel and the island state of Dominica on the other side.
We have the Arab League, all twenty-two members of the Arab League, favoring a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. We have the Palestinian Authority favoring that two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. We now have Hamas favoring that two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. The one and only obstacle is Israel, backed by the United States. That’s the problem.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Ambassador Indyk, why doesn’t Israel accept this ceasefire?
MARTIN INDYK: Look, Amy, I was invited on to talk about my book and the Gaza situation. I was not invited on to debate with Norman Finkelstein, and I’m not prepared to do that.
Former Amb. Martin Indyk vs. Author Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel’s Assault on Gaza and the US Role in the Conflict
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/8/former_amb_martin_indyk_vs_author
I'm sorry that you've all been suckered into believing that there is a true humanitarian crisis in Gaza. If any Gazans are living in abject poverty, it is because of unequal distribution of wealth, due to the ruling Hamas party.
Please google the following phrase, including the quotes: "Fancy restaurants and Olympic-size pools: What the media won’t report about Gaza", and follow one of the links that show up. There are other several links within the story that are worth following.
Israel has the right to defend herself. Gazans have pounded nearby Israeli towns with missiles and kidnapped an Israeli soldier without giving him his rights under the Geneva convention. The "humanitarian" flotilla was asked to convey a letter from the soldier's father, and they refused.
It would be cheaper to move the Gazans to some coastal are in some friendly Arab country, far away from Israel, and subsidize them until they can establish a normal community.
Oooh, I wonder if they serve such forbidden fare as jam at the Roots restaurant?
"It would be cheaper to move the Gazans to some coastal are in some friendly Arab country, far away from Israel, and subsidize them until they can establish a normal community."
That would be very handy for Israel to temporarily expand into as well which would be great since the Israeli's could be trusted upon to be custodians just as they have done so with all the other lands they've appropriated.
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With all the misery and death that's meted out upon Palestine and occupied territories for so many decades against innocent men women and children, the best you can do is a fancy restaurant and decide it would be financially cheaper to move them away? - Your fiscal compassion is amazing.
You're either a head-in-the-sand ignorant, somebody with mental denial, or one of the usual Israel apologists that haunt the internet on a constant basis.
The flotilla is carrying humanitarian supplies.
I guess wheelchairs, medical supplies, and water purification needs aren't your cup of humanitarian tea.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-vows-to-halt-flotilla-aiming-to-break-blockade-1986213.html
sheik nasrullah of hezbollah, a hero speaks:"Now they (the israelis) are being arrogant and here I am telling you: Because of their arrogance, tyranny and racism, they will show haughtiness until they will throw themselves to the abyss Inshallah...
the state which hides itself behind the name,"israel" has nothing to do with any jewish tradition. rather it is an abstract entity, similar to a trans-national corporation, which has inculcated a kind of brand loyalty in in the iron-filing like humans caught in its magnet-like net... spiritually, it functions as an idol, or a false messiah,,,as such it must and will disappear from the face of the earth,,,
more topically, to quote gilad atzmon,..."The Israeli government fails to gather that the tide has changed. We see through them. We all know what the Jewish state stands for. We all know about the devastation in Gaza, we know about the siege, the destruction and the crimes against humanity. We all watch the Israeli separation wall cutting through Palestinian family's houses and olive orchards. We also follow the racist ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem. The Israelis better save us from their spins and manipulations..."
I appreciate CD reports, which are generally unreported in the common press. It's lamentable that the Freedom Flotilla news has been progressing totally unnoticed by the general public who rely on television and other public sources of information. I look to CD for its coverage.
If the purpose of CD is for the 'greater good' however, even though its policy is not to alter reports from other sources, shouldn't some note have been made that Hamas was chosen in a fair election and did not violently gain power?
If the report is from a France Presse source, how pernicious is it that this description of Hamas was gained in translation?
this psy-ops misinformation has been a steady component of all afp articles mentioning gaza...
Israel imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza in 2007 after Hamas -- an Islamist movement committed to the destruction of Israel -- violently seized power in the impoverished, overcrowded Palestinian territory.