The other night I heard Ted Koppel on Charlie Rose waxing orotund about the great civil rights struggle in the American South in the 60s, which he is now chronicling on the Discovery channel, as I recall. Some of the attention to this longago American chapter feels lugubrious, to me. Because it's happening right now. I got this report of another Israeli attack on Palestinian fishing boats from a statement signed by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. October 31:
At 10:00 am Cyprus time, three Israeli gunboats attacked Palestinian fishing boats in the territorial waters of Gaza.
Eleven internationals have accompanied the fishermen on five of the
boats. The internationals were from the Free Gaza Movement and had
landed on the shores of Gaza on October 29 aboard the SS DIGNITY.
According to David Schermerhorn, one of the internationals on board, "Three naval vessels attacked us with machine gun fire and water cannons. All three boats have machine guns on board, one of them has a huge water cannon.
The water from the cannon was so fierce, it blasted a lot of the
equipment overboard as well as my GPS locator. At the time of the
attack, we were about 9 miles offshore fishing. Several of us got on
the radio to the Israeli navy
and shouted, "We are human rights watchers. We are unarmed
internationals, and we are recording everything you are doing. They
completely ignored us and continued menacing all of the boats."
As
David was talking to us, one of the gunboats came back to within 45
meters, shearing the water and making it difficult for the small boat
to steer its course.
Yesterday we in Cyprus received repeated distress signals saying 'help, help, help, help" from one of the boats which was under attack. When one of our colleagues in Israel called the Israeli military to protest, the response was "They have plenty of food; why do they need to go fishing?"
While the Oslo agreement gave Gaza a 20 mile limit, the people of Gaza have never asked for more than the 12 miles which are standard under international law. After the elections in Palestine, Israel arbitrarily announced, as part of its blockade to punish Palestinians for democratically electing the wrong party, that it was cutting the limit to 6 miles.
http://www.freegaza.org/index.php?module=latest_news&id=58d20508ef621d71c0ad8444abcde5cf&offset=
More sterling behavior from the IDF. If we spent a measly 5 billion from our defense budget to buy video cameras for Palestinians, we could double our 'national security'. I wonder how an IDF patrol boat attempting to flood a Palestinian fishing boat's engine room would respond if the fishing boat were equipped with a water cannon and fired back?
Somebody needs to step up target practice for the navy.
It is even worse than that. The Palestinian fishermen boats have been repeatedly and systematically attacked by Isreali Navy at 3 miles.
Fish is scarce and poluted with sewage, as Israel deliberately withholds all the materials necessary for sewage treatment works maintenance, and as a result, raw sawage from 1.5 million people goes to the sea.
All done very democratically by Israel, with support of majority of its Jewish citizen (preferences of its Arab citizen, in practice, totally irrelevant).
THEY ARE SAFE
The SS DIGNITY arrived at 6:30 this morning in Larnaca, Cyprus, as the sun was just splitting the waters of the Mediterranean. I watched the boat come around the corner of the quay, its Palestinian flag flying from one of the masts. Waiting up most of the night worrying about whether they were OK and answering worried callers had made the night long and tiring.
All of that anxiety disappeared as the boat landed and the passengers spilled out, talking all at once and waiting for the immigrating authorities to clear them to leave. As we walked out of the port, we were met by 50 members of the Palestinian refugee community from Iraq, all with keys and names of the villages in Palestine, waving flags and welcoming everyone back from Gaza.
The Palestinians from the West Bank, the Palestinians from Gaza, and the Palestinians from the diaspora were able to hug each other and forget for just a few minutes that their country has been torn apart.
What a lovely morning. What a lovely homecoming.
http://www.freegaza.org/index.php?module=latest_news&id=67d73ac247c34f37d1c217872cb038d1&offset=
We need a new version of Paul Newman to represent the Pals–something Paul ignored, what a shitheel.