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.
