More evidence that the flotilla worked, and nine lives were not lost in vain– the focus is now on the persecution of the Gazan people.
NPR this morning did a pretty-good piece on the Gaza blockade, reported by Michele Keleman, pointing out its political savagery, three years of cutting these people off from the rest of the world in a cruel manner, now unsustainable in the eyes of the world, per Keleman. She quoted Taghreed El-Khodary, formerly of the New York Times, saying what she told us a year ago and John Kerry and the Congress too when this incredibly-appealing young woman was serving as her society’s ambassador, in essence: You cannot isolate Hamas. El-Khodary is apparently now at Carnegie. The piece quoted another Carnegie expert who seemed fair-minded and was absent the usual neoconservative rant, praise be to the lord.
Next time maybe they will throw in Steve Walt’s exciting idea of the U.S. breaking the blockade itself.
Meanwhile, the international story is that Israel is offering to ease the siege of Gaza in exchange for a more limpwristed international probe of the Mavi Marmara killings. Brits say, No dice. The flotilla worked, it has changed global politics. Praise the flotilla.
Let me add my strongest impression of visiting Gaza a year ago. The people were hungry for human contact. Cut off from the world, smeared, starved, humiliated, their families shattered, the target of racism and caricature– above all they were hungry for human contact, for attention, to be taken into the human family, to be heard. Their eyes welled with tears when they saw that a group of westerners was actually there to hear their stories.
