Friday night, the Swedish Freedom Flotilla boat ‘Freedom’ heading towards Gaza lost all communication at 20:06 local time, merely 40 nautical miles away from the Gaza coast, with 12 crew members, activists and journalists from five countries. It has since been confirmed that the boat was seized.
Yonatan Shapira, a passenger on the Al Awda boat to Gaza, echoes the IDF spokesperson: The boat was boarded “without exceptional events”. “Yes, everything was as usual -They slammed Herman the captain’s head against the wall again and again while threatening to take him to the ship’s belly and finish him off when no one is watching.”
A Freedom Flotilla to Gaza boat was stopped by Israeli navy and diverted to Israeli harbor, with all its crew and passengers arrested. “This operation is an act of piracy and the occupation forces do not wish for it to be made public, so one of the first things they do as they come on board is to take away all cameras, phones and all other electronic devices,” passenger Zohar Chamberlain-Regev reports.
Israel is involved in an ideological war against incendiary kites and balloons from Gaza. Israelis at Kibbutz Nir Am launched ‘candy balloons’ in order to counter this supposed ‘hate’ with supposed ‘love’. The gesture is a form of hasbara, aimed at denying the cause of the fire kites: Palestinian expulsion and the recent massacres by Israel in the Gaza strip.
“What did you do when Gaza was dying?” An interview with Freedom Flotilla to Gaza crew member Zohar Chamberlain Regev, as the boats stop in Copenhagen for a few days. This is the tenth freedom flotilla to Gaza. None has gotten through the Israeli blockade.
The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem is calling on soldiers to disobey “patently illegal” shoot-to-kill orders against unarmed protesters in Gaza. The Israeli policy in Gaza has not been the result of one illegal order, but doctrine of collective punishment endorsed by the entire political and military leadership of the county. Thus, refusing orders to attack nonviolent protesters arguably amounts to a mutiny against the state. In Israel, simply following international law is a radical act.
US officials have defended Israel’s massacre of civilians in Gaza as a ‘response’ to terrorism – even before it happened. And afterward, the US “sheriff”, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, again kicked her high heels, blocking a draft UN Security Council statement which called for an “independent and transparent investigation” of the violence. The only answer to official support is grassroots pressure.
Two Gaza musicians were barred from participating in the West Bank tour of the Palestinian Youth Orchestra, and the Israeli Supreme Court affirmed the ban. But a technicality in the Israeli bureaucratic apparatus meant they could participate in the West Bank anyway– and the world did not end, as the rights group Gisha, which fought for the musicians, noted.
Israel’s policy of ‘economic warfare’ against Gaza makes BDS pale in comparison. But Israel would have us think BDS is extreme, and that Israeli policy is moderate.
Haidar Eid writes an open letter to South African President Jacob Zuma criticizing South African Ambassador to Israel, Sisa Ngombane, for his response to the Woman’s Boat to Gaza where South African activist Leigh-Anne Naidoo was among a group of women trying to break the siege of Gaza.