UN-Truth

Almost a week after they were confronted by Israeli naval vessels and towed to the Israeli port of Ashdod, the Free Gaza Movement indicates that its activists captured at sea on board a boat flying a Greek flag and sailing from Cyprus to Gaza were “accused of entering Israel illegally”, but that all charges were dropped.

The activists refused to sign any documents in order to be able to leave Israel, they said on Twitter.

Former U.S. Presidential Candidate for the Green Party, and a former Democratic congresswoman who served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, Cynthia McKinney is arriving back to the US on Monday afternoon via New York City. She wrote that ” The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime… I am now known as prisoner number 88794 (in Israel’s Ramle prison). How can I be in prison for collecting crayons [for] kids?”

She will apparently be accompanied by the other Americans detained at sea on board the Free Gaza boat, Spirit of Humanity.

21 activists set sail from Cyprus a week ago on a ship laden with humanitarian aid.

Do a search for Free Gaza on this site to see our other posts on this story.

Captain Denis Healey and other five British human rights activists, arrived back today in Heathrow.

Irish Nobel Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire and Derek Graham will be sent to Dublin on Tuesday afternoon.

On Friday, a delegation from Bahrain travelled to Israel “in an official capacity for the first time on Friday, according to a Reuters report. The officials reportedly made the trip in order to pick up five nationals who were being deported … Foreign Ministry Spokesman Yigal Palmor was quoted as confirming that the officials had arrived in Israel, but said that there was ‘no other significance’ to the visit apart from accompanying the deportees … The Free Gaza Movement said that the five Bahrainis among the group were released after the intervention of that country’s ruler, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. This report can be read in full
here .

Huwaida Arraf (Palestine, Israel, US) and Lubna Marsawa (Palestine, Israel) were freed almost immediately, and made their way to Ramallah where they gave a number of press interviews last week.

Haaretz’s Gideon Levy wrote today that “Behold, the guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. The military correspondents reported on the incident with an amazement that only they can muster. But even they could not provide a fig leaf for the operation: The Israel Defense Forces has once again used its power to overcome the weak; the navy has once again acted like pirates. The Arion was abducted in the framework of protecting Israel’s security for all eternity, blah, blah, blah. Soldiers, journalists and news consumers automatically refrain from asking questions. The navy captured another ship carrying symbolic aid, as if its passengers were Somali pirates. These were people of conscience from various countries carrying toys and medicine.
This was not the navy’s first daring operation of this kind, nor will it be the last. When there are no hostile aid ships on the horizon, the navy takes control of wretched Gazan boats, using water hoses or firing at its passengers – poor fishermen who only want to make a living at sea. This is the main activity unfolding off Gaza’s shores. A navy outfitted with the best arsenal in the world is hunting surfboards. One of the best-armed forces in the world is chasing children, examining old people’s documents and entering bedrooms to make arrests. We ought to pay close attention to what preoccupies our military. While defense officials hold discussions on buying the F-35 combat jet at $200 million per plane, the IDF is mostly busy with miserable, pointless police work that befits an occupation army. It is engaged in ludicrous and useless policing in a ‘war’ against people equipped with some of the most primitive weapons in the world”. Gideon Levy’s comments can be read in full here.

Filed under: Cyprus, Gaza, Human Rights, International Humanitarian Law, International Law, Law of the Sea Convention, Palestine & Palestinians, Sanctions