Aid to Gaza

A boat carrying Jewish activists from Israel, Europe and the United States set sail on Sunday from Cyprus bound for Gaza, in a bid to run Israel's blockade of the Palestinian territory.

The "Irene" left the port of Famagusta in the Turkish-held north of the divided eastern Mediterranean island in the early afternoon carrying eight activists, three of them crew members, and two journalists.

Reuven Moskovitz, an 82-year-old passenger who survived the Nazi Holocaust, told AFP he felt duty-bound to attempt the voyage in the small blue and white sailing boat, a trip expected to take around 36 hours.

"It is a sacred duty for me, as a survivor, to protest against the persecution, the oppression and the imprisonment of so many people in Gaza, including more than 800,000 children," Moskovitz said.

Yonatan Shapira, an Israeli former military pilot and crew member on the British-flagged sailing boat, said they were not seeking confrontation.   "We have a policy of non-violence and non-confrontation," he said.

The rest of the story here.

Well, today we heard that the Israeli Defense Forces raided the ship and did not allow them to go to Gaza.  

Israel Stops Jewish Activists From Entering Gaza

Well, at least there was no violence this time and the humanitarian aid workers were not killed.

This is not what happened in May 2010.

The report of the fact-finding mission of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla released last week shows conclusively, for the first time, that US citizen Furkan Dogan and five Turkish citizens were murdered execution-style by Israeli commandos.

The report reveals that Dogan, the 19-year-old US citizen of Turkish descent, was filming with a small video camera on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara when he was shot twice in the head, once in the back and in the left leg and foot and that he was shot in the face at point blank range while lying on the ground.

The report says Dogan had apparently been "lying on the deck in a conscious or semi-conscious, state for some time" before being shot in his face.

Very, very sad that this young man, that he was killed for such evil reasons.  My sympathies to his family.  And my disgust to the US government for not acting in defense of an American citizen for this crime.  He was just a child, really.