Thankfully, Israel did nothing to stop them, a move both ethically and tactically wise. The blockade has now been broken. May other boats follow.

“We recognize that we’re two, humble boats, but what we’ve accomplished is to show that average people from around the world can mobilize to create change. We do not have to stay silent in the face of injustice. Reaching Gaza today, there is such a sense of hope, and hope is what mobilizes people everywhere.”
–Huwaida Arraf.

Photo Mohammed Saber / EPA via a L.A Times article.

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Their intention is to break the blockade. Israel has called them pirates. European legislators have endorsed and are participating.

They should reach Gaza sometime today. The only question is, what will Israel do?

Tikun Olam has excellent continuing coverage. Free Gaza has boat updates and streaming video.

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From Steve Clemons at Washington Note.

Will anyone notice? Barack Obama’s team just threw its key Muslim advisor under the bus.

Is this because, as Clemons points out, Obama has been giving speeches running to the right of Bush on Israel?

I think that this is outrageous — and those on the left who appreciate Obama and what he may mean for this country must become as tenaciously committed to what is right and what is good — and fighting for that — because those on the other side of these debates are trying to compel Obama to dilute himself.

Is he diluting himself, or another Slick Willie, or just crafting what he says to the occasion?

He might not like Hamas. I might not like Hamas. But there can not and will not be a lasting peace there until all the players, including Hamas, are part of the negotiations. Even Israel is talking with them.

Cartoon from The Financial Times, May 26. Yes, McCain does it too. Love that British understatement.

Last week, Mr McCain chucked a televangelist under the bus. Mr McCain had previously courted the Rev John Hagee, in spite of the fact that he holds a number of unorthodox views. Mr Hagee believes, for example, that the European Union is headed by the Antichrist and will unleash the war that leads to the Apocalypse. This is a serious misunderstanding of the role of the EU – but not a sackable offence.

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In August, unarmed Palestinians, Israelis and internationals will sail directly to Gaza without going through Israeli territory or seeking permission from Israeli authorities. They include an 81-year-old Catholic nun, an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor, Palestinians from Gaza, 17 nationalities, four major religions and the international press (including Tony Blair’s journalist sister-in-law, Lauren Booth).

On Monday, August 4, 2008, the Free Gaza Movement publicly introduces its international team that will take volunteers from Cyprus to Gaza in popular solidarity with Palestinian human rights. From that day, any attempt to damage the project will be considered an act of aggression against a nonviolent international human rights mission.

A press conference will be held tomorrow, Monday Aug 4 and you can watch live streaming video coverage of it and the voyage at FreeGaza.org

PS Sue says, my dad made me promise, never stand in front of a man with a loaded gun.

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“I’m convinced more than ever that Israeli security will never be fully assured without the birth of a second state, a Palestinian state”

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Let me give my perspective on this. I am a Palestinian, born in the Galilee in “Israel,” forced with my family to leave the farm we had owned for five centuries (since we came to Palestine as refugees from the loss of Al-Andaus to Castilian Spain), and declared absentees who had no right to live there (this happened in 1965, when I was eight).

I totally support Obama for president, even though I also believe he means what he says and will be as blindly pro-Zionist as he sounds. That is because it is an iron law of American politics that to be elected, your position on Palestine has to be awful. There is no one that can be taken seriously in American politics who is not awful on Palestine. Even the post-presidential, well-meaning Jimmy Carter, who does not need to worry about elections anymore, is only tolerable.

I want an American president who does well on all the other topics he or she must deal with– and I pray only that he or she will shut up and get out of the way and let the rest of the world work out Palestine, since it is political suicide for an American politician to do the right thing. We don’t need “honest broker” America. That is not possible. Ideally, the American government would develop amnesia about the Middle East and just do nothing at all there– for or against anyone. Just shut up and get out of the way.

Presumably Obama will not be as overtly bellicose (and incompetent) as Bush. That would be a first step in the right direction.

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It’s the same old same old. Lefti on the News has direct quotes from Obama interspersed with humorous, biting commentary.

“There are those who would lay all of the problems of the Middle East at the doorstep of Israel and its supporters, as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root of all trouble in the region.”

Yeah, what a wacky idea.

There can not be peace in the Middle East until Palestinians have a place to call home. Seems simple enough to me. Until then they will be used as pawns by multiple governments (including Arab) for multiple ends and fanatics on all sides will continue to slaughter each other. Really, folks, what’s going on there now clearly isn’t working. If you want peace, all the players have to be at the table. Period.

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From Josh Marshall of TPM

In case you missed it, I want to commend to your attention Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the Sunday Times: “Israel’s ‘American Problem“. The premise will be a familiar one to anyone who’s thought seriously and sanely about Israel’s future and America’s relationship with Israel. The breadth of acceptable opinion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is vastly greater in Israel than it is in the United States. Indeed, as Goldberg suggests, if Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Barak were running for president in the US, they might not be deemed sufficiently pro-Israel to be acceptable in the American mainstream.

Much of this is due to the neocon / extreme Zionist alliance as practiced by Bush et al. One quibble: the American mainstream doesn’t really understand the situation there, and gets little if any, actual information about  the settlements, the plight of Palestinians, or how they were forced from their land. This is due to the until now quite successful lobbying by extremist Zionists in the US to muddy the waters.

Josh Marshall, who named his son partly after the commander of an elite commando unit of the Haganah and who thus knows the territory well, concludes.

By conflating being pro-Israel with supporting the continued colonization of the West Bank, many of Israel’s ‘friends’ in the US are placing Israel in great danger and doing no favor to the United States either.

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Carter said on Monday that Hamas leaders told him they would accept a negotiated peace agreement, if voted for by the Palestinian people.

“The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with someone who must be involved.”

There can be no peace there until Palestinians have a place to call home. The real problem is that extremists on multiple sides of the issue don’t want peace else why would they keep shooting at each other?

All sides must be involved in peace talk if there is to be genuine peace.

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Israel planning ethnic cleansing in the north of Gaza

The televised report cited high-level security sources as saying Barak intends to plan for the removal of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the northern Gaza Strip

Terror stalks the Yeshiva

Events like this leave one speechless. What can one say? It is simply an act of bestiality.

All sides here have committed atrocities. All sides, by the standard definition, are terrorist, because they deliberately target civilians. The Yeshiva attack was a calculated attempt to make Israel go insane with rage and massively retaliate - which is precisely what Israeli hardliners want a pretext for doing any way. No doubt, the attack was a response to an Israeli atrocity where Palestinian civilians were killed and maimed. Where will it end? Because there are millions on both sides who just want it over so they can walk the streets without fear of incoming missiles or suicide bombers.

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Reader Tony Greenstein comments on our previous post about the current anti-Semitic and Holocaust denier stance of IndyMedia UK.

(This is an abbreviated version. His entire comment is here, and includes relevant links)

Yes, after months of battling to get the Indymedia collective to bar holocaust deniers and anti-Semites from posting articles, we have a situation now, after their meeting at the weekend, whereby anti-Semites are welcome and their opponents are banned!

The fools and fellow-travelers with racism and anti-Semitism on UK IM are unable to tell the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Some of them think they are doing Palestinians a favour by publishing this sort of garbage.

There is nothing the Zionists love better than to demonstrate that supporters of the Palestinians are anti-Semitic. Indymedia UK has now done all it could to prove them right.

Sigh.

Tony also has a long post about this on Socialist Unity.

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