New aid ship heads to Gaza, Israel vows to stop it

[Rockclimber]

These cowards love to fight people without weapons (well butter knifes) and I"m sure they would be more than happy to kill Rachel Corrie twice (the ship)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100604/ap_ ... key_israel

By MENELAOS HADJICOSTIS and DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writers Menelaos Hadjicostis And David Rising, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 19 mins ago
ISTANBUL – An aid ship trying to break the blockade of Gaza could reach Israel's 20-mile (32-kilometer) exclusion zone late Friday, an activist said, but Israel's prime minister has vowed the ship will not reach land.

The dueling comments suggest a potential new clash over Israel's three-year-old blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip — and come only four days after an Israeli commando raid on a larger aid flotilla left nine activists dead.

Greta Berlin, a spokesman for the Free Gaza group, said in Nicosia the 1,200-ton Rachel Corrie is heading directly to Gaza and will not stop in any port on the way. It is trying to deliver hundreds of tons of aid, including wheelchairs, medical supplies and concrete.

By Friday afternoon, the ship was 150 miles (240 kilometers) from the coast of Gaza in international waters, the group said on its website. Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead McGuire and the former head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, Denis Halliday, were among the 11 passengers on board.

The Irish vessel is named after an American college student crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting house demolitions in Gaza.

Israel will not allow the aid ship to reach Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told senior Cabinet ministers late Thursday. According to a participant in the meeting, he said Israel made several offers to direct the ship to an Israeli port, where the aid supplies would be unloaded, inspected and transferred to Gaza by land, but the offers were rejected.

Netanyahu has hotly rejected calls to lift the blockade on Gaza, insisting that it prevents missile attacks on Israel. The Rachel Corrie's cargo of concrete is also a problem, because Israel considers that to have military uses.

Netanyahu has instructed the military to act with sensitivity in preventing the Rachel Corrie from landing and avoid harming those on board, the participant said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.

Israel has rejected demands for an international panel to probe Monday's deadly commando raid on the aid ships, saying it can conduct a professional, impartial investigation on its own.

Activists say Israel sabotaged the previous aid flotilla, and Israeli defense officials said Friday only that unspecified "actions" were taken when the boats were still far from Gaza that delayed the flotilla. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was classified.

The Turkish activists' deaths on the aid ship increased tensions in the Mideast, especially with Turkey, an important ally of Israel. On Thursday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Israel's actions "a historic mistake."

His deputy on Friday announced that Turkey was reducing its economic and defense cooperation with Israel. Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said all deals with Israel are being evaluated.

"We are serious on this issue. New cooperation will not start and relations with Israel will be reduced," he said.

Israel says its commandos opened fire Monday as a last resort after they were attacked, and released a video showing soldiers in riot gear descending from a helicopter into a crowd of men with clubs. Three or four activists overpowered each soldier as he landed.

Returning activists admitted fighting with the Israeli commandos but insisted their actions were in self defense because the ships were being boarded in international waters by a military force.

In Istanbul on Friday, 20,000 people waved Turkish, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags in a memorial service outside the Beyazit mosque for a member of the IHH charity group who the activists say was killed while taking pictures of the Israeli commando raid.

The youngest of the nine activists killed, 19-year-old Furkan Dogan, was being buried Friday in his family's hometown in Kayseri in central Turkey. Another 10,000 people attended the funeral service for Dogan ahead of his burial, chanting "down with Israel," but Dogan's father, Ahmet Dogan, was stoic.

"Neither I nor his mother or brother have any grief," he told the AP as he arranged flowers on his son's coffin before prayers started. "We believe he became a martyr and God accepts martyrs to paradise."

Dogan, who was born in Troy, New York, moved to Turkey when he was two. The other eight slain activists were all Turkish nationals.

In Istanbul, three members of an anti-Zionist Jewish sect called a news conference to blast Israel's actions.

"We are totally opposed and condemn this atrocity that has been perpetrated against Turkey, against the ships of the human rights activists," Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a leader of the radical Neturei Karta, told reporters.

"We all pray for the speedy and peaceful total dismantlement of the state of Israel and for a free Gaza ... so we can live together — Jews, Muslims and Christians."

___

Hadjicostis reported from Nicosia. Associated Press writers Mark Lavie and Matti Friedman in Jerusalem, Selcan Hacaoglu in Istanbul and Burhan Ozbilici in Kayseri also contributed to this report.

[Doc Holliday]

I sure hope Turkey escorts this next aid ship, supposedly a battleship group was to escort the next flotilla.

[joeymaclover]

They all ready lost communications with this one.  I hate to say it but this ship will just disappear, no wreckage, no survivors and certainly no video.  


(CBS/AP) A pro-Palestinian activist ship -- the 1,200-ton Rachel Corrie -- may attempt to run the Israeli blockade as soon as Saturday, a Gaza campaigner told CBS News London this morning.

The ship, laden with concrete and medical supplies, follows the Israeli assault on a flotilla of ships trying to reach port in Gaza on Monday that left nine activists dead.

Israel's prime minister has vowed the ship will not reach land.

Benjamin Netanyahu told senior Cabinet ministers late Thursday that Israel will not allow the aid ship to reach Gaza. According to a participant in the meeting, he said Israel made several offers to direct the ship to an Israeli port, where the aid supplies would be unloaded, inspected and transferred to Gaza by land, but the offers were rejected.

Audrey Bomse, legal co-coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement which is one of the organizers of the aid convoy, said that her team had lost all contact with the Rachel Corrie yesterday and suspects that the Israeli military is jamming the communications.

She said: "We've lost communication with her. We believe communication has been jammed by Israel. The spotting system has stopped and the satellite phone is not working."

The vessel had not stopped in Cyprus and was on its way to Gaza, she said. She believes it may be in international waters off Israel by tomorrow afternoon.

Bomse said: "She didn't stop in Greece. She left Malta three days ago. We had communications through to yesterday. We are assuming that it's the Israelis who are interfering with the communications.

"The Corrie was already just past Crete, that was yesterday morning. We were assuming it was going to go into port in Crete as we were hoping to load on more supplies and media."

Bomse said that if the Corrie reached the vicinity of Gaza waters by late tomorrow afternoon, it would wait until daylight the next day before attempting to break the blockade.

Referring to the under-cover-of-darkness flotilla assault at the beginning of the week, she said: "At all costs we want to avoid a confrontation with Israel at night."

Bomse said that the Corrie has no plans to re-direct to an Israeli port.

"If they do that it's not for the Gaza movement," she said.

The 1,200-ton vessel is carrying mainly concrete. Paper, motorized wheelchairs, and a whole dentist surgery are also on board.

Bomse refutes absolutely the Israeli claim that the cargo could be used by Hamas militants for offensive operations against Israel.

She said: "The list of items has nothing to do with security. Paper can't be made into weapons. We are not delivering our cargo to Hamas, we are bringing it to the people of Gaza."

She said that there had been negotiations between the Irish government and Israeli authorities over the Corrie reaching port in Gaza without encountering Israeli interference.

Bomse added that Denis Halliday, a former UN assistant secretary general, who is on board the Corrie, had asked for UN participation and had invited a representative onto the ship. She does not know whether that has happened yet.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162- ... 03543.html

[Doc Holliday]

Hopefully the UN representative that is supposed to be on board is secretly there to document Israeli's response to this next aid ship.
Otherwise, I hope Turkish war ships that were nearby got to help in escorting.

[Travis]

Hopefully the UN representative that is supposed to be on board is secretly there to document Israeli's response to this next aid ship.
Otherwise, I hope Turkish war ships that were nearby got to help in escorting.

If someone from the UN is there to document what happens it makes no difference because Israel does not care what the non-Jew thinks.

[thirdeyewise]

If someone from the UN is there to document what happens it makes no difference because Israel does not care what the non-Jew thinks.

               Jewish saying:          "Lo Hashuv Ma Yagidu HaGoyim"
                                                              ("Who cares what the goyim say?")