Cynthia and the Gaza 21 Are All Home!

[LordLindsey]

"Many of you have been asking us what has happened to the kidnapped passengers and our boat, The SPIRIT OF HUMANITY. Here then is our current update.

All 21 passengers have now left. Huwaida and Lubna were freed right away, because they hold Israeli citizenship.

Many passengers did not get all of their belongings back, many computers were stolen, some that were returned had their hard drives completely erased. Many of the pieces of camera equipment were not given back as well, and, of course, none of the tapes of the boarding, roughing up or incarceration of the 21 people who have been returned.

However, all passengers are already in their country or origin or are returning tonight. The London 6 had a press conference last night, the Bahraini 5 had a press conference in Bahrain over the weekend, and the Irish 2 are being feted tonight with a massive rally at Dublin airport. There will be a big reception and press conference there.

The two men from Al Jazeera have both been returned to Jordan through the Allenby bridge.

That leaves the three Americans... Cynthia McKinney, Kathy Sheetz and Adam Shapiro. We hear little from the American media about these three brave passengers, and it will be up to the Americans to express their outrage over their treatment. If they had been kidnapped by the military from Irah or Venezuela, their stories would have been all over the media. Because they were kidnapped by a 'friendly' nation, few in the U.S. have opened their mouths.

As far as Israel is concerned, we will demand that our boat be returned, that our equipment and tapes be returned, and they cease and desist their interference with our human rights trips to Gaza. Because we are going back. Israel can ram our boat, threaten us with bodily harm, shoot at us, board and confiscate the boat, shuttle us off to prison, and we will still return.

The outrage in many countries over what happened is muted by the fact that 11,000 Palestinians remain in Israeli jails, many without benefit of trial, many languishing for years without being able to see their families.

And this fact is something we must all remember. We came from countries around the world. We attempted to break Israel's draconian siege of 1.5 million Palestinians. Even when arrested, the Israelis treated us with kid gloves, afraid of the consequences from governments, activists and human rights organizations. Who will stand up for the Palestinians and do the same thing?

Please go and watch, if you have not already, our video of our incarceration and the incarceration of Palestinian men, woman and children.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ri8jWj_KbY

With grateful thanks from all of us to all of you.

The Free Gaza Team
www.freegaza.org
www.flickr.com/photos/29205195@N02/"

[LordLindsey]

AUDIO FROM CYNTHIA MCKINNEY: PT 2 of 2 but is actually the 1ST part! FORWARD THIS!
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2009/07/228806.php

[LordLindsey]

"Hello,

Well, all I can say is "Thank you!"  Your calls, faxes, protests, and prayers all made a huge difference and helped to secure our protection and our release.  I would also like to thank those at the Tel Aviv Embassy for their work on behalf of the three U.S. citizens held by the Israelis.  For those of you who missed it, here is the statement I put out from the Israeli prison.  Please forgive the undone, but needed edits.  I have tried twice, now, to get into Gaza.  I just got off the phone with George Galloway who extended a personal invitation to me to join him and the US convoy in Viva Palestina!  I'm certainly excited about that.  Maybe I will finally make it to Gaza.

Here's my "Letter from an Israeli Prison:"

Letter from an Israeli Prison

by Cynthia McKinney
Original audio message available here:

http://freegaza.org/it/home/56-news/984 ... -in-israel

A funny thing happened to me on my way to Gaza.  Before I left for Gaza, I was giddy with excitement.  The children needed school supplies.  It was a last-minute, but urgent request.  Please bring crayons for the children.  And so I accpeted congtributions of crayola crayons, #2 pencils, pencil sharpeners, paint brushes, and crayola watercolors.

When I told people that I was going shopping to buy crayons for the children of Gaza, everyone wanted to donate.  By the time I left, my suitcase could hold no more.  So, full of expectation, I entered the airport in the U.S. headed once again to Larnaca, Cyprus where the Hope Flotilla, consisting of the "gree Gaza" and the "Spirit of Humanity" were to embark to Gaza.

The "Free Gaza" was to be donated to the people of Gaa so they could replace some of the boats confiscated or bombed by the Israelis during Operation Cast Lead.

It was a beautiful dream.  And dream it had to be because I had tried to get to Gaza before.  At the outbreak of Israel's Ooperation Cast Lead, I boarded a Free Gaza boat, with one day's notice, and tried, as the U.S. representative in a mulitnational delegation, to deliver trhee tons of mnidical supplies to an already-besieged and ravaged Gaza.  But, during Opertion Cast Lead, U.S.-supplied F-16s raised hell fire on a trapped people.  Ethnic cleansing became full-scale, outright genocide.



U.S.-supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, robotic technology, DIME weapons, and cluster bombs - new weapons creating injuries never treated before by Jordanian and Norwegian doctors. I was later told by doctors who were there in Gaza during Israel's onslaught that Gaza had become Israel's veritable weapons testing laboratory; and the people used to test and improve the kill ratio of their weapons.

The world saw Israel's despicable violence thanks to al-Jazeera Arabic and Press TV that broadcast in English. I saw those broadcasts live and around the clock, not from the USA but from Lebanon, where my first attempt to get into Gaza had ended because the Israeli military rammed the boat I was on in international waters that carried medical supplies.  That boat, the Dignity, was completely destroyed in its encounter with the Israeli military.

Again, on a humanitarian mission aborted by the Israeli military.  I am now known as Israeli Prisoner #88794.  I am in cell number 5, Ramle Prison.  How could I be in prison for collecting crayons for kids and trying to get the crayons to them?

The Israeli authorities have tried to get us to confess that we committed a crime.  And while in the cellblock, I have kaccess to my clothes and a cell phinbe, but not the crayons or any clothing that has the word "Gaza" on it.  Zionism has surely run out of its last legitimacy if this is what it does to people who believe so deeply in human rights for all that they put their own lives on the line for someone else's children. Israel is the fullest expression of Zionism, but if Israel fears for its security because Gaza's children have crayons then not only has Israel lost its last shred of legitimacy, but Israel must be declared a failed state.

I am facing deportation from the state that brought me here at gunpoint after commandeering our boat. I was brought to Israel against my will. I am being held in this prison because I had a dream that Gaza's children could color & paint, that Gaza's wounded could be healed, and that Gaza's bombed-out houses could be rebuilt.

But I've learned an interesting thing by being inside this prison. First of all, it's incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream.  My five cellmates have been here for about six months each.  One is pregnant; they are all in their twenties. They thought they were coming to the Holy Land. They had a dream that their lives would be better.  The CIA-installed puppet in Addis Ababa, President Meles, whom I have met, has put the once-proud, never-colonized Ethiopia into the back pocket of the United States, and become a place of torture, rendition, and occupation. Ethiopians must flee their country because superpower politics became more important than human rights and self-determination.

My cellmates came to the Holy Land so they could be free from the exigencies of superpower politics. They committed no crime except to have a dream. They came to Israel because they thought that Israel held promise for them. Their journey to Israel through Sudan and Egypt was arduous. I can only imagine what it must have been like for them. And it wasn't cheap. Many of them represent their family's best collective efforts for self-fulfillment. They made their way to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. They got their yellow paper of identification. They got their certificate for police protection. They are refugees from tragedy, and they made it to Israel. Only after they arrived, Israel told them "There is no UN in Israel."

The police have license to pick them up and suck them into the black hole of a farce for a justice system. These beautiful, industrious, proud young women represent the hopes of entire families. The idea of Israel tricked them and the rest of us. In a widely propagandized slick marketing campaign, Israel represented itself as a place of refuge and safety for the world's first Jews and Christians. I, too, believed that marketing and failed to look deeper.  The truth is that Israel lied to the world. Israel lied to the families of these young women. Israel lied to the women themselves who are now trapped at Ramle.


And what are we to do? One of my cellmates cried today. She has been here for six months. As an American, crying with them is not enough. The policy of the United States must be better, and while we watch President Obama give 12.8 trillion dollars to the financial elite of the United States it ought now be clear that "hope," "change," and "yes we can" were powerfully presented images of dignity and self-fulfillment, individually and nationally, that besieged people everywhere truly believed in.

It was a slick marketing campaign, as slickly put to the world and to the voters of America as was Israel's marketing to the world. It tricked all of us but, more tragically, these young women.

We must cast an informed vote about better candidates seeking to represent us. I have read and re-read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that I, too, would one day have to do so. It is clear that taxpayers in Europe and the U.S. have a lot to atone for, for what they've done to others around the world.

What an irony! My son begins his law school program without me because I am in prison, in my own way trying to do my best, again, for other people's children. Forgive me, my son. I guess I'm experiencing the harsh reality which is why people need dreams. I'm lucky. I will leave this place. Has Israel become the place where dreams die?

Ask the people of Palestine. Ask the stream of black and Asian men whom I've seen being processed at Ramle. Ask the women on my cellblock. [Ask yourself:] what are you willing to do?

Let's change the world together and reclaim what we all need as human beings: Dignity.


I appeal to the United Nations to get these women of Ramle, who have done nothing wrong other than to believe in Israel as the guardian of the Holy Land, resettled in safe homes.


I appeal to the United States Department of State to include the plight of detained UNHCR-certified refugees in the Israel Country Report in its annual Human Rights Report.


I appeal, once again, to President Obama to go to Gaza: send your special envoy, George Mitchell there, and to engage Hamas as the elected choice of the Palestinian people.

I dedicate this message to those who struggle to achieve a free Palestine, and to the women I've met at Ramle.


Cynthia McKinney, July 2nd 2009, also known as Ramle prisoner number 88794.

 




--
http://www.livestream.com/dignity
http://dignity.ning.com/
http://www.twitter.com/dignityaction
http://www.myspace.com/dignityaction
http://www.myspace.com/runcynthiarun
http://www.twitter.com/cynthiamckinney
http://www.facebook.com/CynthiaMcKinney"

[LordLindsey]

"FROM MA'AN NEWS:


http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?op ... s&ID=39066


Bethlehem - Ma'an - At least 100 Americans arrived in Egypt Sunday and made their way up to the Egypt-Gaza border at Rafah with a rumored 1 million US dollars in medical supplies for the besieged Strip.


Less than a week after Israeli naval boats seized and boarded the Free Gaza ship, the Spirit of Humanity, and as activists from half a dozen countries remain in Israeli prison from the first group of activists, the Americans, with the Viva Palestina movement, will try to enter the Strip via Rafah.


Following the first British Viva Palestina convoy which was allowed into the Strip in early October 2008, the American group - also lead by British MP George Galloway - will attempt to deliver supplies and show solidarity with the closed-off coastal area.


*****************************************************
FROM FREE GAZA:


Many of you have been asking us what has happened to the kidnapped passengers and our boat, The SPIRIT OF HUMANITY. Here then is our current update.


All 21 passengers have now left. Huwaida and Lubna were freed right away, because they hold Israeli citizenship.


Many passengers did not get all of their belongings back, many computers were stolen, some that were returned had their hard drives completely erased. Many of the pieces of camera equipment were not given back as well, and, of course, none of the tapes of the boarding, roughing up or incarceration of the 21 people who have been returned.


However, all passengers are already in their country or origin or are returning tonight. The London 6 had a press conference last night, the Bahraini 5 had a press conference in Bahrain over the weekend, and the Irish 2 are being feted tonight with a massive rally at Dublin airport. There will be a big reception and press conference there.


The two men from Al Jazeera have both been returned to Jordan through the Allenby bridge.


That leaves the three Americans... Cynthia McKinney, Kathy Sheetz and Adam Shapiro. We hear little from the American media about these three brave passengers, and it will be up to the Americans to express their outrage over their treatment. If they had been kidnapped by the military from Iran or Venezuela, their stories would have been all over the media. Because they were kidnapped by a 'friendly' nation, few in the U.S. have opened their mouths.


As far as Israel is concerned, we will demand that our boat be returned, that our equipment and tapes be returned, and they cease and desist their interference with our human rights trips to Gaza. Because we are going back. Israel can ram our boat, threaten us with bodily harm, shoot at us, board and confiscate the boat, shuttle us off to prison, and we will still return.


The outrage in many countries over what happened is muted by the fact that 11,000 Palestinians remain in Israeli jails, many without benefit of trial, many languishing for years without being able to see their families.


And this fact is something we must all remember. We came from countries around the world. We attempted to break Israel's draconian siege of 1.5 million Palestinians. Even when arrested, the Israelis treated us with kid gloves, afraid of the consequences from governments, activists and human rights organizations. Who will stand up for the Palestinians and do the same thing?


Please go and watch, if you have not already, our video of our incarceration and the incarceration of Palestinian men, woman and children.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ri8jWj_KbY


With grateful thanks from all of us to all of you.


The Free Gaza Team
http://www.freegaza.org
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29205195@N02/"

[LordLindsey]

"Monday 6th July, Heathrow, London Adie Mormech, one of the six British Free Gaza boat passengers and crew deported today from an Israeli jail, says he's raring to return.

The Free Gaza boat Spirit of Humanity was forcibly boarded by the Israeli navy last Tuesday while trying to sail to Gaza through international and Gazan waters. The boat remains at the Israeli port of Ashdod. "Another boat which tried to reach Gaza a few months ago is still there, so we don't have much hope of getting ours back" says Mormech, "but the lawyers are working hard on it and we will be fundraising for new ones."

Of the experience of being boarded by Israeli soldiers, Mormech remained upbeat about his memories. "The soldiers were trying to look intimidating," he said, "but the boat was rocking so much that they kept sliding all over the place and falling over each other... the Special Forces weren't looking so special!"

Of his time in the Israeli immigration jail at Ramle, though, he emphasised the appalling conditions for people – mainly from Africa and South East Asia – being held there for years at a time. "It was like dipping your toe in an enormous pool of lost people," said Mormech. He described the jail, where Free Gaza prisoners were helped by fellow inmates with mobile phones and in return gave English lessons and took testimonies, as a 'hellhole.' Many of the inmates, he said, have no money for lawyers, and described one individual from Cote d'Ivoire who had been incarcerated for two years with no hope of legal representation or release.

And, said Mormech, the inconsistencies and irregularities of the Israeli system which seemed like a "game of cat and mouse" for him as an internationa,l are "of course, a brutal reality governing the lives of thousands of Palestinians."

"It's not about me, it's about Gaza entirely," he stressed.


Sarah Irving is a freelance writer specialising in social and environmental issues and the Middle East"

[LordLindsey]

If ther was/is ANY DOUBT WHATSOEVER that Egypt is another ZOG, all that anyone will ever need to see is what follows:



"Action alert for Jenny and Natalie – "You will never leave Gaza"
Jenny and Natalie, both British passport holders, and both long term human rights workers in the Gaza strip, are being prevented from leaving Gaza via the Rafah Crossing. Please take action on their behalf.

Jenny Linnell is a co-founder of the ISM Rafah group, and an original crew member of one of the "Free Gaza" boats. For the last year she has been accompanying Palestinians and documenting events in the Gaza strip, both before, during and after the war. You can see footage of her work with fishermen and farmers under fire at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDD8ANFgwtA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTUYivih ... fishingu...

Natalie, from Lebanon (but with a British passport)  also entered Gaza via one of the Free Gaza boats and has been working as part of the International Solidarity movement within Gaza since November 2008. You can see her work at http://gaza08.blogspot.com/
Since the end of May Jenny has been trying to leave and return home via the border crossing at Rafah into Egypt. She keeps getting turned away, most recently under pretty extreme circumstances, as outlined below. Natalie also needs to leave Gaza in order to take up her place at a British University. The Egyptian Border Guards told both women that they were being refused exit because of their work with the Free Gaza boats. They were told that they would 'never be let out'.
Natalie has written an account of their treatment, and their inhuman treatment of so many Palestinians at the Rafah crossing, in 'The Gates of Hell' http://gaza08.blogspot.com/
(June 30th post)
For the sake of both women and other peace workers it is vital that this treatment is not allowed to continue unchallenged. Please help us get them back by ringing the British Foreign office and the Egyptian Embassy in London.

The Egyptian Embassy in London
phone 020 7499 3304/2401
Fax: +44 (0)20 7491 1542
The British Foreign Office
Middle East Desk
Tel: +44 (0)20 70088784
Email: trish.wi...@fco.gov.uk

Or the Consular team: phone the Foreign office on +44 (0)2070081500 and ask to be put through to the Consular Assistance team, ( who are there to assist British travellers when abroad).

If you get a chance to mail me to let me know when you rang, and how it went, it would be great for helping us keep tabs on how effectively the mobilising going. Many many thanks on behalf of Jenny, Natalie and their friends and family.
Liz Snook. lizthesnook at gmail.com.  
(UK support team for Jenny and Natalie)

Sample letter:

Dear sir/ madam

I am concerned about the continued refusal at the Egyptian Border with Gaza to let British citizens Jenny Linnell and Natalie Abou Chakra leave Gaza for return via Egypt to the UK. In the past months they have been engaged in humanitarian work in Gaza and it is important that as British Citizens they must be given whatever legal protection and entitlement is necessary for their safe return to the UK.

They had been assured that their documentation was in order and yet on the 28th of June it was deemed to be inadequate despite assurances made to the contrary. There appears to be a missing link in the coordination between the MFA and the Egyptian Intelligence Services, or between these offices and the officials working in the crossing, resulting in Ms Linnell and Ms Abou Chakras continued refused entry into Egypt.

As a matter of urgency, it is essential that a greater level of assurance is acquired from the MFA that this situation does not arise again, either through further coordination or documentation, or by the physical presence of a representatives to ensure the border guards at the Egyptian crossing implement what appears to have been agreed by more senior Egyptian officials.

The women have every reason to believe that simple reiterations of documentation and assurances alone will not be sufficient. They have put their faith in these mechanisms for over a month now, with no effect. They first approached the British Embassy in Cairo on the 31st of May. On the 9th of June they were told that they had the required coordination and paperwork from the MFA, this was faxed through to the British Embassy in Cairo. They took a copy of this fax to the Crossing when they attempted to pass. They had been told that it was acceptable for British nationals to leave before the date of the official opening of the Crossing so they attempted to cross on the 10th of June. After several hours and several trips backwards and forwards by the by the Palestinian official responsible for coordination they were told that the Egyptian Intelligence office at the Crossing had informed him that we were not allowed to go through at that time and said things
 would work out once the Crossing opened. Despite several calls to Ms. Hayek from the MFA, they were refused entry.

On Saturday 27th June, 2009, the first day of the officially announced three-day opening of the Rafah Crossing, 4 British citizens including Ms Linnell and Ms Abou Chakra passed through six phases of checkpoints, before finally being allowed onto a bus waiting before the gates to the Egyptian side of the Crossing. This meant that they were still on the Palestinian side, in a bus in a queue of around seven buses and dozens of ambulances, stranded waiting for the Egyptians to open the entry gate to the Egyptian terminal. At 7.30pm local time, the Egyptians called the Palestinians to return back. The Egyptians then allowed some ambulances through, although 20 ambulances and the buses were left stranded again until 11pm, when all were returned back to Gaza.
The following day, Sunday 28th June, the four British nationals headed to the crossing in the early morning. At 2pm they were asked to get on a bus heading to the Egyptian gate. At 3pm, the four British nationals had gained entry to the Egyptian terminal. At 7.30pm, the other two British nationals were allowed into Egypt, however Ms. Linnell and Ms. Abou Chakra were told their passports were being checked and were then questioned by the border officials regarding the purpose of their stay in Gaza, their arrival, and marital status. An hour later, Ms. Linnell and Ms. Abou Chakra's names were called as part of the list of those to be "returned back" to Gaza. The afore-mentioned protested against this, thinking that there must have been a misunderstanding, reiterated that they had "tanseeq", or coordination from the MFA based on the request of the British Embassy and repeatedly showed the document from the MFA.

They were told by a uniformed officer that the faxed document was in fact a letter from the British Embassy and what they actually needed was a letter from the Egyptian Government, despite the fact that the document was written on letter-headed notepaper from the MFA emblazoned with a governmental emblem and that it bore a governmental stamp below the text. They were also told that they weren't being allowed to pass because the British Embassy hadn't approved of their departure from Gaza.

The officers and Intelligence personnel threw the faxed document on the ground. Ms. Linnell and Ms. Abou Chakra attempted to refuse to leave the Crossing, demanding to know why the permission they had previously been granted was not now being honoured. No answer was given although an Intelligence officer there, Mr. Saeid, insisted that they needed "tassdeeq" which constitutes a call by the MFA to their office at the Crossing. He said the document from the MFA meant nothing. Ms. Dina Hayek from the MFA had previously explained to Ms. Linnell that it would have been impossible for her to have sent the fax to the British Embassy without the approval of the Intelligence Services.

After approaching other Intelligence officers, they were denied entry to the Government Security office that they'd been recommended. At around twelve midnight, when one of the women was speaking to the media about the situation at the Crossing, Mr. Saeid approached her saying "I will make sure you will not leave Gaza," and assured her "We are untouchable" (literally, meen hayhasibna). During these hours, Ms. Linnell and Ms. Abou Chakra were speaking on the telephone with family members who contacted the British Embassy in Cairo. "We are working on it," was a repetitive answer.. Hours later, they received a 'phone call from Caroline, the Duty Officer at the Embassy saying, "I've seen this happen before," "Wait till tomorrow when we can sort things out," and "You have everything you need to cross, the problem is from them [Egyptian Intelligence Services]."

The two British women informed the Embassy that they would remain in the crossing until an explanation was given as to why they had been denied entry based on unjustifiable and potentially false grounds. The Egyptian officials at the border asked how they entered Gaza, and on explaining that they arrived on the Free Gaza Movement Boats they were told, "So, you don't need us to answer. You already know why you're not being allowed out."

This would seem to suggest that they were detained as a form of unofficial punishment for their humanitarian work in Gaza. This is extremely alarming. Officers then forcibly removed them from the departure hall to where there was a bus waiting outside. Moments later, Ms. Abou Chakra was also assaulted and lost sight of Ms. Linnell. Officers again threatened Ms. Abou Chakra with her continued detention in Gaza saying saying "We will make sure you will never get out," and, "You are lucky you are not in Jordan. Our boots would be in your mouths by now."

The treatment Ms. Linnell and Ms. Abou Chakra were subjected to was abusive and unnecessary. The Egyptian authorities at the Crossing have failed to acknowledge their right of passage. As is evident from the verbal exchange mentioned above, this is a ...

As is evident from the verbal exchange mentioned above, this is a direct challenge from the Egyptian authorities to the democratic rights of any person who has been working aiding the desperate situation in Gaza.

I would be grateful if you would fully investigate this matter further and urge you to act on this information to secure an efficient and safe passage from Gaza for these two humanitarian workers, which they have so far been unjustly denied.
I would appreciate you keeping me informed of the results of your enquiries.
--Yours sincerely"

[joeblow]

[MikeWB]

There isn't a single word about this in newspapers, TV, radio or any other type of mainstream media. They also ignored the illegal arrest.

[LordLindsey]

Mike, the JESUITS under orders from the GERMAN DEATH CULT are the ones controlling the media!!  Didn't you get the memo from Kelly "Violet" Nichols Jones?   :?:  :ugeek:

LINDSEY