Tag: Free Gaza Movement - Page 14 - International Solidarity Movement

Threatened and beaten on the way to Gaza

17 July 2009

I departed Cyprus with 20 others on June 29 in a converted ferry carrying humanitarian provisions intended for Palestinians in Gaza cut off from the world by the Israeli military siege. Our intent was to bring Palestinians toys, medicines, toolkits, olive tree saplings, and one 50-kilo bag of cement while breaking the sea barrier Israel maintains to imprison Palestinians in their coastal territory.

An independent filmmaker, and human rights advocate, I planned to document the trip and life in Gaza.

Approximately half of Gaza’s population is under age 18. These children suffer the consequences of an Israeli imposed economic collapse ostensibly intended to undermine Hamas rule. As with Iraq, the sanctions serve only to devastate a population and decimate civil society.

At 2:00 am on June 30, somewhere off our starboard side, an Israeli warship shone its searchlights at our boat. A voice called on the radio, “You are navigating towards a blockaded area. You are hereby ordered to change your course. If you do not, we will be forced to use all necessary force to stop you.”

These waters are patrolled unchallenged by the Israeli navy. Our call for help – one previous boat of ours was intentionally rammed by the Israeli navy – to a UN ship we knew to be in radio range went unanswered.

We counted eight Israeli warships and four zodiac boats with boarding parties and divers in hot pursuit. About an hour earlier an F-16 executed fly-overs. This was US-supplied and American taxpayer-subsidized-force all to stop one bag of cement from reaching a ghetto and human-made disaster area.

In a flurry of activity, we were boarded. Those of us with video cameras bore the brunt of the over-zealous navy forces. We were beaten to break our grasp on the video cameras. I have documented events from Afghanistan to Darfur to various locations around the Middle East, but until then I had never been physically attacked on account of my work. Israel’s military censor continues to hold the evidence and I expect never to retrieve it. With the evidence gone, much of the media have treated the event as though it never occurred.

Instead of sailing into Gaza’s bombed and broken port, we were kidnapped at gunpoint, taken to a foreign country, and imprisoned. Instead of delivering toys to children in Azbet Abed Rabbo, where in February I met families living in tents (again) because their homes were left in rubble by Israel’s December-January invasion, we stood at attention for a prison guard to check our cell.
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As other governments spoke up publicly for their citizens, the US government was notably silent.

In his Cairo speech, President Obama asserted, “Palestinians must abandon violence…For centuries,” he continued, “black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights.” He then noted it was peaceful action that had won rights in the United States, South Africa, and elsewhere. Yet how seriously can Palestinians take his exhortation to nonviolence when he allows an ally to kidnap and beat American citizens attempting nonviolently to assist Palestinians in war-ravaged Gaza?

Even President Obama, who seemed so sincere in his Cairo speech, is imprisoned by the status quo of American-Israeli relations that bend American values and interest to the will of a state that is increasingly being labeled internationally with the brand of apartheid. One set of laws for Jews and one set of laws for Palestinians is unacceptable in the 21st century. Washington can only ignore the facts for so long when Israel’s housing minister states, “We can all be bleeding hearts, but I think it is unsuitable [for Jews and Palestinians] to live together [in Israel].”

As for Gaza, Palestinians there are worlds away from hoping for equal rights. Day to day survival is the priority. The International Committee of the Red Cross recently issued a report, “Gaza: 1.5 million people trapped in despair,” in which it details that nothing has been rebuilt that was destroyed during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, over 70% of Gazans live in poverty, and malnutrition is on the rise among the most vulnerable – the children of Gaza. Trauma is a foregone conclusion.

The World Health Organization has reported that one-third of children under five and women of childbearing age are anemic.

In his Cairo speech, President Obama called the present situation facing Palestinians “intolerable,” adding that “just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel’s security.” More recently, President Obama called on Israel to allow in the reconstruction and humanitarian aid that Gaza desperately needs, though he fell far short of calling for the fundamental human rights to movement, education, health and security that all Palestinians deserve.

It is in this context of despair and a complete lack of governmental will to challenge Israel in which a generation of Palestinians is growing up in Gaza worse off than their great grandparents who fled there in 1948. Our small boat tried to break the apathy that permits blockade and siege. We were ordinary civilians, taking a risk on the high seas, confronting the region’s most powerful navy, because despite all the words describing the situation in Gaza, nothing is improving. In fact, after the immediate outcry following Israel’s winter invasion, Israel again started reducing the number of trucks allowed to enter Gaza.

The Berlin Wall did not fall in a day. Consequently, our next ship sails for Palestinian freedom in a month

Adam Shapiro is a human rights advocate and documentary filmmaker. His latest film is “Chronicles of a Refugee.”

Free Gaza–and Palestine

Huwaida Arraf | The Nation

17 July 2009

Last month I led a group of twenty-one human rights workers on a boat from Cyprus to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. We carried toys, medicine, olive tree saplings, toolkits, a fifty-kilo bag of cement and school supplies on our small converted ferry boat.

At 2 AM on June 30, almost eighteen hours into the 230-mile journey, a colleague awakened me. The Israeli Navy was calling our boat on the VHF radio. “You are navigating towards a blockaded area. You are hereby ordered to change your course. If you do not, we will be forced to use all necessary force to stop you.”

Nervous after a previous boat of ours was dangerously rammed at sea in December by the Israeli military, I replied, “Israeli Navy, this is Arion (the registered name of our ship). We are twenty-one unarmed civilians carrying aid for the Palestinian people of Gaza. Any blockade on Gaza is unlawful as you are the occupying force in the territory and are therefore responsible for the well-being of the civilian population there. As our boat, its cargo, and the twenty-one civilians on board do not constitute any kind of threat to Israel or its armed forces, you are obliged to allow us entry. We are proceeding to Gaza. Do not use force against us.”

Shortly thereafter our navigational systems were disabled for nearly four hours as the warnings continued. In their “final” warning to us, the Israeli Navy threatened to open fire. “Israeli Navy, we are unarmed civilians; do not use force against us. Do not shoot.” We did not stop.

We were boarded by force. Before we were separated, I saw Navy forces grabbing my husband, Adam, a filmmaker who has made documentaries from Palestine to Darfur, about the neck. Later, I learned that outside of my view, these government-sanctioned pirates pummeled Adam in order to wrest his videocamera from his grasp.

Though I know it could not have been easy for him, Adam did not fight back. He was a multi-sport athlete in high school, threw out Manny Ramirez stealing second and is one of those rare individuals who bring a football player’s intensity to peace work. But like the rest of us, Adam insists on using nonviolent means to resist Israel’s military occupation. And though in his widely hailed Cairo speech President Obama made an implicit call for nonviolence as the means to challenge the Israeli occupation, the Obama administration made no public statement on our behalf — nor did it do so three months ago, when my dear friend Bassem Abu Rahme was killed while nonviolently protesting Israeli expansionism in the West Bank that threatens to destroy his village of Bil’in.

Perhaps we were politically inept. Had we sailed toward Iran to offer assistance to civilian protesters there, we would have been a cause celebre if the Iranian government had arrested us. Iran, however, for all its troubles, is not now under foreign occupation as Palestine is. Yet as I watched the demonstrations in Iran, I could not miss the similarities to Palestine’s nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation. I cannot count the times I have marched peacefully, waving a flag and demanding freedom for my people — with only my voice and my presence as my weapons. And sadly, the number of friends I have lost — killed by Israeli forces as, like Neda Agha-Soltan in Iran, they nonviolently demonstrated for freedom — is becoming too great a pain in my heart.

My colleagues and I invested time and energy in this difficult journey and put our lives at risk because for too long the international community has been complicit in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. For too long, diplomats and world leaders have paid lip service to Palestinian human rights. For too long, the Palestinian people have been told to wait — wait in the checkpoint line, wait on the peace process, wait to have your rights recognized, wait for freedom.

Students I met on a recent successful voyage to Gaza certainly did not want to wait to be slowly suffocated and drained of their dreams. So desperate were they to escape their confinement in Gaza to obtain higher education abroad that they asked us to drop them in international waters and they would swim the rest of the way to Cyprus. This was youthful madness, but indicative of how trapped people in Gaza are today.

I was born in the blanket of freedom of the United States. My parents immigrated here, knowing that I could not be free in my homeland. But today I use my freedom to struggle as a Palestinian for my friends and relatives who endure the yokes of occupation, oppression, discrimination, exile, internment and apartheid.

Most Palestinians in the occupied territories have not lived a day free of Israel’s occupation, and Palestinian citizens of Israel continue to live as a discriminated-against minority. Just the other day, Israel’s housing minister, Ariel Atias, declared, “We can all be bleeding hearts, but I think it is unsuitable [for Jews and Palestinians] to live together [in Israel].

This is the Israel the United States funds with billions each year. Under the leadership of President Obama–or any American president, for that matter–support for this sort of raw bigotry makes no sense and is antithetical to our most cherished principles. Yet when Israeli leaders utter such contemptible language it is ignored. When Israeli soldiers fire lethal weapons at unarmed, peaceful protesters it is too often ignored. When Israeli naval boats become pirate ships — boarding a vessel that poses them no threat, arresting and beating American citizens–it is ignored.

It is ignored and Israel continues to enjoy the patronage of the United States and to present itself as a moral beacon for the world. But my generation finds racist language like that of Atias’–and the actions that result from such outdated thinking–abhorrent.

We find it unacceptable that Palestinians continue to be asked to wait, to improve our self-government and to be patient as we build ourselves toward the same rights that people elsewhere take for granted. With the fourth Palestinian generation born into refugee camps, with a new generation in Gaza being raised poorer and more desperate than the last, with my land being carved and sliced and walled for the exclusive benefit of one ethno-religious group, I say we cannot wait.

The question facing the world now must no longer be about where to squeeze a Palestinian state. The only relevant question is how to advance the immediate freedom of ten million Palestinians. There can be no more waiting, no more prevaricating, no more negotiations on that simple, beautiful human concept–freedom.

We will be free. President Obama can expedite the process by putting pressure on Israel, or he can sideline himself and the process for the next eight years. Sooner or later, however, Israel’s subjugation of us will be overturned. The current situation is untenable. Whether we live in two states or one state with equal rights for all–as in South Africa and, indeed, the United States–we will achieve our freedom. What South Africa was to students in the 1980s, Palestine is fast becoming to younger generations increasingly repulsed by the entrenchment of Israel’s dual system of law, domination of another people and ongoing confinement of 1.5 million Palestinians to a tiny parcel of land in Gaza.

So, yes, this was only one tiny humanitarian boat to Gaza. But Israel’s heavy-handed action shows how much is at stake and how shaky Israel’s grip over another people becomes when the world’s citizens speak out and take action–even as governments fall short.

NST: Fighting the Palestinian cause

P. Selvarani | New Straits Times

The Spirit of Humanity leaves port in Larnaca for Gaza

P. Selvarani speaks to Free Gaza Movement chairperson Huwaida Arraf to discover a woman determined to see an end to violence. She could have lived a blissful life as a successful lawyer, raising a nice, happy family in the Land of the Free. But social activist Huwaida Arraf, a first generation Palestinian-American, instead found her calling helping free her people.

For the past 10 years, Huwaida has often found herself staring down the nozzle of an Israeli army Uzi submachine gun, roughed up, handcuffed and thrown into jail — all in her quest to free Israeli-occupied Gaza and provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.

A lesser mortal would have caved in under such pressure and atrocity but then Huwaida is no ordinary woman.

“It’s not going to stop me. I’m lucky to be alive and not injured like others. Some of my friends have been killed. It’s bad when that happens but what Palestinians are going through on a daily basis is more horrifying,” said the Free Gaza Movement (FGM) chairperson and founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) whose mission is to resist Israeli occupation of Palestine using non-violent tactics.

Just a week before this interview was conducted in Kuala Lumpur, Huwaida and her team of FGM volunteers found themselves once again under siege by Israeli forces.

“On June 29, we departed Cyprus in the ‘Spirit of Humanity’ ferry to provide aid such as medicines, toys and books to the Palestinians in Gaza. But the next day, we found ourselves surrounded by Israeli warships. They threatened to use force against us if we would not leave.

“I told them we were unarmed civilians who were just bringing humanitarian aid. But they kept following us and when we were about 18 knots from the Port of Gaza, their commandos jumped on board our ferry and forcefully took control of our vessel. They took away our cameras and phones and when my husband (documentary producer Adam Shapiro) tried to prevent them, they beat him up.”

Huwaida’s efforts to placate the commandos and assure them that they were on a humanitarian cause ended with her being handcuffed by the soldiers.

“They isolated me in the kitchenette of the ferry. I didn’t know what happened to the rest of the volunteers, including my husband. As the ferry shook violently while they steered it to an Israeli port, crockery and cutlery were falling all over me. Fortunately, I was not injured.”

Huwaida and another volunteer, who are both Israeli citizens, were detained in a huge warehouse near the port with six soldiers watching over them. They were released 16 hours later without being told why they were arrested.

The 19 others, including Adam, spent the next six days in an Israeli prison and were eventually deported. They included Nobel Laureate Mairead Maguire and former US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

It’s this type of unnecessary aggression against innocent folk that makes Huwaida, a Christian, even more determined to fight the Palestinian cause.

Understandably, although she is only 33, Huwaida wears a weary look on her face as she has witnessed this kind of brutality all too often. But doesn’t it feel like she’s flogging a dead horse?

“I can’t accept the violence of the Occupation. When you see (the brutality and oppression) every day and you get used to it, THAT would be a tragedy. I try not to be desensitized to what is happening because we cannot give up.

“Sometimes you feel a sense of guilt, especially when you have access to luxuries denied to other people. I used to feel very guilty about sleeping (she manages on about five hours of sleep a day). Now, I don’t feel as guilty as before because I have to take care of myself but sometimes I still do, especially when I find myself in a place like this,” she said, gesturing at the Club Lounge of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, where the interview took place.

(Barely hours after she landed at the KLIA, Huwaida was whisked to Putrajaya for a press conference held by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad on the plight of the Palestinians.)

Huwaida said the sight of Palestinians waiting in long queues for hours as they go through the numerous Israeli checkpoints to get to the West Bank is degrading.

“The soldiers decide everything. You see old folk, mothers and children going to school sometimes waiting the whole day just to get through.”

She recalled seeing a soldier yelling at a Palestinian man from Jerusalem who needed to get to Nablus to pay his last respects to his father who had died that morning before they buried him.

“The soldier refused to let him through but when the man kept on insisting, the soldier raised his gun. I intervened and pleaded for the soldier to let the man through on humanitarian grounds. Instead, they handcuffed and took him away. I still protested and they asked me to leave. When I refused, they arrested me.”

Huwaida’s parents — her father is an Israeli-Arab and her mother a Palestinian who both migrated to the United States as they wanted to bring up their children away from the violence in Palestine — are always pleading with her not to waste her life like this.

“I have sometimes thought about what we’re doing. But what’s happening in Palestine is so illegal and immoral. There have been times when I thought about returning to the US to practice law, become successful and build an influence, but I never thought about it for too long although I know I need to strike a balance in my life now.”

She said although she and Adam, whom she met at the Seeds of Peace youth organisation, have been married for seven years, they’ve hardly thought of starting a family because of the work they do and the limited time they spend with each other.

“I do want to have children but with so much to do now, I have not thought of starting a family. I guess I have to find a better balance in my life because I am not getting any younger!”

Huwaida confessed that when she first met Adam, they didn’t initially hit it off.

“For the first year we didn’t really talk to each other very much but I think there was a hidden attraction between us. And within a few weeks after our first kiss, he proposed! Two months after we were married, my husband was arrested in Israel and deported and not allowed to return for 10 years.”

It was a difficult period for Huwaida as she was unsure whether to stay on or join her husband in the US. She decided to stay on in Palestine and only went to the US in 2004 to read law.

“Our struggle is a long one and we need to gather as much support as we can from all over the world. Some governments support us but many are unwilling to stand up against Israel’s policies. People in power know what’s going on but they are consciously choosing to ignore it.

“But I know I can’t always be there. I tell myself not to allow this war pre-occupy me too much in order to focus on the bigger change.

“The people whom I have had the honor of meeting and working with, especially our volunteers — who come from all over the world and who’ve not given up in the face of all this persecution — offset the disappointments we face.

But what really keeps Huwaida going is the spirit and resilience of the Palestinians.

“I was in a village called Jayyous where we were planning a demonstration against the Israelis for confiscating the farms of the people to build a wall. The night before I was staying with a friend and his family and I was visibly distressed by what I saw.

“But here was my friend, who had just lost his land, trying to comfort me and make me laugh. I was bewildered! I asked him how he could laugh in the face of all this adversity.

“And he told me that although his land had been confiscated by the Israelis, what was important was that they didn’t take away his ability to laugh and live away from them.”

On another occasion when the [ISM] was trying to prevent the Israeli soldiers from conducting house-to-house raids in Nablus, Huwaida received a call from someone. “He said he could see our volunteers trying to stop the soldiers and although he felt the volunteers could not really do much, the fact that we were trying to do something was comfort enough for him. I did not know who this man was or how he got my number!

“It’s this kind of positive spirit that motivates me and tells me that our efforts are not wasted. At the very least, we are telling the Palestinians that “we see you, we hear you and we are doing what we can to help you”.

Her most challenging moment was when she had to face the parents of a 23-year-old American volunteer who was killed when an Israeli bulldozer ran over her as she was trying to prevent the demolition of a house.

“I was in the US when this happened. Having to face her parents was the most difficult thing I had to do.”

Despite the odds, Huwaida is optimistic that the conflict will end soon.

“We are going to continue to stop this blockade in Gaza. And I believe that if people unite and work together we can be a force to reckon with. Even one person can make a difference.”

Fmr. Congressmember Cynthia McKinney back in U.S. after being detained and deported from Israel

Democracy Now

8 July 2009

Guests:

Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Congresswoman and the 2008 Green Party presidential candidate.

Adam Shapiro, documentary filmmaker, human rights activist and Palestinian rights activist. Adam was a co-founder of the ISM in Palestine. He was filming the voyage of the Arion for the Free Gaza Movement last week.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member Cynthia McKinney arrived back in the United States Tuesday following her deportation from Israel. McKinney was one of 21 activists seized by the Israeli military in international waters last week as they tried to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. Also aboard the Free Gaza boat was Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire. Last week’s trip was the Free Gaza movement’s first since it aborted an attempt in January after the Israeli navy threatened to shoot the civilian passengers on board. That sailing had come just weeks after an Israeli Navy vessel deliberately rammed another of its boats, almost forcing it to sink. Cynthia McKinney joins us now in Washington D.C. We are joined here at the Firehouse by Adam Shapiro. He was filming the Free Gaza trip last week. He is a Palestinian human rights activist and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. Both former Congress member McKinney and Adam were detained for the past week and just deported back to the United States.

Cynthia McKinney why did you go? What happened to you in the Israeli jail?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: I went because there’s a gross injustice being carried out everyday. This is my second attempt to get into Gaza with the Free Gaza organization. And for the two times I attempted to get in, two times I have been thwarted by the Israeli military. The cause is the human rights of the Palestinian people. The world saw the operation Cast Lead where the United States supplied white phosphorus, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, DIME weapons, were rained down on the defenseless people of Gaza. Of course, we desperately wanted to get in to take humanitarian relief supplies. And both times I have tried to go with Free Gaza, they’ve been thwarted—we have been supported thwarted by the Israeli military.

AMY GOODMAN: Now were you on one of the boats that was rammed?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: I was on the Dignity. And yes it was rammed in international waters…

AMY GOODMAN: When was this?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: ..This was in December, just a day or so after the outbreak of Operation Cast Lead. I was contacted by Free Gaza and asked to go within 24 hours and I said, yes, I would go.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a comment made last week by Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev who dismissed the humanitarian mission of the Free Gaza Movement.

MARK REGEV: Israel every day is allowing humanitarian support to reach the people of Gaza. Food stuffs, medicines, energy and so forth. This boat was not about that. This boat was about political activists who have been apologists for the Hamas regime who have nothing whatsoever to say about Hamas’s brutal treatment of the people of Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member McKinney, your response?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Well, clearly, we just had a visit to Gaza by President Carter, Former President Carter. Basically, he acknowledged that with the complete and utter devastation that the people of Gaza experienced at the hands of weapons that were supplied to Israel by the United States, he said that unfortunately the Palestinians are treated worse than human beings. I challenge the Israelis to respond to what President Carter had to say.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member McKinney, tell us about the jail. Were you able to reach the Obama administration while you were there?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Well, the jail was very interesting. In fact, the first most interesting thing I witnessed was the seemingly endless stream of people of color who are being processed as we were being processed. And on my cell block, there were women from Africa and Asia who thought they were going to Israel because Israel was the Holy Land. And many of them, not all of them, but many of them had United Nations refugee status. They have been certified by UNHCR as refugees, but what they were told as they faced the threats and intimidation from the police is that the United Nations is not in Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Adam Shapiro, you are Palestinian rights activist long known for this. You were on the boat. You were roughed up, you were filming when the Israeli military came on board. Describe what happened.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well, they boarded us, four zodiac ships as well as eight naval warships, they surrounded our boat and can immediately towards the wheel house where I was along with the captain and one other crew member. I was documenting the whole trip and filming as they boarded the ship. Two soldiers came after me immediately, recognizing I think that they don’t want any footage of what was happening and they don’t want the world to know how they behave. I tried to keep the camera as long as I could. But I was pummeled repeatedly in the back and arms and choked and eventually they got the camera out of my hands. They have since taken all of our tapes, all of our flashcards and all of that, so we don’t have a record to show the world of what happened on board. The rest of the time we were detained in one room of the ship as we spent the better part of six hours navigating back to an Israeli port where we were processed and ultimately jailed.

AMY GOODMAN: There was another Al-Jazeera reporter on board as well ?

ADAM SHAPIRO: There was an Al-Jazeera reporter and cameramen. They lost all of their footage and camera as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Their computer was taken?

ADAM SHAPIRO: Yes, it was taken, completely reformatted and erased. And so again, we don’t seem to have a record to show the world what happened.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response to Israeli Spokesperson Regev?

ADAM SHAPIRO: Well Mark Regev is known for his colorful descriptions of how great life is in Gaza as far as Israel is concerned. However, all of the reporting, including the most recent International Committee for the Red Cross, shows the number of trucks Israel is allowing into Gaza is completely insufficient for what is needed. And so yes, it is true, he can say Israel allows foodstuffs and medicines to get in, but two trucks a day or 20 trucks a day is far inferior to what is needed. And we have seen, since the international outcry following January’s attack has subsided the number of trucks Israel has allowed in has decreased. And so, what we are saying, Free Gaza is a humanitarian effort to bring in the kinds of medicines and foods that are needed. But the Free Gaza movement is also a political organization in the sense we are human rights organization, And human rights for Palestinians is inherently political. And we are challenging Israel politically too, and this week I think has been a success for those of us who are fighting for Palestinian rights. We were not able to get into Gaza but we have shown the world the true colors of the Israeli occupation, and the double standard by which the United States and other countries are dealing with Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: Former Congress member McKinney, we only have ten seconds. But, you’ve just been deported. What are your plans right now?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: Well, I would like to see the children of Gaza have the coloring books and crayons that we had on board with us. I would like to see the houses that have been destroyed rebuilt. I would like to see the lives rebuilt for the people of Gaza and I would like to see the people of Palestine have, and enjoy their human rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think president Obama is headed in that direction?

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: I think you can probably answer that as well as we can, because while we were in detention, the Foreign Ministry of Ireland made protests and asked the government of Israel to release its nationals, several Members of Parliament

AMY GOODMAN: …We have 5 seconds….

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: from the United Kingdom…

AMY GOODMAN: … 5 seconds….

CYNTHIA McKINNEY: …also wanted to censure Israel. Nothing from the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Cynthia McKinney, Adam Shapiro, Thank you so much. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.

Nobel peace laureate jailed in Israel for Gaza activism

Jonathan Lis | Ha’aretz

6 July 2009

A Nobel Peace Prize winner and a former U.S. congresswoman are among eight people to be released today and expelled after having sailed on a protest ship heading to Gaza from Cyprus, the Israeli Interior Ministry says.

Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her peace campaign in Northern Ireland, has been in prison in Israel since Tuesday after being removed from the ship.

Israel has imposed a naval blockade on the Gaza Strip, so the ship, which flew a Greek flag, was intercepted by the navy. Among the passengers detained was former U.S. congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

When the crew of the Greek ship failed to respond to the navy’s order to stop, the vessel was boarded by Israeli forces, but no weapons were fired. The ship was taken to the port of Ashdod. “Free Gaza,” the organization that organized the attempt to sail to Gaza, has said Israel’s navy used electronic devices to scramble the ship’s navigation equipment.

This was not the first foray into Middle East politics for Maguire, who shared her Nobel Prize with Betty Williams for their efforts at conciliation between Catholics and Protestants. In the past, she has also advocated awarding the Nobel Prize to Mordechai Vanunu for his anti-nuclear activities. Vanunu was jailed by Israel for leaking details of Israel’s nuclear program to the press.

McKinney released a statement contending that the ship was a civilian vessel that was unarmed and carrying humanitarian assistance in international waters.