Solidarity 175, 10 June 2010

From Challenge Magazine. Original source here . Israel's attempt to divert argument away from its blockade on Gaza, and over to the resistance that its troops encountered while attacking the Blue Marmara, is futile and grotesque. Let's suppose for a moment that its commandos were attacked, as Israel claims, while invading this ship in the Freedom Flotilla. Here you have soldiers sent to prevent civilians from breaking a siege, while there you have 1.5 million Palestinians caught in a three-year humanitarian catastrophe. The siege is justified, Israel claims, because Hamas holds its soldier...

An impersonator who looks like the country's leader murders him, takes his place, and thereafter deliberately leads the state to defeat and catastrophe. That was the plot of a Hollywood film I saw long ago. Sometimes it is almost tempting to think up some such tale to account for Israel's behaviour - to conclude that a bitter enemy of the Jewish state and of its best immediate and long-term interests has somehow got control in Jerusalem and works relentlessly to undermine Israel. The self-righteous but too often senseless eternal prattle about "terrorists" with which the Israeli governments...

From the Gush Shalom website . Uri Avnery: "This night [31 May] a crime was perpetrated in the middle of the sea, by order of the government of Israel and the IDF Command. A warlike attack against aid ships and deadly shooting at peace and humanitarian aid activists. It is a crazy thing that only a government that crossed all red lines can do. "Only a crazy government that has lost all restraint and all connection to reality could something like that - consider ships carrying humanitarian aid and peace activists from around the world as an enemy and send massive military force to international...

On 29 May "North East Against Racism" (NEAR) organised a protest of 150 activists at 10am on the Saturday morning against the English Defence League rally taking place in Newcastle the same day. NEAR was joined by the TUC music event at 11am at the same meeting point, the Monument in Newcastle City Centre. At the high point we had maybe 600 at the Monument. We then took about 100 people on an impromptu march to three different pubs where the EDL were drinking. This was good, but not everyone was up for it or clear about it, and we had to keep running to avoid being "kettled" by the police...