The “Free Gaza” movement

Some of you may have been aware of news stories about the flotilla of ships from the “Free Gaza” movement headed from various Mediterranean ports to Gaza to break the Israeli-imposed blockade. The Israelis, you may recall, put this blockade in place largely to try to stem the flow of rockets into Gaza from Egypt and Syria (and ultimately Iran) – the rockets that were being fired daily into Israel by Palestinian militants. It was also put in place to put pressure on Hamas to release the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas has held prisoner for years now after kidnapping him from a boarder post.

The movement has attracted a lot of high-profile supporters in Europe and America, and many of these were apparently on some of the flotilla ships. The Israeli military made no secret of the fact that these ships would be stopped and boarded if they continued on their way, and so of course there was a confrontation yesterday, which the world press, in its usual one-sided way, is playing-up as an Israeli atrocity (strange that this same press never seems much disturbed by the continued Palestinian rocket attacks or suicide bombers in Israel).

Anyway, to see how “peaceful” these “peaceful” Free Gaza followers are, take a look at the Utube video at http://www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk.

The Israelis are pretty sure the movement, probably once a real spontaneous grass-roots movement, has by now been co-opted by Islamic militant forces in Turkey, who are using it as a front to try to bypass the Israeli blockade. Those high-profile world notables may, of course, be totally unaware they are being used. That was certainly the case during the Cold War, when (as recently opened KGB records confirm) all sorts of western “peace movements” were funded and guided by the KGB, unknown to most of their followers.

The blockade isn’t pretty, and it certainly causes the average Palestinians in Gaza a lot of grief, but on the other hand the Hamas movement, which runs Gaza (and runs it like the mafia might run a country), is publically committed to the total destruction of Israel.

If we in America had a next-door neighbor who was publically committed to wiping America off the map, and who fired rockets daily into our territory and regularly sent suicide bombers into our restaurants, schools and malls, I wonder how we would react?