I forgot that if you help out Gazans you're untrustworthy.

This makes me wish I had voted for McKinney. It was what I planned to do, and then I voted for Obama in the polling booth. True story. Not too happy about that.

Andrew,

Writing like that is clearly suggestive, no doubt. There is always going to be propaganda to serve the interests of the various parties....Harmen just doesn't get it, either does Carolyn.

How is Israel capturing these people outside of Israeli waters not kidnapping?

Stickboy:
> I saw no one claim that, unless that is what you are claiming, and in that case maybe you should familiarize yourself a bit more.

You apparently didn't see my wry irony.

Original quote:

Note how they go out of their way to demonize Israeli in this paragraph.

"The aid was being delivered in the wake of a 22-day military assault against the Gaza Strip last winter, in which Amnesty International has charged the Israeli military... blah blah blah."

My updated version make at least as much sense, doesn't it?

"The aid was being delivered in the wake of a 22-day military assault against the Gaza Strip last winter, in which Amnesty International has charged that the Gaza militias engaged in numerous war crimes."

So, since Amnesty International has declared the group leading Gaza guilty of numerous war crimes, can you possibly understand why Israel might not want people smuggling weapons and explosives to these war criminals?

I did some research and i have to take some of it back..
Its probably not piracy in the legal sense because..

"The law is fairly clear that ‘piracy” applies to non-State actors unless a State can be shown in court to have employed non state actors in a criminal enterprise."



This is an interesting article on the legal aspects of the Free Gaza ship abduction ...



Cynthia McKinney honored America on July the 4th
Tuesday, 7 July 2009, 10:04 am
Column: Franklin P Lamb
How Cynthia McKinney honored America on the 4th of July from an Israel Jail


by Franklin Lamb,
Beirut
Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney returned home today after 6 days being held by the government of Israel while attempting with 21 colleagues to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza on the vessel, the Spirit of Humanity.

“Don’t sign Miss Cynthia don’t sign!” So chanted a boisterous group of Palestinian teens and pre-teens in Beirut’s Shatila Refugee Camp demonstrating support for the Freegaza Humanity boat abductees on the 4th of July.

The students understood that those illegally arrested while in International waters had been offered a “get out of Jail Free” pass if they confessed in writing to violating Israel’s territorial waters.

The Spirit of Humanity boat, trying to bring emergency humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, was the topic of a lively discussion during a Sabra Shatila Foundation summer school civics lesson on “International law and the Question of Palestine”. The students were interested in the plight of some of their relatives and countryman in Palestine and the continuing siege of Gaza. Some had just finished their Baccalaureate exams and were wondering how they could continue their education given the severe impediments the government of Lebanon places on Palestinian civil rights, and their post exam relief seemed to energize them for the discussion.

A couple of the students had met Cynthia during her recent visits to Lebanon. When they learned that as a Congresswoman, she had introduced articles of impeachment against Bush, was a consistent anti-war voter during her twelve years in Congress, and that no member in Congress had achieved a more consistent, principled, voting record of issues of civil and human rights, including Palestinian rights, they really connected with the subject of the Freegaza aid boat, the Spirit of Humanity and her travails. “Those supporters of Palestine should not accept a false confession and should stay in Jail if necessary. They are patriots” was a commonly expressed sentiment.

The students understood that in refusing to sign the Israeli government prepared “acknowledgement/confession” the Freegaza group acted consistent with International Law. They learned that territorial waters, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea is a belt of coastal waters extending at most twelve nautical miles from the baseline (usually the mean low-water mark) of a coastal state. The territorial sea is regarded as the sovereign territory of the state, although foreign ships (both military and civilian) are allowed innocent passage through it. They learned from media reports that in any case the Humanity was in International waters and that consequently Israel had no right to molest it.
.....................
Only Military activities that are consistent with the UN Charter are allowed within the ‘peaceful purposes’ for which the high seas are reserved. Israel’s actions on June 30, 2009, reflecting its three year siege of Gaza, clearly did not meet the international standard of ‘peaceful purposes’ and its crimes against the Humanity boat group are part and parcel, as Professor Falk noted, of its continuing crimes against Humanity itself.

Israeli violations of the rights of Journalists on board the Humanity.

Israel's false arrest and false imprisonment of Journalists on board the Humanity contravened its international legal obligations, imposed by international customary law as well as statutory enactments. The Johannesburg Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information of 1995, an amalgam of general principles of international law and customary international law, states that the government of States that would interfere with the work of Journalists bares the "burden of demonstrating the validity of the restriction.” The blanket ban instituted by Israel in November 2008, as its prepared its assault of Gaza and its response did not meet this standard nor did the arrests of Journalists on board the Humanity, including Al Jazeera’s Othman Al-Battiri and cameraman Mansour Al-Ibbi, and Press TV’s Cynthia McKinney.

Israel was required to give the journalists on board the Humanity respect for their life, property and personal dignity based on General principles of the international law relating to the protection of human rights including Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols as well as international practice of States and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Journalists on the Humanity were civilians and they share the rights of any member of the civilian population and must be treated as such. Abducting, falsely arresting and falsely imprisoning a journalist is prohibited as are acts or threats of violence, psychological pressure and intimidation in order to pressure them into signing ‘confessions’ or summary ‘convicted’ without a due process court proceeding. Israel’s treatment of journalists on the Humanity grossly violated these international norms.

The International Covenant for the Protection of Journalists (ICPJ), an NGO based in Geneva, condemned the Israeli arrest of Humanity’s journalists and International Lawyers Sans Frontiers has asked the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Arab Federation of Journalists (AFJ), as well as the Palestinian Syndicate of Journalists and the Israeli Association of journalists to start an immediate investigation into the Israeli arrest of the journalists.

Cynthia Mckinney, without support from her own government, stood up for the principals on which her country was founded 233 years ago and spent Independence Day inside a foreign jail. All people of peace and good salute her and her colleagues who sailed the Freegaza Spirit of Humanity with the universal message of self determination.


www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL...7.htm#a%23a