From Greta Berlin, of the FGM Media Team:
It's 2:30 am, and Osama has just gone to get some sleep for a couple of hours. He and I wait in Cyprus for news from the Dignity and watch the small blip of the SPOT checker as it moves slowly toward Gaza and a possible forceful intervention from the well-armed Israeli navy somewhere are oung 6:00 am. The rumblings out of Jerusalem are fierce. They will not let us come into Gaza, because we didn't behave the last time. What that means only the minds of neurotic military men can sort through, and I am reminded of the movie, Dr. Strangelove, only this confrontation will be real, pitting nonviolent human rights watchers against the 4th largest military in the world.If the doctors on the boat can't handle seasickness in a couple of dozen people, exactly how much help can they give to 1.5 million during their attempted photo-op?
The people on board are now Osama's and my friends, most of them having been to Cyprus twice in an attempt to get on board. We talked to David S about a half hour ago, and 80% of them are sea-sick, some seriously. Even with the new boat, one that rides better and is more stable, the people are still sick. Twenty-seven of them are crowded onto that boat, because they care enough about the human rights of an occupied people being slowly strangled to death by Israeli military might to take the risk.
And why am I not surprised that one of their leaders is named Osama?
Clearly Greta is tired, because she let slip something she surely didn't mean to:
Israel is panicked that the Palestinians will do the same thing that they did in the late 40s and that is get on boats and come home.It took me a second, but then I realized what she was saying: she was comparing Palestinian Arabs to the Jews who had to "illegally" immigrate to Palestine to save their lives from the Nazis!
Which means that she must consider the Palestinian Arabs' host countries to be as oppressive as Nazi Germany, I guess.
But notice her word choice: even this rabid anti-Zionist admits that the Jewish refugees of the 1940s were not European colonialists, but they were members of a nation coming home!
I doubt that this dispatch will make it onto their website before they realize that they just justified Zionism as a national restoration movement.