Oct 08,2016 – JORDAN TIMES – EDITORIAL
The recent interception of Zaytouna-Oliva boat by Israeli naval units in international waters off the coast of Gaza is another demonstration of Israel’s blatant disregard for peaceful gestures from Palestinians and their supporters to end the decades-long suffering of the people under occupation or of those in the besieged Gaza Strip.
The boat, dubbed “Women’s boat to Gaza”, carried 13 women activists of different nationalities, including a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, journalists, a lawmaker and a former US army colonel and State Department official who resigned over the 2003 Iraq war. They set sail from Barcelona in September as part of the wider Freedom Flotilla Coalition that regularly seeks to break the blockade on Gaza.
The women’s message and purpose was to show Israel and the world that the continued Israeli blockade of Gaza is an affront to humanity and common sense.
The Israeli navy’s excuse for this act of piracy was typically pathetic. It said it took the boat and its occupants hostage in order “to prevent the breach of the lawful maritime blockade of Gaza”.
What arrogance to claim that the blockage of Gaza is lawful!
What is Israel’s reason for the baseless contention that its blockade of Gaza — which means starving the strip’s population and forbidding the entry of material needed to rebuild what Israel destroyed in its July-August 2014 bombardment of the enclave — is a lawful maritime blockade?
By what authority does Israel intercept a peaceful passage of boats in international waters?
Israel escorted the boat to its port Ashdod and took the occupants to Ben Gurion Airport to have them deported.
It, of course, confiscated the women’s telephones and cameras in order to conceal its act of piracy on high seas.
It will not help. The word is out and the message the women were trying to send has reached the world.
Not that the world really cares, however. Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation for over half a century and the voices of condemnation are growing fewer and weaker.
So what is there to prevent Israel from continuing its illegal practices, including its unlawful encirclement of Gaza?
Regrettably, Israel’s acts are no prescription for the peace it disingenuously claims to want to reach.
SOURCE: http://jordantimes.com/opinion/editorial/another-israeli-transgression
Knowing the history of the jews, the cowards that they are, as long there are idiots like Obama and Putin living with their noses up their own backsides oblivious of others, the jews will continue to pretend to be a force to be reckoned with against a Nation already cheated, subdued, and abandoned by the rest of the world.