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This letter was originally broadcast on WBAIX on July 3rd

My Letter from an Israeli Prison

By Cynthia McKinney

A funny thing happened to me on my way to Gaza. Before I left for Gaza I was giddy with excitement. The children needed school supplies. It was a last minute, urgent request; please bring crayons for the children. And so I accepted contributions of crayola crayons, number 2 pencils, pencil sharpeners, paint brushes and crayola water colours. When I told people that I was … to buy crayons for the children of Gaza everyone wanted to donate. By the time I left my suitcase could hold no more. So, full of expectations, I entered the airport in the United States headed once again to Larnaca, Cyprus, where the Hope flotilla, consisting of the Free Gaza and The Spirit of Humanity were to embark to Gaza. The Free Gaza was to be donated to the people of Gaza so they could replace some of the boats confiscated and bombed by the Israelis during their Operation ‘Cast Lead’.

It was a beautiful dream and dream it had to be because I had tried to get to Gaza before.

At the outbreak of Israel’s Operation ‘Cast Lead’ [in December 2008], I boarded a Free Gaza boat with one day’s notice and tried, as the U.S. representative in a multi-national delegation, to deliver 3 tons of medical supplies to an already besieged and ravaged Gaza.

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By Saree Makdisi

To judge by the next day’s headlines, Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy speech last month was a great success. “Israeli Premier Backs State for Palestinians,” declared the New York Times. “Israel Endorses Two-State Goal,” said the Washington Post. “Netanyahu Backs Palestinian State,” announced The Guardian.

He did no such thing, of course, unless by “state” one understands an amorphous entity lacking a definite territory, not allowed to control its own borders or airspace, shorn of any vestige of sovereignty (other than a flag and perhaps a national anthem), not allowed to enter into treaties with other states—and permanently disarmed and hence at the mercy of Israel. It would make about as much sense to call an apple an orange or a piano a speedboat as to call such a construct a state, and yet those are the conditions that Netanyahu imposed on the creation of such an entity for the Palestinians (if they get that far in the first place).

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A boat carrying foreign activists and three tons of medical supplies was rerouted Tuesday. Meanwhile, the fishing industry – a key source of jobs and protein – has been crippled.

By Mel Frykberg | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Ramallah, West Bank

Bringing fresh attention to its blockade of the Gaza Strip, Israel on Tuesday turned back a boat attempting to deliver three tons of medical supplies to Gazans.

After a radio message asking the small ferry to turn back was ignored, the Israeli Navy boarded the boat and redirected the vessel to the Israeli port of Ashdod. Reuters quoted a police source as saying that the activists aboard, members of the US-based Free Gaza movement, would “likely be deported.”

“Yesterday evening the Israeli Navy contacted the boat while at sea clarifying that it would not be permitted to enter Gaza coastal waters because of security risks in the area, and the existing naval blockade,” the Israeli military said in a statement, adding that humanitarian aid would be sent to Gaza “subject to authorization.”

The naval blockade – part of a wider Israeli effort to seal off the tiny coastal strip controlled by the Islamist militant group Hamas – not only prevents such shipments, it is also devastating a key Gazan industry and source of food: fishing.

[…]

Click here to read about fisherman Mohammed Hassuna, who says he and his crew were recently surrounded by Israeli Navy boats, shot at, forced to strip, and swim in frigid water to the Navy gunboat, where they were handcuffed, blindfolded, and their feet chained.

[Read the report]