For Immediate Release
November 9, 2008

Contact: Mary Hughes, Cyprus +357 96 75 00 59
Greta Berlin, Cyprus: +357 99 08 17 67
Osama Qashoo, +44 78 33 38 16 60
Angela Godfrey Goldstein, Jerusalem: +972 547 366 393

Gaza : All day

9:15 am. From a small Palestinian fishing boat, David Schermerhorn watched as Israeli sailors aboard a large Navy Gunboat put on Hazmat suits and masks. Five minutes later, the fishermen and internationals were blasted by water from a cannon mounted atop the gunboat. The water was filthy, with an appalling chemical smell to it.

Listening to David on his satellite phone, we could hear water hitting the cabin, a harsh thumping sound. It was pouring into the cabin as the boat flooded with water that drained out through the back. The sharp staccato of machine guns in the background clearly sounded close to the boat.

Everyone aboard the fishing boat was drenched.

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Date : 11-9-08

Greta Berlin just emailed this from Cyprus. She is on the satellite phone with David Schermerhorn. He is out fishing with Vik, Nicos and the Palestinians. They were attacked from the moment they passed the 6-mile limit. Water cannons and machine gun fire into the water. At 9:29, he called me again. The gunboat has come within 50 feet of the fishing boat and has cut across where the nets are.

Vik is yelling at the Israeli gunboat, telling them that three internationals are on board and they are all unarmed and they just want to go fishing. The pleas were met by water cannon so strong that all of the people on board went into the cabin for protection. David is trying to get water samples to bring back and have analyzed.

The connection is very difficult to understand, but I can hear Vik in the background and hear the machine gun fire and the water hitting the wheelhouse. They are trying to break the windows in the wheelhouse. Another fishing boat about 100 yards off is also being attacked. He then yelled in the phone that the boat was being hit by water from the front, that the Israeli gunboat is trying to actually break up the boat.

The connection just broke. Please put whatever pressure on that you can …

Update:

At 10:53 an Israeli gunboat is off the port side of the fishing boat getting ready to spray dirty water on the crew and the fish. The crew is trying to raise the nets and the fish inside. The Israeli military on board the gunboat have masks on before they spray the boat, an indication that the water is going to be dirty.

The way point of the boat is .021 as the fishermen frantically try to raise their nets. The larger gunboat with the water cannon mounted on it has gone around to the winward side of the fishing boat, where they always shoot the water cannon. It is 50 yards off and preparing to fire as the nets are being hauled in as fast as the crew can work. As David is talking at 11:05, gunboat started to fire dirty water, attacking the crew and the fish. Nicos has collected the water in a sample jar and will bring it back for analysis. They are trying to ruin the catch.

Update: 11:23 The large gunboat has dropped back after spraying the crew with dirty water. The crew dropped the fish back into the sea to protect them and they were not hit. David said that the military men on the gunboat were wearing hazmat suits an masks, an indication of how dangerous the water must be. Everyone on board was hit, but no fish were ruined.

Gershon Baskin, Co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information writes:

The Director of the Wiesenthal Center from Los Angeles had a piece in the Jerusalem Post which included a direct attach against me. I wrote a response to the Post but they have responded that they have given both of us our say – which is true. So I want to share my response with you because it concerns the continued building of the Wiesenthal Museum over the Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. I will first put in my response followed by Hier’s piece . Take note that he in no part of his arguments addresses the original concerns that I raised in my piece in the Jerusalem Post. (You can see my original arguments against the Museum at::
http://www.ipcri.org/files/cityoftolerance.html)

Dear Editor

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For Immediate Release
November 6, 2008

Contact: Mary Hughes, Cyprus +357 96 75 00 59
Greta Berlin, Cyprus: +357 99 08 17 67
Osama Qashoo, +44 78 33 38 16 60
Angela Godfrey Goldstein, Jerusalem: +972 547 366 393

Larnaca: Tomorrow afternoon at 5:00 pm, the DIGNITY leaves for the third time for the shores of Gaza. This time, eleven past and current members of the European Parliament are on board, along with journalists from Al Jazeera English and The Independent.

These dignitaries were among the 53 Parliamentarians denied entrance by Egypt at the Rafah checkpoint.

“Egypt did not allow us to enter Gaza via the Rafah terminal, but this will not stop us from visiting the area,” Lord Nazir Ahmad, head of the European delegates stated, “We will sail to Gaza, we are determined to break the siege”.

Ms Clare Short MP emphasized, “The Egyptian refusal to grant us access through Rafah Crossing is insulting to all of us, and Egypt should open the crossing now.”

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Avraham Burg was a pillar of the Israeli establishment but his new book is causing a sensation. It argues that his country is an “abused child” which has become a “violent parent”. And his solutions are radical, as he explains to Donald Macintyre

Saturday, 1 November 2008

In shorts, T-shirt and cotton kippa, Avraham Burg is sitting in his sukka, the temporary booth that every observant Jewish family in Israel builds outside their home for the joyous religious holiday of Sukkot, and talking with some disdain about the holocaust “industry”.

The sunlight is filtered through the roof of palm leaves, the decorative strings of apples, coloured balls and paper streamers almost motionless on this still October morning. Nearby the autumn desert flowers are blooming and a ladder up against a tree indicates that someone has recently been picking olives. Here in Nataf, the select, upper-middle-class community idyllically set in the Jerusalem Hills where Burg lives with his wife Yael, just 1,000 metres from the border with the West Bank, it’s momentarily hard to focus on the sombre subject matter of his latest, explosive book, one which by his own – if anything understated – account “singlehandedly shook the foundations of the Zionist establishment overnight”.

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