IDF Admits It Doctored the Audio Tapes
Written by Free Gaza Team | 06 June 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Cyprus, June 6, 2010) The IDF admitted today in a press release that it doctored audio footage from its exchanges with the Gaza flotilla in order to paint the flotilla passengers as anti-Semites.

However, their comments made no more sense with this explanation: “This transmission had originally cited the Mavi Marmara ship as being the source of these remarks, however, due to an open channel, the specific ship or ships in the “Freedom Flotilla” responding to the Israeli Navy could not be identified.

Israel forced to apologise for YouTube spoof of Gaza flotilla
Rachel Shabi, guardian.co.uk, 6 June 2010

The Israeli government has been forced to apologise for circulating a spoof video mocking activists aboard the Gaza flotilla, nine of who were shot dead by Israeli forces last week.

[…]

The clip features a group led by the Jerusalem Post‘s deputy managing editor Caroline Glick, wearing keffiyehs and calling themselves the Flotilla Choir.

RogerWatersHimself — 25th May 2010

Over the new year 2009-2010, an international group of 1500 men and women from 42 nations went to Egypt to join a Freedom March to Gaza. They did this to protest the current blockade of Gaza. To protest the fact that the people of Gaza live in a virtual prison. To protest the fact that a year after the terror attack by Israeli armed forces destroyed most of their homes, hospitals, schools, and other public buildings, they have no possibility to rebuild because their borders are closed. The would be Freedom Marchers wanted o peacefully draw attention to the predicament of the Palestinian population of Gaza. The Egyptian government, (funded to the tune of $2.1 billion a year, by us, the US tax payers), would not allow the marchers to approach Gaza. How lame is that? And how predictable! I live in the USA and during this time Dec 25th 2009-Jan 3rd 2010 I saw no reference to Gaza or the Freedom March or the multi national protesters gathered there. Anyway I was moved, in the circumstances, to record a new version of “We shall overcome”. It seems appropriate.

Roger Waters

Many thanks to G.E Smith: lead guitar and Thor Jonsson, drum programming and whatever. Thanks guys!!!

PS. 3rd June 2010

And now piracy!!!!!!!

Medical supplies being loaded into the MV Rachel Corrie, which was named after a 23-year-old American killed in Gaza in 2003. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

Harriet Sherwood in Gaza City and Amy Fallon, guardian.co.uk, 5 June 2010

Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement, the main organisation behind the flotilla, said the passengers and crew had four times refused to accede to Israeli demands to divert to Ashdod voluntarily.

“There’s no way that 20 people are going to resist a fully armed force,” she said. “The fact that Israel boarded a civilian boat in international waters is a violent act.”

She expected the 11 passengers – including the Nobel peace laureate Máiread Maguire– and nine crew would be treated “with kid gloves: the world is watching”.

[Read the report]