Protest boats dock in Gaza

August 24, 2008

By Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City | The Independent, Sunday, 24 August 2008

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Two boats carrying dozens of international activists sailed into the Gaza Strip in defiance of an Israeli blockade yesterday. They were greeted by jubilant Palestinians after a two-day journey marred by communications troubles and rough seas. The 46 activists from 14 countries include Lauren Booth, sister-in-law of Tony Blair.

Since sailing from Cyprus early on Friday, the mission by the US-based Free Gaza Movement had been in question. Israel initially hinted it would prevent the vessels from reaching Gaza, but relented after determining the activists did not pose a security threat.

Israel imposed its blockade in June 2007 after Hamas seized power in Gaza. Israel has closed its trade crossings with the territory, while neighbouring Egypt sealed its passenger crossing, confining Gaza’s 1.4 million residents. Israel has allowed only basic supplies into Gaza, causing shortages of fuel, electricity and basic goods.

Failing Darwish’s Legacy

August 23, 2008

By Sumia Ibrahim

Relatives of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish along with Palestinian Authority officials mourn over his coffin during his state funeral in the West Bank city of Ramallah, 13 August. (Mustafa Abu Dayeh/POOL/MaanImages)

Last Wednesday’s state funeral in Ramallah for the revered Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish revealed how far the Palestinian people are from realizing the justice imagined in Darwish’s writing, and was a sad reminder of how the Palestinian Authority (PA) helps undermine his people’s struggle.

On the day that Darwish’s body was laid to rest, amid tens of thousands of Palestinians mourning in the streets and many more in their homes, his criticisms of and hopes for the Palestinian and Israeli governments and societies remained unheeded and unrealized. However, Darwish’s official funeral at the PA headquarters, with all of its military pomp, demonstrated that the PA had its own interests in mind over that of respecting, never mind fulfilling, Darwish’s message and legacy.

Darwish joined the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1973 but broke 20 years later in disagreement with their signing with Israel the Oslo Accords which Darwish believed did not even minimally fulfill Palestinians’ rights. The Oslo Accords established the PA and initiated the “peace process” supposedly aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state, but were null and voided after Israel doubled its illegal settlement population in the years that followed, dashing any hopes of Palestinian sovereignty.

It is hard to imagine that Darwish would have been pleased with his PA-sponsored state funeral. Indeed, with the Oslo Accords he opposed came the establishment of the PA and the illusion of a Palestinian government in parity with Israel. However, in effect the PA served as an arm of the occupation, relieving Israel of its obligations as an occupying power. Meanwhile, Israel continues to colonize Palestinian land, control the borders and Palestinian movement, and the Palestinians are no closer to realizing their right to self-determination.

Furthermore, Darwish was overtly critical of political factionalism between Fatah and Hamas, Palestine’s leading governing parties. In July 2007, he described deadly infighting in Gaza as “a public attempt at suicide in the streets.” He said with irony, “We have triumphed. Gaza won its independence from the West Bank. One people now have two states, two prisons who don’t greet each other. We are victims dressed in executioners’ clothing.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas eulogized at Darwish’s funeral: “You remain with us, Mahmoud, because you represent everything that unites us.” Abbas spoke of Palestinian unity but in actuality, the PA has complied with Israel and the US’s attempt to further fracture Palestinian society by isolating Gaza from the West Bank. Renewed infighting emerged this summer between Fatah and Hamas, with the more severe rights violations occurring at the hands of Hamas in Gaza. But for their part, the al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades, closely linked to Fatah, abducted a senior member of Hamas in the West Bank in Nablus earlier this month. Palestinian security forces also detained up to 50 Hamas members, including senior party figures, also in the West Bank earlier this month.

Continued . . .

‘Mr 10 percent’ nominated as next president of Pakistan!

August 23, 2008

Pak Tribune, August 22, 2008

ISLAMABAD: The Central Executive Committee of Pakistan People’s Party has nominated the PPP Co-chairman, Asif Ali Zardari for the post of president of Pakistan.

This was stated by Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Sherry Rehman while talking to newsmen after the Pakistan People’s Party CEC meeting here on Friday.

She said the CEC meeting did not discuss anything on the minus-1 formula and added that a three-member committee has been set up for restoration of the deposed judges. Sherry Rehman, Raza Rabbani and Farooq H. Naek will represent PPP in the committee.

Meanwhile, Asif Ali Zardari has sought 24 hours from the party to make a final decision.

Read also Newsweek: Zardari on the Hot Seat

Jerome Corsi: How a Racist, Conspiratorial Crank Became a Top GOP Anti-Obama Point Man

August 23, 2008

By Max Blumenthal, The Nation. Posted August 23, 2008.

Corsi’s success represents the apotheosis of a long, strange trip from the furthest shores of the right into the national spotlight.

These are good times for Jerome Corsi. Already notorious for his factually challenged book-length takedown of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, Unfit For Command, the 61-year-old Corsi has another hit on his hands. His new book, Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality has made Corsi a hot commodity again on the right-wing radio circuit, the bane of the Obama campaign and catapulted to the top slot on the New York Times bestseller list. With his newfound notoriety, Corsi has brought his pathographic anti-Obama narrative to hundreds of thousands of readers — and millions on radio and TV — just as he did with Kerry. Corsi has become the court bard of the conservative movement. “The goal is to defeat Obama,” Corsi told the New York Times. “I don’t want Obama to be in office.”

Corsi’s success represents the apotheosis of a long, strange trip from the furthest shores of the right into the national spotlight. During George W. Bush’s first term, Corsi was a little-known financial services marketing specialist. In 1995, according to the Boston Globe, he coaxed twenty people into a shadowy investment venture in Poland that ultimately lost them a total of $1.2 million. “It ruined my career in the brokerage business, and it was a sad story for a lot of people,” said Bradley Amundson, one of those enlisted into Corsi’s bungled scheme. The FBI opened an investigation but never filed any charges.

Corsi had dabbled off-and-on the fringes of conservative backlash politics for nearly three decades. In his spare time, which he appeared to have lots of, Corsi busied himself at his computer, firing off opinions on the far-right website Free Republic, marked by their sexual and racial obsessions.

In a comment typical of the dozens he posted under the handle “jrlc,” Corsi wrote, “Anybody ask why HELLary couldn’t keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?” In another, he ranted, “Isn’t the Democratic Party the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA — oh, I forgot, it was just an accident that Clintoon’s [sic] first act in office was to promote ‘gays in the military.’ RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters — it all goes together.”

Then he composed Unfit For Command, suddenly vaulting into best-sellerdom. Surrounded by the media buzz of talk radio and Fox News, Corsi no longer plied the seamy troll-zones of the right-wing blogosphere. Overnight, he had become a conservative folk hero. But as Bush’s popularity waned during his second term, Corsi’s star dimmed. He tried to reignite it by co-authoring a book with “prophecy expert” Michael Evans, Showdown with Nuclear Iran, calling on the United States and Israel to attack Iran “before it’s too late,” and another, Black Gold Stranglehold, claiming to expose the Big Lie that will “enslave” Americans: “the belief that oil is a fossil fuel and a finite resource.” Corsi’s conspiracy theories consolidated his cult status, but he did not revive the brightness of his Swiftboating campaign. As another presidential election approached, however, Corsi followed his well-trod path back to renown.

In early 2007, Corsi huddled with an old friend, Howard Phillips, a veteran conservative operative who had attempted to organize the anti-government militia movement into a cohesive political bloc during the 1990s. Corsi emerged from their discussion convinced of his destiny. He would declare his campaign for the presidential nomination of the ultra-right Constitution Party, enthusiastically embrace the party’s call for a complete halt on immigration, banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and upholding its official platform that the “U.S. Constitution established a Republic under God, rather than a democracy.” With this momentous announcement, Corsi hoped to cast himself as the last, best hope to save America from the godless, globalist duocracy conspiring to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada into a “North American Union.” (His latest flop, published in 2007, was a screed entitled, The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada.)

In July 2007, Corsi spoke before the Texas Constitution Party. At the time, he remained focused on foiling the ambitions of Hillary and Bill Clinton. “I don’t want Bill Clinton anywhere near the White House,” Corsi proclaimed. “We had enough serial rape going on when he was president.” But Corsi didn’t want a Republican in the White House either, especially not Senator John McCain. The war-scarred McCain, Corsi wrote in a column for the far-right webzine WorldNetDaily, is a possible jihadist dupe who “has enjoyed strong support from a lobbying group that backs … a Muslim terrorist group with ties to criminal drug networks and Al Qaeda.” Even George W. Bush was now treasonous. “Bush,” he told the Texas Constitution Party, “is post-America and post-God,” a figure so indebted to foreign interests that he had allowed “communist China” to “run its gunboats up the Mississippi.” In Corsi’s mind, both parties were fronts for the money-masters, the Trilateralists, the plotters of Bohemian Grove — the “elitists who want to destroy the nation-state.”

Continued . . .

See also: A Book Written to Defeat Obama

The killing fileds of Afghanistan: American airstrikes kill 76 Afghan civilians

August 23, 2008

US-led coalition forces killed 76 Afghan civilians in western Afghanistan yesterday, most of them children, the country’s Interior Ministry said.

The coalition denied killing civilians. Civilian deaths in military operations have become an emotive issue among Afghans, many of whom feel international forces take too little care when launching air strikes, undermining support for their presence.

“Seventy-six civilians, most of them women and children, were martyred today in a coalition forces operation in Herat province,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Coalition forces bombarded the Azizabad area of Shindand district in Herat province on Friday afternoon, the ministry said. Nineteen of the victims were women, seven of them men and the rest children under the age of 15, it said.

US-led coalition forces denied killing any civilians. They said 30 militants had been killed in an air strike in Shindand district in the early hours of Friday and no further air strikes had been launched in the area later in the day.

Air strikes took place after Afghan and coalition soldiers were ambushed by insurgents while on a patrol targeting a known Taliban commander in Herat, the US military said in a statement.

“Insurgents engaged the soldiers from multiple points within the compound using small-arms and RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) fire,” it said. “The joint forces responded with small-arms fire and an air strike killing 30 militants.”

A senior police commander in western Afghanistan confirmed the incident but could not say how many civilians died.

“More than 30 people have been killed. I cannot say how many of them are civilians,” General Ikramuddin Yawar told Reuters.

A spokesman for the Defence Ministry in Kabul said US special forces and Afghan troops had been carrying out an operation against a commander named Mulla Sidiq, who was planning to attack a US base in Herat. “Twenty-five Taliban were killed, including Sidiq and one other commander,” said spokesman General Zaher Azimi.

“Unfortunately, five civilians were killed in the bombing.”

Afghanistan has seen a surge in violence this year as the Taliban steps up its campaign of guerrilla attacks, backed by suicide and roadside bombs, to overthrow the pro-western Afghan government and drive out foreign troops.

Meanwhile, soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) fired artillery rounds into Pakistan from the eastern province of Paktika yesterday in a coordinated attack with the Pakistani military, the Isaf said.

The rounds were fired at militants across the border who the Pakistani military said were preparing to fire rockets at an Isaf base in Paktika, Isaf said in a statement.

This Time, the World Is Not Buying It

August 23, 2008

by Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, August 22, 2008

Antiwar.com

The success of the Bush Regime’s propaganda, lies, and deception with gullible and inattentive Americans since 9/11 has made it difficult for intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future of the United States. For almost 8 years the US media has served as Ministry of Propaganda for a war criminal regime. Americans incapable of thinking for themselves, reading between the lines, or accessing foreign media on the Internet have been brainwashed.

As the Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, said, it is easy to deceive a people. You just tell them they have been attacked and wave the flag.

It certainly worked with Americans.

The gullibility and unconcern of the American people has had many victims. There are 1.25 million dead Iraqis. There are 4 million displaced Iraqis. No one knows how many are maimed and orphaned.

Iraq is in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed by American bombs, missiles, and helicopter gunships.

We do not know the death toll in Afghanistan, but even the American puppet regime protests the repeated killings of women and children by US and NATO troops.

We don’t know what the death toll would be in Iran if Darth Cheney and the neocons succeed in their plot with Israel to bomb Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons.

What we do know is that all this murder and destruction has no justification and is evil. It is the work of evil men who have no qualms about lying and deceiving in order to kill innocent people to achieve their undeclared agenda.

That such evil people have control over the United States government and media damns the American public for eternity.

America will never recover from the shame and dishonor heaped upon her by the neoconned Bush Regime.

The success of the neocon propaganda has been so great that the opposition party has not lifted a finger to rein in the Bush Regime’s criminal actions. Even Obama, who promises “change” is too intimidated by the neocon’s success in brainwashing the American population to do what his supporters hoped he would do and lead us out of the shame in which the neoconned Bush Regime has imprisoned us.

This about sums up the pessimistic state in which I existed prior to the go-ahead given by the Bush Regime to its puppet in Georgia to ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of Russians in order to defuse the separatist movement. The American media, aka, the Ministry of Lies and Deceit, again accommodated the criminal Bush Regime and proclaimed “Russian invasion” to cover up the ethnic cleansing of Russians in South Ossetia by the Georgian military assault.

Only this time, the rest of the world didn’t buy it. The many years of lies – 9/11, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, yellowcake, anthrax attack, Iranian nukes, “the United States doesn’t torture,” the bombings of weddings, funerals, and children’s soccer games, Abu Ghraib, renditions, Guantanamo, various fabricated “terrorist plots,” the determined assault on civil liberties – have taken their toll on American credibility. No one outside America any longer believes the US media or the US government.

The rest of the world reported the facts – an assault on Russian civilians by American- and Israeli-trained and -equipped Georgian troops.

The Bush Regime, overcome by hubris, expected Russia to accept this act of American hegemony. But the Russians did not, and the Georgian military was sent fleeing for its life.

The neoconned Republican response to the Russian failure to follow the script and to be intimidated by the “unipower” was so imbecilic that it shattered the brainwashing to which Americans had succumbed.

McCain declared: “In the 21st century nations don’t invade other nations.” Imagine the laughs Jon Stewart will get out of this on the Daily Show. In the early years of the 21st century the United States has already invaded two countries and has been beating the drums for attacking a third. President Bush, the chief invader of the 21st century, echoed McCain’s claim that nations don’t invade other nations.

This dissonant claim shocked even brainwashed Americans, as readers’ emails reveal. If in the 21st century countries don’t invade other countries, what is Bush doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what are the naval armadas and propaganda arrayed against Iran about?

Have two of the worst warmongers of modern times – Bush and McCain – called off the US/Israeli attack on Iran? If McCain is elected president, is he going to pull US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan as “nations don’t invade other nations,” or is President Bush going to beat him to it?

We all know the answer.

The two stooges are astonished that the Americans have taught hegemony to Russians, who were previously operating, naively perhaps, on the basis of good will.

Suddenly the Western Europeans have realized that being allied with the United States is like holding a tiger by the tail. No European country wants to be hurled into war with Russia. Germany, France, and Italy must be thanking God they blocked Georgia’s membership in NATO.

The Ukraine, where a sick nationalism has taken hold funded by the neocon National Endowment for Democracy, will be the next conflict between American pretensions and Russia. Russia is being taught by the neocons that freeing the constituent parts of its empire has not resulted in their independence but in their absorption into the American Empire.

Unless enough Americans can overcome their brainwashed state and the rigged Diebold voting machines, turn out the imbecilic Republicans and hold the neoconservatives accountable for their crimes against humanity, a crazed neocon US government will provoke nuclear war with Russia.

The neoconservatives represent the greatest danger ever faced by the United States and the world. Humanity has no greater enemy.


Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts

Foreign contractors stoking Iraqi violence

August 23, 2008

BAGHDAD, Aug. 22 (UPI) — An Iraqi defense official said Friday security contractors employed by Western nations are recruiting foreign fighters to Iraq, boosting the level of violence.Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari blamed foreign fighters employed by unnamed security firms under contract with U.S.-led forces for a spate of attacks recently, Iraqi daily Azzaman said.

“These people’s access to Europe is facilitated by these firms. Once trained to carry out special violent actions, they are sent to Iraq to execute their plans,” he said.

Without mentioning specific firms, the spokesman suggested many had recruited fighters from North Africa to conduct operations in Iraq.

By his estimate, there are around 2,000 foreign fighters in Iraq. He said some are working for Western security firms, while others are al-Qaida mercenaries.

Askari said his information comes from interrogations of foreign detainees who admitted to training in Europe under the guidance of the security firms.

They were trained, he says, “to kill Iraqis and cause further insecurity.”

© 2008 United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

Britain’s terror laws have left me and my family shattered

August 23, 2008

RINF.COM, August 21, 2008

Stop the War Coalition

The UN’s committee on human rights has just published a report criticising Britain’s anti-terror laws and the resulting curbs on civil liberties. For many commentators the issues raised are mostly a matter of academic abstractions and speculative meanderings. For me, it is anything but. These laws have destroyed my life.

On May 14 I was arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act – on suspicion of the “instigation, preparation and commission of acts of terrorism”: an absurdly nebulous formulation that told me nothing about the sin I had apparently committed. Once in custody, almost 48 hours passed before it was confirmed that the entire operation (involving dozens of officers, police cars, vans, and scientific support agents) was triggered by the presence on my University of Nottingham office computer of an equally absurd document called the “al-Qaida Training Manual”, a declassified open-source document that I had never read and had completely forgotten about since it had been sent to me months before.

Rizwaan Sabir, a politics student friend of mine (who was also arrested), had downloaded the file from the US justice department website while conducting research on terrorism for his upcoming PhD. An extended version of the same document (which figures on the politics department’s official reading list) was also available on Amazon. I edit a political magazine; Rizwaan regularly sent me copies of research materials he was using, and this document was one.

Within hours of my incarceration I had lost track of time. I often awoke thinking I had been asleep for days only to discover it wasn’t midnight yet. My confidence in the competence (and motives) of the police ebbed away. I found myself shifting my energies from remaining cheerful to remaining sane. In the early hours, I was often startled by the metallic toilet seat, crouched in the corner like some sinister beast.

For days on end, I drew cartoons and wrote diary entries in the margins of Mills and Boon novellas. I spent hours reciting things to myself: names of Saul Bellow characters, physics Nobel prize winners, John Coltrane albums, anything to keep the numbness away.

I’m constantly coming across efforts being made to give detention without charge the Walt Disney treatment: the crushing weight of solitary confinement is painted as a non-issue; the soul-sapping nothingness of the claustrophobic, cold cell is portrayed as a mild inconvenience. Make no mistake: the feeling that one’s fate is in the hands of the very people who are apparently trying to convict you is, without doubt, one of the most devastating horrors a human being can ever be subjected to. It is (to misquote Carl von Clausewitz) the continuation of torture by other means.

“Those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear,” goes the tautological reasoning of the paranoia merchants calling for harsher, ever more draconian “security” measures – as we saw throughout the 42-days debate. They should read Kafka: nothing is more terrifying than being arrested for something you know you haven’t done. Indeed, it is the innocent who suffers the most because it is the innocent who is tormented the most. The guilty calculates, triangulates, anticipates. The innocent doesn’t know where to start. The answers and the questions are absolute, unbreachable, towering conundrums.

Continued . . .

The Gaza Concentration Camp: Ancient Colonialism through a Nazi Filter

August 22, 2008

Visiting the Gaza strip, July 2008

When you approach the Erez frontier post to enter Gaza from the north, you notice a concentration camp straightaway even if you may never have seen one like the ones turned into museums or educational centres, or like the ones that appear in documentaries or photographs.

An observation balloon, innocently painted white, rocks gently to and fro in the air over the wall surrounding Gaza. It makes sure no unhappy soul moves beyond arbitrary limits set by the camp guards. The visitor is overwhelmed by the mammoth steel-reinforced wall. This imprisons a million and a half inmates inside an area approximately 38 kilometres long and 12 wide at its widest.

Apart from cases you can count on the fingers of one hand, Palestinians quite simply cannot pass through Erez. Full stop. Besides, they are not allowed out via the South, crossing into Egypt, nor via the West, since the Mediterranean Sea is barred to them, nor via the air, since that too is likewise barred, despite there being no boats or planes to travel in. In any case, the airport was destroyed by the bombs of Israel air power. Gazans are not allowed to exit by digging underground either.

Patrolling closely about the ten or so people waiting under a scorching sun before a guard post in the middle of open ground about a built-up area, various soldiers and plain clothes police, with state of the art machine guns at the ready, make very clear the people had better keep very still. At the end of a long wait, by loudspeaker, the soldier in the armed guard post lets them through into the built-up precinct. It is like a warehouse, unexpectedly high, air conditioned and with various control posts inside, although only one is in use, since not enough people go through to warrant operating the rest. One is subjected to more waiting despite the absence of movement.

For the Zionist mentality everyone who does not cooperate with the system must pay a price. It is not even necessary to be one of their declared enemies. In this case, the visitors came from a State with good relations of all kinds with Israel, namely the Kingdom of Spain. Their documents were in order and they were unarmed. Matters had been prearranged with the Israeli authorities via the Spanish Consulate in Jerusalem. They also had a return ticket to their country, money for their stay and a stated humanitarian purpose for their visit, which would last exactly three days. The reason the Israeli frontier police at Erez waste the foreigners’ time, is because the Zionists are not enthusiastic about witnesses visiting the camp. Foreigners arriving at Erez intending to pass through, are indeed that, nothing else. Israelis are forbidden to enter. Israelis attempt to discourage visitors by many means. If the sight of the wall, the wandering machinegun-totting soldiers, the wait in the sun do not work, then visitors are subjected to hostile interrogation. From behind thick armoured glass, the seated interrogator addresses the standing interrogated person. The questions vary from the reasonable to the comical, “What are you doing in Gaza? Have you been to Israel before? Do you speak Russian? Do you have a driving license? How many passports do you have? What’s your boss called?” From the higher level floor above, cameras and guards record and observe the visitors without being seen. Afterwards people have to go individually through a narrow series of metal barriers which the service personnel can shut off at will, then another couple of armoured doors operated by remote control and – all the while under closed circuit TV cameras – one leaves the precinct to enter a metal corridor and finally cross through the concrete wall into the Palestinian side.

When returning from Gaza to Israel, the process is the same except that one is forced to enter a coffin-like cubicle that is adjusted to one’s body and in which you have to place yourself, legs apart, arms apart above your head. A kind of vertical electronic belt or ribbon goes around one’s body. It is a procedure as stupid as it is impressive since the soldiers know beforehand who the visitors are and why they are visiting Gaza.

Continued . . .

‘Free Gaza’ boats set sail from Cyprus to Gaza

August 22, 2008

Uruknet.info

Saed Bannoura – IMEMC

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Peace activist and children on the deck of the ‘Free gaza’ boatThursday August 21, 2008Despite Israeli objections and attempts to intervene, Cyprian authorities have given the go-ahead for two boats filled with humanitarian supplies and 60 international activists to set sail tomorrow for the Gaza Strip. The boats took off at midnight Thursday morning.

The ‘Free Gaza’ movement has been collecting money and supplies since last year to allow the unprecedented blockade-breaking trip to move forward. As the sixty activists gathered in Cyprus two weeks ago, the Israeli government issued statements indicating that the Israeli navy would shoot the boats if they tried to bring the humanitarian aid to Gaza.

In addition, activists on the boat have reported receiving death threats for their work. Palestinian activist Osama Qashoo, who now lives in London, told Agence France Presse on Wednesday that over the last two weeks, he has received around twenty death threats on his phone, some of which have been traced to Israeli cell phones. He said his family in Qalqilia, in the West Bank, has also received death threats.

The aim of the group is to bring much-needed medicine, medical supplies and food to the civilian population of Gaza, which has been suffering under an Israeli-imposed siege for over a year.

Now, the boats are setting sail from Cyprus for the 30-hour trip to Gaza. Tom Nelson, the Portland, Oregon-based lawyer for the group, says they are simply trying to expose the truth about Israel’s targeting of civilians in Gaza. Israel has cited ‘security concerns’ in its announced plan to shoot the boats as they approach the Gaza shore.