Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Z-Word has a thoughtful post on the difference between thoughtful, careful diplomacy, and ridiculous gesture politics: Tony Blair or Lauren Booth? Booth is Blair's sister in law and a participant in the Cypress to Gaza boat ride we've been reading about.
Fund raising has been difficult for the effort. A recent posting on their email list explains:
...We are now in Cyprus awaiting our boats' arrival from Crete. When they come in, we will fuel up (with very high-cost diesel) and stock necessary food and supplies. We hope to cast off for Gaza this weekend. We are told that hundreds of thousands of Gazans will greet us on arrival.
Many people thought we'd never come this far. But here we are and we firmly intend to set sail regardless of some recent staggering debts. Frankly, we have spent much more than we raised; here are just a few of our recent expenses:
•Two Sailor 250 FleetBroadband systems to allow us to stay in electronic contact and to send streaming video in real time, $16,000 each, or $32,000;
•Repairs required to make the boats seaworthy, $25,000-$30,000;
•Electronics, wiring, connections, satellite uplinks, SPOT Trackers to make the system work, $5000-$8000. (Most of the labor on the electronics and boats has been donated by the Greek crew and technicians.)
•Forty-four life jackets and two hand-held GPS units, $8000;
•Paint & banners for the boats, and balloons & toys for Gaza children, $2000
•Diesel fuel for both boats, both ways, $15,000 to $25,000.
Except for part of the diesel fuel, we have already paid these costs by running our personal credit cards to the limit, borrowing money, and asking some of the Greek crew to help. Frankly, we're tapped out...
Shame, that.
So that's about $109,000 in expenses and less than $2000 for the kids (far less, since paint and banners probably take away a significant percentage of that $2k). Now that's charity -- for smelly moonbats. (And not a dollar on soap!)
Another message explains the schedule:
We who are waiting in Cyprus are packing up our stuff in readiness for joining our fellow passengers already aboard. We expect the boats to receive a rousing welcome when they arrive here, and we will sail from here toward Gaza with an enthusiastic sendoff from press and well-wishers. After completing the ceremony of throwing 34 long stemmed red roses into the sea in memory of those American sailors who were murdered aboard the other LIBERTY, we will be escorted from the harbor by the local Coast Guard.
Yeah, one of the boats is called the Liberty, a ship they lurrrrve. Jew haters the world over love the Liberty. Isn't that funny? The people who supposedly hate all things military and American, denouncing them as murdering Imperialists just care so, so much about the American sailors killed aboard the Liberty. Soooo patriotic. No? You're right. Let's hear from Yvonne Ridley, British journalist, radical Islamist, and a passenger on board:
Ken O'Keefe, one of the several captains to skipper the SS liberty and SS Free Gaza, reckons that conditions in the Mediterranean would prove too risky to set sail from Crete for Cyprus until later in the week.
"Safety comes first," he said in his coffee smooth, American accent.
The irony was not lost on several of us who fully expect to be facing down Israeli gunships very soon.
I was absolutely crestfallen and being told to swab the decks, clean the heads (toilets) and empty the rubbish bags did nothing to lift my spirits this morning.
After carrying out my chores along with everyone else, I decided to have a word with Captain Ken and he turned out to be just as amazing as many of the passengers.
He is a striking man with an amazing array of politically inspired tattoos. He also insists he is an Irishman with a passport from the Emerald Isle to prove it.
However, I can reveal he was actually born a US citizen and periodically burns his American passport to symbolically disown his country of origin.
The good captain describes himself as a citizen of the world and has no time for such a war-mongering, imperialistic entity as the United States, hence the change of nationality - lucky man has an Irish granny...
Oh yes, that's real patriotism all right. If there were any justice, Poseidon would slosh out of the drink and stuff those roses right back up Captain Ken's behind.
Update: A convenient roster of the participants [PDF]. How much money are these people scamming for their personal photo-op and a vacation on the Greek Isles?
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Red Roses, Gaza Boats, and Tony Blair's Relative.
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What's one to do on a Friday afternoon when one's work (OK, most of it) is done? Why, a spot of the old photoshop, of course. We've all heard the story of the boat ride to Gaza, and followed the... Read More
OK, now the system is working for me.
I just wanted to say that the Israelis should do nothing when these boats arrive. Otherwise, they'll just be playing into the activists' hands.
If these activists want to play at being martyrs (against an army and navy they know won't shoot at them), then let them be disappointed at encountering...no gunboats at all. Israel doesn't occupy Gaza now, anyway.
Let the activists prattle on about how brave they are, and then shrug their shoulders when they face no Israeli military presence. They'll still carry on, putting an anti-Israeli gloss on things, and they'll still have great photo ops in Gaza. But there's no point in Israel's playing the role appointed to it in Yvonne Ridley's script. Israel should just ignore the story and let it blow over. That way, the damage is minimized.
"How much money are these people scamming for their personal photo-op?"
The request for donations asks that money be sent to the home address of Paul LaRudee, chief recruiter of fresh new cannon fodder for the International Solidarity movement in Northern California.
Paul lives high in the El Cerrito Hills overlooking San Francisco Bay. Not too shabby for a "piano tuner"
My question: Why does this "organization" have 501 c (3) status?
Don’t you find it bizarre how Palestinian narrative tries to imitate, almost point by point, the saddest and most traumatic highlights in modern Jewish history?
Edward Said started it, when he insisted on equivalence between the Holocaust and the Nakba. Of course he didn’t come out and just declared it to be so but rather snuck it into the I/P discourse, when he “prophesized” that peace would only be possible when the Arabs accepted the reality of the Holocaust and Jews - the reality of the Nakba.
Following Rachel Corrie’s death, there has been a flurry of impassioned literary activity to make her out to be the “Palestinian” Anne Frank.
To say nothing about the analogy of Gaza and the concentration camps or Ramallah and Warsaw Ghetto.
And now this ridiculous ship with its ridiculous agenda and its ridiculous passengers, like Yvonne Ridley, trying to pass themselves off as some glorious freedom fighters...
It’s a systematic attempt to obliterate genuine events in Jewish history by means of vainglorious auctioning of victim self-pity.
The fact that these loons are excited about the prospect of facing Israeli gunboats -- but are "crestfallen" at having to actually do sailor work (e.g. swabbing decks and scrubbing toilets), while simultaneously begging for money -- tells me all I need to know about these people.
Regardless of one's political perspective, it should be clear -- these are spoiled college kids, anxious for some excitement and a day in the sun, but unwilling to do the day-to-day drudgery required.
They don't deserve our attention. They do deserve our ridicule.
Frankly, I would hope that the Israeli Navy tries to up the ante on their little stunt. For example, wouldn't it be cute if our brave little flotilla is met by... an oversize rubber ducky, painted in Israeli Navy colors?
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
34 roses for the other Liberty?
You'll never see these self righteous islamofascistphillic hypocrites drop...
- 17 roses for the American sailors who died when the USS Cole was attacked by islamofascists
- 241 roses for the US Marines who died when their Beirut barracks were bombed by islamofascists
- 4000 roses for the US servicemen who died in Iraq
- 3000 roses for the people who died in the US during the 9/11 islamofascist sneak attacks on the US