...“It’s terribly sad,” Mr. Heap said. “The people here [in Crete] tell us they are ashamed of their government; some of the soldiers apologize for what they have to do to us.”
When the coast guard overtook the ship and several commandos and police came on board, Mr. Heap said, the volunteers “disabled the engines to make it hard for the Greeks to get the ship back to port.”
Towed back to harbour, the ship had its diesel tank ruptured when it was roughly docked at a pier without bumpers, Mr. Heap added. Early reports about the ship sinking were the result of a premature evaluation, Mr. Heap explained, apologizing for the misleading information.
It looks to be the end of the line for Mr. Heap, in this, his second frustrated attempt to get to Gaza. He had been part of a 2009-10 march to Gaza that was stopped by the Hosni Mubarak government in Cairo.
Mr. Heap, a father of two, says he won’t quit, despite criticism by some at home, including at his own university.
“That’s their opinion,” he says of his critics. “A lot of people are proud of what we’re doing.”
He said his father, an Anglican priest, union organizer and social activist, “was ridiculed too when he went to Selma to join Martin Luther King,” referring to the ground breaking civil rights marches in the southern United States in the 1960s.
For David Heap, Gaza is his Alabama...I think I see where you're going with this, Dave. The Gazans are the "negroes" and the Jews are the "white racists," right? Now, how do you explain the part where the "blacks" want to kill all the "racists," not only the ones in "Alabama" but every last "racist" in the world?
In that sense, Gaza ain't his Alabama. It's his Nazi Germany.
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| The little Gaza boat says, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..." |
2 comments:
I think you're spot-on in your analysis, Scaramouche. The American Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s has become the template for just about _every_ "protest movement_ ever since: Second wave feminism, the gay rights movement, the nuclear disarmament movement, the American Indian Movement, the immigration rights movement, and, in its latest manifestation, the Palestinian rights movement. You name, everything is made to fit through a template of virtuous "people of color" vs evil honkies, and, as I've mentioned several times before on your blog, the Israelis have become the designated honkies this time around. Appeals to facts, logic, justice, etc. just do not work in confronting this sort of big lie. Only vigorous counter-propaganda--of the sort that we saw the Allies use against the Axis (no mean propagandists themselves) during WWII, will avail . . . and I just haven't seen a lot of that coming from our side, so far.
Divagation: Israel has a very good film industry, which makes quality movies on relatively low budgets; one would think that, as their country is locked in an existential struggle whose outcome is by no means certain, Israeli filmmakers might bestir themselves--with some government subsidies--to put their talent to the service of their country . . . maybe something along the lines of the "Why We Fght" series of American WWII propaganda films. Just sayin' (as Kathy Shaidle likes to say).
Alas, most Israeli filmmakers, like most filmmakers, are of/on the left, thereby ensuring that it's the leftist viewpoint that will make it to the screen. I think we're more likely to make inroads (especially with youth) via online satire, as Caroline Glick is doing with Latma TV.
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