That Maritime Security Blockade

"We just don't understand why Israeli officials are acting as they are. My husband's youngest is putting a brave face on it, but I know that he is very upset and worried about how his father is doing." Wife of a Canadian Gaza-blockade-running detainee

Fairly pathetic, the level of intelligence betrayed by that interview. It is clear that neither she nor her involved husband have any understanding whatever with respect to the situation that compelled the Gaza blockade. For these Canadians have never known terrorism, close to home. They have never experienced the raw fear of never knowing when the next attack will occur, and where.

They have never had to concern themselves with the safety of their children. Nor had to contend with the trauma and fear experienced by their children who have had to learn at an early age how to react when a siren goes off informing residents that they must swiftly repair to underground bunkers to shelter them from incoming rockets.

They haven't the interest in making themselves knowledgeable about the agenda of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel. And presumably, if they were made aware, the fact that a violent group of dedicated jihadists were committed to destroy a country they are happy to view as vicious occupiers, an apartheid state, would not trouble them at all.

The reader is invited to feel deep compassion for the child concerned about the welfare of his father who had simply embarked on a humanitarian mission, as a decent and caring human being. Held in custody by state security and reputed by their representatives in Canada to have been physically abused for their humanitarian impulse.

"Having departed Turkey on their way to secure their purpose, the two ships were intercepted by members of the Israeli navy which had asked them repeatedly to head toward the Israeli port of Ashdod, which directions they ignored. They were taken into custody because they attempted to break the "maritime security blockade that is in place in accordance with international law".

Since then the spokespeople for the activists have claimed that some of their members were roughly treated while in custody. "Beaten", they claimed. They have since spoken with Canadian consular staff who verified that several delegates were seen to have been bruised. Consular staff felt, however that everyone involved was "OK."

These are brave games played by adherents-for-justice, with little to lose and an international reputation as supporters of the Palestinian "cause" to gain. They need not concern themselves with stubbornly irrelevant details that, even if they became aware of, they might simply dismiss as 'beside the point'. Although the citizens of Israel don't view their survival as beside the point.

The Canadian, American and Irish 'activists' who embarked on their strenuous effort to guide world opinion in rejection of the cause of a Jewish nation to survive despite insurmountable odds against that survival, encircled by hostile and violence-threatening neighbours, feel themselves to be honourable and passionately dedicated seekers-of-justice.

Dig deep enough into that social conscience, and out comes the explication of a deeply-entrenched, visceral aversion to Semites of the Jewish persuasion.