Tag: flotilla

The Free Gaza flotilla incident seems to have pushed Israel and its supporters, including those in the US government, over the edge of reason (Original reporting Here). And you thought our neoconservative psychotic episodes had subsided once BushCo left office.  

A Democratic member of the US House of Representatives says he wants to see US citizens aboard the Gaza flotilla prosecuted for providing aid to terrorists.

In a conference call organized by The Israel Project, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) told reporters that activists participating in the flotilla were aiding Hamas and therefore breaking US law.

“The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 makes it absolutely illegal for any American to give food, money, school supplies, paper clips, concrete or weapons to Hamas or any of its officials,” Sherman said, as quoted at Jim Lobe’s foreign policy blog. “And so I will be asking the Attorney General to prosecute any American involved in what was clearly an effort to give items of value to a terrorist organization.”

Sherman also said that he plans on working with the Department of Homeland Security to make sure that any non-U.S. citizen involved with or aboard the Flotilla are excluded from entering the U.S.

Now, before I tee off on Brad Sherman or any other member of Congress contemplating the use of demented and Orwellian “anti-terrorism” laws to coerce free-thinking Americans into silence, or to bring them in line with crazy and criminal policies of Israel’s ever-worsening bunker mentality, over at TPM, M. J. Rosenberg makes an appropriate distinction worth acknowledging:

Brad Sherman (D-CA) is probably (possible exception Shelley Berkley of Nevada) the most pro-Likud Democratic member of Congress. (No, not pro-Israel. You can’t support policies that cause the whole world to turn against Israel and use that label).

But this is crazy even for Sherman.

Okay, caveat made.  We’re not talking pro- or anti-Israel.  We’re talking about insane pro-Likudnik policies.  Now, cue the outrage.

The Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla was an overt political act aimed at breaking the siege of Gaza.  Bringing food, medicine, and supplies to humans suffering extreme privation in defiance of “the authorities” is an act far less theatrical or playful but conceptually tantamount to hippies stuffing flowers into rifle barrels as a form of protest so good-natured and free of overt threat as to be disarming and impossible for the world audience to find the least bit menacing, much less provoking a violent response.   Indeed, military responses to expressions of “flower power” are unthinkable, and would instantly discredit and delegitimize those bearing actual weapons in support of establishmentarian power.  While the analogy may be imperfect, it generally seems that Israel has done the unthinkable by shooting the flower children dead, including an American and some Turks, citizens of their most critical allies.