Ambassador Demands UN Intervention to Prevent Food From Being Delivered
Will UN support the siege?
Israel's UN ambassador Ron Prosor has sent a letter calling on the UN and other representatives of the international community to stop the Ship to Gaza sailing vessel Estelle from reaching its destination. If this means that Israel has decided to leave control over Palestinian territorial waters to the UN it is a fall forward.
The UN and many other representatives of the international community have for years characterized the siege of the Gaza strip as inhuman and incompatible with international law.
Ship to Gaza Sweden assumes that that UN will not take over the implementation of this policy by preventing a peaceful vessel from delivering humanitarian supplies.
Ship to Gaza and the Freedom Flotilla have never opposed lawful inspections of cargo and vessel from representatives of the UN, or from national authorities in the ports and waters we have passed through and...http://shiptogaza.se/enby Jason Ditz, October 18, 2012
The Finnish-flagged Swedish aid ship Estelle is looking to near the Gaza Strip in the next few days, capping off a summer-long sail around Europe to raise awareness for the blockade. The ship is loaded with food aid.
Which has Israelis typically furious, but none moreso than Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor, who penned a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon claiming the Swedes on board the ship were less moral than Viking raiders and
demanding international military intervention to prevent the food from being delivered.
This has sparked some criticism, claiming Prosor's bellicosity is drawing undue influence to the single ship, while Israeli officials say they intend to militarily keep the ship away from the Gaza coast, as they so often have
with past ships.
But that military action is going to happen under considerably more scrutiny than it normally would have because of both Prosor's letter and this week's revelation that the Israeli military has been trying to limit the number of
calories of food allowed into the Gaza Strip.
Ship seeking to break Gaza blockade set to arrive
Gov't officials say envoy to UN Prosor gave "free publicity" to activist ship 'Estelle' with letter to Secretary-General Ban.
Photo: Screenshot
Government officials on Thursday raised eyebrows at a letter Israel's United Nations envoy Ron Prosor wrote UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this week asking for international intervention to "stop the provocation" of a small ship sailing to Gaza.
According to one official, the letter – which said the Vikings had a better moral compass than the passengers of The Estelle, expected to arrive near Gaza in the coming days – gave a publicity boost to the ship that is challenging the IDF's naval blockade of Gaza.
"One ship does not a flotilla make," said one official of the ship carrying what Prosor called "weekend revolutionaries" with "radical and extremist agendas."
Israel's blockade policy remains intact, and the ship will be stopped, one official said.
The ship, sailing under a Finnish flag,
set sail in June and has stopped at numerous European ports trying to drum up support and publicity. The vessel, carrying over a dozen passengers, took on additional food and passengers off the coast of Crete earlier this week.
Among the new passengers are five European parliamentarians: Ricardo Sixto Iglesias from Spain, Sven Britton from Sweden, Aksel Hagen from Norway, and Vangelis Diamandopoulos and Dimitris Kodelas from Greece.
http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=288417
Ship to Gaza Sweden vessel sets sail again
A Swedish ship with rights activists from several countries aboard sailed from Naples on Saturday in the latest bid to break Israel's blockade against Gaza.
A crowd of well-wishers saw off the sailing vessel Estelle as it left the Italian port as part of the "Freedom Flotilla" movement.
"We think it will take around two weeks to get to Gaza, but it will obviously also depend on the weather conditions," spokeswoman Ann Ighe told the AFP news agency.
The Estelle, whose voyage was organized by an international pro-Palestinian coalition, is carrying humanitarian goods to the Gaza Strip.
The 17 activists from around the world on board include passengers and crew from Sweden, Norway, Canada, the United States and Israel.
Israel says the blockade against Gaza is necessary to prevent weapons from entering the coastal territory, which is run by the Islamist movement Hamas.
The Free Gaza movement landed in hot water last month after its founder, Greta Berlin, tweeted that "Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews."
The tweet linked to a video of Eustace Mullins, a conspiracy theorist, claiming that the word "Nazi" combines the words "National Socialist" and "Zionist."
http://www.thelocal.se/43664/20121007/
https://www.youtube.com/user/ShipToGaza2011
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