Ship of Fools

There will be no peace. Israel is being squeezed like a ripe grapefruit. Hamas wants to push them into the sea, the rest of the world cannot fathom why two states cannot coexist when one as a matter of policy wants to obliterate the other. Even the Turkish prime minister has been deceived into quoting in public that Hamas are no more than heroic freedom fighters. Does he not bother reading a little history about their activities in his own country? Perhaps if he stopped cosying up to Ahmedinajad and took the plank out of his eye, he might be competent to see what everyone else sees is going on under his nose.
There will be no weapons on board the Rachel Corrie, the latest arrival into the maritime exclusion zone, no jihadists, only middle aged flagwavers. Even the ship's name is provocative. Rachel Corrie, a student activist, described as an 'anarchist' by a colleague was killed accidentally playing a dangerous cat and mouse game with a bulldozer during the Second Intifada trying to prevent demolition of the home of a Palestinian in Rafah, a Hamas stronghold in southern Gaza. The actual circumstances of the tragedy were questionable at the time and conflicting reports concerning the whereabouts of her body and the details of her funeral were widespread. Perhaps this was Hamas flexing its fledgling propaganda muscles seven years ago. It is her ideological successors who comprise the passenger list on the boat named after her.

Israeli SEALs will board her and find only sanitary towels and toothpaste. Israel will ask she put in at Ashdod for safe transportation of cargo. The ship will refuse, screaming 'foul' to the world's press. Every anti-Israel organisation in the world will howl for Jewish blood. This is no crapshoot. The dice are rigged.


An Act of God would be welcome right about now.