Oh my, that really is a bitter lemon you are sucking.

Please, try and look at the bigger picture.

If you go to the Free Gaza website you will be able to read the mission statement and the true intention behind breaking the siege.

Kind regards

Yvonne Ridley
Gaza, gaza City

Yvonne:

You can cry wolf all you want, and claim that Israel is perpetrating a "slow genocide" against the Palestinians. If that's your bag, go ahead. But when the word loses any meaning, and the people are truly targets of genocidal hostility are unable to muster the moral outrage of the world because the word itself has lost any meaning, it will be on your head.

Hi Yvonne,

This website you're talking about certainly is revealing.

Your "mission statement" suggests that all of the Palestinian refugees for "forcibly evicted" despite detailed research showing otherwise. Are you really hoping to convince people that, for example, Palestinian refugees from Haifa -- the largest source of Palestinian refugees -- were "forcibly evicted"? Do you simply hope that nobody will look it up and learn that the Jewish leadership there actually pleaded with their Arab neighbors to stay?

Also telling is that you support the Palestinian call for a return of "refugees" (mostly the descendants of refugees). Wasn't it a former Lebanese prime minister who said: "The day on which the Arab hope for the return of the refugees to Palestine is realized will be the day of Israel’s extermination." Didn't an Egyptian foreign minister say that "In demanding the return of the Palestinian refugees the Arabs mean their return as masters, not slaves, or to put it more clearly – the intention is the extermination of Israel." Do you agree with these statements?

I also found it interesting that your group doesn't seem to care about the terrorism that comes from the Gaza Strip, the qassam rockets that have been intentionally fired at civilians. Intentionally. Do you support these attacks actively, or just tacitly?

Are you one of the group members that met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh? Did you talk to him about his uncompromising, rejectionist attitude and calls for the destruction of Israel? Did you urge him to relent and accept Jewish self-determination, or do you agree with his calls for the destruction of Israel? (Your fellow passenger Donna Wallach, who refers to all of Israel as being "occupied," certainly seems to agree with him, as do the "international solidarity movement" members of your group.) Do you agree with Haniyeh's recent statement that Samir Kuntar, the man who smashed a 4-year-old girls head into a rock, killing her only after making her watch the murder of her father, is a "huge hero"?

Since so many of your group members and supporters are anti-Zionist (i.e. opposed to self-determination for the Jewish people), can you see why people observing your group can't but conclude that your activities, your support for the extremist Hamas government, and your patently false allegation of genocide are all cynical ploys geared toward eliminating the Jewish state?

Wouldn't someone who really cared about the Palestinians, as well as all peoples, criticize the leadership of the Gaza Strip, who are more interested in seeing their neighbors destroyed than in seeing their borders open up for more than just basic humanitarian aid?

Yvonne, You call yourself a journalist?????????? The venom that spews forth from your movements "key players" has enough acid to burn metal. Why dont you take some lessons from a real journalist, Neheda Barakat

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1219572124477&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Good preachers need few words. Pro Israel writers need pages long explanations with dubious references. Fact remains that Israel is built on terror from the beginning, the Stern gang and the Hagganah to name a few. Its policies concerning the original inhabitants of the area has not changed. Where the Palestinians come from is irrelevant, where they are now and under what conditions is what counts.

Yes, propaganda can sometimes work with an economy of words. And history -- the real kind, as opposed to Alexander Baldal's spewing of hyperbole -- does often involve long explanations.

Fortunately, educated society tends to give due credence to actual, fact-based historiography, and tend to be skeptical of your type of preaching.

Good preachers preach, not inform, you write soap operas, not articles.

You miss the fact that Zionists brought sea ports and industries to the land. Did you knwo that the life expectancy in gaza is longer then that in glasgow?
And what policies do you refer to? Do you mean leting Arabs vote, give them public education, let them learn arab history and traditions in arab schools with Israeli funds?
Original, nhabitants of the region? Napoleon, Balfour, Eouropean Pilgrims during the 16 century, all told the same thing, The place was practically deserted, the 1882 ottoman census counted 144000 arabs and not arabs. If the palestinian place of origin does not matter, does it matter that they are trying to take control of the whole of the land that they have no conection to?

Fascinating take on this, like a sailor I'm always keen to understand much more about boating.