Stuart Littlewood views the British government’s unwillingness – as evident from the statements of its ministers in Parliament – to support its citizens' right to go about their lawful business delivering humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza and to protect them from Israeli threats to slaughter them on the high seas.

It doesn’t look good.

Our oh-so-moral international community, always poking its democracy-loving nose into any trouble spot that might threaten Western security (whatever that means) and always eager to mobilize its mighty weapons of war, is still reluctant to operate on the cancer it foolishly implanted into the Holy Land 63 years ago and which now menaces the world.

Instead, our heroes encourage it to grow and won’t even protect the “caring services” wishing to sooth the excruciating pain suffered by the Palestinian victims.

And right now it’s disappointing to find that the Free Gaza Flotilla’s new international media office in London is not up to the job. It issued its first press release this week. An accompanying note told us that "the steering committee decided it didn't want a unified media strategy" – a fatal mistake, surely, when faced with an aggressive campaign of distortion, disinformation and sabotage mounted by Israel and its massive stooge network to scupper the sailings. It also mentioned a letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron but didn’t make the text available. And it revealed they still hadn’t written to the Foreign Office – unbelievable,

The press release announced that a boat packed with Freedom Flotilla activists had sailed along the Thames to Westminster. MP Caroline Lucas went ashore at the Houses of Parliament "to deliver a message of freedom for Palestine" and afterwards "asked [Foreign Secretary] William Hague what the government is doing to support the flotilla to Gaza".

No further details were given. So what exactly was the "message of freedom" delivered to Parliament, and how was it received? And, most important, what did Hague say?

Back came the reply: "Freedom for Palestine was the message. Ms Lucas posed a question in Parliament. Our press release was about our action and her involvement in it. You can look up Hague's response in Hansard if you're interested but he didn't say anything we wanted to repeat in that press release."

That’s the sort of attitude that’s guaranteed to bury a release in a news editor’s wastepaper basket. You don’t ask a high-credibility MP like Caroline Lucas to publicly pin down a foreign secretary like Hague who’s a prominent cheer-leader for Israel, and hide the result.

As for the flotilla's abrupt "Freedom for Palestine" message to Parliament, at the very least the press office could have beefed it up with a list of freedoms taken for granted in Westminster but denied to Palestinians – like freedom of self-determination, freedom to choose their own government, freedom to trade with the outside world, freedom to come and go, freedom to work, freedom to attend university even within their own country let alone abroad, freedom to worship in their holy places, freedom to reunite with their families, freedom to travel for medical care, freedom to fish in their own territorial waters, freedom even to have a good night's sleep. The “packaging” possibilities are endless.

Source and full article: Redress Information and Analysis, 3 July 2011

Submitted by Sullivan on Sat, 2011-07-02 23:05

• Sullivan's blog
• Login or register to post comments
• 82 reads
•