Arrest Haliday, deport him, confiscate the Rachael Corrie and sell it for scrap. Run a legal blockade at your own peril. The Irish Diaspora? Oh what a world these crackpots live in.

Hey anonymous, why don't you have the courage to use your name when you attack people w/ statements like those ? You must think yourself a real man but are sorely mistaken, the people on those boats make you seem very small. They have real courage & are backed by most of the world.

We can't speak to Anonymous because he/she didn't give his/her name. I suspect that, between 1845 and 1850, when over a million Irish died of starvation caused by the Empire of the Day, the British Empire, there was a contention that it was a legal blockade. The British may have contended it was--or was the art of public whopper-telling not so developed back then?
Read U.S. newspapers closely. U.S.A. Today contended those on largest boat attacked with firearms, knives and clubs. The Israelis, elsewhere, admitted the only firearms found were two of the commandos handguns in the hands of dead activists. Empty magazines were cited as evidence the activists fired.
With disinformation and lies from our corporate-controlled media, is it any wonder we are the only country standing between Israel and an enraged world?
Leo Ray Ingle

It seems that the Israeli government has indicated that they plan to handle things differently since their people were not prepared to board this kind of vessel under those kinds of circumstances.

Likewise, the Irish activists have indicated that they plan to be sitting upon being boarded, with their hands in plan view, so as not to be misinterpreted.

My hope for the journey of the Rachel Corrie is that the Irish activists show more self-discipline than the Turkish activists who endangered everyone on the boat with their individual decision-making and actions. And that the Israeli officials, likewise, use a more informed strategy for dealing non-violently with protesters.

continued

Peace activists don't secretly hope for violence, what they hope for is increased international attention brought to bear upon an unsustainable, cruel occupation, hoping Israel will confront its intransigence, bend to international opinion, and change its "facts on the ground" policy that it thinks will implement its desire to annex land set aside by UN partition for a Palestinian state. With so many of the world's nations opposing Israel's military land-grab and ethnic cleansing, it would be wise for Israel to listen. Israel and its great enabler the US do not a majority make, and eventually the crows will come home to roost, maybe not in our lifetimes, but eventually and most assuredly. This is a very dark time for the Jewish people, an era they will not look back on with pride. They have come to power and are using it in much the same way it was used for so long against them.

The cast of Irish characters revealed in this article shine a whole new light on Gaza for us:

Ging
Halliday
Robinson
Corrie

and this call by Halliday and Robinson for Americans to join in and break a legal blockade of Terrorist Gaza. And the article clearly states that Ireland, officially, is clearly behind the running of this blockade.

Hamas would perhaps have folded by now if not for your efforts to prop them up. This is a stunning indictment. This is shocking.

Just give Palastinians the home they need and deserve. That is the proper thing to do. It is the honorable thing to do. It is the mature and adult thing to do. But Israel won't. Deep in their collective psychology they wish to enslave the way they were enslaved, torture the way that they were tortured, kill the way they were killed.

Will the world continue to tolerate and coddle Israel's malignant historical paranoia? Let's hope for everyone's sake that it does not.

Israel is a Euro-Asian colony forced on an indigenous population by the machinations of the British Empire. Jews and Arabs had been living peacefully on the land until the Zionist movement began and Arabs became afraid of exactly what has happened, their marginalization and disenfranchisement in their own land. So yes, Israel is surrounded by a hostile population. Does one take other people's property and kill and brutalize them and expect them to be happy about it? And let's consider the number of dead on either side, overwhelmingly lopsided. As Daniela Perdomo recently noted, the Israelis just killed more civilians in one day than Gazan rockets have in the past ten years. Operation Cast Lead, less than ten Israelis dead, more than a thousand Palestinians. Who is it has the security problem? If Israel returned to its '67 borders there might be peace but actions speak louder than words, Israel doesn't want peace, it wants the land and resources set aside by UN mandate for a Palestinian nation. One can only hope that with enough international pressure, divestment and boycotts of Israeli goods and trade, Israel will reconsider its expansionist policies.

Israel, by far the most powerful military in the region and armed with nukes, is in no danger of being wiped off the map. The "poor little defenseless Israel" claim is silly and old, and proven time and again to be false. Israel invades neighboring countries at will. Look at the numbers of dead on either side and then tell me who has the security problem. It's not Israel. I deplore genocide wherever it happens and add my voice in protest, but Turkey, Ruanda, etc, are not the subject of this article. The vast majority of countries in the UN are in favor of Israel's return to '67 borders as a condition for peace in the region. To contend that Israel conform to international law and Geneva conventions, which it obligated itself to do when it joined the UN, is neither anti-semitic nor anti-Israel.

Those few who survived the German camps knew the situation was hopeless. But some persevered nevertheless and many of those who did moved to Israel. People as smart as today's Zionists know that in the long-run the situation is equally as hopeless - inch by inch and rocket by rocket the Arabs will ultimately prevail. But I just can't reproach Israelis for trying what ever it takes to last "one more day." I beg my Jewish friends not to move there or to leave - some do and some don't. I can also see where the Arabs are coming from and would probably do the same in their shoes. Lord Balfour has a lot to answer for - let us hope he resides on one of the more unpleasant circles of the Inferno.

I live in Texas. The blockade of Gaza is not understood here. this is part of the US bible belt
Many Christians here are unthinking Zionists.
We have also Jewish people here who are not zionist at all.It is a strange paradox. It has much to with "defense economics" and the church being at the service o f the " national security state"
The Gaza Blockade can not stand. It is intolerable