UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – Several American Jews are to board a US boat planning to join a flotilla of about 10 ships seeking to breach Israel's naval blockade of Gaza later this month, an organizer said Monday.
"We are seeking justice for Gaza," Leslie Cogan told reporters, noting the boat will have 36 passengers, four crew and nine journalists when it sets sail for the tiny Palestinian enclave.
She said 28 percent of the passengers were American Jews.
"It's important that Jews are in this boat... The Jewish lobby in this country is so powerful," said New York labor attorney Richard Levy, himself Jewish.
"We cannot support an Israeli blockade which is morally and juridically unsupportable ...No more people should be slaughtered in the name of the Jews."
The US boat, The Audacity of Hope, will sail from Athens to join around 10 ships carrying some 500 to 600 pro-Palestinian activists from 22 countries, Cogan said.
The boats are expected to leave various Mediterranean ports around June 20 as part of the so-called "Freedom Flotilla II" aimed at breaking the Israeli blockade.
Cogan said the American ship will carry some 3,000 messages from the American people to the people of Gaza in what she called "a cargo of friendship, a cargo of peace."
They will try and reach the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip a year after a previous attempt ended when Israeli troops stormed the lead ship and shot dead nine Turkish activists.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged all governments concerned by the plans to try to discourage the new flotilla from being launched out of fear it could degenerate into violence.
WHAT THE FUCK! the BLOCKADE IS OVER! What drugs are these people taking? We can't expect Jews to act like Jews if they can't be bothered to listen... the BLOCKADE is over stupid Schmendricks
In The Ship of Fools Bosch is imagining that the whole of mankind is voyaging through the seas of time on a ship, a small ship, that is representative of humanity. Sadly, every one of the representatives is a fool. This is how we live, says Bosch--we eat, drink, flirt, cheat, play silly games, pursue unattainable objectives. Meanwhile our ship drifts aimlessly and we never reach the harbour. The fools are not the irreligious, since promiment among them are a monk and a nun, but they are all those who live ``in stupidity''. Bosch laughs, and it is sad laugh. Which one of us does not sail in the wretched discomfort of the ship of human folly? Eccentric and secret genius that he was, Bosch not only moved the heart but scandalized it into full awareness. The sinister and monstrous things that he brought forth are the hidden creatures of our inward self-love: he externalizes the ugliness within, and so his misshapen demons have an effect beyond curiosity. We feel a hateful kinship with them. The Ship of Fools is not about other people, it is about us.Bosch, Hieronymus, The Ship of Fools via ibiblio.org
what the critic above wrote fails to mention how religious Bosch was.
