Last Straw

While I was party­ing at Sun­rise Cel­eb­ra­tion in Somer­set recently my good friend Ken O’Keefe was sail­ing off to Gaza on the Mavi Mar­mara, as part of the Gaza Free­dom Flo­tilla.

The flo­tilla was car­ry­ing human­it­arian aid, med­ical sup­plies, and con­struc­tion mater­i­als, intent on break­ing the Gaza Strip block­ade being per­pet­rated by the apartheid state of Israel against the people of Palestine.

In the middle of the night on 30 May, while in inter­na­tional waters, they were for­cibly boarded by armed Israeli com­mandos. The pas­sen­gers defen­ded their ship against the invaders and nine of them were murdered, most shot at close range in the back of the head.

Ken helped over­power two com­mandos and man­aged to dis­arm one of his pis­tol and empty it’s ammuni­tion. The com­mandos even­tu­ally over­powered the flo­tilla, then promptly kid­napped every­one, tow­ing the ships to a deten­tion camp. After steal­ing everyone’s pos­ses­sions and gen­er­ally treat­ing them like dogs the kid­nap­pers relen­ted to inter­na­tional pres­sure, releas­ing and deport­ing most of those they had kid­napped. Ken wanted to appeal his deport­a­tion to Ire­land and instead go to Gaza, but, hav­ing already been ser­i­ously beaten twice by Israeli sol­diers while cap­tive, his soli­citor advised him that for his own safety he should leave Israel.

For his troubles Ken was laugh­ably lis­ted on the IDF’s offi­cial pro­pa­ganda web­log — IDF Spokes­per­son — as “known to be involved in ter­ror­ist activ­ity,” and con­tinu­ing with:

Ken O’Keefe (Born 1969), an Amer­ican and Brit­ish cit­izen, is a rad­ical anti-Israel act­iv­ist and oper­at­ive of the Hamas Ter­ror organ­iz­a­tion. He attemp­ted to enter the Gaza Strip in order to form and train a com­mando unit for the Palestinian ter­ror organization.

To form and train a com­mando unit? I’ve had some heated argu­ments with Ken over the years but ‘ter­ror­ist com­mando’? Someone in the IDF pro­pa­ganda unit’s been telling porkies. (Note to IDF: when you’re falsely accus­ing someone of being a ter­ror­ist try not to get their nation­al­ity wrong. Kind of makes you look like you don’t know what you’re talk­ing about.)

So let’s get this straight. They kid­nap Ken (whose life story hap­pens to be an open book). Then they deport him. And then they tell us he’s a known ter­ror­ist? Wouldn’t it per­haps be a little more prudent to hold onto a terrorist?

Someone in the IDF pro­pa­ganda unit doesn’t know how to tell porkies.

External links

• Ken’s state­ment on the Israeli attack
• BBC HARDtalk inter­view with Ken, 28 June 2010