Hi
I received this message today and it reminded me of the efforts made to make the Flotillas of Hope to Nauru a reality. Every little bit counts, every positive thought form focussed on manifesting the intention helps, every dollar and every dialogue that concerns this project helps make it a reality.
Please help make this Free Gaza Flotilla a Reality, support the Free Gaza Movement.
http://www.freegaza.org/de/donate
Why we care – written by Free Gaza Movement, April, 2009
stavros
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Our four boats are purchased or refurbished, flagged and registered. The cargo ship is now named the MV Rachel Corrie with the blessing of the Corrie family. Children in Gaza and the occupied West Bank will name the other two boats, and we will let you know what they chose.
The Free Gaza Cargo Ship "MV Rachel Corrie"
We are hard at work collecting the cargo… cement, books for children and universities, paper for printing books, water filtration equipment, and medical equipment, all being denied the people of Gaza by Israel’s brutal blockade.
So we ask one last time for a $25.00-$100.00 donation from each of you, a donation that will be used for our operating costs. It is not enough to buy, register and insure the boats. We need fuel for all vessles, crew expenses, supplies for all four boats, a crane to add to the cargo ship to offload the cargo, and miscellaneous expenses that always appear at the last minute.
Please go to http://www.freegaza.org/de/donate and help us raise the final 20%. You can donate in the U.S. by writing a tax-deductible check to our fiscal sponsor in DC, donate through our two PayPal accounts, one in Cyprus and one in the U.S. or wire an amount into our Free Gaza account in Cyprus. The website provides all of the detail for you.
With your help, our final $100,000 can be raised in the next month as we get ready to leave Europe on May 3 and begin our voyage to Gaza. More than 5000 of you now follow our voyages; you have signed up for our TWITTER account, you have joined our newsletter, and you are members of many Free Gaza lists. Please donate, send our plea to your own lists, then watch our journey as we make our way across the sea to Gaza.
Thank you from all of us at Free Gaza. Every one of you has made this flotilla a reality.
Journeys and Star Gazing
in this world within worlds……
Welcome
Thank you for visiting Journeys and Star Gazing. Here there's stories of my various journeys, some inner but mostly outer; photos, song lyrics, poems, astrological readings and interpretations, I Ching speculations, quotes from people I admire and some cool graphics. There are reflections and archival material on various human rights campaigns I have been involved in over the years. With these, some have a "Star Gazing" interpretive filter.
Posts include my interests in alchemy, magic, kabbalah, consciousness studies, the Fourth Way and anything else that may enter my sphere of living. I hope you enjoy your visit. I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
Follow me on Twitter @dodona777 where I mostly comment on Australian politics and my blog interests.
Journeys and Star Gazing 
In advance, I’d like to thank all of you who are reading this blog and believe in what we are doing. Your donations have helped us purchase these boats and will now help us operate them. Whatever you can send, we will be more than appreciative. It will cost us almost €60,000 in fuel to send this ship and our three smaller boats to Gaza and back. Ours is an entirely volunteer organization, so we ‘float’ on your good will. Thank you so much. Greta Berlin
Greta
Your (and everyone else involved in this human rights action) intention is pure and as such will evoke the right response from people.
I wish you, the crew, and everyone involved with Free Gaza Movement and in particular this journey to Gaza the best wishes.
stavros
what is exactly the intention here? to get aid to Gaza? if so then ship your Aid to Israel and it will be trucked to Gaza like all the rest of the aid that is flowing in every day. why go the hard way and end up hurt and the aid, which I paid for, lost??? what a dumb way to help.
Bob, you don’t get it. Apart from providing aid, one of the intentions is to highlight the plight of the people living in Gaza who cannot receive aid from the global community unless it goes through Israeli channels. It is also to throw a spot light on the Israelis’ lack of compassion and understanding of the Palestinians’ situation in Gaza….which is as prisoners in their own homeland.
The Palestinians live in a prison, their land has been stolen with no compensation and there is an injustice to its work force while their children are being brought up in an atmosphere of mindless hatred. Didn’t the Bible speak of Israel as a “Light to the nations”? What has happened?
I just can’t comprehend how Israel, of all places and its people cannot see that their behaviour is racist towards the Palestinians. Israel has become a country convinced of its own righteousness and that it can rationalise any activity, no matter how violent or repugnant in the name of its own security. Look at their great wall of apartheid. They have forgotten what it is like to be on the receiving end of racist behaviour.
They have become terrorists against innocent and unarmed civilians. When Somali pirates boarded ships in international waters near Africa they were called pirates. Are not the Israelis also pirates, indeed, killing commando machines ……………?
stavros
Stavros,
When I donated to a group of people in down town Toronto who explained that they are supporting a shipment of aid to Gaza I did not realize they were intent on a PR show. I thought they were what they said: “sending aid to Gaza” you would be a fool to try violence against any country and more so against Israel who has the best American war machines and are never shy in using them. No violence has ever helped and in most cases, like this miserable flotilla, it actually achieves the reverse I feel I personally contributed to the death of these people by donating. What did you prove here? that Israel is violent? That’s old news!. Nobody in that region ever benefited from violence. If you want to break the blockade why not go through the Egyptian side instead of putting good intentioned, innocent people in front of the Israeli army and then have them resist with sticks?? What stupidity!
I will tell you what my father told me “you do not resolve violence with violence. Be smart not right” you want to protest go ahead; but to resist fully armed soldiers with sticks?? Come on… did you think you can breach the Israeli blockade with these sticks?? I am very disheartened by the management of this operation and put the blame squarely at the organizers’ feet.
Bob,
I understand where you are coming from. But where is the planned violence of the Flotilla? The organisers did not plan any violence, they are just interested in getting the aid to the Palestinians and to highlight their plight to the world. This is aid, the aid to speak on their behalf so that the world knows what is going on. There was no planned violence. Yes, what you say is true about Israel and its propensity to violence. You may think I am naive but I didn’t expect them to helicopter onto the boats and shoot people. I really didn’t! I thought that they may block them and send out some bullshit propaganda, but to actually land on the boats and shoot people !!!
The organisers are not to blame and your donation is not to be blamed for the criminal terrorist behaviour of these Israeli pirate commandos.
By the way, just to set things straight here – I am not an organiser of this project. I am a supporter. I organised another Flotilla to Nauru way back in 2004 to highlight the plight of innocent refugees incarcerated in the most isolated gulag in the world – Nauru, Prison Island Central Pacific Ocean.
stavros
Bad soup and the Middle East have in common that neither benefits from being stirred up. When a feel-good lark meets the IDF, a few naive college kids will discover that one should never be where one does not belong.
Stavros
The point is that while protesting (as legitimate as it may be) you never resist armed forces if the organizers of this flotilla allowed violent resistance they are as good as have sent these protestors to heaven, and contrary to common belief you do not get 70 virgins there. When I protested against the Ontario government with native Canadian over land rights, the organizers warned everyone not to resist the troopers. And wouldn’t you know it; the hot heads that resised after all (not with metal poles but simply with their hands) ended up being hurt bad by the police. And you know what? I would have personally slapped their dumb faces if I could, as I would the faces of the irrisponsible organizers aboard the ship Navi Marmara. If personal safety is not top priority and it appears that it was not in that case, then I cannot support it. And yes I blame the people on board that ship as I blame my fellow protestors years back that put up a violent resistance against the Ontario Provincial Police. Again: don’t be right, be smart. Had I known they were intent on violent resistance, and they were based on the stash of poles and knives on board, I would never have donated. Because as Stuart Speer says why steer things up? you want to help or you want to get people killed?
Bob
I’m not going to paraphrase this excellent post, read it yourself, because I think it will put our discussion into perspective >>
http://politicalcorrection.org/fpmatters/201006020003
stavros
The fact remains that the people aboard the Navi Marmara put up a violent resistance and by that effectively committed suicide.
Therefore I am washing my hands with regret off of the whole affair. Let them fight forever. I will invest my efforts here in North America where native people struggle peacefully for their rights against the white invaders. Violence will bread violence. Any child knows that.
Enjoy your infinite fight because violence will never win (I say with bitterness).
Bob,
I take great offense to your use of the word “suicide” to describe what was murder. I know you qualified that word with “effectively” but still the direction of your judgement is to blame the victim, not the perpetrator >> Israeli commandos trained to kill swiftly and mercilessly.
It is normal human instinct to try to defend oneself. Those murdered tried to defend themselves on international waters, carrying cargo needed by the people of Gaza. They were not doing anything illegal. The commandos who raided the ships were pirates. The Israeli government can do doublethink and use lies to cover up their criminality but the obvious and clear reality is that passengers on a ship in international waterswere attacked by fully armed and armoured commandos coming by boat and by helicopter. The attack murdered people and wounded many more.
Wash your hands of it……..regretfully.
stavros
“Israeli commandos trained to kill swiftly and mercilessly” therefore violently resisting them is effectively committing suicide. Are you going to jump into a lions cage and start poking the lion with a stick? If you do you are in fact committing suicide. The protestors on any of the other ships were not harmed because they did not resist. Turn it which ever way you want. I donated to a suicide mission and I will forever regret it.
Let it rest in your conscience then.
My conscience is clear because the intention to free the people of Gaza so that they can lead lives in dignity is a noble intention.
Stavros
I am a PEACE activist and as one I will demonstrate NONEVIOLENTLY for peaceful co-existence and human rights. Therefore my conscience will never be clear. Not after nine people die. Good people are hard to come by. We cannot afford to let them die of stupidity. There is no cause noble enough to die for because when you die you cannot help anymore.