Bristol City Council to dis-invest from Israel

One of the positive results of the Flotilla to Gaza has already surfaced. Bristol, England, has voted to disassociate itself from Israeli companies and financial institutions and will encourage the councils of other cities to follow its lead. Below is part of the story in the Bristol Evening Post, and it's followed by the Post's address, if you want to comment where it counts.

Condemnation over Gaza attack
BRISTOL City Council has voted to condemn Israel for the Gaza convoy incident that saw nine human rights activists killed.
Members called for the Government to "hold Israel to account for this illegal action" and to impose sanctions on the country until it "complies with international law and ceases perpetrating human rights abuses".
Two Bristol men were aboard the Freedom Flotilla of ships when the Israeli military opened fire on May 31. One of them, Cliff Hanley, spoke in support of the motion before last night's council debate.
He was joined by a number of pro-Palestinian protesters outside the council chamber, who want a boycott of all Israeli goods and companies in Bristol.

Mr Hanley said: "We question the morality of the council having money invested in Israeli banks or investment funds where it gains interest derived in any way over 60 years of ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine, the illegal occupation of the West Bank and the brutal starvation and slaughter of the people in Gaza."
Proposing the motion, Lib Dem councillor John Kiely (Easton) compared life in Gaza to Bristol during the Blitz.
The Conservatives put forward an alternative motion, with what they described as "less emotive language" and calling for Israel to "exercise restraint".
The amendment failed and while the Conservatives voted against the Lib Dem motion, the majority of the council approved it.

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/news/Condemnation-Gaza-attack/article-2361116-detail/article.html

Mavi Marmara: smuggled footage

Footage smuggled past the soldiers who occupied the Mavi Marmara, and subsequent body searches on dry land has just gone public, and Lara Lee, film maker said:
As a passenger of the Mavi Marmara, the flagship vessel of the humanitarian convoy that Israel attacked in international waters, I am cautiously optimistic about Israel's announced plan of "easing" the Gaza blockade. Easing, after all, is not the same as "complete lifting," and it is yet to be determined what the nature of this easing process will be. Still, I am encouraged by the fact that this small step resulted in the first place from the Freedom Flotilla's nonviolent act of civil disobedience.

However we must never forget that nine civilian peace activists -- including one American citizen -- were unjustly killed in the process, and that the challenge still remains of bringing Israel to account for its actions on May 31st.

In their defence of the indefensible, the Israeli government has attempted to slander the character of the victims and other flotilla participants by drawing false links to terrorism, and portraying us as a lynch mob of anti-Semitic Muslim fanatics.

Fortunately, we were able to smuggle some footage of the Israeli assault off the ship and safely back to the US, and which I was able to screen at the United Nations. It paints a picture in stark contrast to Israeli claims of a violent mob looking for a fight. I encourage everyone to view this footage. You will see people from all walks of life, secular and religious, Muslim, Christian, atheistic, male and female, young and old. Prior to the raid they are talking, sleeping, praying or working on their computers. After commandos invade the ship you see men scrambling, the dead and wounded being hurried to the lower decks, away from Israeli gunfire, and groups of men huddled together with whatever makeshift items they can find, including broom handles, pipes, and sticks -- not exactly a well-prepared or well-trained armed force.

Mavi Marmara - the B-movie

It certainly looks as if Mossad's propaganda department prepared this film clip well in advance of the attack on the Flotilla. They might have got away with it if they had included the name, writ large on the side of her top deck:

http://whatdefuck.com/news/idf_video/newspage.html

Gaza Flotilla eight

I spent the remainder of the long, slow journey to, as we guessed, Israel, in my original seat, surrounded by Turkish speakers. I should do my homework before I come again. The boy soldiers ( one, perhaps two were girls, I guessed by looking at their eyes above the balaclavas) worked in shifts, changing twice and finally being replaced by others in black uniforms. We got to dock at about 8pm, and following a long wait very slowly queued to go down to the loading bay through which we had entered a major experience ago. At about 11pm I was stumbling up a gangway to dry land and a walk to a maze of tents containing interrogation desks. Sitting down at the first, just inside the entrance to the big tent,after my cuffs were cut off, I was asked who I was and where I had come from. The boy also demanded to know my reason for doing this. I said I wanted to connect with fellow artists in Gaza. "Do you realise you have broken the law?"
"What law?"
"Israeli law! There is a blockade."
"A blockade is not what I would call a law."
Next, I was passed farther inside to a girl, who while a goon-with-gun looked on, removed everything from my pockets, chucked my pen contemptuously into the dirt and put everything back. I can't believe they haven't stolen my money. Yet. Again I had to explain the contents of my medicine bag.
The girl passed me on to the next stage, chirping "Enjoy."
Now, a guy asked me why I was travelling to Gaza. I said to meet artists, especially one I had already made contact with , who works on computer.
"Are you an artist?"
"Yes."
"Do you work on computer?"
"Sometimes, but mostly paint on canvas."
"Do you speak Arabic?"
"A little, but its difficult to learn, as they all speak such good english. I know some Yiddish, too. Schlepp, schtupp, schmuck..." - They weren't listening...

They took a particular interest in my passport, scrutinising it verry closely. They were amazed that I had been to Gaza before, and wanted to know the precise details of the journey taken to get there; the reason for most of the exotic visa stamps in my book. The next interrogator handed me a form which he asked me to sign. It stated that I had entered Israel illegally, and that I left freely and of my own will. He said that if I signed I would get a plane ticket home immediately, but that if I did not sign, I might be jailed for up to a month. I replied that I would gladly sign if he first put the ticket in my hand. I held out my hand. I had called his bluff. "You must realise that the longer you stay here, the more you cost the State of Israel?" -" I am sorry to have caused you such inconvenience, " I replied as I stood up to move on.

At the time this meant nothing to me, but later I would realise that with the interest in my passport I was a marked man from then on. I was parked in a chair in front of a tiny camera high up on a stand. On its table there was also a little printer capable of knocking out my likeness four times although my face in the passport-sized photos was really too small for any passport. This, the unsigned paper and my passport were then kept in an A4 plastic dossier bag. Taken to a portable ID machine, a laptop fixed on top of a large black box, I had to press each digit finger on a little glass panel twice.
Finally, the last tent within the tent: A final search. All my money and bank/travel cards removed from my wallet and money belt and carefully laid on a chair. A girl was exclusively employed to rip open all my little boxes of pills in foil and reassemble them, replacing them in my plastic shopping/medicine bag. Then a really dirty fuck carried out a more thorough search, fluttering his hands all over me from top to toe. Not quite thrusting his fingers into any orifices. I could hardly believe that with all this obsessive searching they had repeatedly missed the expensive, shiny little mini microphone in my Levi jacket pocket. Of course it was no longer much use to me without a recorder to plug it into. I was allowed to retrieve all my money, again. Then we were ushered out to a van. Three of us in the tiny front compartment with more in the one behind. As ever with the Israelis, nothing happened for a good while. I had thought that Egypt was the world leader in inefficiency. Our friends in the back seats called out for the air conditioning to be turned down. We explained that it was only us chickens on board, and that we were locked up too. When the drivers at last got in and we pulled out, the lights went off. I expected the next thing to be carbon monoxide filling our tiny, blacked-out tin box. But after a two-hour journey, (doubtless feeling like twice that for one of my fellow travellers whose bladder was full and whose panicked entreaties to the driver to stop were of course ignored), we stopped at Beer Sheva Jail, way out in the desert.

Two aimiable blokes took charge of our entry. By now it was approaching 5am. We were given a little food: bread, peppers, apples, water. And mattress covers, underpants, socks, T-shirts, towels, food trays, toothbrushes, toothpaste. This part of the prison had obviously been a building site a couple of weeks before: a fine layer of cement dust covered every surface. The floor of the hall was painted pale grey to match the cell doors and the chunky railings on the stairs and the balcony leading to the upper rooms. In all the look of the place was like a 'post-modernist' set for Jailhouse Rock. As the cells were opened we grabbed places and with sunrise we got to sleep. I, in cell 2019, was joined by Pakistani TV presenter Serge, AKA Syed Talat Hussain, whose business card had gone into the mud with my own cards on the boat; Sukir, a gentle and kind professor also from Pakistan, and big, 'all-American' Serbian Stojinjkovic. They all spoke english, as mixed foreigners nearly always do. So my verbal exile was ended. Just in time for bed, as we removed the plastic foam mattresses from their store-bought bags and crashed out.
1June
We all get acquainted. We didn't all talk to everyone on the boat, but now we get the chance to really pal-up. The noisy and hugely entertaining Ken O'Keefe, renounced US citizen/ now citizen of the world especially Palestine, the kid from East London who looks like Yusuf Islams' young brother, the Spaniard, the white-haired teacher from Sweden, Dimitiris the Greek.

The promise that we could call home and/or our consuls turned out to be more bullshit. There was a long bank of phones on the wall by the showers but only one functioned, and only with a phonecard. Most of the time our block seemed to be in the charge of 'the Kid', a skinny lad who tried to marshal us into our cells after feeding time, on time but who we defeated by spinning out our long-winded discussions about the meaning of life. This wasn't being run like a conventional jail - only a holding centre until we could be got rid of. Occasionally we were visited by a group of officers from other parts of the jail, including a neatly uniformed woman, big bum and sculpted hair, glamorous enough to pass as Lebanese, and whom I could only regard with lustful eyes. Some men are put off by powerful women, but not me.

Regardless of the empty promises, late in the afternoon our consuls appeared, the two-man team from the UK consulate in Jerusalem coming round last. (I heard that at one block they had had to conduct their interview with the British inmates by crouching down and shouting through the glass door) I told Roger, second in command, that the first guy I spoke to at Interrogation tried to get me to sign the statement 'admitting' that I had entered Israel illegally and that I was leaving freely and of my own will.

I had seen that one or two who signed got sent to jail regardless. Roger politely asked me if I could possibly find him a glass of water. Two of us Brits leapt into action getting a bottle and washing out a plastic glass. I said, "You must think we're terrible hosts."
He said that he would send me a list of legal representatives in a couple of days, in case I needed them, and visit again soon if it looked like a long haul, also taking away my message of reassurance to my concerned sister Jane and pal Ed who had to pose as a relative to get past the red tapirs at the Foreign Office. If he or his colleague made any representations about setting a date for freeing us we were not aware of it, although I was confident that the Israelis wanted us out of the country as soon as possible.

2June
4am: two guys with boxes of passports wanted to know how many of them matched with us. Only a very few. The lucky winners packed up and left. At 7am we were woken again to meet a guy with a smaller pile of passports, one for each of us. Mine was in its plastic bag with the unsigned document (I think - it may have been by that time an A4 photocopy of my passport, and I didn't get a close look), and the bad passport photo. 'The Kid' told us we were going to another centre. I saw fellow-Bristolian Sakir for the first time in a while. We had to wait in a tiny, if high-ceilinged, room for ages, made worse by a couple of us being intent on a smoke, burning up the oxygen. Two buses were to take us to Ben Gurion Airport; a one-hour journey. After sitting in the buses for a further hour as they circled about then slowly ground through the exit. We were promised that inside the airport would be our missing luggage.
In a large waiting area, surrounded by rifle-toting guards we had to wait for hours while nothing but lots of paper-shuffling took place at the long 'desk'(three or four tables) before us. Although one of the 'officers' passed round giant rolls containing cheese, tomato, spam, the wait and occasional insulting threats got too much for one of us who angrily pointed his finger at a senior officer- who stepped forward and slapped the pointing hand away. Sparking off a jump-up scrummage - soldier/cops ran in, jumping on top and dragging a boy away, flattening him to the floor, handcuffing him and taking him to a room. While other goons sprung forward to threaten us, many of whom were still chewing on our hero sandwiches, with guns.

My turn at last. Israeli public servants/beaurocrats do make the Egyptians look like models of efficiency. Memories of long days sitting in UK benefit offices awaiting our turn to be insulted are stirred.
I was given the file plastic envelope containing the bad photo taken at the port, a photocopy of my passport and, I think, my actual passport. Directed to a glass-fronted booth where a woman did something below her desk for a while, painstaking and mysterious before handing me back the envelope. A hovering man directed me through a barrier past another boy soldier with rifle. Faced with an airport-style electronic gate and roller-scanner for my nonexistent baggage, I had to got through the usual emptying of pockets. A new one for me: this time I had to take off my shoes. When I had reassembled myself a kid said,"Sit!"
Suddenly my calm snapped. I lent forward. "Do you think I am a little dog, that you can tell me to sit?!"
A besuited kid stepped foward and quietly said, "You must sit.
"No, I must not sit!"
I sat.
I asked the suited 'usher' that question again, as he politely asked me to move on if I was ready, "Where is my luggage?"
" In the hall."
I walked forward. Into the hall. Completely empty! Only a desk away at the far side. I can see there's no turning back: right behind me the kid with the gun.
At the desk a smoothly coiffured guy took my envelope and asked me where my passport was. I said I didn't know - you've got it. The girl said "Now you can go down there", gesturing at the stairs behind leading down to the glass frontage.
"To whaat?"
"To the bus."
"Wait a minute! I'm here for my luggage."
Permawave said it was all sent to Turkey. "I have to say, I don't believe you. (He shrugged, half-smilingly) And my passport?"
"Sent to the consulate in Turkey."
I was quite tired, and a little confused. Combined with the smooth man's bland and well-rehearsed (empty) assurances this led to my descending the stairs going out of the door and into the bus - with no passport. I got out again. The boy soldiers at the door leapt forward.
"I must have my passport."
"Wait on the bus!"
"No, I will wait here." -I turned to the girl soldier: "Will you get my passport? It really is important."
"Yes, I will get it. Later." - she looked away
"No! You really must get it now."(smile) "Look, I'll come with you."
The two brats jumped at me, shoving me with their rifle and their arms. I yelled at the girl as we struggled, "You stole my passport, you fucking crooks - What are you going to do with it? Commit another crime?"
I couldn't fight back properly as my priority has always been to keep hold of my bag of medicine - it's like lugging an extra person around. I had left it on the bus anyway. Slam! So I was back on board for good.
The filled bus set off for the plane; a crowd already inside gave a huge round of applause as we boarded. Several other crowds joined us, always accompanied by overwhelming cries of victory and love. Our flight was delayed by several hours as Bulent Yildirim, leader of I.H.H., was still being held by the airport/army/police. When he eventually climbed on I gave him a manly punch on the shoulder as a welcome. Not as invasive as it sounds - the first time I came close to him, in Istanbul, he gave my four-pack a really good feel in passing.

Turkish Airlines/the Government kindly put many of us up in hair-raisingly expensive hotels back in Istanbul, a stay which had been planned for about one night, but when Sakir and I, and Peter who had booked our flight together, said we wanted to stay till Sunday they said, Fine. So we were able to combine a little more sightseeing with attendance at two funerals of the brothers who had been killed, plus a huge protest march through the Fatih district. And most of that luggage did turn up. Even some cameras were there, most of them relatively undamaged but without their media.

When the entire British contingent arrived at Heathrow, 10pm local time Sunday 6th June, the enormous crowd gathered to welcome us alerted us for the first time to the fact that the attack on our Flotilla was Big News. And from the Zionist point of view,one of the biggest PR disasters in history.

Update: 1st December 2010 - Very useful in many ways we might not have guessed at, YouTube: While idly looking through the Tube, I discovered that Aljazeera knew the Iraelis were setting up an interrogation tent city and preparing the port at Ashdod for our arrival (which arrival was not of course on our schedule) as far back as the 27th May. If anyone on the Flotilla knew about this they managed to keep it quiet...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeKtcHIbMjY&feature=related

In this interview with DemocracyNow, President Obama presents himself as extremely shifty, unable to be honest in any way as he attempts to balance the interests of Zionism with the military/industrial complex while weaseling out of condemning the attack: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/4as_obama_refuses_to_condemn_flotilla

Come fly with we

I got to know Ken O'Keefe, as he has retitled himself, quite well in our short time at Beer Sheva Jail. He's the ultimate bullshit detector and perfectly capable of translating his ethos into action. The violence and attempted humiliations did not end when we left our boats, nor even when we got past the interrogations and jail time. Just negotiating Ben Gurion Airport involved us in long stretches of totally unnecessary waiting, searches, threats and for a few, thefts of our passports backed up by gun-waving. Ken stood up to some of this:

Gaza Flotilla seven

Sunday / Monday 30/31 May

We cast off from the docks at Antalia on the 27th. We were gradually joined on the high seas by the other five ships. We stopped moving on the 29th. Just after 4.30pm with no warning we are moving again. Mavi Marmara the vanguard with the others arranged behind in a line. An Israeli spy drone appears to our stern on the starboard - a tiny pale triangle high in the sky. I try showering: we are getting short of water so the showers now consist of a hose connected to a tank of brown lumpy stuff - but I use it and it's a palpable improvement. Kevin, George Galloway's right-hand man on the VP Convoy, says he'll wait until he gets to a hotel.
I swap my shorts for my combats in readiness for tomorrow - we have been told to be ready by 7.00. Ready - for what?
As ever, the prayers start at 4am, but I am personally glad to say only heralded by the three-note jingle - So-Me-Do - without the usual distortion-level roar of the muezzin. We are at the same time called to put on our life-jackets, which we had to practise earlier at 1.00. The 'call' proceeds anyway. I go up to the middle deck, watch the watchers, looking at the sea, moon, our fellow ships' lights. I try filming but it's mostly too dark. Someone on the deck above throws light on the men below and out to sea. A helicopter aproaches, heard rather than seen. Now it's almost perched on our top. I see its propellors fanning above. Its noise drowns everything else. Boats of soldiers are running parallel to us.
Bangs. Helicopter returns. Clouds of dust or tear gas coming down from the helicopter. Loud explosions - sound bombs? Some brightly lit damage to the port side of the ship - I lean out as far as possible to get film.
Snappy bangs.
Ratatat ratatat.
They're aiming at the guy with the handheld searchlight.
I'm behind him to get a good picture. Someone slaps me on the arm. I look. No-one there! It was a bullet. Just skimmed off me, though. It stings. Impossible to see if there's damage with this bulky lifejacket. I retreat down inside. Two ad hoc treatment centres, drip feeds too, have been set up to deal with the wounded. Alex down on the middle landing tells me I have no visible damage. No possibility of going back up just now as all traffic is furiously coming down - escapers and people carrying the injured. Much blood on the stairs. I get out my padded coat for the first-aiders to use as extra bedding, and keep out of the way, in the lounge. Laura appears, looking for cushions for the "hospital". She has just watched one of the injured volunteers die. Through the lounge windows I can see soldiers on the bow deck. After red-gold sunrise they are air-lifted off again - I think ...

A male voice announces: "The main engine of the ship has been disabled. Please return to your seats."
A female voice: "We are civilians. Please stop shooting. We are in urgent need of medical help. We have severely wounded people on board."

Everyone now (6.30 local time) sitting around drinking water. The windows are open, which makes sitting here a little more bearable. ( Despite the constant roar of the air-conditioning it's usually stuffy) I'm wrong about the army! (much later I discover that although from where I stood it looked as if all invaders were coming up from the boats, they were being dropped from the helicopter)They've taken over the deck and upper deck levels and will handcuff anyone going up. A couple of my near neighbours throw their mobile phones out to the sea and one takes out a memory card, twists it to destroy it. I remove and hide the precious memory card from my camera 1, containing the 'holiday snaps', street scenes I hope to use for paintings, Istanbul, plus interviews,leaving harbour, our sister ships as movies. I stash camera 2 with all the attack footage way at the back of my suitcase.

The boy soldiers enter and order us to leave, single file, through the port side door to bow. They are dressed to look as threatening as possible: despite the heat inside and out, they are in full battle gear, helmets; balaclavas covering the lower part of their faces and black fingerless gloves. I get out, am grabbed and searched. The first boy tells me I cannot have my little bag of drugs with me. I explain it's medicine. Sakir, behind me, reinforces my protestation. They let it through. My hands tied behind my back with plastic handcuffs. All my pockets emptied by the two rapid searchers, practically ripped open. My sleeveless Levi jacket left hanging behind me from my wrists and I am holding my bag behind as the search continues. My camera is removed. Also my digital recorder. My wallet pulled out of my back pocket, examined and stuffed back in my front pocket. A final, more thorough searcher finds a microscopically tiny bulge in my left hip pocket, digs into it and pulls out the plastic wallet with my business cards. They are all chucked into the mud. At the back he strikes gold, crows " Memory card!" - he holds the not-so-carefully hidden treasure up, passes it to his mate or just throws it into the sea.
I then have to struggle up the steps to the middle deck. All the men have to kneel down in rows just as the Americans do it in Guantanamo. Tied hands. Stress position. For three hours. In whirrs a helicopter. It parks above us for twenty minutes, creating a gale-storm effect, whipping up the sea and almost knocking us over. It's a considerable effort to remain upright; anything that is not fixed down is blown off the deck, and the huge banners which had decorated the sides for our leaving, now tied up above us, are getting ripped. The second time it returns, I lose my grip on my precious bag of tricks, but it is blown against the next guy. By rolling on my side and 'Houdini-ing' my left hand round to one side I can get hold again - but one large bag of pills (from the Co-op) falls out. I have to then keep up the struggle while clenching the fallen bag between my knees.

The 'copter visits are two or three times to pick up injured voyagers, who are stretchered up the gangway to the top deck, but it remains for the usual twenty minutes to knock us about, each time.

My left hand has come out of its cuff, so I am able to wave to a nearby boy soldier, who beckons me over. The reason for my wave is that I need to go for a piss. I smile about the cuff, 'Well, nothing's perfect.' -but he just grimly recuffs me, and replies, 'Not now.' when I make my request. Half an hour later I ask another boy, who vaguely indicates that I may move my arse a few feet on the deck to join the queue. It's agony by now.
(at least one of them is a girl; I can tell by looking above the balaclava)


After many more 'copter passes we are ordered to get up and walk round the stern and back, to the port side door back down to the lounge. It's a real mess. All our luggage and loose clothing, books, food have been rearranged in two landfill-type heaps, many cases and bags ripped open. As soon as we find seats and a boy gives us a speech saying that we may now use the toilet in a a strict rota of one-at-a-time, I beckon him over and say,(with what I hope is a wry, winning smile), 'I really need to use the toilet.' He allows me to go forward to the door, where my pockets are searched (again) and my hands are freed, but re-cuffed, to the front, on my return. In the toilets the boy soldiers have mischieviously heaped our clothing into the piss.
I manage to negotiate the double-checkpoint system for the toilets twice during our long journey to - we assume - an Israeli port. On my second return I miss my seat as another guy has taken it. I am pressured by a boy soldier to sit elsewhere; a seat coincidentally in the same corner of the next semi-circle. I don't see my bag of drugs, and go into blind panic mode. So much that one soldier-boy leans over to say 'If you have lost your drugs we will find them.' On the face of it this sounds almost human, although in retrospect I am sure he would have done nothing and only wanted me to sit down.

Nine of my friends have been killed today. I've been tortured and humiliated and face an uncertain future. A guy from Belgium leans towards me (standing is verboten) and hisses -'Hey, hey- look; keep quiet- don't make trouble!'

Gaza Flotilla six

27 May 2010 10:00:42

Hello pals-

After yet another bombastic exercise in strung-out PR at the sports stadium where we men - most of us - have been sleeping here in Antalia (The girls got a proper hotel) it was obvious that the predominant rumour of last night as I and my chums emerged from the sea for a major Kebab (Not all strife in the Freedom Fight), that we would be sailing today, Thursday, was the real deal: hordes of locally-based voyagers began arriving, luggage and farewell relatives and all. Although the chances of you hearing about this from the straight news media in the UK~US are slim: those people have been conspicuous by their absence as they were on the last (Road) Convoy.
Later today it`s off to the Boat. Watch this space, and sagliginiza!

Gaza Flotilla five

: 24 May 2010 11:44:23


So! it goes! (As I said before, my online application to join this trip turned out not to have connected)

Yesterday was balmy and hot in the dappled Istanbul sun as I drank and ate for what I though was the last time in a while with my friends. But in the evenings after a big meeting at IHH's headquarters and a big kebab at the best local- and prayers in the Fatih Mosque containing the bones of the local warrior hero, known as Saladin (not the Saladin), having booked into my hotel for another few days and gone along to wave goodbye to the bus,I was accosted by fellow Bristolian Sakir who I had been filming earlier on, and who said "If I said I had a confirmed seat on the boat, what would you do?
I was, for once, unable to speak for a moment.

...Therefore here I am in the local internet cafe. We travelled overnight by road to join the ships. Its too hot out there to stand on the corner kicking myself for leaving the laptop at home. Next: dondurma!
If you hear nothing further from me - as I can't get my blog working by remote- look in on the I.H.H.website.
Seeyou!

Gaza Flotilla four

Saturday 22nd
This morning we have breakfast inside as it's raining. Yesterday we could enjoy the sunny roof. I hear from the Spanish cameraman whose lady friend interviewed me on our arrival that there is a "press conference" at eleven. Later a crowd of us pile into a minibus to one of the docks. One of the big ships - Mavi Marmara the (ageing) Luxury Cruiser - is docked - lots of Turks assembling - flag waving and dancing. Ship draped in tenement-sized banners. Little pleasure boats and ferries circling about with flags and banners and occasional coloured smoke. Then come The Speeches. Even if they were in English I would soon have tired of them - increasingly bombastic and even hystrionic. I leave the thickly crowded close-up for farther away to watch and wait. Finally she pulls out and away, with fireworks in the sky and red green and black balloons clouding up from the stern. We all go back towards our hotels. These people - so motivated and united in purpose - can't just stride home. They dither - fart about - wonder about taxis (taksis) or buses or the metro. We stop for grilled fish and a few of us share a taxi for what I now know is only a half-hour walk.
In the evening Peter and I are again confronted by our tardy acceptances. A bloke appears after we wait upstairs drinking lots of tea - you are not allowed to sit here and not at least drink tea if you are not shaking hands or eating - a bloke - Durmus Aydin -, brings us the message. We are not being taken on the voyage as the total number of volunteers has been sent off to the naval security people and it is set in stone. He offers to take my books for Majed Badra and Peter's books for the university. Later I discover that Mr Aydin is not a mere messenger. There is no real hierarchy in I.H.H.- He's the Vice-Chairman.
Looks like that is IT - but wait and see!

Gaza Flotilla three

Friday 21st
Peter and I on visiting IHH discover an interesting new thing- neither of us although we both had our applications accepted online - have been "accepted". I, the daft optimist - am sure that this will only be a slight hitch. We meet more fellow convoyers including Alex, the star of my "Cairo Hotel" youtube video.
I'm keen to get out walking but Sakir insists we get the dedicated bus to the old city. We get into the Blue Mosque as bona fide Muslims. I has taken me 40 years to get this far! The last time I walked here was as a hippy in 1968, and I was waved away from the entrance by a guy who couldn't believe I had washed my feet. Of course we do the whole schtick. The endless sermons, the beautiful musical koran stuff and the bum-in-air. Outside there is a long and deep queue of tourists waiting at the visitors' door, probably taking as long to get in as we spent praying. I finish with a tour of my old haunts as the other drift off for a taxi. My own taxi when I get one is an old-fashioned rip-off: probably had the meter running before I jumped in - but I enjoyed the ride.

Gaza Flotilla two

23rd May
Hello folks.
(This was originally emailed to a select bunch of mates) I can't update my voyage blog from Turkey so here's a quick update: After the ever growing business of near strip-searching at the airport we flew out. Sakir and I teamed up with another veteran of the Convoy. Peter Venner from the Isle of Wight. We got into Istanbul at 3pm local time. Sakir found a hotel. near the offices of I.H.H. which couldn't be handier. We go for a big meal at a local kebab restaurant - I almost forgot how much bread the Turks expect you to eat. Every time I looked like having finished my 4" round they whacked another on my plate.
And Sakir had got us pudding! Made of miniature flakey pastry floating in heavy syrup and containing melted cheese. I did my best...
End the night watching TV installed as an extra on top of our wardrobe. All pictures are green.