U.S. officials are now threatening jail time for those who sail on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza. "We underscore that delivering or attempting or conspiring to deliver material support or other resources to or for the benefit of a designated foreign terrorist organization, such as Hamas, could violate U.S. civil and criminal statutes and could lead to fines and incarceration," said State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland in a Reuters story dated Friday.
We also have Hilary Clinton quoted by CNN as asserting that passengers on the flotilla will be guilty of creating "a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves," a statement basically giving the Israelis a green light to use violence.
Were the mainstream media doing their jobs, they perhaps might have pointed out to readers that one of the most vital functions of any government is to protect its own citizens from attack by a foreign power. But of course neither Reuters nor CNN venture into that territory in their respective reports—reports in which we have American officials exhibiting in essence a complete reversal of what their priorities are supposed to be. For consider: here we have U.S. citizens being threatened by officials of their own government, officials who at the same time have issued statements defending the foreign power that poses the very real and perilous threat to their lives. Presumably only in Zionist-controlled America could such a situation be.
All of this brings about an interesting possible scenario. One of the ships making up the flotilla is an American vessel named "The Audacity of Hope," and among the passengers on that ship is to be one of our country's most prominent authors—Alice Walker. Born in 1944 in Georgia to a sharecropper family, Walker is an African-American writer who has explored themes of racism and patriarchy in both her fiction and poetry. Her most well-known work is perhaps The Color Purple, which tells the story of a young African-American girl growing up in rural Georgia. In the early 1960s, as a young student at Spelman College in Atlanta, Walker met Martin Luther King Jr. and became active in the Civil Rights Movement, participating in the 1963 March on Washington, which of course was one of the pivotal points in the movement's history, the one in which King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
What price will Walker, who is now 67 years old, pay for sailing with the Freedom Flotilla? Assuming she survives the boarding and hijacking of her ship by the Israeli military, what legal entanglements will follow? Will she be charged with aiding terrorists and be forced to hire an attorney to represent her in an American or possibly Israeli court? Such would be embarrassing for the Obama administration, to say the least, but the president has already undergone humiliations a-plenty at the hands of the Israelis and so perhaps would not be too averse to stomaching one more. But the humiliation will be all the greater considering that The Audacity of Hope's cargo will consist of nothing more than letters of support written by Americans to the people of Gaza. As Walker humorously points out , should Israel attack the ship, "it will be as if they attacked the mailman." A letter addressed to Obama and signed by 27 of the ship's passengers, including Walker, clearly states the vessel's peaceful intent and even specifies its cargo:
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
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