Israeli raid of relief aid ships to Gaza

[William J Poser]

That article, like much of the press about the "aid convoy",
is seriously misleading.  This is not a humanitarian convoy.
The aid that it purportedly contains is quite unnecessary:
contrary to Hamas' claims, there are no serious
shortages of materials in Gaza. Israel allows hundreds of times the
content of these ships to enter every week, including substantial amounts
of building materials such as cement. What these Hamas supporters don't
like is that fact that Israel works with the NGOs and UN to supervise
the distribution and use of construction materials so that they are
used for legitimate purposes and not to fortify the rocket emplacements
used by Hamas for its illegal indiscriminate attacks.

The reason that I said "purportedly" above is that when the ships of a
previous such "aid convoy" were inspected, it was found that they did not
contain the 60 tons of aid that they were claimed to but were in fact all
but empty.

Finally, if you look at the organisers of the "aid" convoy, you'll find
that they are not neutral humanitarians like, say, Medecins Sans Frontieres
or the Red Cross - they're partisans of Hamas, supporters of genocide
and terrorism. (Hamas not only calls for the destruction of Israel but
for the extermination of Jews, and since taking control of Gaza has
killed or driven out most of the Christian Arab population.)

That article is so misleading that I feel compelled to reply, but really
we probably should avoid getting into the morass of Middle Eastern politics
on this list, which is devoted to other purposes.

Bill