Relief Boats from Cyprus Break Israel's Gaza Blockade

al jazeera on the same story

this story sure doesn't draw much of a crowd either in the MSM or elsewhere it seems...

From Al Jazeera:

I'm thinking the Israelis didn't care neither: Two small boats loaded with people and no restricted supplies is hardly "breaking the blockade"... if they were cargo ships full of bags of cement you can bet they would have been stopped.

If that's the case, I wonder if the Israeli regime didn't PAY them to "break" the blockade.

The Free Gaza movement just marked two years of breaking the blockade.

http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/articles/middle-east/1450-happy-birt... [8]

Oh, I think the Israelis care a great deal. After the savaging their credibility took with the Marmara incident, there is no way they could stage a repeat without even greater repercussions. Their hand has been forced by this latest challenge and they've had to rely on the MSM's complicity to suppress the story. The new tactic, obviously, is to starve the blockade runners of the publicity which is so critical to their strategy and I do not doubt a great deal of backroom lobbying has gone down to bring the MSM onside.

That these blockade runners carried no significant materiel is irrelevant since it is the SYMBOLIC aspect of their gesture which signifies, drawing attention to the sordid nature of the Israeli siege.

No...it would be the first task of their propaganda machinery after the Marmara obscenity to redouble efforts to bring the - let's face it, already compliant - MSM onside and the fact that only Al Jazeera with its Arabist mandate has covered it internationally would seem to confirm that.

It could be that the latest blockade runners have exploited a weakness in Israel's position and it will be increasingly difficult for the Israeli state to bring the boom down again - at least while memories of the Marmara are still fresh. This story is just beginning.

Good points about the Marmara incident but I'm less optimistic than you are... it looks, as you have suggestedl, like Israel has learned from the incident as well and may have adjusted their strategy and are now focusing on a media blockade of sorts to supplement the physical one.

I'm sorry but blockades and sieges are broken by supplies flowing in and out of the besieged city; symbolic gestures, like this one, feed nobody, relieve no suffering and for reasons you mentioned, achieve very little on the MSM side of the house. With the MSM muzzled or disinterested in stories like this involving just activists in small boats real supply ships are needed to end this very real siege and it's probably going to take more violence to get it done; maybe even the threat of military action. That will get the MSMs interest again: unfortunately is it bleeds it leads... so you get stories about Hamas shooting up settlers (rightfully so or not the effects are negative in the MSM) and saying they oppose the talks with Israel instead.  

Breaking the media siege of Gaza might prove more difficult than the material siege... and it looks like that one will have to be broken first, which would make this Israel's counter move to the Marmara incident.  

I think I agree with this.  Boats had been getting in for months, sometimes Israel stopped them, sometimes they got through.  It was when it was a supply ship that it became a real problem for Israel.  Maybe, though, another international flotilla, as is being planned, will get some attention.

Ummm... the original article, from Al-Jazeera, was dated 2008, so to the best of my understanding, this happened well before the Mavi Marmara attacks.

I believe fundraising is underway for the Canadian boat to Gaza. It will be interesting to see who gets on board.

More important is what is put on board that ship... as I've said before people, no matter who they are, in this case, are pretty much worthless.