Jewish boat to attempt to breach the siege of Gaza

A small (10 m long) catamaran with pro-Palestinian activists of Jewish ethnicity has set sail from Cyprus in yet another attempt to breach the siege of the macro-camp for displaced persons in South Palestine. The boat, named Irene, carries fishing nets in a nonviolent act of defiance against Zionist apartheid, 8 crew members and two journalists.

Reuven Moskovitz, an Holocaust survivor, 82, declared:

It is a sacred duty for me, as a survivor, to protest against the persecution, the oppression and the imprisonment of so many people in Gaza, including more than 800,000 children.

He also said: we are two peoples but we have one future. 

The crew of the Irene

The crew members are:

• Reuven Moskowitz, Israeli citizen. Founder of unsegregated village Neve Shalom – Wahat al Salaam (Oasis of Peace). He is an Holocaust survivor.
• Rami Elhanan, Israeli citizen. Lost his daughter Smadar in a suicide bombing in 1997 and is founding member of Bereaved Families Circle of Israelis and Palestinians (association of victims of the conflict).
• Lilian Rosengarten, US citizen. Peace activist and psychotherapost. She is a refugee from Nazi persecution.
• Yonatan Shapira, Israeli citizen. Former military pilot and member of Combatants for Peace. 
• Glyn Secker, British citizen. He is the boat captain and a member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians Executive Commitee.
• Edith Lutz, German citizen. She is peace activist and a nurse. She was in the first boat to Gaza in 2008. 
• Itamar Shapira, Israeli citizen. Yonatan's brother. 

The two journalists are Eli Osherov, from Israeli Channel 10 News, and Vish Vishvanath, freelance photographer and reporter.

More information at Jewish Boat to Gaza and also at the support organizations:

• European Jews for a Just Peace.
• Jews for Justice for Palestinians.
• Juedische Stimme fuer einen gerechten Frieden in Nahost.
• American Jews for a Just Peace.
• Jewish Voice for Peace.
• Jews Against the Occupation Sydney.

See also news items at Al Jazeera and BBC.

Update: somewhat anecdotally, Jews sans frontieres mentions today that Marion Kozak, mother of the two confronted Labor party leaders Ed and David Miliband, is among the 1600 signatories supporting the boat, whose names will be displayed in colorful banners by the crew, as member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians. She is a veteran left wing and Labor Party militant.

Update (Sep 28): Israel has taken the boat today. Not yet known whether in international or Gaza waters, in another illegal action in any case. The boat flies British flag so this is technically an act of war against the United Kingdom.

Physicians for Human Rights has asked for access to the kidnapped crew, as at least one of them is known to have a chronic illness and needs medical care.

Gruesome cannibal site of early Neolithic Rhineland

The westernmost branch of the Danubian Neolithic peoples were a strange bunch: they are typically buried with weapons, unlike all other Danubians, they might have been quite extensive consumers of opium (as far as I know theirs is the oldest evidence of this psychoactive crop) and now it seems they were also cannibals.

Bruno Boulestin et al. have excavated a site near Herxheim (Rhineland-Palatinate, just at the border with France) where they have found an extensive mass burial of what seem to be the remains of roasted and eaten people.

The paper is published at the latest issue of Antiquity (paywall) but, for those who do not have access, BBC also comments on the prehistoric mass murder.

USA provided the weapons for Gaza massacre

From Voltaire Network: U.S. shipped 989 munitions containers to Israel week before Gaza invasion.

A German cargo ship, Wehr Elb, transported 14,000 tonnes of munitions from the USA to Israel just a week before that Israeli attack. At least 300 containers were unnloaded at Ashod, a few kilometers north of Gaza, according to Amnesty International, while the Pentagon says all them arrived to Ashod in fact.

Amnesty International is sure that the cargo contained arms and munitions and has a "strong suspicion" that it also contained white phosphorus shells, used by the Zionists to masacre civilians in flagrant violation of Intenrational Law.
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Research journalist jailed in Germany

Jürgen Cain Külbel, a former GDR policeman recycled into research journalist has been sentenced to ten days of jail under weak legal pretexts. VN considers that he has been punished for political reasons, as he has repeatedly denounced the political bias and lack of evidence in the research of the murder of the Lebanese billionaire and politician Rafik Hariri, and more specifically because denouncing that the Commissioner of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri had financial binds with the perpetrators, and that his main aide is a CIA agent involved in the ongoing wave of kidnappings in Europe.

Full article: A Voltaire Network collaborator jailed in Berlin.

Interview with Külbel on the Hariri process: The Assassination of Rafik Hariri: A Biased Investigation.