The Stay Human flotilla to Gaza has either set sail or is about to depending on when you read this. Here there is an article about the threats to its departure, a piece from flotilla veterans of the Free Gaza movement which cites a Palestinian civil society petition, and the petition itself with its many signatories at the end of this post

Haneen Zoabi, Knesset member from the Balad party (National Democratic Assembly) and a participant in the first Freedom Flotilla, says that by arresting Sheikh Raed Salah the British authorities have been pulled into Israel’s anti-Arab policies and Europe’s Islamophobia

Prime Minister Netanyahu has no plan to block PA bid for UN recognition says President of World Jewish Congress, former ally of Israeli PM

The Israeli Knesset, the “worst for democracy in the history of Israel”, is expected to to pass a bill making it a felony to support a boycott of settlement products . NGOs are covered by the bill, jeopardising their tax status.

Britain’s Border Agency has arrested Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of Israel’s Islamic Movement. Jews for Justice for Palestinians has protested to the Home Secretary and here we publish the letter, followed by press releases from Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Middle East Monitor, both objecting to his arrest and querying the reasons for it.

After learning his trade in Operation Cast Lead, 25-year-old Sasha Dratwa heads a unit which uses the ‘infinite tools’ of the internet to combat negative views of the IDF. Watch out!

Just announced – Netanyahu has overturned the threat to the media made by his director of the government press office if they cover the flotilla. The Israeli goverment has secured a series of own goals in its varied efforts to stop media coverage (with the many issues about Gaza and international law which the flotilla raises): 1) A review of Israel’s diplomatic efforts secures a notably ambivalent coverage in the normally supportive Bloomberg Business Week; 2) Josef Federman reports from Jerusalem on the response to the threatening letter from Oren Helman; 3) an Israeli video of a gay man denouncing the flotilla is revealed by electronic intifada to be a government hoax; 4) the letter of protest written by ACRI to Oren Helman, credited as one of the voices prompting Netanyahu’s change of mind

1, Joe Catron from Brooklyn sees ‘this Flotilla is an unabashed act of solidarity with a people fighting colonialism, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid’; 2, Kathy Kelly from Voices for Creative Nonviolence, prepares on the Audacity of Hope for Israel’s worst; 3, the Free Gaza Movement reports the departure of French boat Dignity/Karama and reminds the world that it’s Israel’s sealing of the Gaza strip that is illegal, not the sailing of the flotilla; 4, Amira Hass and the passengers from Canada’s Tahrir sit in a Greek lecture hall and learn how to respond to the IDF’s masked men

There are three articles in this posting:
1. from Bilbao, the ship Gernika sails in the Rumbo a Gaza to join the flotilla;
2, from the US, ‘I am one of a growing number of young American Jews who are determined to shake off an assumed – and largely imposed – association with Israel’; and
3, the 50 civilians on Canada’s Tahrir practise to overcome their fear of Israeli attack

Caroline Lucas, Britain’s only Green Party MP and a supporter of the Palestinians, criticizes the PSC’s use of a pre-Israel map as its logo

Israel launches a drive through eastern Europe, where the Palestinian voice has hardly been heard through the clouds of history, to pre-empt support at the UN in September for recognition of Palestinian statehood

France’s President has made another intervention in the Middle East with a promise to get Hamas to release Shalit – a possibility which Ehud Barak thinks Netanyahu is blocking

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights wins the right to bring its case against Israel’s statute of limitations which demands victims of, for intance, the 2008-9 Opearion Cast Lead make compensation claims within two years – which is impossible as this press release from PCHR explains

An AP Exclusive quotes a Palestinian official as saying they (the PA presumably) are offering to drop demands for a freeze on Israeli settlements if peace talks can begin on the basis of the 1967 borders as Obama proposed

Palestinians have one tremendous resource in their fight for independence says Jeff Halper. This is civil society – at home, in the Palestinian diaspora, amongst the millions abroad who support their cause. The Palestinian Authority should treat us, not the US, as their greatest ally

Michael Oren cheers removal of Mavi Marmara from flotilla as too large to stop ‘with technical means’, denies any lack of medicines or food in Gaza, relies on San Remo defence and sees Israel as besieged by belligerent Muslims and ‘de-legitimisers’

The move to establish Jewish-only settlements in the Negev, home of the Bedouin, has been boosted by Ben Gurion university, despite staff protests

A Jerusalem audience booed distinguished and world-renowned author Amos Oz for condemning the expulsions, Occupation and settlements as bad for Israel, the state he loves

WHO attributes Gaza’s acute shortage of medical products to the fear of suppliers they will not be paid because Israel has withheld tax transfers to the PA after the Hamas/Fatah deal

Israel has chosen as its new ambassador to the UK not a diplomat, but the legal adviser to its Ministry of Foreign Affairs on many of his country’s most controversial practices. Here we publish the news of his appointment, an interview with him on Operation Cast Lead and a transcript of his answers on the Goldstone report at a MFA press briefing inn 2009