Oh, God, Don’t Put Me In Another Gaza Flotilla

By the MV Mavi Marmara

It’s getting old, people. Face it: nobody cares about the stupid Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Least of all their leaders. So stop trying to organize “freedom” flotillas for people who would be just fine if their government would stop using them as blackmail fodder. They are just as much a prop in this farce as I am.

And please, God, don’t let them put me in another #$% flotilla.

I used to have dignity. I used to carry passengers on a perfectly respectable ferry route. All was well and good, until the “IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation” wasted eight hundred grand to acquire me. That’s when it all started going downhill. Somebody decided it was a good idea to challenge Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, apparently under the impression that protecting one’s citizens by trying to prevent a terrorist organization from obtaining armaments is somehow illegal or immoral. I’m still trying to figure that one out. If I had a brain, it would hurt. I do have a head – dozens of them, in fact – but that’s just a naval term for an on-board toilet. You see what I mean.

The toilet is a useful analogy here, in that my fate rapidly went down one. It was embarrassing enough to be part of an operation whose aim was as questionable as its motives. It became downright mortifying when the activists festooned me with banners and paint declaring a “humanitarian” mission that would be of minimal humanitarian value even if it managed to reach Gaza’s shores. I wasn’t even carrying supplies. It was my humiliation to be carrying the attention-seekers, the provocateurs, the self-hating Jews, the opportunists, and some media people. Also there were mediocre sandwiches.

Lo and behold, the Israeli navy didn’t just allow Hamas and their sympathizers a PR victory of allowing me through. Gee, I’m just stunned that they didn’t just let those IHH people just sail into Gaza unopposed. What were they expecting, a welcoming committee? Did they think of me when they all but condemned me to being towed from place to place after this fiasco?

The official word from IHH when another flotilla was bring organized in 2011 was that I wasn’t in technical shape to participate, but the truth is I simply refused to function properly – and a good thing, too; the second flotilla was even more pathetic than the first – people started pulling out left and right, and in the end the Greeks didn’t even let the boats go. One ship tried to fool everybody by embarking for Egypt and changing course in the middle, only to be taken again by the Israelis, with the incident barely registering on international radar.

The morally upright people behind the second effort then stormed the Spanish embassy in Greece, which should give you an idea of how these people assign blame. And now a Turkish court wants Interpol to arrest the Israeli military officers under whose aegis the raid occurred – a raid that the UN itself found to be in enforcement of a legal blockade.

This is my legacy? Just scuttle me now.