U.S. dashes Hope

A total of 1.5 million people, half of them children, live in Gaza, sealed in under terrible conditions, living with malnutrition, 50 percent unemployment, surviving mostly on humanitarian aid. All due to an Israeli blockade that was implemented years before Hamas took power there, and paid for by our tax dollars.

The dramatic attempt of the U.S. boat Audacity of Hope to sail from Athens was just another attempt by international civilians to break that inhumane blockade. They sailed because their governments will not act to end that horror.

Don’t believe Israel’s propaganda that supplies “can go through Rafah crossing,” or that Israel will distribute aid. Aid confiscated from earlier flotillas still sits in Israel, wheelchairs broken, food rotting, and the Rafah crossing is only a joke – and Israel acknowledged as a hoax their statement that flotilla passengers planned to kill IDF soldiers.

But our president told Israel it had a right to “self-defense” against the American boat, whose passengers are 17 percent people over 60, 25 percent Jewish, about 50 percent women and whose cargo is letters for Gaza.

What a picture, an American president announcing to a foreign country open season on Americans who sail to put an end to a longstanding Israeli/American crime.

Marianne Torres

Spokane