Flytilla: Israel's Real Easter Pilgrims
- Israel's Destruction Of Jerusalem
20 April 2012
By Eric Walberg
Easter celebrates suffering and compassion.
Alhamdulillah, these human traits were on display on
Easter Sunday at European airports and in the Holy
Land, reports Eric Walberg
Ben Gurion Airport was thrown into chaos for the third
annual Flytilla on Sunday. As starry-eyed tourists
arrived to visit the Holy sites and beady-eyed new
Israelis arrived to kick more Palestinians off their
land in the name of the Jewish State, thousands of
Westerners with a sense of conscience presented their
air tickets to suspicious officials in Europe and --
if they were lucky -- their passports in Tel Aviv, and
held their breath.
Their intent was quite innocent -- to visit
beleaguered Palestinians in the West Bank; in one
case, to help locals build a school. But the fact that
2,000 such do-gooders were planning to do so en
masse as part of the annual Flytilla was a red
flag to the Israeli bull. The world might take notice,
the Palestinians might take heart, and Israeli crimes
might finally be stopped.
But Israeli refusal to allow these innocent visitors
to the West Bank would prove once again that the West
Bank is an open prison inside Israel, with access at
the whim of the prison guards.
The prison guards rose to the occasion. Airports
around the world were issued no-fly lists with 730
names, and airlines were warned they better kick them
and any other suspicious passengers off their planes,
or the airlines would be charged for the cost of
deporting them. 650 undercover police swarmed Ben
Gurion with their guns and tear gas, just in case.
The high tech planning against the low tech protesters
mostly worked. Members of "Welcome to Palestine" say
up to 200 of the 2,000 activists from 15 countries, a
third of them from France, were prevented from flying
to Tel Aviv from Paris, Brussels, Basel, Geneva and
Zurich on Sunday. Apartheid-complicit airlines
included Jet2.com, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa,
Alitalia, Swiss Air and Turkish Airlines.
At Ben Gurion, a Swedish citizen was forced to sign a
hastily-composed document stating that she would have
no contact with pro-Palestinian groups while in
Israel. Shortly after, a new illegal procedure was
instituted at the airport demanding select passengers
sign a statement saying they will not be in contact or
work with "members of any pro-Palestinian
organisations" and "will not participate in
pro-Palestinian activities". The Prime Minister's
Office released a letter that was handed to deported
Flytilla activists telling them to "Go to Syria".
The Welcome to Palestine Campaign stated: "Those who
wanted to welcome our visitors and were brutally
assaulted will remember how the same Israeli police
let right wing fanatics sing and disrupt at the
airport. The whole world is now seeing Israel for what
it is: a police state that fulfills all the
requirements of being an apartheid pariah state per
the International Convention on the Suppression and
Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973)", and
charged that "those airlines and governments that
acted as subcontractors for the Israeli apartheid
regime are being challenged by their own people."
Last year, around 800 people tried to join the
campaign, 400 blocked from flying by the airlines.
Another 120 were deported by Israel. The term
"flytilla" recalls attempts by activists to reach
Israeli-blockaded Gaza by boat, which have come to be
known as "Freedom Flotillas".
A 23-year-old French woman who made it into Israel to
take part in the protest said about half her group of
50 was detained. "The security forces in France and
Israel treated us like criminals," she said. "It's
very frustrating and surprising that the authorities
cooperated with the Israeli claims and propaganda."
The blacklist grows by leaps and bounds. The 270
people who made it to Tel Aviv in last year's protest
had pride of place on this year's list and are banned
from entering the country for 10 years. All those on
this year's will be added.
Israeli apartheid is not perfect. Two lonely voices
in the Knesset denounced the crackdown. Meretz leader
Zehava Gal-On said blacklisting pro-Palestinian
activists only deepens delegtimisation of Israel. MP
Haneen Zoabi said it proves that Israel violates human
rights not only of Palestinians but of people from all
around the world. An Israeli official admitted that 40
per cent of the names on Shin Bet security blacklist
were not activists at all.
Included among the blacklisted were: a French diplomat
and his wife looking for an apartment in Jerusalem; an
Italian government official scheduled to meet her
Israeli counterparts; and a member of the board of
directors of German pharmaceutical giant Merck with 10
million euros for the Weizmann Institute of Science.
In the mix-up, even Israelis were blacklisted. "We put
people on the list who are as far removed from
anti-Israel political activity as east is from west,"
one Israel Foreign Ministry official complained. "We
have insulted hundreds of foreign citizens because of
suspicions, and have given the other side a victory on
a silver platter."
The daily stream of Jewish and Christian
Disney-pilgrims continue to wail at one Wall or pass
through another to visit a faux manger in
Bethlehem, or a prettified Garden of Gethsemane. Only
Egypt's Coptic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church
refuse to give permission to pilgrims to make these
jaunts, which give tacit approval to Israel's
destruction of Jerusalem's Christian and Muslim
heritage.
The flytillers, today's true pilgrims, are enduring
their travail -- bearing their cross -- not to send
home "I was there" pictures of Jesus's tomb, but to
provide truly Christian compassion to the suffering
Muslims and handful of Palestinian Christians who
desperately cling to their remaining bits of land, and
to emphasise to the world how Israel crucifies
innocent Palestinians every moment. For them -- Arab
or Christian -- every day is Good Friday.
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