"If the REALLY want to change things, let them stand in front of the tanks and guns, not take a sea cruise that they know will end in a free flight home! "
"Come out into the open where we can kill you easier" - great idea John.
These were unarmed volunteers delivering relief supplies; the Israelis were a highly trained crack force belonging to an army that has more than proved its vicious readiness in killing unarmed opposition (including women and children btw).
These are the weapons found to have been used on the Mavi Mamara (according to the Sunday Times).
Those found on board ship: stun grenade, catapult, metal bar, knife, broken bottle.
Those in posession of the pirates: paintball gun, tazer gun, Uzi sub-machine gun, Glock handgun.
The "stroll down 5th Avenue" on board the Rachel Corrie was described thus:

"'THEY WERE LIKE HYENAS'
A FULL moon hung over the Mediterranean but somehow the Israeli Zodiac boats eluded its beams. "We couldn't see them until they were up close to us, They were like hyenas circling the boat," said Fintan Lane, a historian and author from Cork who was previously jailed in connection with anti-war protests at Shannon airport.
Lane was one of five Irish citizens on board Challenger One, an American boat, including crew members Shane Dillon from Dublin and Fiachra Ó Luain, a Donegal-based candidate in last year's European elections.
At first, Challenger One tried to outrun the Israeli boats but when the captain suspected they were about to be rammed he slowed the engines. Almost immediately, a stun grenade exploded on board. A second one landed beside Lane.
For a while, the activists impeded the boarding commandos by throwing furniture in front of them but they were soon overwhelmed. "This was a violent attack," Lane said. "They assaulted one of our lookouts. There was a Belgian girl who took a plastic bullet or some sort of missile in the face. She was bleeding from the nose. They wrestled a Palestinian woman with an Israeli passport to the ground. They got stuck into her, I could hear her screaming. : They took one girl to the front and hooded her."
The commandos confiscated phones, cameras and recording equipment. While Kate Geraghty, an Irish journalist, managed to conceal her footage of the raid, Ó Luain, who had been at the bow filming the events on the nearby Mavi Marmara, had his camera seized.
At Ashdod port.the activists linked arms and refused to disembark, saying they did not want to visit Israel. Lane was forcibly transferred on to the quayside where he was informed he would be charged with entering Israel illegally and that the penalty was deportation.
One by one, the other boats arrived ashore. Two Irish citizens of Libyan origin who live in Dublin, Al Mahdi Alharati and Isam Ben Ali, had been on the Greek-owned Sfendoni. "You have arrived in Israel," Ben Ali was informed. "There is no Israel," he replied. "There is Palestine." He told a press conference in Dublin on Friday that he was denied his regular medicine. Ben Ali signed a deportation order because he feared being singled out by the Israelis in jail. Alharati, who says he has diabetes and a heart condition, collapsed at Ben Gurion Airport and was sent to Turkey where he was admitted to intensive care.
Ó Luain insisted he wished to contest his deportation order in Israel's courts, and claimed he was assaulted by "between 15 and 20" uniformed minders. One allegedly threatened to kill him.
There are five Irish people on board the Rachel Corrie. They include Matread Maguire, a Nobel peace laureate from Belfast, Denis Halliday, an assistant secretary general at the United Nations, and Derek Graham, an electrician from Ballina. Graham and Maguire were arrested in the Mediterranean and jailed in Israel in July last year when they attempted to break the Gaza blockade on board the Spirit of Humanity."

Ed T
You fail to state your opinion on the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, so we can presume that you are in favour of it but lack the courage to say so openly - puts your position in context perfectly - thank you.
You also fail to give us any examples of anti-Semitism on this thread so we can also assume that you made it up and your accusation can be seen as a rather pathetic attempt to smear.

Can I unreservedly recommend as an overview of the Palestine conflict the prizewinning film documentary 'Occupation 101' - inspiring and at the same time harrowing. Available on DVD - all proceeds going to the attemps to deliver relief to Gaza.
Jim Carroll