Greens NSW Sen­a­tor Lee Rhi­an­non today issued a state­ment call­ing on the Israeli gov­ern­ment “to imme­di­ate­ly release Michael Cole­man”, an Aus­tralian mem­ber of the Free­dom Waves to Gaza Flotil­la, who has been arrest­ed by the Israeli Defence Force.
“I have also asked the Depart­ment of For­eign Affairs and Trade to work hard to ensure Mr Cole­man is safe and is released with­out delay,” Sen­a­tor Rhi­an­non said. “It is the Israeli Defence Forces that have act­ed ille­gal­ly as the boat Mr Cole­man and oth­er Free­dom Waves par­tic­i­pants were on was in inter­na­tion­al waters when inter­cept­ed.
Sen­a­tor Rhi­an­non added: “The Unit­ed Nations Human Rights Coun­cil Inquiry Report of Sep­tem­ber 2010 found that the Israeli block­ade of Gaza is ille­gal. It is time to end it once and for all”.
The Pres­i­dent of the ECAJ, Dr Dan­ny Lamm, issued Rhi­an­non with a sting­ing rebuke. “As usu­al when it comes to Israel, Sen­a­tor Rhi­an­non has blun­dered bad­ly. She is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law. There is not a sker­rick of evi­dence that Michael Cole­man is in any dan­ger, as she has implied.” Dr Lamm said.
“Sen­a­tor Rhiannon’s char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the block­ade of Gaza and the board­ing of ves­sels that are used to break the block­ade as “ille­gal” is men­da­cious non­sense, as will be imme­di­ate­ly under­stood by any­one who has read the Palmer Report. Unlike Sen­a­tor Rhi­an­non, Sir Geof­frey Palmer of New Zealand, is an expert in inter­na­tion­al mar­itime law.” Dr Lamm said. “Palmer and oth­er legal experts, Alvaro Uribe (Colom­bia), Joseph Ciechanover Itzhar (Israel) and Süley­man Özdem San­berk (Turkey), inves­ti­gat­ed this issue ear­li­er in the year. They con­clud­ed that Israel’s naval block­ade of Gaza is legal, describ­ing it as a legit­i­mate secu­ri­ty mea­sure in response to the real threat posed by ter­ror­ists in Gaza.”

“The experts also con­clud­ed that ships that are being used for the pur­pose of break­ing the block­ade may law­ful­ly be board­ed and com­man­deered by Israeli forces, even in inter­na­tion­al waters.” Dr Lamm added.
“It is ludi­crous to sug­gest that this lat­est attempt to break the block­ade is nec­es­sary to bring med­ical sup­plies to Gaza”, Dr Lamm stat­ed. “More than 30,000 tons of sup­plies are trans­port­ed into Gaza from Israel every week, includ­ing at least 5 truck­loads of med­ical sup­plies. The peo­ple who want to break the block­ade are not inter­est­ed in pro­vid­ing human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance to the Pales­tini­ans. If that was their fun­da­men­tal aim, they could send their sup­plies in by land via Israel. Their main pur­pose is to harm Israel and her peo­ple”, Dr Lamm con­clud­ed.
Rhiannon’s state­ment can be accessed at:
http://lee-rhiannon.greensmps.org.au/content/media-release/call-govt-action-on-australian- detained-israel