>> " They have started a hunger strike in support of the occupiers of the church of the nativity and to object to the apauling conditions they are subject to."

I think you've got that the wrong way round. The church's occupiers are not being subjected to appalling conditions. It is true that conditions in the church are appalling, but that is because they refuse to leave the church. Just think: by the simple move of putting their guns on the floor and walking outside with their hands up they can end the siege. It really is that simple.

Jo, Kate and Marcia who delivered food and water to the people in the church should count their blessings that they're just being deported. Providing active material help to one side in a conflict means that they and the rest of the Solidarity Movement have lost any right to be considered "neutral". I just hope they realise that this means they are in great danger.

Yeah, giving food to Palestinians in their own country in a building beseiged by an occupying army that has already killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, is an appalling crime and something these people should feel lucky to be deported for.

I don't think Jo, Kate and Marcia would pretend to be neutral in this war. I don't think most people with a semblence of conscience would want to be neutral where a known war criminal, Sharon, is directing the Israeli defence force in a vicious military assault on an entire civilian population in order to prop up a racist, apartheid system that ensures the systematic impoverishment and humiliation of the Palestinian people.

As ever, this Zionist posting ends with a threat. That's the voice of the oppressor - do nothing to resist us or expect to be shot at, imprisoned and eventually killed.

The state of Israel has only been able to maintain its fifty year reign of terror against the Palestinian people because it has been armed, payrolled and supported by the United States and Britain as imperialism's policeman in the middle east. The courage and internationalism of people like Jo, Kate and Marcia, and the dozens of other US and UK citizens who are risking their lives to slow down the Israeli assault on Palestine shows that not everyone in the world's rich countries is willing to stand by as the Israel Defence Force adds to its catalogue of war crimes against the Palestinian people.

Our solidarity and best wishes are with them now.

No! They should never surrender and give in to your and Israeli beligerance. Nobody should even though the World's Press carry the Israeli side of the argument with no thought of those who are suffering. I appeal to the Freedom loving people of the World and the Left to stand up against Bush's and Sharon's New Fascism and total disrespect for UN resolutions and total disregard for those who are against people being oppressed. Don't EVER EVER change your mind!

Colin, I never said that giving food to the people in the church is a crime. It's perfectly reasonable for members of the Palestinian army to supply other members of the Palestinian army with food: there's nothing criminal about it. Equally, there's nothing criminal about members of the Israeli army stopping them from doing so.

You said "As ever, this Zionist posting ends with a threat." There was no threat (and in any case I'm in no position to carry out any threats). I am genuinely concerned that the Solidarity Movement's people do not realise that they are in great danger. My concern is that they think they cannot be hurt, that the Israelis dare not fire upon them because they're foreign citizens, protected somehow by a badge of "international observer" and "peace activist". I am worried that they'll try some stupid stunt like lying down in the road in front of a tank and be surprised when the tank does not stop.

Lets be clear about a few things. Your 'concern' here is all about softening up public opinion for extending the brutality the Israeli army is meting out to the Palestinian people to anyone who supports them - a lot of people in the states are heading out to Palestine this summer. That's not concern - it's a threat, pure and simple. I'm sure you aren't in a position to personally carry out these threats - you leave that to your friends in the Israeli army. Your role is to intimidate people from showing solidarity with the Palestinian people because it represents a threat to Israel's apartheid rule. You are as guilty of the massacres in Jenin and elsewhere as the people putting bullets into Palestinian children.

In the US in the 1960s black and white civil rights activists went to the southern United States from the north to help black voter registration, a real threat to white racist in those states. The white racists in the south told them it was none of their business, they would be putting themeselves in danger and, when they came, attacked and on occasion killed them. What you are doing is exactly the same.

You say that "There's nothing criminal about members of the Israeli army stopping them from (supplying food)". Actually, you're completely wrong. The Israeli occupation of Palestine is illegal under international law, the war crimes committed by the Israeli army are in contravention on numerous intermational treaties and the United Nations has passed numerous resolutions condemning the illegal actions of Israel against the Palestinian people. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of a bit of propaganda.

Next you'll be saying that anyone who disagrees with you is ant-semitic and on some level supports the holocaust, a disgusting cheapening of the suffering of the Jewish people under the Nazis that Zionists are rarely too ashamed to use to justify their savagery. I hope you're getting top dollar from the Israeli embassy for all this.

>> "Your role is to intimidate people from showing solidarity with the Palestinian people because it represents a threat to Israel's apartheid rule."

My 'role' is to state my personal views. My personal view is that members of the International Solidarity Movement are active combatants. I would hope that members of the International Solidarity Movement getting on aeroplanes to Israel have given some thought to what that implies. They're adults, and it's their choice to do what they do, but they ought to realise that they are (at least in my opinion) placing themselves in great physical danger.

>> "You are as guilty of the massacres in Jenin and elsewhere as the people putting bullets into Palestinian children."

What massacre in Jenin? Human Rights Watch's figures [ http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/05/jenin0503.htm] are that a total of 22 Palestinian civilians were killed in Jenin, in something like 8 or 10 days. That's slightly less than 3 per day: when hundreds or thousands of Israeli soldiers were involved. That has got to be the most lacklustre 'massacre' in the whole of history.

>> "The white racists in the south told them it was none of their business, they would be putting themeselves in danger and, when they came, attacked and on occasion killed them. What you are doing is exactly the same."

Nonsense. The civil rights activists in the American south were not carrying rifles and their supporters did not set off bombs. If the civil rights campaigners had decided to kill random people and then a group of armed "civil rights campaigners" had barricaded themselves inside a building then the police would have been perfectly right to lay siege to the buliding and arrest anyone who tried to take them supplies.

>> "Next you'll be saying that anyone who disagrees with you is anti-semitic and on some level supports the holocaust"

Not at all. I think it's crazy that critisism of Israel is denounced as anti-semitism or support for the holocaust. Believe it or not, I think that Israel should pull the settlements out of the West Bank and Gaza, and sort out issues such as unfair allocation of water resources.

>> "I hope you're getting top dollar from the Israeli embassy for all this."

I'm not paid anything by anybody for what I say here. I am not, nor have I ever been, an employee or agent of the Israeli government (or any other government, for that matter).