16.07.2011                      14.Tammus, 5771                      Pinchas

"Gaza-Flieger":

A week after the 'Flightilla': The ones who made it in

69-year-old Australian "Grannies for Gaza" were set to be deported, now demonstrating in Jerusalem.

The threat of mass demonstrations by a hoard of activists descending on Ben Gurion Airport was mostly avoided after more than 250 activists who arrived on the “flightilla” last Friday were deported by Israel over the past week. But a handful of the activists squeezed through the security, and spent the past week attending demonstrations in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Welcome to Palestine, the “flightilla” organizers, refuse to reveal the number of activists that entered the country, but put the number between 15 and 100.  
Two sixty-nine year old women, nicknamed the “Grannies for Gaza,” were among those pro-Palestinian activists who successfully entered the country. Sylvia Hale, a former Member of Parliament in New South Wales, Australia for the Greens party, and Vivienne Porzsolt, a 20-year pro-Palestine activist and leader in Sydney’s Jews Against the Occupation, were in Greece for three weeks waiting for their ship to set sail for Gaza. When they realized their boat, nicknamed Tahrir, would not be permitted to leave Greece, the women bought tickets to Tel Aviv and arrived on Monday, two days after the biggest wave of activists arrived at Ben Gurion Airport….