A couple of folks have raised this point in comments but I haven't seen a diary on it.
http://www.lobelog.com/...
On a press call hosted by a pro-Israel organization, Rep. Brad Sherman, Democrat of California, told reporters that he intends seek the prosecution of any U.S. citizens who were aboard or involved with the Freedom Flotilla.
Again, from the same link (emphasis mine):
"The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 [PDF] makes it absolutely illegal for any American to give food, money, school supplies, paper clips, concrete or weapons to Hamas or any of its officials," Sherman said on the Israel Project call, conflating Hamas and Gaza’s civilian population. "And so I will be asking the Attorney General to prosecute any American involved in what was clearly an effort to give items of value to a terrorist organization."
Got that? According to Rep. Sherman, aid to the people of Gaza is support for Hamas. Of course, there is the uncomfortable fact that the Palestinians, under the democratic processes we kept insisting they put in place, in 2006 freely elected Hamas to a parliamentary majority (at which point, the United States, in a remarkable display of our true commitment to freedom and democracy around the world, imposed sanctions against the Palestinians for the crime of exercising their voting rights). However, I'm sure to Congressman Sherman that's simply evidence that every single Palestinian is a terrorist, and so aid to any of them is aid to a terrorist organization.
The Congressman, known as a pro-Israel stalwart who has, in the past, joined as the sole Democrat on Republican criticisms of Obama’s foreign policy toward Israel, denied that there was a "hunger crisis" or "humanitarian crisis" in the Gaza Strip. "The health circumstances in Gaza are better than they are in many American cities," he added later.
Aside from this being an excellent argument to start channeling the money being spent on America's Never-Ending Middle East Misadventure into American cities, it's a flat-out lie. The UN has repeatedly condemned the blockade for the suffering it has caused amongst the Gazan population, using language like "war crime" and "crime against humanity" to describe the depth of the impact Israel's actions have had on the Gazan civilian population. Who are you going to believe here, a series of international observers or someone who has been called "probably...the most pro-Likud Democratic member of Congress" (source)?
Questions about the legality of the Israeli blockade and its enforcement in international waters were quickly dismissed by Sherman, who said that the U.S. had itself blockaded Germany in both World Wars, Japan in the Second, Cuba during the missile crisis, and, curiously, the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Germany, Japan, and Cuba were all hostile sovereign states with whom the United States was at war. Israel has no state of war with Gaza and, indeed, cannot, since that would be an effective declaration of Gaza's sovereign independence and Israel will not make such a declaration (nor would the international community accept it given that the situation on the ground clearly shows that Gaza is in no way sovereign). Israel is, at best, at "war" with a particular group located inside Gaza. There are grave problems with punishing an entire civilian population over the actions of one group living amongst that population.
Citing the Union blockade during the Civil War is particularly instructive, given that in order to legally establish the blockade the Union had to acknowledge that the Confederacy was a belligerent, and not an insurrectionist, entity. This was likely a de facto recognition of the Confederacy's independence, a problem for Lincoln then and something Israel surely does not want to recognize with respect to Gaza now. Israel wants to argue that it no longer occupies Gaza, and yet it will not and cannot permit Gaza to exist as an independent state; so, what is it? According to international law, Gaza is still an occupied territory and, as such, Israel has Geneva Conventions requirements to protect the civilian population. It has further requirements that any belligerent act, such as a blockade, distinguish between civilian and military populations. A quick perusal of the banned items list would show that there is no such distinction being made here.
But the thing is, none of the gross errors, lies, and distortions in Rep. Sherman's rhetoric really matters that much. Well, his conflation of the entire Gazan civilian population with Hamas does matter, because it allows him to invoke the 1996 antiterrorism act. But what really matters is that an elected US Congressman, in the name of a foreign nation, is trying to encourage our Justice Department to prosecute and imprison his fellow citizens for the crime of delivering aid to a people in crisis. Is it just me, or is that troubling?