As Americans celebrated their revolution, passengers on US boat to Gaza called for new US Declaration of Independence �ê" from Israel, demands Henry Norr Eleven score and fifteen years ago, our Forefathers declared independence from Britain. We, the passengers on the SS Audacity of Hope, call for a new American Declaration of Independence. So declared patriotic Americans from the decks of their ship which aims to relieve the siege of Gaza by Israel. It is currently confined to a Greek military pier near Athens, while its captain sits in jail. Like the Founders in Philadelphia, the passengers detained in Greece recognise that, "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them to another, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." Just as the Founders cited "a long train of abuses and usurpations" committed by the British, the Audacity of Hope passengers detailed the Israeli abuses motivating their call for US independence: For generations Israel has engaged in a systematic campaign to dispossess Palestinians of their lands and drive them from their ancestral homes. Since 1967 Israel has occupied East Jerusalem the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights in open defiance of UN Security Council resolutions and the Geneva Conventions. Residents of these occupied territories have been subjected to numerous forms of mistreatment, including military attacks, arbitrary arrests, home demolitions, and the confiscation of vast areas for the construction of illegal Jewish-only settlements and roads. Since the mid-1990s Israel has imposed an ever-tightening regime of economic strangulation on the Gaza Strip. Since 2006 in particular the 1.5 million people of Gaza have been kept in isolation and under siege, with severely limited access to medical care, clean water, and construction materials needed to rebuild after Israeli military attacks. They have been prevented from fishing in their coastal waters, growing crops on much of their farmland, or exporting almost anything. Israel has used its powerful influence inside the US to secure Washington's backing for these illegal and counterproductive policies. In addition to more than $3 billion per year of US taxpayer dollars in military aid, Israel has gained uncritical American diplomatic support, including repeated use of the American veto in the Security Council to stymie any UN effort to enforce international law and to hold Israel accountable for its crimes. In recent years Israel has reacted with brutal violence against international as well as Palestinian and Israeli activists who have dared to step in where the US and the UN have feared to tread. On 31 May 2010, Israel's vicious assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters caused the deaths of nine unarmed human-rights volunteers, including the 19-year-old American citizen Furkan Dogan. This year Israel, in collusion with the US, has deployed a variety of economic, diplomatic, and other pressure tactics to undermine the sovereignty of Greece, Turkey, and other nations and force them to obstruct the Gaza Freedom Flotilla II in defiance of their own maritime regulations and procedures. In addition, Israel has carried out a campaign of unbridled distortion and defamation against the organisers and participants in this year's flotilla. When that failed, Israel's agents resorted to life-threatening sabotage operations against at least two of the flotilla's ships. "In light of this long �ê" but still very partial �ê" list of abuses and usurpations committed by Israel, it is long past the time for the US to end its �ê�special relationship' with Israel and declare its independence from that country," said a letter that the passengers delivered to the US Embassy in Greece on 4 July. "Just as the original American Declaration of Independence inspired popular struggles for independence and democracy all over the world, we humbly call on other countries that have been subjected to Israeli pressure and manipulation, particularly Greece and Turkey, to join us in our campaign to rid our country of this scourge." The author, a passenger on The Audacity of Hope, is a former technology writer.
