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You are here: Home / Politics / Kevin Neish and the flotilla: human rites

Kevin Neish and the flotilla: human rites

06/02/2010 by backofthebook.ca 10 Comments

By Frank Moher

Kevin-NeishI got to know Kevin Neish, one of three Canadians currently being held by Israel after its attack on the Gaza aid flotilla, last Fall, when a production of the play My Name is Rachel Corrie that I had directed toured to Victoria. Kevin was instrumental in bringing the show to his city, and I slept in his basement office/guest room. It was lined with vintage leftist texts, while Kevin himself bore a striking resemblance to Lenin. For some reason, I thought it might be rude to say so, so I didn’t; I later found out he performs a one-man show about Lenin, when he e-mailed me to ask for some tips on blackening his 53-year old hair.

Kevin, I learned while working with him, was a combination activist, propagandist, and shrewd and good-humoured tactician. On the day I arrived, one of the members of the group sponsoring our visit had received an intimidating phone call from someone who likened its members to Nazis. By the time I got up the next day, Kevin had used reverse search to find an address for the anonymous caller, and visited his small office to leave a note “alerting” him to the fact that someone was using his phone to make harrassing calls. Of course, Kevin knew very well that he was alerting the culprit himself, but he preferred an approach that was both non-confrontational and satirical. He was entertained that it hadn’t occurred to the caller that his number would show up on call display.

He was also, I learned, deeply engaged with the plight of others, not only in Palestine, but in places like Guatemala and Colombia, where he’d done human rights work too. I mention this because Israel, or at least its army, seems to want us to suppose all these things cannot reside together in one human frame, or humanitarian movement. “The equipment that we found is all equipment that we have regularly allowed into the strip over the past year,” an Israeli commander told The Jerusalem Post after inspecting the flotilla’s cargo. “This proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the whole premise of the voyage was for propaganda and provocation and not for humanitarian purpose.

Either/or. Either the mission was strictly a cargo run, or it was propaganda. But of course it was both. (I doubt it was intended as a provocation, though — as we have learned many times, the IDF is not a beast you want to provoke.) To call it propagandistic is not an insult, any more than I was insulting Kevin when I called him a propagandist. Propaganda is (or can be) simply a means to bring attention to a cause, and the flotilla was certainly designed to do that. But that doesn’t cancel out its simple human value, nor the compassion of those involved. To say otherwise is, well, propaganda of a lesser order.

My stay with Kevin wasn’t our first encounter. That had been the year prior, when we first staged My Name is Rachel Corrie on Gabriola Island. Kevin had travelled up from Victoria and was in the opening night audience. Rachel Corrie is the story of the young American activist who was killed by an Israel Defence Forces bulldozer while attempting to protect a Palestinian home. I don’t think Kevin had known Rachel, but he had worked with the same group, the International Solidarity Movement, in Gaza, and back in Canada had received her e-mails.

After the show, he didn’t move from his seat, and I thought that perhaps he was avoiding me because he hadn’t liked it. Then I moved closer to him, and I realized he was weeping. He wept for a long time. Then we began to make plans.

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: British Columbia, human rights, Israel, Kevin Neish, Palestine, Victoria

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Comments

  1. Michael Ross says

    06/29/2010 at 10:27 pm

    Kevin Neish won’t respond to the facts as I pointed out in my articles because he knows that I know that he is a pathological liar who has the misfortune of being saddled with a severe case of narcissism.

    Regardless of my affiliation with the Mossad (a top tier intelligence service that has saved more lives than ISM, Neish, and his cohorts combined), my article simply points out the discrepancies in what he told the CBC and what was filmed by a fellow “activist” (btw don’t stand too close to a Hamas activist when he “activates” himself). It’s clear when you see how he bridles at Carolyn MacNeil for simply questioning him on his ability to be at so many places at once on that ship of fools.

    To be entirely fair however, I sincerely doubt that Kevin Neish possesses the intellect required to comprehend his actions let alone the historical context of the conflict itself. As a moral relativist and “avowed Marxist” (his words) the Israeli-Palestinian issue provides an easy and relatively safe means for him to express his simplistic world view.

    Rob H: Places like Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and Burma are just too complicated for self-indulgent “progressive” simpletons like Neish who really in the end, just crave the camera. He’s a one-note loser whose pathology is so obvious its embarrassing.

  2. Fyoder Larue says

    06/18/2010 at 8:21 pm

    Just because what you linked to was written by a former Mossad operative and published in the National Post ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Post#Criticism ) doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s completely false. It would be interesting to hear Neish’s response to it.

  3. Anne Investigator says

    06/18/2010 at 12:13 pm

    So what about the fact that Neish demonstrably lied about what happened on the vessel?

    http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/06/15/michael-ross-the-varying-stories-of-kevin-neish/

  4. Fyoder Larue says

    06/16/2010 at 6:30 pm

    Both sides go too far. The Israeli blockade in its current form constitutes collective punishment, and shooting up people on an aid ship is just totally excessive. But they can pretty much do as they please because of the unconditional support of the US. And so they do.

    The Palestinians, on the other hand, are in some ways in a similar position to the Indians under British rule in Gandhi’s time. They’re occupied by a power with superior strength. They are well poised to take the moral high ground through similar approaches to those used by the Indians against the British, such as passive resistance. But no, they would rather fire piece-of-shit rockets that can only be said to be accurate if the target is defined as an entire nation state so that even if all they hit is a field they can cheer themselves for striking a blow against the oppressor. I suppose they perceive it as having some value as a weapon of terror, but really it’s just pathetic on multiple levels. The wikipedia article on the rockets is interesting ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qassam_rocket ), but doesn’t mention any figure for people killed making and operating the rockets — one suspects it must be close to or possibly exceed the number of people deliberately killed by them.

    With regard to Neish, as you note, “we can all pick our charities”. Since Canada is already formally engaged in helping support Karzai and the Afghan gov’t militarily, while Harper seems actively hostile towards the Palestinians, I applaud Neish’s courage in acting contrarily to the government position. Hopefully his actions, and support for him from fellow citizens, sends a message that not all Canadians support that position. I would be surprised if he qualified for canonization, but perhaps once Harper’s out of power he could be made a member of the Order of Canada.

  5. Rob H. says

    06/15/2010 at 3:45 pm

    FL.. a “false dichotomy”?

    Ok – rather than play semantics, I have no problem with Israel’s response in Gaza in general, though I do believe that allowing further settlements in the occupied terroritories has been provocative and ill-conceived.

    However – Hamas is a terrorist organization and the fact that they are elected, while complicating the issue, doesn’t erase the issue. Further, their actions in lobbing rockets from school yards and such.. and continuing to take a completely hostile position on Israel’s right to exist is a position which in my mind completely justifies the blockade continuing.

    But – really – my comments had less to do with Israel and Palestine – which I concede is wayyy more complicated than I suggest above, and more to do with so-called “peace activist” Kevin Neish.

    Mr. Neish and many of his friends seem to be very selective in who they support and who they attack as being “oppressive”. There seems to be little if any commentary on their part for the sort of world that could be created by expanding Muslim theocracies.

    As indicated, last week in Afghanistan, a 7 year old child was murdered by Taliban to send a message to his grandfather not to publicly support the Afghan government.

    Yesterday two people were executed in Samalia by members of the Hizbul Islam group, for watching soccer on television.

    For all I keep reading about what a “saint” this Kevin Neish is, he is curiously silent on the most horrendous oppression going on in the world.

    Certainly, we can all pick our charities, without need to pick the “neediest” charity – but I find the support for Hamas in Gaza to be a little bit phony, and, actually NOT suprisingly, devoid of any criticism of the scourge of Muslim fundamentalism which is making the world, more and more, a very dangerous place.

  6. Fyoder Larue says

    06/12/2010 at 5:41 pm

    Rob H. , if you want to defend Israel’s actions in Gaza, just come out and do so, rather than setting up a false dichotomy where we can only be concerned about one part of the world or another.

  7. Rob H. says

    06/11/2010 at 10:39 am

    Just curious.

    Why is Kevin Neish and his friends so oblivious to the oppression by non-western and non-capitalist regimes?

    Why is Kevin Neish and his friends not on a long convoy to Helmand province to help the truly disadvantaged, instead of those who, if oppressed, are only mildly oppressed and to a great extent being oppressed by the same people (Hamas) that Neish supports?

    Here are the facts:

    There are 1.4 million people living in Helmand Province and fewer than 100 doctors.
    Only 28% of Helmad citizens have access to safe drinking water.
    The literacy rate in Helmand is only 5%.
    64% of its citizens do not have access to sufficient food.
    The death rate of the newborn and infants is approximately 16%, the third highest rate in the world.

    Gaza has roughly the same population, some 1.5 million people living there.
    They have 2,941 registered doctors, to Helman’s 100.
    92.4% of Gaza citizens are literate, to Helmand’s 5%.
    The infant mortality rate in Gaza is 1.835% – compared to Halmand’s 16%.

    Think about that last indicator of social stress. Gaza has a lower infant mortality rate than Mexico. It has a lower infant mortality rate than China, than the Philippines, than Brazil, than the Bahamas, than Turkey, than Egypt, than Iran, than Morocco, than South Africa, than Kenya, than Pakistan.

    Gaza has a lower infant mortality rate than 112 other countries. The “Humanitarian Crisis” in Gaza is a sham. It is yet another obscene effort of extremist propaganda and manipulation of western liberals, to facilitate an extremist agenda.

    Meanwhile, in Helmand province this week, Taliban seized a 7 year old child from his garden where he was playing and hung him from a tree until he was dead – calling him a “spy” – in reality, sending a message to his grandfather not to publicly support Hammad Karzai.

    No propoganda, Kevin, just the facts.

    Makes me puke how some grow up in a country rich in the blessings the benefits of a free market, and then spit on it to support a communist agenda. Better, I’m sure, that the world look to North Korea and Cuba as moral guides for how to treat eachother.

    And.. MB.. if the FLQ start lobbing rockets into Ottawa, uh, yeah, we’ll bomb the shit of them as well. Of course, one would hope they wouldn’t be so spineless and cowardly as to set up their attacks from hospitals and school years like Hamas..

  8. Michel Brisebois says

    06/08/2010 at 12:13 am

    M WhiteRock, I suppose that all french canadians are separatists, it will give you the right to bomb the olympic statium…

  9. FredinWhiteRock says

    06/05/2010 at 11:13 pm

    Kevin Neish was aboard the flotilla as an agitator supporting Hamas, which is recognized by Canada as a terrorist organization.

  10. Fyoder Larue says

    06/02/2010 at 2:42 pm

    “Kevin, I learned while working with him, was a combination activist, propagandist, and shrewd and good-humoured tactician.”

    Sounds like he *is* a great guy. This is a tribute and not a eulogy, right? He’s coming home Friday?

    I think the Israelis were trying to send a message, namely, “cross our blockade and we’ll kill you”, and they sent it very effectively. I’m glad Mr. Neish wasn’t one of the fatalities. Some might believe that the Israelis wouldn’t go so far, but I’m not sure anyone familiar with the Rachel Corrie story would be among them. He is a very courageous person.

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