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AUTHORITIES ARE MAKING preparations to send the 14 Irish activists held in Israel back to Ireland after a 72-hour period of detention ran out overnight.
The 14 Irish activists, including former Fianna Fáil TD Chris Andrews, are being held at Givon prison in the city of Ramla after the Israeli Navy boarded their ship, the MV Saoirse, which was sailing on a solidarity mission to Gaza along with another Canadian ship, the MV Tahrir, last week.
The pro-Palestinian activists claimed they were travelling in international waters on an aid mission to the blockaded-Gaza Strip. Israel claims that the activists were in Israeli waters and that the blockade is legal as was found in a UN report last month.
A spokesperson for the Irish Ship to Gaza movement said that the ship was “hijacked” by members of the Israeli Navy who held the activists “at gunpoint”.
Both the MV Saoirse, which was carrying no aid, and the MV Tahrir, which was reportedly carrying medical supplies, had a total of 27 activists on board, all of whom were taken into Israeli custody and brought to Ashdod port in Israel.
“Unlike what the Israeli side is reporting that it was a peaceful handover, it wasn’t. Our passengers made it very clear they had no intention of leaving the boat. They were taken at gun point, guns were pointed at them and windows were smashed on the MV Saoirse,” Claudia Saba from the Irish Ship to Gaza claimed.
A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Ireland told TheJournal.ie that it was “normal procedure” that navy officers are armed for self-defence when boarding a ship.
He said that the boats had been guided to Ashdod where an Irish consular representative arrived and convinced the activists to disembark the ship.
“The Irish ambassador to Israel has seen them every day they have been there and says they are not being mistreated,” he added, describing the protests of those aboard the flotilla as “illegitimate”.
After disembarking the ship, the activists were taken to Govan prison in the city of Ramla where they have been held over the weekend.
Most of the activists refused to sign deportation orders, saying they contained false statements meaning they could not be sent home until a 72-hour period expired.
Now that it has the Israeli authorities are making arrangements to send the activists back to their home countries either tonight or tomorrow morning. The cost of this will be borne by Israel.
The Israeli embassy in Dublin said that six of the 27 activists had signed the deportation orders and had gone home. The Irish Ship to Gaza movement confirmed this and said that none of those deported were Irish.
It also claimed that the whereabouts of British journalist, Hassan Ghani of PressTV are unknown.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs told TheJournal.ie:
We’ve been providing consular assistnace, visiting every day and keeping in touch with families. We have no cause for concern for any of the activists’ treatment by authorities.
“For any issues raised by detainees, our consular official would have raised those with the authorities there and any issues raised were dealt with,” the spokeswoman added.
Fianna Fáil issued a statement yesterday in which leader Micheál Martin, a former Minister for Foreign Affairs, condemned the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces:
There is no justification for what has been happening over the last week.
“I have spoken directly to the Israeli Ambassador today and made clear to him my view that while we respect Israel and its efforts to protect its citizens, this latest attack on a legitimate protest is unjustifiable,” he said.
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I’m waiting for Irish people to be tagged as ghosts
Funniest headline I’ve read in ages!
Google need to stop monkeying around.
The algorrillm needs some fine tuning.
Is it caus they black?
It’s a bit like when Nikon brought out their blink detection software years ago. It asks “did someone blink?” I noticed it myself on my L100 and it worked fine. The problem arose when pictures of Asians were mistaken as someone blinking, even though they were not.
Since Nikon is an Asian company, one wonders what sort of quality control they had on that one.
What kind of ape wrote that program.
That’s fierce funny altogether.
Light relief from the Greece crisis.
Can’t foresee a Terminator situation any time soon
I’ll be black.
For anyone thinking this is a person in google tagging black people as gorillas: http://rocknrollnerd.github.io/ml/2015/05/27/leopard-sofa.html
Check your algorithmic privilege.
Mortifying.
ilikegrasss
Seems like they have a racist/s in Google
I don’t think computers can be racist. They’re aren’t that advanced in AI yet.
Nor are they so advanced in recruitment…
This is an AI issue, not a human issue.
Perhaps if it wasn’t a human issue it wouldn’t have been an AI issue.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2014/05/29/2-of-google-employees-are-black-and-just-30-are-women/
So it’s not the fault of the person who programed the AI(long way off real AI) who is at fault?
Black people don’t look anything like Gorillas . If it can tell the difference between a Leopard and a Jaguar then it should be able to tel the difference between a person and an Ape.
Don’t see how labeling a black person as a Gorilla is racist..sure aren’t we all as equally related to the gorilla?
After that handsome gorilla the other day I;d say many of us would take kindly to being more gorilla-like :)
Well said Fozz. Sure Gareth Bale is the absolute spit of a gorilla. He gets fierce abuse for it. And I have yet to hear anyone call it a racist insult.
@Paul Roche
Maybe white and Asian males are just better at this kind of work.
Do you think a negroe programmer would have missed this?
You’re supposed to say “black”.
Perhaps, but I intended to write “negro”, the “e” hung around after an unsuccessful edit of an original plural… Maybe it should look for job on Google…
Looks nifty, can I download from the ApeStore?
There is a simple solution to that issue. It would involve swapping two words. Although I think gorillas would not like to be named humans. Just imagine what animal rights activists would say.
Think how clever you have to be to screw up on this level.
How do you test every possible scenario for photograph classification? I’ve been fooled by more than one elbow, myself.
Facial recognition insists in asian
Well then, I think it’s time for me to get a software update too. I honestly had to do a double take.
All aboard the lets get offended at anything band wagon.
‘Get machetes to think more like the way people do’ (quote) . Keep digging !
have your say