What writers do

According to the BBC, Swedish author Henning Mankell was/is on board one of the ships.

I wish I had his guts.

I wish I wasn’t afraid of being shot.

What writers do and what writers should do are often different things. We’re not creatures of action, as a rule. Our method of confrontation is words on paper, not face-to-face. And to a great extent that is how writers should voice themselves. It’s what they’re good at, after all.

Right now on Israeli TV, one of the generals came on to explain that the IDF soldiers were attacked and therefore had to protect themselves. Let me repeat that. The IDF soldiers who attacked the ships were under attack and had to use force.

Orwell would have been so proud.

TV and newspaper double-speak is the order of the day. The soldiers had to defend themselves. The same general on TV said that, when the flotilla organisers were told not to approach Gaza, they replied in “an inappropriate manner I don’t want to repeat here”.

My God. Did they? Why not, I don’t know, shoot them? They made us do it, seems to be the consensus.

And they used bad language!

I hope they said Fuck you, just before you gave the order to attack.