Media told not to join flotilla

ISRAEL has threatened to ban international journalists for up to a decade from the country if they join aninternational flotilla which includes one Irish vessel, planning to breach the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The warning, issued yesterday, reflects Israeli jitters about the flotilla, which comes just over a year after a similar mission ended in the deaths of nine Turkish activists in clashes with Israeli naval commandos.

In a letter to foreign journalists, the Government Press Office’s director, Oren Helman, called the flotilla “a dangerous provocation that is being organised by Western and Islamic extremist elements to aid Hamas”.