McKinney relief boat hit by Israeli ship

Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, standing beside a damaged yacht, Tuesday accused the Israeli navy of ramming the vessel to halt the delivery of medical supplies to the embattled Gaza Strip.

“Our mission was a peaceful mission,” McKinney told CNN after she and 15 others aboard the boat made it safely to the harbor in the Lebanese seaport of Tyre.

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Petros Karadjias/AP

Cynthia McKinney is aboard the yacht Dignity, which set sail from Cyprus on Monday.

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McKinney, the recent Green Party candidate for U.S. president and frequent center of controversy, is the most prominent political figure to join the relief voyages sponsored by the Free Gaza Movement.

McKinney was slated to travel by car to Beirut where she was expected to conducted media interviews and meet with Lebanese government officials, said Paul Larudee, a co-founder of the California-based Free Gaza group.

Larudee said the organization was determined to continue the relief mission, the sixth such trip to Gaza and the first to be interrupted.

“We’re going to get it repaired,” Larudee said of the “Dignity,” the cabin cruiser which he said sustained damage to the hull, the bridge and the engine room.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said Tuesday that U.S. diplomats had issued no protests to Israeli authorities. “When you enter a zone of conflict, then you have to realize that it’s very, very dangerous,” the spokesman told reporters.

Later, State Department spokesman Noel Clay said “there were no injuries, that we’re aware of at the moment” and that “to my knowledge, consular officials have not been in contact with the American who was aboard the ship.”

McKinney was the sole American on board.

A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington described the incident as an accidental “collision” after the aid vessel drew near to an Israeli military craft and was warned away.

“The boat came very close, we called the ship to basically to turn around, we informed the ship that they wouldn’t be allowed to enter Gaza,” said the embassy spokesman, Jonathan Peled. “The ship wasn’t rammed, that definitely wasn’t the idea.”

The Israeli naval craft did, however, prevent the aid ship from landing in Gaza, he said in a telephone interview. “We see all these ships as pure propaganda, they have journalists on them and all kinds of other people who are coming basically to provoke.”

He said the intention was not to deny humanitarian aid to Gaza. In fact, he said, aid arrived there on Tuesday from Turkey, Qatar and Jordan.

“We receive all aid and let it enter Gaza properly so that we can make sure that it’s only humanitarian aid and they’re not smuggling people and weapons and explosives into Gaza,” Peled said.

He said Israeli military craft offered assistance to the aid vessel before escorting it toward Lebanese waters.

“They said that the didn’t need any assistance,” he said. “It passed peacefully, apparently no damage, no wounded, no nothing, but a slight collision.”

In a news release, the Free Gaza group offered a conflicting version of the incident. The Israeli gunboats “gave us no warning” and “rammed us three times,” said Caoimhe Butterly, who was aboard the aid ship.

“We began taking on water and, for a few minutes, we all feared for our lives,” she said of the early morning incident.

Larudee said the Dignity’s bilge pumps worked well enough for the boat to sail to a safe harbor in Lebanon. The boat had shipped out of Cyprus Monday en route to Gaza.

McKinney’s father, former Georgia state Rep. Billy McKinney, said in a phone interview Tuesday that he had a brief conversation with his daughter as she was heading toward Beirut.

“I’m really relieved, but I’m not totally relieved because she’s still in the Middle East,” he said, adding that he expected her to continue her journey.

“She’s a determined woman,” he said. “This isn’t the first civil right and human rights mission that she’s been on.”

McKinney said his daughter had traveled to Cuba a few weeks ago and was “very well received” by President Raul Castro and that she had recently tried to visit Syria but had been turned away when she attempted to board the flight.