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Two Waltham Forest men caught up in Gaza flotilla riad

3:28pm Tuesday 1st June 2010 in Waltham Forest News By Mhairi Macfarlane

Tauqir Sharif, known as Tox, was on board the aid ship convoy Tauqir Sharif, known as Tox, was on board the aid ship convoy

TWO Waltham Forest aid workers were on board a Gaza-bound ship when it was strormed by Israeli troops.

Tauqir Sharif, known as Tox, of Warwick Road, Chingford, and his friend Mohammed Abid Mahi, 31, from Walthamstow, were among 700 passengers of a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza, which has been blockaded by israel for three years.

At least ten civilian activists are said to have been killed and many injured when the ships were raided by Israeli troops in international waters, sparking international condemnation of the operation.

Mr Sharif's brother, Toseef Sharif, of Prospect Hill, Walthamstow, said his parents Mohammed and Zuhda Sharif, and his four sisters, have been extremely anxious about Tauqir's safety since news broke of the deaths on Monday.

They last received a text from Tauqir on Saturday morning and were eventually told on Tuesday that he is uninjured and being held in an Israeli detention centre.

The 30-year-old plumber said: “It has been very stressful not knowing what is going on, especially with all the deaths. We want him back safe and uninjured.”

Mohammed Abid Mahi, 31, was also uninjured and is also being detained.

Mr Sharif said his brother was compelled to join the mission after taking part in the “Viva Palestina” aid convoy to Gaza in December.

The Nottingham University student has since been fund-raising for the Palestinian cause.

Mr Sharif said: “Once he delivered the aid and saw the massacre and destruction, he wanted to go again. It really affected him. When he came back he was a changed person – he was more of an adult.

“We, as a family, are very proud of him. We've been supporting him in what he is doing, so everyone is involved.

“That is why it is a shock for us and upsetting what has happened, but we know he has gone out with good intentions to help people.

Chair of Waltham Forest Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Ellie Merton, who got to know Tauqir on the convoy last year, said she is very concerned about the two men.

She added: “We know they are safe but we don't know how well they are. We don't know where the detention centre is. We are very concerned about their welfare.”

Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned the loss of life and said the British Embassy is trying to get more information from the Israeli Government and access to any UK nationals involved.‪

Israel says its soldiers were shot at and attacked with weapons, whereas activists say Israeli troops came aboard shooting.

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Comments(13)

Mrs Brilliant says...
6:33pm Tue 1 Jun 10

Israel is the world's number one rogue state. It's violent act of piracy is typical of what it does, and Britain has long been complicit in the violent suppression of the Palestinian people. Gordon Brown and David Cameron are both self-proclaimed Zionists, though Nick Clegg to his credit isn't. Unfortunately he has been totally silent about the latest atrocity.
The reality is that the unstinting support which Britain and the USA give to the fanatical regime in Israel, who every week steal more land from Palestinians, smash up more Palestinian homes, and shoot and kill Palestinians, simply encourages terrorism.
Israel is quote unlike any other country in the world, because your identity as a citizen is determined by your religion. It is a vicious sectarian state which systematically discriminates against Christians and Muslims.
It is also an increasingly crazy regime which now has made the mistake of thinking it can murder Europeans in the same way it murders Arabs.

In Israel anyone who is born an Arab experiences discrimination

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rubberneck says...
7:11pm Tue 1 Jun 10

After the 2nd world war the jews vowed never to be pushed qround again

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Mrs Brilliant says...
7:27pm Tue 1 Jun 10

rubberneck wrote:
After the 2nd world war the jews vowed never to be pushed qround again
Pathetic. Why should the Palestinians be punished for the Holocaust, which was a crime of Europeans, not Arabs?
In any case the best critics of Israel are Jews, eg Noam Chomsky, Tom Segev, John Rose, Avi Shlaim.
Zionism had set its sights on Palestine, for spurious theological reasons, long before the second world war. Jewish radicals believed in fighting anti-semitism in those countries where it existed, reactionary Jews believed in retreating to a Jewish 'homeland' which actually belonged to another people, the Palestinians. Zionism was a racist project from its inception, as the diaries of Herzl show.
The racist settler state of Israel is only sponsored by the west because we regard the Middle East as ours, for its oil. Hence the Iraq war. Hence British support for Israel and Egypt, both vicious torture states which suppress dissent and commit weekly human rights abuses of no interest to tghe western media.

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Mrs Brilliant says...
7:36pm Tue 1 Jun 10

rubberneck wrote:
After the 2nd world war the jews vowed never to be pushed qround again
By the way, Israel is NOT 'the Jews'. Most Jews don't live in Israel. Most Jews live quite happily in countries alongside other religious groups.
Israel is a Jewish supremacist state which systematically disciminates against anyone born there who is not a Jew.
Anyone watching Sky News yesterday, where a gloating mob waving Israeli flags celebrated the massacre of the peace activists and then spotted two young women walk past in Muslim dress, and turned on them, screaming "death to Arabs"?That is the true, ugly face of modern Israel, and it is not surprising that Israel is today supported by fascist organisations like the BNP and the so-called "English Defence League".
Incidentally a lot of modern Israelis were born in places like New York and Essex. They have a "right of return" based on the Bible, but the Palestinians born there, who were thrown out in 1948 by Jewish terrorists, don't.
Israel is the world's biggest recruiter of homegrown terrorism that there is, because of its glaring human rights abuses, which are financed and armed by the USA and Britain.

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rubberneck says...
7:59am Wed 2 Jun 10

What a lot of people fail to understand is that Israel have still been subjected to rocket attacks every day and have shown great restraint despite being consistently attacked. Hamas only had to stop the rocket attacks and israel would have stopped the counter attacks.
It is quite cleqr thqt the so called peace convey had ulterior motives in fueling trouble, by attacking the soldiers first with iron bars and pointed sticks and the troops are not trained to just stand there. One soldier was thrown overboard. The jews occupy Israel under International agreement decided after the 2nd World War.
It just seems very fashionable and typical of the pro palastinian BBC to launch an anti jewish campaign as they do with the tories

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janusbranzer says...
8:37am Wed 2 Jun 10

No, they were not 'caught up' in it, they deliberately involved themselves in a mission to supply terrorists in Gaza, they were on a ship that repeatedly ignored warnings to not approach Israel, the ship broke through the blockade and when security forces landed on the ship they were immediately attacked by a mob wielding metal bars, clubs and knives.

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Flaming June says...
10:49am Wed 2 Jun 10

Janusbranzer, my understanding is that the convoy was still in international waters when it was boarded and had not, as you say, broken through the blockade. The Israeli forces' boarding is thus tantamount to an act of piracy, against which those on board had every right to defend themselves. Israel has for too long acted in defiance of international law, with the complicity of the US, UK and other governments. I very much hope that this time, by their outrageous action, they have gone too far. Yes, Hamas refuses to recognise the right of Israel to exist and yes, the shadow cast by the Holocaust is a long one but two wrongs do not make a right and for Israel to treat the Palestinian people as it does is indefensible and should not be tolerated by the western powers. Turkey, Israel's sole supporter in the Muslim world, has acted (thus far) with remarkable restraint. I almost hope they do send their navy to support the next convoy and thereby force the international community to acknowledge this matter for the crisis it has long been but about which they have maintained a conspiracy of silence.

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Nicholas Gascoine says...
8:13am Thu 3 Jun 10

Whatever the many wrongs committed by Netenyahu's government - and they are many - and many, if not a majority of Israelis and jews do not like him ....
There is STILL a question to be asked:
Why are these people, the so-called "aid volunteers", supporting Nazis?
Hamas are Nazis, as are Hizbollah.
WWII isn't over yet!

Some people need to be reminded of this extremely unpleasant fact.

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rubberneck says...
8:57am Thu 3 Jun 10

True and if I was jewish I would never let people treat me or jews like they did in that film the piano.

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mr rusty says...
11:47am Thu 3 Jun 10

Currently Hamas are not allowing any aid in until the Isrealis release everyone they took off the boat.....make of that what you will.Whatever, these two people are either very gullible and simple minded or they're potential terrorist recruits desperate to do another 7/7, either way they will need a close look from the security services on their return, assuming they get deported back to the UK.
how do people think Hamas get volunteers and rockets in other than under the cover of aid convoys? And why was there a problem on this one boat only when the others in the convoy had submitted peacably to a search? And why are the turks bleating so much about this when at the same time they're killing kurds on their eastern frontier?

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hursthill says...
2:23pm Fri 4 Jun 10

Israel has both a moral & legal right under international law, to board ships in international waters to ensure rockets are not sent to Hamas, who then aim them at Israeli schoolchildren, or they fall short & kill Palestinians. The problem is Hamas wants to destroy Israel, & Israel wants to defend itself.

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Mrs Brilliant says...
6:54pm Sun 6 Jun 10

The last 4 comments are hysterical rubbish. No one is more like Nazis than the population of Israel, whose racist chauvinist hatred of Arabs is a matter of public record.
Israel is an apartheid state which systematically discriminates against non-Jews.
The murderous attack on the aid convoy was just the latest atrocity in the blood-drenched 62 year-old history of this vile little settler state.
No one but a buffoon would believe that the aid convoy was carrying weapons.
The so-called Hamas rockets are pathetic home-made devices used against a murderous regime armed with state of the art weapons supplied by the West. More people were massacred on the aid convoy in ten minutes than have ever died from Hamas 'rockets'.

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Mrs Brilliant says...
6:59pm Sun 6 Jun 10

The problem is Israel wants to destroy Palestine, and is licensed to do so by the West.
There is no greater inspiration to terrorism than the West's unstinting support of this loathsome racist settler state which murders Palestinians every week of the year, and seizes more of their land every week of the year.
Remember that the greatest critics of Israel are Jews - Ilan Pappe, Noam Chomsky, Avi Shlaim, and hundreds of other writers, who have
exposed the depraved condition of Israel on innumerable occasions.

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