The Atlanta Journal-Constitution · Atlanta, GA (per the printed folio) · 31 December 2008
CP-2008-022
McKinney relief ship hits Israeli vessel
By JULIA MALONE jmalone@ajc.com, BOB DEANS bdeans@ajc.com and JEFFRY SCOTT jscott@ajc.com
Transcribed from the clipping
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. But Israeli authorities said the collision was accidental.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the boat tried to outmaneuver an Israeli navy ship and crashed into it, lightly damaging both vessels. The navy then escorted the boat out into the territorial waters of Cyprus. A U.S. State Department spokesman said Tuesday that U.S. diplomats had issued no protests to Israeli authorities.
But the incident reverberated in Atlanta, McKinney's hometown. A protest was held Tuesday outside the Israeli Consulate on Spring Street by pro-Palestinian groups in the Atlanta area. Saba Khalid, a member of Emory Advocates For Justice In Palestine, said about 100 people protested against Israeli action in Gaza.
How this transcription was made
Date confirmed on the page (eva-folio). Adjudicated corrected against the printed page: Folio rule across the top of the page: left end reads "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution / ajc.com", centre reads "NEWS", right end reads "Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2008 / A7". Both ends are sharp and unambi.
Context added by this archive
Staff copy, three bylines, all local. This is a Georgia paper covering the Free Gaza Movement's SS Dignity being rammed off Gaza during Cast Lead, and the local protest that followed — the kind of hometown-angle coverage the archive is usually short of.
Photo caption: "A crowd on the dock welcomes the vessel SS Dignity from the group Free Gaza as it arrives in the port of Tyre, Lebanon." Credit: MUHAMMED ZAATARI / Associated Press. Mugshot of McKinney captioned "McKinney".
Also quoted in the story: Riad Mansour, Palestinian Ambassador to the U.N.; Jonathan Peled, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington; and Paul Larudee, a co-founder of the California-based Free Gaza group. The story closes "The Associated Press contributed to this article."
Cite this clipping
"McKinney relief ship hits Israeli vessel," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 31 December 2008, p. A7 (per the printed folio). Covering Palestine archive, CP-2008-022. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2008-022
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Last updated 2 November 2026
This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1724 to 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.
The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the news agency that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. A city here is where the newspaper was published, not where the story came from, and on most records it was taken from the masthead.
Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2008-022.
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