Victoria man aboard ship stormed by Israeli soldiers off Gaza

VICTORIA _ Friends of a Canadian man who was aboard a convoy of ships stormed by Israeli soldiers off the Gaza coast say he’s a “teddy bear” whose activist work was driven by a near-death experience.

And they’re worried about what happened to Kevin Neish, a retired marine engineer from Victoria, after the violent confrontation between activists and the Israeli military that left at least 10 dead.

Neish, 53, joined pro-Palestinian activists aboard the ship Challenger II, one of six vessels on a mission to carry humanitarian relief to the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Foreign Affairs said no Canadians were believed to be injured in the Monday morning raid, but that provided little comfort to those closest to Neish.

“We have had no word from Kevin, we don’t know if he is all right, if he is in detention. We don’t know when he’s coming back and I’m very, very concerned about him,” his friend Zoe Blunt told The Canadian Press.

Blunt said Neish, a member of the Free Gaza Movement, became an activist after he was shot by a neighbour in a random, unprovoked attack but she declined to provide further details, calling it a personal matter.

“He’s had some transformative experiences,” she said. “He’s witnessed a great deal of brutality against innocent civilians in his life, here at home and abroad.

“I think it reached a point where he could just no longer turn away and let it happen.”

Mordecai Briemberg, a member of a group called the Canada Palestine Support Network, said he’s known Neish for over a decade.

“(I know Neish) through social justice issues, both in terms of central America where he’s been very active and also in support for Palestinian human rights,” he said.

“He’s a bit of a teddy bear kind of guy. He’s very low-key, very compassionate, very unrhetorical, simply sees an injustice and he wants to help in a non-violent way.”

Neish’s brother Steve said his younger brother “has a high degree of social concern.”

He said he’s quite concerned about his welfare, and Blunt said Neish’s daughter was “distraught.”

“There have been no reports about casualties on the boat the Challenger, which was the boat we think Kevin was on, although people may have been moving around between the boats,” she said.

At least 10 people, most of them Turkish, were killed in the Monday morning raid and dozens more wounded after the Israeli forces boarded the vessels.

There has been international condemnation of the Israeli action.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Ottawa and was to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper but cut short the rest of his visit and a planned trip to Washington in order to return home Monday.

A Foreign Affairs spokeswoman said the department has heard reports additional Canadian citizens might have been affected by the raid and is “making every effort to follow up on these reports.”

Blunt said she last had personal contact with Neish, who she described as a good friend, on May 27. In a web post dated May 30, the father of one said he was getting ready for the impending mission.

Neish as going to repair a well in a Palestinian community in Gaza but on board the ship, he was assigned to “defend” journalists in the event of soldier boarding.

“Since the Israeli military always tries to seize the media first to destroy evidence, my job is to non-violently get in the way of the Israeli commandos in a narrow passageway for about 30 seconds so the journalists can upload their reports,” he wrote on the Free Gaza website.

“It should be interesting, to say the least.”

Protests against Israel’s actions were planned for Victoria, Vancouver and several other Canadian cities Monday, and speaking in Toronto, British novelist Salman Rushdie condemned the killings.

In Vancouver, about 100 people forced police to reroute traffic at a downtown intersection. Among those in attendance was Rabbi David Mivasair of the Ahavat Olam Synagogue.

“My hope is if there’s enough protest in enough places, there will be more people in Israel who will feel strengthened and supported in trying to change their own government’s policy,” he said.

“What the government in Israel is doing now is not something that is supported by all Israelis.”