As pro-Palestinian activists weighed how they should spend their coming weekend — writing to Congress to note the over 50 Palestinians killed in December, faxing the UN to protest the lack of action over the Israeli murder of aid worker Iain Hook with sniper scopes in broad daylight, or holding felafel bake sales to raise money to feed the Gazan children because of the Israeli starvers — many breathed a silent ‘thank fuck’ as Canadian activist Jaggi Singh was released from Israeli detention.

“I’m just glad we don’t have to set up another campaign,” said Ahmed Mrasha, “as he busily folded mailers for a coming ‘Save the Nablus 10,000’ rally. “I’m all out of love.”

Mrasha — whose weeks are spent active on endless campaigns to free the latest Palestinian detainee from the newest Israeli desert prison reopened to incarcerate Palestinians en masse for the latest Israeli-defined crime — has had enough.

“It’s all we can do to hold mock funerals for the last 10 teens killed,” he complained. “No sooner have Mo, Chad, and Nabs from the Y built the last dozen cardboard coffins to attempt to raise a pulse from the average American conscience, than the Israelis have perpetrated another massacre we have to schedule a protest for. It’s getting hard to keep up.”

When well-known Canadian activist Jaggi Singh was arrested on 8th January, pro-Palestinian activists around the world rolled their eyes and braced in for a long harsh winter, even in Dubai, which doesn’t know how to spell the word.

“We were livid,” commented Jacque Moutard, from L’infantada electronique, a French non-profit aimed at leveraging the Internet to protest Israeli violence against Palestinian toddlers. “I mean really, we’ve just had Christmas and Ramadan in quick succession! What the hell did the Israelis think they were doing, giving us more activist work by arresting Jaggi Singh at a point when we were already stretched balancing our holiday needs with Palestinian human rights advocacy needs.”

“It’s just not cricket,” stated Christopher Dowl of the Council for the Advancement of Arab British Exploration. “There comes a point when you have to tell the Israelis that it’s just bloody not on. They can’t be prancing about the streets of West Jerusalem arresting writers who we’d look bad not protesting the detention of. We’re already swamped. We’ve got no time for any other campaigns or indeed address any additional educational needs.”

Spokespersons from the Campaign to Free Marwan Barghouti, the Campaign to Allow Arafat to Walk Freely for 500 Yards in a Single Direction Before Encountering an Israeli Tank, and the Palestinian Movement to Eradicate the Need for Anyone to Watch CNN By Removing that Cute Anchorwoman Who Appears Between 5 and 7pm on Wednesdays all declined to comment.

Somewhere tonight, someone else is relieved not to be this week’s cause celebré. Jaggi Singh is alive and well in Toronto. This was Najeeb Al-Anbarry reporting for BNN.