Above photo: Crew member aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla. Gulcin Bekar.
Despite two suspected drone attacks, the largest civilian-led maritime effort to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza promises to fulfill its mission.
Activists aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla vow to continue their mission to set sail to Gaza, insisting nothing will stop them from breaking Israel’s blockade and bringing aid to Gaza. Members of the Flotilla have reported two suspected drone attacks on their boats while docked in Tunisian waters. Still, the first wave of Flotilla ships departed the Sidi Bou Said port in Tunisia where they were stationed on the night of September 11, and the rest are set to depart on September 12.
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“We know who has interest in stopping these flotillas, in stopping this mission to Gaza,” Mariana Mortágua, a member of the Portuguese Parliament who joined the Global Sumud Flotilla, told Democracy Now!, indicating that Israel had a role in the attacks on the ships. “We are very also aware of the fact that Israel did this at the same time they were displacing 1 million people in Gaza. So, there is these tactics that they use all the time to change the attention, to move the eye from Gaza to the flotilla, from the flotilla to Qatar.”
Despite the attacks, activists aboard the flotilla have vowed to continue their mission. “No acts of aggression will stop us. In the coming days the flotilla will be united at sea in our mission to break the siege, to end the genocide and to stand with the Palestinian people in their just struggle for freedom,” said Saif Abukeshek, Global Sumud Flotilla Steering Committee Member.
“People who hit you, as an individual, or as a group, they are also doing that to teach a lesson,” said Francesca Albanese, and the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. “To make sure that this works as an alert, as a red flag so that others will not follow you.”
“If there is a state behind it, not only it shows the level of conviction that impunity is still that enabling ground, but also it shows the fear,” Albanese articulated.
The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) is the largest civilian-led maritime effort to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza, and builds on the efforts of previous flotillas attempting to deliver aid to the besieged Strip, aiming to bring food and medical supplies. The GSF brings together grassroots organizers, sailors, doctors, artists, and solidarity activists from more than 40 countries, including celebrities and celebrated activists such as Greta Thunberg and Irish actor Liam Cunningham. Many of these organizers are part of groups including the Global March to Gaza, Sumud Convoy, Sumud Nusantara, and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
Gaza On The Brink
As international organizations and aid groups have reported for months, Gaza is on the brink of mass famine due to Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid. Aid organization Action Against Hunger reports that in July and August alone, their nutrition teams “received more than 400 cases of malnourished children, with 20% of cases classified as severe.”
Beyond depriving Palestinians in Gaza of food, Israel is also depriving Palestinians of medical supplies. “Just a few days ago, I spoke with a doctor in Gaza who told me about 3,600 Palestinian children with type 1 diabetes who no longer have access to insulin,” Moroccan pharmacist and human rights defender Aziz Rhali, a part of the Flotilla crew, told Peoples Dispatch. “For a child with type 1 diabetes, insulin is a matter of life or death. Those 3,600 children face a death sentence.”
“At the same time, healthcare workers themselves have been deliberately targeted by the Israeli forces, precisely because their presence signals the presence of civilians,” said Rhali. “Why has Al-Awda Hospital been attacked so many times? Because the hospital’s existence in the north means Palestinians remain in that region. The goal is clear: to push Gazans to leave by destroying the healthcare system, and therefore eliminating the medical staff who sustain it.”
“What we are seeing in Gaza City is not just a crisis, it is a collapse of human survival,” says Natalia Anguera, Head of Operations for the Middle East at Action Against Hunger. “Families are hungry, exhausted, grieving, and can’t imagine having to move their children again – some for the twenty-sixth time in less than two years. Despite our teams’ relentless efforts, they too are facing this same collapse.”
