News

Handala Completes Its 2023 Sailing

Handala in Bristol

The Freedom Flotilla 2023 took to the seas again in a 58-foot converted Norwegian fishing boat called Handala! Halted by COVID for a few years, the Gaza Freedom Flotilla sailed this summer in northern Europe. With port visits in Norway, the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden the Freedom Flotilla Coalition did educational events with local Palestinian solidarity organizers. In 2024, Handala will sail to Gaza with educational port visits in Europe and the Mediterranean with a final push to Gaza to break the illegal Israeli blockade!

Handala in Scotland

Handala has handled the sea well, coming across the North Sea in high seas from Oslo to Scotland in mid-June. A 200-year old broken bridge in the Caledonian Canal in the Scottish Highlands halted her progress for several days, but the crew was warmly welcomed by all who passed the locks! Unfortunately, the delay caused cancellation of stops in Glasgow, Dublin and Waterford, but Freedom Flotilla members and local Palestine Solidarity groups held wonderful and well-attended events in the other stops.

One silver lining from being stuck at Laggan Locks in Scotland, was meeting a captain from Inverness, more than an hour away. He is a member of a Palestinian solidarity group and was thrilled to meet us. By great fortune, when he learned Handala needed a captain for an upcoming leg of our trip he introduced us to one! He was both an excellent captain and engineer!

So many have supported the journey along the way. A doctor in Fort William, Scotland graciously brought us multiple dinners and groceries. He has done medical training in Gaza, the West Bank, and Rwanda. A merchant along the canal gave crew members free dinners when he learned about Handala and our efforts to break Israel’s illegal blockade.

Border police

Four Scottish border police officers came aboard in the middle of Scotland, divided us, interrogated the crew and inspected the boat. A local told us that in all the years he had worked there he’d never seen the border police come. It turned out to be a great way to attract local attention and solidarity!

Throughout the UK, local Palestine Solidarity Campaigns (PSCs) have been great. We were greeted in Liverpool by the local PSC who had organized events where local officials, firefighters, union organizers, and others spoke about their solidarity work for Palestine. We also had an event at the oldest mosque in Britain where Alex McDonald from Houston, a US Boats to Gaza steering committee member spoke after prayers; later we were part of a panel in an event at a local church. The outreach in Liverpool was excellent!

Cardiff PSC also welcomed us as we approached the lock. Seeing banners and Palestinian solidarity signs in both English and Welsh was impressive! As soon as Handala docked, a local TV station interviewed captain Clive Haswell in Welsh and later he had an English radio interview on BBC. Good exposure for the campaign!

Cardiff organized a demonstration downtown in response to the violent attack on the Jenin refugee camp by more than a thousand Israeli troops. We marched with their solidarity group through the town to the BBC offices to deliver a letter condemning their biased coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian situation.

March in Cardiff

There have been further stops in Bristol and Southampton England as well as Rotterdam, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Halmstad, Gothenburg, and Oslo.

US Boats to Gaza was well represented in the flotilla’s crew. Alex McDonald and Tighe Barry sailed with Handala from Oslo, through Scotland. Alex continued to Cardiff and Bristol. Ann Wright was part of the ground crew in Liverpool. Kit Kittredge and Keith Meyers represented the Freedom Flotilla at the events in Waterford, Ireland. All US Boats to Gaza volunteers paid their own expenses and we have incredible gratitude for their efforts.

Thank you for your continuing support in raising awareness of the situation in Gaza, and in holding our governments accountable for their complicity in the violations of Palestinian human rights! We join together globally to let Palestinians know that they are not forgotten or alone!

Panel in Rotterdam
Panel Q&A session in Rotterdam

You can see more details of each of the port visits (including pictures and videos) at: https://freedomflotilla.org/freedom-flotilla-ports/

or some inspiring photos on the Facebook https://www.facebook.com/FreedomFlotillaCoalition/ and https://twitter.com/GazaFFlotilla.

Please continue to donate to the 2024 Gaza Flotilla through our US Boats to Gaza donation link.

Follow Handala on its Northern European Voyage

Handala in Bristol

Handala, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s 2023-4 boat has been sailing throughout northern Europe since April. She officially left on her journey on June 16, 2023 after introductory stops at ports throughout Norway. She then sailed across the North Sea to Scotland and down the Caledonial Canal.

Freedom Flotilla events were held in Glasgow and Inverness Scotland. Then she sailed down the Irish Sea to Liverpool and an event occurred also in Waterford, Ireland. Cardiff was her port visit in Wales before returning back to England in Bristol.

Follow the events at different ports at: https://freedomflotilla.org/freedom-flotilla-ports/

Freedom Flotilla Coalition prepares for 2023 Actions

After the global pandemic pause, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition has initiated plans to again sail to challenge the illegal, immoral and inhumane blockade of Gaza. Freedom Flotilla Coalition campaign members, including US Boats to Gaza, recently met in London (Nov. 2022). Member campaigns from Norway, Malaysia, US, Sweden, Canada, France, New Zealand and the International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza attended. We also met with British and international Palestinian rights solidarity organizations to discuss plans to reactivate and expand our work. Our goals remain full human rights for all Palestinians, and in particular, freedom of movement within historic Palestine and the honoring of the international Right of Return.

In light of the increasingly racist and extreme political situation in apartheid Israel and the increasingly brutal repression in occupied Palestine, we are reaching out to other parts of the solidarity movement to work together towards our common goals. This work includes amplifying Palestinian voices, especially those from Gaza, and supporting our civil society partners, like the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which represents farmers and fishers in Gaza. The UAWC, along with other Palestinian civil society organizations, has been unjustly smeared and designated by the Israeli occupation blatantly incorrectly as a terrorist organization in an attempt to undermine their important role in documenting human rights violations and building resilience in Palestine. While some of our partner organizations are actively involved with important programs addressing the most urgent needs of Palestinian children traumatized by the blockade and murderous Israeli attacks on Gaza, we recognize that a lasting solution requires an end to the blockade.

Human rights organizations, civil society groups, and other solidarity movements are under attack in Palestine and around the world. Our response must reflect and amplify the urgent pleas from our civil society partners to end the blockade of Gaza. At the same time, we also work to end the media blockade by exposing the brutal reality of occupation and apartheid that most media ignore.

As our predecessors in the Free Gaza Movement said when they began these challenging voyages in 2008, we sail until Gaza and Palestine are free!

Barbara Briggs-Letson

Barbara Briggs-Letson

Gaza Freedom Flotilla supporter and participant, 88-year-old Barbara Briggs-Letson passed on August 17 with her family and friends by her side. Barbara had a long history with the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. She was a key ground crew member in 2011 with the US Boat to Gaza Audacity of Hope in Athens. In 2016, she was on the ground crew for the Women’s Boat to Gaza in Barcelona. In 2018, she traveled for two months visiting 20 ports as ground crew for Al Awda and was the nurse on the leg of the voyage from La Rochelle, France, to Gijón, Spain.

Barbara was a longtime supporter of Palestinian rights. She had been to Gaza in 2009 as a part of a CODEPINK delegation for International Women’s Day, in another delegation in May/June 2009 (see Barbara at minute 4:30 of this video), in 2012 as a part of an emergency delegation after another Israeli attack on Gaza and in 2014 as part of an international delegation of 100 women whom Egyptian authorities refused entry into Gaza. She wrote:

“I have visited in both Gaza and Palestine/Israel and thus, have glimpsed life there. It is not human. To nonviolently change this reality is something worth working for, working hard for. At 55 I went to nursing school and once I had my RN and training as a lay midwife, went with my husband, to volunteer for four years in the countryside of Guatemala, then Honduras. Life was/is hard there, but nothing like Gaza. I feel the injustice and pain in my gut.”

From a visit to Gaza in 2012, Barbara wrote:

“When I visited Gaza,, I walked into the port as the sun rose and fishermen returned from a night of fishing. I was curious and a curiosity. We did not exchange words and I wandered,
stopping at boats, looking at their catch. One boat with two or three quiet men, a few spaces down the harbor, another boat. Each had a box maybe 18”x18” and each box held enough small fish to leave spaces between them as they lay in the bottom of those boxes. It was a night’s work yet not even a meal. That memory is the reason I’m on the Al Awda today. Gaza was not and is not a human place.”

When not working with US Boats to Gaza and the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Barbara protested Israeli and US assassin drones. She joined protests at Creech Drone Base, Nevada; Beale Air Force Base, California; and on delegations to Pakistan and Germany. Barbara created a book of the names of children killed by US assassin drones. The pages of the book unfolded to circle a room with the names of the children in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen that US assassin drones had killed. The book was used in meetings with members of the German Parliament to urge members to vote against weaponizing that country’s drones.

Barcelona before departure
Barbara and US Boats to Gaza friends in Barcelona

For a CODEPINK: Women for Peace delegation to Iran in 2019, Barbara created a book of the names of those on the commercial airliner Iranian Air flight 655 who perished on July 3, 1988, when the US naval destroyer Vincennes shot down the aircraft as it left Iran on a scheduled flight on a scheduled route, killing all 290 onboard, for which the US has never apologized. Barbara presented the book to the Foreign Minister of Iran, who asked that it be kept at the Tehran Peace Museum. Barbara gave the book with the names written in Farsi to Tehran Peace Museum Director Taghipour and the Peace Education Department’s Yalda Khosravi. The book still resides at the Peace Museum in Tehran as a testament to the importance of citizen-to-citizen diplomacy.

In 2022, in Barbara’s last six months, she continued her busy activist life on delegations to Tucson, Arizona, for the “All the Walls Must Fall” conference linking struggles on the Mexican border and in Palestine; to Washington, DC, for the Poor People’s Campaign (be sure to watch the excellent video); and to Guantánamo, Cuba, for the conference on the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases.

We will miss Barbara’s smile, spirit, love, and stand for justice and humanity!

¡Barbara Briggs-Letson—PRESENTE!

Remembering Gail Miller

Remembering Our Gail Miller…

Gail Miller, a brave sailor who attempted to break the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza as part of the 2016 Women’s Boat to Gaza, and a member of the US Boats to Gaza steering committee,  passed away on April 15, 2022.  Gail has been and remains an inspiration for so many – a steady hand on the tiller pointing us towards justice, freedom, equality – all with love.

What friends are saying in remembrance of Gail:

Gail Miller ¡PRESENTE!

The world is no longer the same place. Today and onward, a shining space once occupied by a unique , generous and fierce person, Gail Miller, will be filled with the presence of memory and the power of love… today we have lost a great and powerful woman, a fighter and healer,

Gail Women boat to Gaza
Gail with “Stay Human” on her shirt.

a dear friend to so very many, a loving mother, a grandmother and matriarch to a great clan, a loving partner to her dear Billy and an organizer of intimate, abundant gatherings that allowed for political action to be planned or shared, a courageous activist and comrade who inspired and instigated and labored toward a world where justice would be a lived experience and for which we would always fight.

Gail Miller knew and clearly voiced and manifested the deeply held belief that justice is only realized in liberation for all and liberation is realized in the struggle for justice and it comes over a long arch of time and not all at once and never, ever to be taken for granted but practiced.Gail Miller Women Boat to Gaza
Gail knew, to struggle well together we needed to break bread and to share food together and she often provided for us abundantly.

I worked closely with Gail to send a U.S. BOAT TO GAZA and she was dedicated, in solidarity, to the liberation struggle in Palestine because she knew none of us are free until Palestine is free.

REST IN POWER dear Gail, dear friend. We carry on in your great memory.

– Laurie Arbeiter

I remember laughing with Gail and Lisa under a tree in some country because Gail in cabinLisa had to prop up the terrible non-violence training that some other project had organized and how the three of us knew that it takes a woman to get the job done…Gail knew how to read people and could identify problems quickly and calmly. I will always remember that about her because that’s what I try to do in my own world.  I have met the strongest women I know through the flotilla.

– Wendy Goldsmith

I am so sad to see this news. She was a wonderful woman, full of passion for Palestine. When she left Barcelona on the boat sailing to Gaza, she was beaming, one of the most excited passengers on the boat. I remember waving at her as the boat slid past the docks. She had the biggest grin on her face I’d ever seen.

There will be a hole left that will be hard for any of us to fill.

“Good night, sweet princess. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

– Greta Berlin

Barcelona before departure
Women Boat to Gaza members prior to departure in Barcelona 2016

 


Gail Miller and the “Audacity of Hope” on Democracy Now (July 6, 2011)

2011 Audacity of Hope w Gail Miller

Gail Miller Women Boat to Gaza

US Boats to Gaza Ambulance in Service in Gaza

Ambulance and Gaza patient

US Boats to Gaza ambulance

We are excited to see the ambulance US Boats to Gaza purchased with other Freedom Flotilla Coalition members and coordinated by member Kia Ora Gaza from New Zealand!  Thank you to Miles of Smiles whose people were responsible for making this extremely complex process of getting vans converted into ambulances and transported to and allowed into Gaza.  And thank you to all who donated to US Boats to Gaza to make this dream become a reality!

More information in The Palestine Chronicle.

 

A Little Perspective

With the recent uproar over the US Border Patrol treatment of Haitian refugees on the US-Mexico border, US Boats to Gaza deemed it appropriate to highlight how much worse the treatment is on the separation fence between Israel and Gaza.  As Americans who support the Israeli military with over $3.8 billion per year, we are unfortunately complicit in not only the abuse but also the murder of innocent civilians.  We decided to create a short video clip with a lot of help from our Canadian Freedom Flotilla Coalition partner to help Americans understand what we are supporting and protecting.  Here is the video clip:

 

If Telling the Truth is Anti-Semitic, We Have a Problem

SNL Michael Che

Michael Che said “Israel is reporting that they have vaccinated half of their population, and I’m gonna guess it’s the Jewish half” on the “Weekend Update” segment of February 20, 2021 Saturday Night Live.

What often makes the “Weekend Update” segment funny, is how Michael Che and Colin Jost share an element of truth about what is happening in the news.

Numerous organizations and individuals have accused Che’s statement as being anti-Semitic including the ADL’s CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt: “Saturday’s deeply offensive joke about Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination process not only missed the mark, but crossed the line — basing the premise of the joke on factual inaccuracies and playing into an antisemitic trope in the process.”1

The problem is that Che is telling the truth. Half of the people under Israeli control are not Jewish. Most of them are even denied citizenship. 70 percent of the people in Gaza are refugees; their homes are in Israel yet they are denied their Right of Return, a right that all people have according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Fourth Geneva Convention. And, as Che points out, they are not getting the vaccine—Israel has only allowed two thousand vaccines to enter Gaza for a population of two million.

The problem is that the ADL and other Jewish organizations are defending the state of Israel, a state that has numerous UN resolutions condemning it for its human rights violations. These Israel-loyal organizations claim to be offended and concerned about discrimination when they stand by and support a country that defeated a proposed law to treat all its citizens equally, a country that has occupied a population for over fifty years and blockaded a mostly child population (over 50 percent of the population of Gaza are under the age of eighteen) for over a decade.

The ADL and other organizations claim to be against bullying and to be against discrimination but they did not seem to be concerned about the joke that immediately preceded the one about the state of Israel: a joke about the Catholic church changing its policy about wiping ashes from foreheads on Ash Wednesday; Colin Jost said “I think no touching could just be a great new rule in general.”

If anyone is creating ill-will towards Jews, it is not Michael Che, it is those who claim that Israel represents Jewish values.

It’s also interesting to note how Americans are given a much more one-sided view of the response to Michael Che’s comments.  The Insider published multiple versions of an article by Rachel E. Greenspan.  In the Australian version of the Business Insider entitled “Why Michael Che’s ‘SNL’ joke about Israeli vaccinations sparked a debate about anti-Semitism,” the article quotes a tweet from Jewish Voice for Peace saying, “They say there’s a grain of truth to every joke, but this SNL one has 5 million,” referring to the 5 million Palestinians under Israeli occupation, not counted in Israeli vaccination numbers.  The article mentions a couple of other Jews who stated that the comment was not anti-Semitic.  The American version of the article was entitled “A top Jewish organization slammed Michael Che’s controversial joke about Israeli vaccinations on ‘SNL’ and reached out to Lorne Michaels,” did not include the quote from JVP, and only mentioned one person who disagreed with the anti-Semitism accusation.  This single case was mentioned in the last paragraph of the article.2

Read the opinion piece in Haaretz by Joshua Shanes, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston and Director of its Arnold Center for Israel Studies. It is entitled: “No, ‘Saturday Night Live’ Isn’t Inciting the Mass Murder of Jews”

  1. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/michael-che-snl-israel-vaccination-joke-sparks-anti-semitism-debate-2021-2
  2. https://www.insider.com/michael-che-israel-jewish-joke-backlash-adl-snl-weekend-update-2021-2

Associate Professor Haidar Eid on December 27, 2020

Associate professor Haidar Eid in Gaza commemorates December 27, 2008 when Israel attacked the civilian population it is supposed to defend. During this massacre Israeli forces killed approximately 1400 Palestinians in contrast to 13 Israeli casualties. Dr. Eid reminds people of conscience across the world that we all have to defend human rights because our governments do not. Palestine is the perfect example of this relinquishment of responsibility—refugees have been prevented from returning for over seventy years and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza continue after more than fifty years. He calls on all to support activism such as BDS and the Freedom Flotilla to bring freedom to Palestinians.