Jailed for Sailing to Gaza, Challenging the Blockade
Medea Benjamin & Robert Naiman
[Photo: An image released by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) shows the two Gaza-bound boats carrying pro-Palestinian activists in the Mediterranean Sea November 4, 2011. The Israeli navy boarded on Friday two yachts carrying pro-Palestinian activists who had set sail for the Gaza Strip in a challenge to Israel's blockade of the Islamist-controlled territory. The military said in a statement that the Canadian "Tahrir" and Irish "Saoirse" vessels would be taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod. (IDF/Handout/REUTERS)]
The Israeli military stopped these two small ships carrying peace activists to Gaza, but they won’t stop the Palestinians who are demanding freedom, and they won’t stop the solidarity movement.
Two boats full of courageous passengers were on their way to Gaza when they were intercepted on Friday, November 4, by the Israeli military in international waters. We call the passengers courageous because they sailed from Turkey on November 2 with the knowledge that at any moment they might be boarded by Israeli commandos intent on stopping them—perhaps violently, as the Israeli military did in 2010 when they killed nine humanitarian aid workers on the Turkish boat named Mavi Marmara.
The boats—one from Canada and one from Ireland—were carrying 27 passengers, including press and peace activists from Ireland, Canada, the United States, Australia and Palestine. They were unarmed, and the Israeli military knew that. They were simply peace activists wanting to connect with civilians in Gaza, and the Israeli military knew that. Yet naked aggression was used against them in international waters—something that is normally considered an act of piracy.
The passengers on the boats were sailing to Gaza to challenge the U.S. - supported Israeli blockade that is crippling the lives of 1.6 million Palestinian civilians in Gaza. They were sailing to stand up against unaccountable power—the power of the Israeli government—that has been violating the basic rights of the 5.5 million Palestinians that live inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders or in the Occupied Territories. They were sailing for us, civil society, who believe in human rights and the rule of law.