Part VII: Peace through the muzzle of a gun
An account of our voyage from the English Chanel to Gaza.
A coastal town reveals itself on a clear night at about 25 nautical miles out to sea. First you pick up a loom — the reflected glow of electric lights — then the lights at the tops of buildings or industrial towers, then navigation signals, highway lights and advertising.
We had been steering our sailing vessel Freedom east toward the Port of Gaza but we had been boarded at about 37 nm from our destination. We were now under the control of the Israeli Defense Force and were headed northeast. We were still in international waters — an area of the eastern Mediterranean that would be Palestine’s coastal waters if Palestine were a state.
Not that the location matters. The blockade is illegal because of what it does, not because of where it is. The lawyers worked through that question years ago: “collective punishment”, a war crime. Which is why we were there. And why I was working through the triangular arithmetic to guess when I might see Gaza. It was hard to move in the crowded cockpit under armed guard, but I craned my neck to get a better view in the direction I thought was the Gaza shoreline. It was a low, dark smudge on the horizon. No loom from streets lights. No blinking navigation signals. In other words, no electricity in the prison camp. Israel had turned it off. Buried in that darkness were about two million people.
As we moved beyond Gaza’s northern fence we could see isolated lights low on the coast. Then a string of lights running northward. Ashkelon. In Ashkelon they know exactly when the IDF is bombing Gaza because they hear the night raids roaring overhead to their targets. Another few hours north to the larger harbor of Ashdod, where we would be forced ashore.
Though we would learn this only later, earlier that day Israeli snipers near the south end of prison fence shot eight Palestinians. Since March 30 of 2018, Palestinians have been gathering in the near the fence and, in this 19th week of Friday protests, the injuries and deaths had climbed past 170 killed and 17,000 injured. The IDF reported that some of the protesters “breached the fence” just as we were trying to breach the blockade.
The sun was rising on Saturday morning giving us a better look at our captors as their navy tug towed us into the harbor. We were 12. Each of us struggled up onto the dock with our duffle bags and faced pretty young soldiers aiming video cameras. Addressing an imagined Israeli TV news audience, each of us stated that we had been kidnapped by the Israeli Navy and brought to Israel against our will.
After four days in prison we were categorized by nationality and dispatched to a holding cell at Ben Gurion Airport. Our prison days had been unlike anything experienced by a Palestinian in jail and our flights out of Israel would be beyond the imagination of all but a few living in the West Bank let alone Gaza. The engines whistled, the Mediterranean was again a sunny blue. The attractive Israeli women in the seat next to mine was taking her granddaughter to California and Disneyland. My ship-mate Pascal was seated a few rows behind waiting for the drinks service. El-Al’s inflight magazine Atmosphere informed me that one of my favorite concert performers would be playing Tel Aviv. I sketched out my protest letter to him then slept. We landed at Charles de Gaulle.
As I exited the plane the air steward handed my passport directly to one of the uniformed Police au Frontiere waiting for us in the gate ramp. I stood aside for the other passengers and waited for Pascal to join me. The first officer opened my passport to examine the photo then looked up at me and nodded.
She asked, “Are you the person who has been deported from Israel?”
“Yes,” I said.
She opened her arms and reached around my shoulders.
“We are so honored to meet you.”
In his recent book, “Gaza, An Inquest Into Its Martyrdom”, Norman Finkelstein writes about the 2010 attempt to break the blockade. This was the famous Mavi Marmara disaster that became so notorious it has inspired several attempts since, including our own. He writes,
“The [UN Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Mission Report … ] gravely observed that it ‘seriously questions the true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers.’ Why? Because it discovered that they intended not only to deliver humanitarian relief but also ‘to generate publicity about the situation in Gaza.’ To clinch its indictment, the Panel reproduced with a great flourish this document ‘prepared by the organizers’:
‘Purpose: Purposes of this journey are to create an awareness amongst world public and international organizations on the inhumane and unjust embargo on Palestine and the contribute to end this embargo which clearly violates human rights and delivering humanitarian relief to the Palestinians.’
“If this statement of intent weren’t incriminating enough, the Panel laid out yet more evidence of the sinister and nefarious plot: ‘The number of journalists embarked on the ships gives further power to the conclusion that the flotilla’s primary purpose was to generate publicity.’ It must be a first, and surely marks a nadir, in the annals of the United Nations that a report bearing its imprimatur vilified the victims of a murderous assault because they sought to cast light on an ongoing crime against humanity.
Pascal and I were rubber-stamped through the police office then escorted to the arrivals level were my partner Karen and a crowd of French activists were waiting to greet us. At the same time, 1,700 miles behind us, a Palestinian boat crew was planning another threat to their Israeli prison staff. The seventh attempt to sail out and away from Gaza to a refugee haven took place a few weeks later, on September 10th, when 49 people boarded 20 small boats and left the Gaza beach heading west. After three miles of freedom their flotilla was forced back to shore. The same naval personnel that had prevented us from sailing through the blockade simply raised their guns and opened fire.
Part II: Gijon, Asturia, Spain and Israel
Part III: There may be no God and no Heaven
