Regarding the multifaceted solidarity with Palestine, of the most diverse forms of resistance the fleets have become a tradition of denounce and struggle to end the inhuman siege to Gaza by Israel. This year, the boat Zeytouna-Oliva –which went on that mission and was assaulted by the Occupant Marine, still in international waters- raised the flag of ending the blockade and also the boycott to Israel.
By Soraya Misleh.
There is an essential feature when talking about solidarity and resistance. The 13 people in the crew were women, from different countries, among them some journalists. On October 7th –after most of them were detained for around 48 hours-, they were deported and punished with banning for ten years to enter the occupied Palestine.
The peculiar gender composition threw light over the essential role of women in the entire history of the Palestinian resistance and the urgency for international solidarity. Women are the main victims: for example, in Gaza, the third cause of dead is pregnancy, because of the siege that impedes women to access the basic right of pre and post birth assistance. They are always in the front line, in a double fight: against the patriarchal oppression, and against the barbarianism of the Israeli occupation –in the case of Gaza, with the help of the Egyptian dictatorship, too-.
The female fleet, which left Barcelona on September 14th and was assaulted by Israel on October 5th, followed the example of the previous fleets, plus the additional element of being all of them women.
The first initiative was also the most tragic one. In 2010, the one named “Freedom Flotilla”, counted with 6 boats and a crew of 450 people. The first boat in the line –Mavi Marmara– was brutally attacked by Israel, ending with the death of 9 Turkish people. The Brazilian filmmaker Iara Lee was in the boat. After being deported, she told to the BBC, in an interview in Brazil, what she lived: “we were waiting for shots fired in the air or to our feet, as a warning, by they shot to kill”.
As a proof of the genocide nature of Israel, the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed he “had no choice”. Only in 2013, after the global repudiation and with internal opposition, he apologized for the killing, aiming to normalize relations with Turkey. By the beginning of 2016, an agreement was signed to recompose relations –sadly, against the campaign of Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) to Israel-, guaranteeing a compensation of US$20 million to the families of the victims.
The next fleets –like the Zaytouna, of brave women- show the bullets and the force cannot shut the dreams. The criminalization of international solidarity has intensified, following the logic of isolating even more the already choked Palestinian people, and of silencing the critical voices all over the world. But it backfired: the image of Israel to the world goes from bad to worse; the Zionist project was never as discredited as it is now. Nobody that knows something of the Palestinian history and raises the flags of human rights and justice believes the worn-out propaganda ideology of Israel, which has as one of its main instruments the denomination of “anti-Semitic” of anyone who criticizes the Zionism, while relying on the Bible to justify their existence.
History shows the political project of constituting a homogeneous State –therefore, based on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people over 68 years ago, with the nakba (the catastrophe)- serves colonial interests in the entire region. It has nothing to do with religion. Unfortunately, our enemies are powerful and manage to continue over the decades: the Arab regimes –specifically the Egyptian in relation to Gaza-, the imperialism/Zionism, and the Palestinian elites, as Ghasan Kanafani correctly pointed in his book The Palestinian revolt of 1936-1939.
The heroic Palestinian resistance -that does not shut up nor hesitates, inside Palestine as much as outside- has exposed this project, and the international solidarity is decisive to make resound these voices. Inspired in this resistance, the absurd criminalization of activists and intellectuals must be stimulus and motivation to continue the struggle all the way to the Palestinian liberation.
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Translation: Sofia Ballack
