Col. Ann Wright (U.S. Army Ret.)
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
NEW YORK — On June 9 over 300 people braved a torrential downpour and packed the All Souls Church in Manhattan to hear Ann Wright, a former US Army colonel who resigned in protest against the Iraq war, describe her experiences on the Free Gaza flotilla. She was a passenger on one of the smaller ships - the Challenger. Wright began by explaining that the Free Gaza movement did something remarkable in organizing to collect money for ships and, despite the logistics, got people to risk their lives to travel on those ships. The international coalition of 750 people represented the conscience of the world in saying that “we refuse to let this siege stand.”
The attack on the flotilla took place 70 miles from Gaza in international waters. The Israeli military had been meeting with the Knesset everyday long before the flotilla set sail. By 4 AM on May 31st she could see the approach of large high-speed Zodiac (inflatable) boats. Each held 15 - 20 heavily armed men with their faces covered. The Challenger was carrying 4 members of the German parliament and one member of the Swedish parliament. She could also see that the Zodiacs came up to the Mavi Marmara on both sides and the passengers on the Turkish ship had decided that they were “not going to roll out the red carpet.” People on all the ships had talked about what they would do if they were boarded. They were people of peace, they had come in peace, they had no weapons. The passengers on the Challenger stood along the edge of their boat and said, “You are not welcome. These are international waters. Do not come on board this ship.” The commandos threw stun grenades which produce a loud blasting sound, bright light, and smoke. The result is disorientation. 15 commandos boarded each side of the Challenger. The captain stopped moving forward because a large Israeli naval vessel was in front of the Challenger. Wright pointed out that Israel could have stopped the flotilla non-violently by placing vessels in it’s path but the decision had obviously been made to use violence which cost 9 lives.
Once on board the commandos searched all the passengers and confiscated all electronic and photographic equipment - phones, cameras, and computers. Security cameras were removed from the ships. These items were never returned. A total of over $1 million worth of equipment was stolen from flotilla passengers. This includes the property of journalists and documentary filmmakers and their crews. Everyone’s credit cards were also confiscated and not returned. Between the time the ships were boarded and the time they were taken to an Israeli port all luggage was searched. The passengers, including the press, were made to remain in a kneeling position, handcuffed, on the deck in the sun for many hours. Some were not allowed to use the toilet and were told to urinate on themselves.
Everyone was taken to a newly built prison in the Negev and kept there several days. The journalists were also held for several days. Israel was clearly determined to get their version of the story out first. No consular visits were allowed during the first 24 hours.
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“Q: Activists have claimed that during the first few hours after the assault the dying and seriously injured were deliberately denied medical treatment.
A: This is true.
Q: the Israelis state that violence was only used against the passengers on the Mavi Marmara who resisted, Do you agree with this?
A: This is a lie. The Israelis used excessive force and violence on all the boats even when no resistance was offered. Journalists were attacked, some activists were beaten so badly that they needed to be hospitalized when they arrived in Ashdod. An Israeli commando stood on my head with his boot and ground my head into the deck until I screamed. I was handcuffed and a hood was put over my head.”
Mel Frykberg interview with Huwaida Arraf
June 8, 2010 — ipsnews.net
“…there is reason for Israelis and for Jews generally, to think long and hard about the dark Hitler era at this particular time. For the significance of the Gaza Flotilla incident lies not in the questions raised about violations of international law on the high seas, or even about who assaulted who first on the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, but in the larger questions raised about our common human condition by Israel’s occupation policies and its devastation of Gaza’s civilian population.
If a people who so recently experienced on its own flesh such unspeakable inhumanities cannot muster the moral imagination to understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions and even it’s legitimate security concerns are inflicting on another people, what hope is there for the rest of us?”
Henry Siegelman, National Director of the
American Jewish Congress, 1978 - 1994
June 11, 2010 — Haaretz.com
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The passenger/activists learned that the people on the top deck of the Mavi Marmara tried to protect the captain’s cabin and prevent the takeover of the ship for as long as possible. After about 20 minutes the captain stopped this defense and told the passengers not to resist. The IDF members that were roughed-up were given first aid and returned to the military. Weapons taken from them were thrown overboard. People who were shot were refused medical aid from the Israelis on the ship. One of the women in the prison lost her husband on the ship, killed by the IDF. No special consideration was given her as a new widow. After she closed her husband’s eyes she was cuffed and sent on deck to kneel in the sun with the others. Almost all the men on the deck were in their 50s, they were husbands and fathers. They were shot in the head and in the back. 30 bullets were fired into 9 bodies.
Turkey flew 3 chartered planes into Israel to take everyone back to Turkey. The Turkish prisoners refused to leave until all the internationals were released so everyone was flown to Turkey and went home from there.
Wright concluded, piracy, kidnapping, murder, and theft charges will be filed against Israel. This is a movement of “great spirit and conscience” and we must continue to move forward.
Adam Shapiro
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
The next speaker was Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. He began by asking for a moment of silence for the victims of the massacre. He then announced that they are organizing to have an American ship in the next flotilla. This is not just about delivering humanitarian aid. “We were, very much, intentionally, taking a political act by challenging the blockade itself. Not so much to challenge it and be stopped, but to challenge it and break it.” We were not seeking a provocation - we would have been perfectly happy to get the ships into Gaza. What the Palestinian people want and need most is freedom. That is the basic thing they are denied, their human rights. The political act that we took is a response to the political act that Israel took by creating the blockade. Even before that, the political act of the occupation since 1967 must be challenged if we want Palestinians to live free. The blockade is built on the foundation of a 43 year old occupation. The issue of humanitarian aid is forcing the world to take notice.
“We did change the world this week.” In part due to Israel’s brutal response but also because we were prepared. We got the truth out challenging Israeli lies about what happened. Eyewitnesses eventually got to speak and a film was smuggled out. We showed that Israeli pictures and fake audio recordings and doctored infrared footage were all phony. France, Sweden, Spain, and much of Europe condemned Israel. Obama cancelled a visit with Netanyahu and called the attack “regrettable.
The blockade and the life of Gazans is now an issue before the world. We have to take the next steps. 5 organizations organized the flotilla, many others representing millions of people contributed. It was a global intifada. Israel is not only against the Palestinian people but also against the internationals helping them. We have no ships (Israel has confiscated the ships too) now. The new flotilla will be organized using lessons we learned from this one. Momentum is on our side today, on the side of justice, freedom for Palestinians, and for an end to the siege, blockade, occupation, apartheid, and second class citizenship. But momentum being on our side doesn’t mean that we’re winning. We must raise the funds for an American ship in the next flotilla and we must work on the civil society movement for change, the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign. Israelis supporting BDS will be guilty of a criminal act and citizens from other countries who support BDS will not be allowed into Israel or the West Bank. The cultural boycott has been referred to as “cultural terrorism.” The more we can make this a conflict between Israel and the rest of the world, about Israel as a pariah state and the rest of the world standing up for justice, the faster we will win.
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A second report organized by Al-Awda and other groups took place on June 17th at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. this report was to be specifically about the violence unleashed by Israel on the Mavi Marmara. The speakers were to be US filmmaker Iara Lee, British political organizer Kevin Ovenden, and Ahmet Unsal, a former member of Turkey’s Parliament. When the meeting was announced a group calling itself the Jewish Community Relations Council organized a rally in Times Square on June 14th to demand that the State Department investigate the invited speakers for “ties to terrorism”. The attempt to deny the American people the right to hear the truths that the Mavi Marmara passengers have to share with them was shamelessly supported by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Representatives Jerry Nadler, Anthony Weiner, Carolyn Mahoney, Charles Rangel, and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, all at the Times Square rally. The censorship campaign yielded results. Ahmet Unsal was not allowed into the country even though he has been here several times. It was also announced that 500 people would be picketing outside the House of the Lord Church - less than a dozen showed up. But inside the church there were 200+ people who came to hear the report and see the film made by Iara Lee.
Rev. Herbert Daughtry, who hosted the forum
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
Rev. Herbert Daughtry opened the meeting welcoming everyone to his church. He said he supported this cause because he believes in a God who is concerned about the oppressed, not the oppressor and who works for the exploited, not the exploiter. His church has always been about the struggle for freedom, liberation, and a better life. Last summer the church hosted the sendoff of the Viva Palestina convoy bringing aid to Gaza. This is the church where President Aristide came when he was trying to get back to Haiti and where Winnie Mandela spoke when working to defeat apartheid in South Africa. If you are feeling a spirit of continuing the struggle to help Palestine, you are feeling the spirits of freedom fighters in this church, he said. Noting that he has reached his 80th year he said that as his sun goes down in the western sky let the record show that “I’ve been consistent.” It was very unusual for a Black Pentecostal minister to be walking the streets of Belfast when Bobby Sands was dying in prison. Wherever there are human beings suffering on this globe, “that is where I want to be.”
Bill Doar of Al-Awda was the next speaker and he addressed what he called the new McCarthyism, the attempt to label anyone who opposes Israeli apartheid and sending US arms to Israel a terrorist. Liberal Democrats are taking the lead and doing the work of right wing Republicans. “They’re acting like fascists.” Voices of witness to the crimes on the Mavi Marmara will not be silenced. “They risked all to bring life to the people of Gaza and they were murdered in cold blood - shot in the head by a gang of heartless killers who, I’m sorry to say, were paid by our tax dollars.” The politicians who spoke at the rally were walking in the footsteps of Joe McCarthy while supporting every act of terror by the apartheid state against the native people of Palestine. Their hands are “dripping with blood.” They represent not only the Zionist forces but the powerful military-industrial complex who forever wants to see the Islamic world, Africa, Asia, and Latin America ground down and divided. The struggle for Gaza is the front line in the struggle for all of humanity. “And that is why the ships will keep coming” from all over. “The spirit of Rachel Corrie lives on in that ship” that carried her name.
Charles Barron
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
City Councilmember Charles Barron, referred to as “an elected freedom fighter” then spoke of a discussion he had with a rabbi who was critical of his support for Palestine. Barron told him that over the 22 days of Operation Cast Lead (Dec. ’08 - Jan. ’09) 1,400 Gazans were killed, including almost 400 children, and 2,200 homes, hospitals, and schools were destroyed, Gaza has been set-up to be a death camp. Jews have no monopoly on suffering. He concluded, “We only go around once in life so we might as well live it with some spine.”
Kevin Ovenden, who was on the Turkish ship spoke next. He said that the movement had grown but at a terrible price - 9 brothers were taken from us and very many more were hurt by gunshots to the head, abdomen, and limbs. “Their blood is now lapping on the shores of Gaza.” Brothers were shot standing near him and there were no commandos in the area. It is unthinkable to maintain that the people that shot those guns from above were threatened by those standing around him. That was a “complete and utter lie.” It was also a lie to label the shooting death of one man, a photographer holding a camera, who was shot with high velocity bullets in the head, self-defense. The people who were on the flotilla and their supporters are collecting evidence and will be taking legal action in many jurisdictions. Justice will not be denied. Now the question is not if the siege will be lifted but how rapidly. “We are not afraid today.” He compared the Free Gaza movement to the US civil rights movement. The murders of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner that hot summer in Mississippi created a major push forward for the movement for racial equality in the US.
There is a backlash in the press and from Israel condemning the flotilla. We all have to work to refute the charge that what happened on that ship was the fault of the passengers. The commandos were not facing a “lynch mob.” In all legal codes and in religious and moral teachings “victims of lethal violence have an absolute right to defend themselves.” To paraphrase Malcolm X, “We didn’t land on Israel, Israel landed on us.”
Ovenden urged the audience to remember Soweto, Sharpeville, and the murder of Stephen Biko, when apartheid seemed invincible. It was defeated and Nelson Mandela walked free. Public opinion is changing. Israel’s political capital has diminished. Nobody thinks of it as a social democratic paradise anymore. He then enumerated the tasks before the movement and they were in total agreement with the plan laid out by Adam Shapiro days earlier, more boats and more focus on the BDS campaign. He said that a Viva Palestina convoy, the biggest yet, will be leaving London in mid-September, going through Europe to the Middle East, and entering Gaza through Rafah. Simultaneously, a large new flotilla will be sailing through the North Atlantic into the Mediterranean and on to Gaza. The different interlocking elements in this struggle will all work together and reinforce each other.
Ovenden ended by quoting Patty Pierce, an Irishman who spoke in New York on the eve of WW1, “There can be no peace between truth and falsehood, between tyranny and justice, between freedom and oppression. There can only be eternal struggle between them until justice is won and freedom prevails.” This is what we need now. Without justice and freedom there will be no peace in Palestine. If there is no peace there, there will be no peace in the Middle East and in the rest of the world.
Iara Lee, a filmmaker and human rights activist who successfully hid her film of what happened on the Mavi Marmara when the commandos landed spoke next. She said she was appalled by what she saw in Gaza when she visited there last March. The infrastructure was destroyed, people had severe burns on their flesh from the use of white phosphorous against them, and fishermen were being shot at when they tried to fish. She supported the flotilla because she saw it as a way to resist what was being done to the people of Gaza. She and her crew interviewed many on the Mavi Marmara and she kept the camera rolling when they were attacked to provide evidence of how people were massacred. She said that many people took pictures and tried to hide them from the Israelis, but she was the only one who succeeded.
She played a portion of the film for those assembled. It showed blood splattered on the walls, people injured and bleeding being carried below deck by their fellow passengers with many making efforts to stop the bleeding. People were rushing around trying to give first aid. Others seemed to be bleeding so profusely that their fellow passengers didn’t seem to be able to do anything to help them. A helicopter could be seen hovering just above the deck with bright lights shining down on the ship. There were red laser marks on the deck that came from weapon guidance systems seemingly coming from the helicopter. A booklet taken from one of the Israeli commandos, written in Hebrew, had pages that had the names of the different flotilla ships on them along with photos of people. Were they photos of certain passengers? One can only speculate. Someone was walking around with a big sign stating that they were not armed. The film was going to be shown at the UN the next day.
There were several other speakers including Lamis Deek of Al-Awda who said that the Palestinian people want one democratic state in all of Palestine. Jews are welcome to live there as long as they dismantle the Zionist laws and institutions because Zionism = Jewish supremacy.
Danny Meyers
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
Messages of solidarity were read from several organizations. Danny Meyers of the National Lawyers Guild said that seeing the helicopter full of armed soldiers descend on the ship reminded him of Attica when helicopters dropped gas that led to the indiscriminate killing of innocents. Sara Flounders, speaking for the International Action Center, said that a tipping point in the struggle had been reached. It is a moment that comes after many years of resistance and struggle. “We salute that tonight.” Strong solidarity messages were also read from the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and the Gabriela Movement.
Noor Elashi
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
There was a lengthy Q and A and Comments session. One person was anxious to start fundraising to get an American ship in the next flotilla and suggested calling it the Audacity of Hope. Noor Elashi, whose father is a political prisoner in a federal prison in Illinois spoke of how the “international solidarity bravery” shown by the flotilla gave him peace of mind, and someone likened Israeli behavior to Nazi behavior. Ovenden disagreed. He said Israel was acting like a typical European settler state using the same techniques used by the French in Indochina and the British all over, police domination, systematic racism, and dehumanization.
Between the 2 meetings presenting reports from the Free Gaza flotilla almost 600 people came to listen, to learn, and to support. Shapiro and Ovenden were in complete agreement on the issues of future goals and strategy. This world-wide movement of true international solidarity is reminiscent of what happened in Spain during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 when volunteers came from all over to protect a democratic Spain from fascism. Israeli violence will not stop this movement. When asked if the use of extreme force would prevent future Free Gaza boats from trying to reach Gaza Huwaita Arraf answered, “Quite the opposite actually. We have been inundated with people from all over the world, from various organizations, wanting to participate in future flotillas. People everywhere are outraged by Israel’s behavior. More boats and bigger flotillas until we break the siege on Gaza completely. We’ll be back.” (Frykberg interview with Arraf, ipsnews.net, 6/8/10)
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