I wish I were on it

By Herbert Rothschild

By the time you read this, the Global Sumud Flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza may be nearing its intended destination. When I checked on Tuesday, my deadline for submitting this column, the flotilla was still docked in Tunis. There is a site where you can track its progress for yourself.

The main convoy of 21 ships started in Barcelona. There may be at least 30 smaller boats that have joined. On board are people from more than 44 countries, prompted by the intentional starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza. On YouTube there’s a 35-minute Al Jazeera video of interviews with the participants before they set sail (you’ll have to skip some ads). It’s very moving, 

On Tuesday, Sept.16, at 6:30 p.m., Peace House and South Mountain Friends Meeting (Quakers) are hosting a flotilla watch party at Peace House, 543 S. Mountain Ave. in Ashland. We’ll watch short videos sent from the ships and, if the flotilla has made contact with the Israeli blockade, any footage of what happened.

There have been previous aid flotillas to Gaza but none this large. What usually happens is that Israeli forces board the boats in international waters (which is illegal), confiscate the cargoes, arrest the aid activists, take them to Israel and later deport them.

One boat in the current flotilla has already suffered damage from a drone-launched bomb in the Tunis harbor. And this past May, a Gaza-bound aid ship caught fire and issued an SOS after what its organizers claimed was an Israeli drone attack off the coast of Malta in international waters. The Israeli military declined to comment on that incident.

The worst encounter took place in 2010. Israeli naval commanders from speedboats and helicopters boarded the Mavi Marmara, one of six ships in a mostly Turkish flotilla. Nine aid activists were killed on board and a 10th later died from his wounds. Ten Israeli servicemen were wounded, one seriously.

There were, of course, competing reports of what happened. According to a United Nations Human Rights Council report, all activist deaths were caused by gunshots, and “the circumstances of the killing of at least six of the passengers were in a manner consistent with an extralegal, arbitrary and summary execution.” However, because the Israelis confiscated the photographic evidence from the passengers and refused to release it to the public, there was no way to determine exactly what happened.

The confiscation was of a piece with Israel’s longstanding effort to keep the truth about what it’s doing to the Palestinians from reaching the public. One of its more heinous tactics is to kill journalists. Tallies of the number of journalists killed in Gaza since the start of the current war run from at least 192 (the Committee to Protect Journalists) to at least 270 (Al Jazeera), the large majority of whom are Palestinians. Last month the Israelis targeted a media tent near Al-Shifra Hospital, killing five journalists. The government claimed that one, a well-known reporter named Anas Al-Sharif, was a Hamas operative. Human rights organizations contradicted that claim.

By this time perhaps some of you are saying, “Why doesn’t he get off the subject of Israel and the Palestinians? Surely there are other bad actors in the world?”

So far this year I’ve written four columns about the genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and mentioned them briefly in three others. That’s out of 32 columns. Last year I made them the focus of four columns and mentioned them in three others. That was out of 49 columns.

I was much too young to speak up against the Nazi genocide of European Jews. Later, I often heard Jews say that more Germans should have spoken up for us. I presume they didn’t mean that someone should have talked about it once and moved on to other subjects. The evil was so enormous in its depth and extent that people of conscience should have focused on it until it ended, one way or another. The Arabic word “sumud” in the name of the flotilla means “steadfastness” or “perseverance.”

I’m not too young to speak up this time, and I don’t intend to have people ask, long after the Israelis bring to its horrible conclusion their plans for the Palestinians, why I didn’t. And I’m not just trying to salve my own conscience. My country could put an end to this abomination or, as a meaningful minimum, stop abetting it with weapons and diplomatic support. So, it’s my intention, along with many thousands of like-minded Americans, to keep the horror in front of our fellow citizens until enough of us demand a change in U.S. policy.

I believe that when people look at evil rather than away from it, most of us will at least think and feel rightly about it if not find a way to oppose it. But, sadly, many people would rather look away. The board of the Ashland Food Co-op, after hearing from 20 people at its August meeting that it should remove Israeli products from its shelves, made a later decision (not in a public meeting, apparently) to keep selling them. It might make a difference if the board members looked longer and harder.

I confess to wishing I were aboard one of the ships in the Global Sumud Flotilla. Were I to die as a consequence, it would be a suitable end to my life. Meanwhile, I have to live with the reality that there’s not much I can do to prevent another holocaust as it unfolds before my eyes. What I will risk is that you won’t lose patience with me if, from time to time, I keep it before yours.

Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected]. Email letters to the editor and Viewpoint submissions to [email protected].