When the first freedom flotilla broke the siege of Gaza

For nearly two decades, Israel has enforced a devastating land, air and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip. Since March, almost all supplies have been blocked from entering the territory, resulting in mass starvation.

In early June, the Madleen Freedom Flotilla set sail from Catania, Italy, towards Gaza. On board were twelve activists, including Greta Thunberg and French politician Rima Hassan. Their goal was to deliver humanitarian aid—rice, baby formula and medical kits—and to defy Israel’s criminal siege. Before reaching its destination, and while in international waters, the Madleen was intercepted by Israeli forces. Soldiers boarded the vessel, took the activists on board and held them in Israeli prisons for days.

This wasn’t the first time Israel has used force to stop activists from breaking the siege. In 2010, Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara, a ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza from Turkey, and killed nine activists aboard.

But two years earlier, in 2008, the siege had been broken. Two small wooden boats, the Free Gaza and the Liberty, sailed to Gaza from Cyprus, carrying 44 international solidarity activists and medical supplies. Aviv Shiron from the Israeli foreign ministry said at the time that the government wanted to avoid a PR disaster: “They wanted a provocation at sea, but they won’t get it”. So, Israel let them through.

When the boats arrived in Gaza, they were greeted by crowds of Palestinians. One participant described the scene: “Dozens jumped into the water and climbed aboard our boats, cheering and waving and hugging everybody”.

The idea to break the siege and deliver humanitarian aid had come from Michael Shaik, an organiser for Free Palestine Melbourne and a founder of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition in 2008. He spoke to Red Flag’s Renee Nayef about the origins of the flotilla campaign.

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What led to the formation of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition in 2006, and what was your role?

There were a lot of experienced activists who had been deported from Palestine, and we were discussing what we could do. The purpose of international activists is to use their privilege to shine a light on the invisible aspects of the occupation. We’d had some success in working with Palestinian communities resisting the construction of the Separation Barrier through the West Bank and drawing attention to house demolitions in the Gaza Strip.

The big hidden story in 2006 was that Israel was claiming that it no longer occupied the Gaza Strip because it had withdrawn its settlers, even though it was blockading imports and exports, forcing the population to rely on aid handouts to survive. That was the hidden violence we needed to shine a light on. So I proposed that we charter a boat to “break the siege of Gaza!” The plan was to place Israel in a lose-lose situation. If they let us through, we break the siege. If they don’t, then we highlight the fact that they have intercepted us—not in Israeli waters, but in Gaza’s waters—and that there was a real blockade.

None of us had a boat, none of us could sail a boat, and we didn’t have any money. So we did a lot of fundraising around the world. Some people raised donations, some did cake stalls and other grassroots fundraising until we got together the money to purchase a couple of wooden boats. When, in 2008, we first broke the siege, it seemed that the whole population of Gaza came out to the docks to welcome us—just a couple of fishing boats.

In 2008, the Kadima Party, led by Ehud Olmert, was in power in Israel. Their calculation was that it was best to let the boats through, rather than embarrass themselves with the spectacle of intercepting unarmed activists bringing humanitarian supplies to Gaza. We got three boats through before the end of the year, when Operation Cast Lead commenced.

After that, Israel became much more aggressive and we couldn’t get any boats through, so we decided to ramp it up to a flotilla of boats. In 2010, when the Likud Party, led by Netanyahu, had taken power, Israeli commandos attacked the Mavi Marmara flotilla and shot dead nine activists. For the next four or five days it was headline news around the world.

A flotilla carrying high-profile activists, including Greta Thunberg, was recently raided and its passengers taken by Israeli forces. What do you think is different this time?

I’ve been repeatedly shocked over the last twenty months at what Israel has done and gotten away with. They’re doing insanely vicious things in the Gaza Strip—cruel things that don’t seem to have any military logic. International solidarity is based on the premise that Israel will be less inclined to use lethal force against Westerners because it will be sanctioned by Western governments.

Yet Israel got away with killing Rachel Corrie. It got away with the murder of Zomi Frankum and her colleagues from the World Central Kitchen. Every time they kill an international activist and [Australian Foreign Minister] Penny Wong expresses her regret and then refuses to demand an independent investigation and exonerates the Israeli military by abetting the cover-up, it normalises violence against international activists. We’ve known Palestinian life was cheap for a long time, but even internationals in the line of fire can’t count on their governments protecting them anymore.

The thing you learn when you’ve been doing this for a long time is that Israel’s supporters are active everywhere. They’re active in the mainstream media, they mobilise professional trolls and bots to obscure the facts of the genocide on social media, they are active in all the major parties except the Greens, and I think we have to be the same. The only antidote we’ve got to their big money is big organising—this applies to all movements, Palestine and the climate.

Rallies are good, but we need to move beyond them. People want to do something to stop the genocide. The activists on the flotilla showed the world that there is something you can do. It’s great what they’re doing. Future generations will remember that when Gaza was on its knees, they, like so many others, stood up for justice and against genocide.

Why is international solidarity important in the struggle for Palestinian liberation?

When I was in Gaza, I noticed that, apart from the physical violence of having their relatives murdered and their homes destroyed, one of the things that most oppressed the people was the feeling that they were being strangled in the dark.

They can’t leave, the media isn’t allowed in, the walls keep closing in on them, and nobody seems to see them. I think that’s why, when the boats came in in 2008, two pitiful little wooden boats, it was like, “Woah! These people from around the world have come to help, and we’re not invisible”. If nothing else, international solidarity is a morale boost for the people in Palestine—otherwise it’s like they’re fighting the empire on their own.

Last month, Angela Davis said that Palestine is now the centre of the world. I think she was spot on. The struggle for Palestine, like the struggle for South Africa last century, is bigger than Palestine. Before 2023, I often felt like I was shouting into a void, like no-one was listening. I’d always dreamed that one day there would be an anti-apartheid mass movement in Melbourne, but I never really believed it would happen. Now, people in Melbourne and around the world understand that Palestine stands at the centre of the ancient and global struggle between racism and justice. They also know that Penny Wong and Donald Trump aren’t going to free Palestine, and we have to get up and do it for ourselves.

I’m not saying that we will win. Or that we won’t suffer defeats and make mistakes—but I don’t think this movement is going to fall away. It radicalised a generation. Palestine is part of young people’s identity now. I think they understand the enormously powerful forces that are supporting Israel, that there will be no easy victories and that we need to be in it for the long term.