The largest flotilla to Gaza departed on April 12, including vessels in the Global Sumud Flotilla and Freedom Flotilla Coalition, or FFC. This particular flotilla sails amid a regional war in the Middle East, instigated by the United States and compounded by the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza and Lebanon.
Since their departure, 22 of more than 50 boats in the Global Sumud Flotilla were “disabled and destroyed” and nearly all 180 individuals were abducted during an Israeli Navy raid on April 30, according to a GSF press release. The IDF attack occurred in international waters—hundreds of miles away from Gaza and within 80 nautical miles of Crete—which violates international law, specifically the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
“My stomach dropped,” said Zuleyma Guevara, whose daughter Fredi Guevara-Prip, was aboard one of the intercepted ships.
Rosa Martinez and Noa Avishag Schnall, both aboard the Adalah in the FFC, are still hundreds of nautical miles from Gaza, but continuing east. For them the flotilla, and particularly the FFC, is a human rights mission.
“Though we do have some medicine on the boat, it’s not like we’re going to be solving any mass medication crisis in Gaza,” Avishag Schnall said. “We are sailing because governments are not upholding their duties.”
Both volunteers on the flotilla and their loved ones assert that the flotilla is just one part of the larger pro-Palestinian movement. As Mika Lungulov-Klotz, Martinez’s emergency contact, put it, “everyone is able to pull a different lever.”
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