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By Mike Treen aboard the Freedom Flotilla
After months of preparation and training, the Freedom Flotilla is ready to depart for Gaza today.
The converted trawler I travel, the Al Awda (Return) as well as three sailboats were under constant surveillance while the previous flotillas were sabotaged in foreign ports by the Israeli secret services that were trying to Stop attempts to break the blockade.
Kiwi fellow of Palestinian origin, Youssef Sammour, sailor and yachtsman currently working in Dubai, leaving Palermo after 45 days at sea.
He sails on the yacht of the flotilla Freedom from Amsterdam. If the boats are intercepted and the crew is stopped, they will all be banned from returning to Israel for ten years.
As a third generation refugee, Youssef does not want to exclude the possibility of visiting his country.
Youssef considers himself a Kiwi since he spent half of his life in New Zealand at school and at university. His father Khalil worked in New Zealand as a surgeon at Greymouth Hospital on the west coast of the South Island.
My mother, Joan, grew up in Blackball, a small mining town just outside Greymouth. Greymouth. My grandfather, Walter Kirk, was a miner and a trade unionist, and was part of the "Red" Federation of Labor, the first national union federation formed in 1920 that had its national headquarters at Blackball.
] Famous figures from the New Zealand labor movement – Paddy Webb, Bob Semple, Walter Nash, Harry Holland – were familiar names, friends or colleagues
Granddad was also one first, if not the first, kiwi to play rugby. Professional league in Australia for at least one season in the early 1900s.
For Mom, Blackball was at home, and that was where she wanted her ashes to spread when she died that we were able to do it five years ago. The only problem is that she wanted them to spread to the top of a rugged mountain range behind Blackball known as The Creases.
I was back on May 1 of this year to commemorate the fifth anniversary of his death
I want to go to Greymouth – too small, isolated and cold. He left his wife and son in Auckland and visited whenever he could.
Yet three years later, by the time he had finished his contract at Greymouth, Youssef said his father went off in tears while he loved his colleagues' place there
L & # 39; The story of Youssef's family is both typical and special. Youssef's father was born on May 15, 1948 – the day known in Palestinian history as Nakba – the day of the "catastrophe". Jewish settlers proclaimed the state of Israel and presided over the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians.
Traumatized by the events
Youssef's grandmother went to work on the road to Palestine in Lebanon. She gave birth to Khalil and was so traumatized by the events that she could not breastfeed her child. They were forced to crush the almonds so that the milk fed him along the way.
Her parents were childhood friends, growing up in a refugee camp in Lebanon. Dad went to Cairo to become a surgeon and Samira, Youssef's mother stayed in Beirut to study chemistry. They ended up ending up a few years later while they were working in the same hospital in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
They are still happy today, Khalil is in his last year of work as chief of surgery. department in a private hospital in the UAE.
They are looking to get back to New Zealand and finally get some well deserved R & R. For a Palestinian family, the house may be Beirut, Auckland or Greymouth, but often never Haifa, the homeland of their birth, even to disperse their ashes as I could do for my mother
My own place on Al Awda I succeed another young Palestinian intellectual, Awni Farhat, who grew up in Gaza and completed a Master's degree in Human Rights Conflict Studies in the Netherlands, but can not come back as a normal person to visit his family.
These are the many small, but cruel, ironies of life in occupied Palestine.
Al Awda was a Norwegian fishing trawler. The Scandinavians have been strong supporters of the ten-year campaign to break the sea blockade. Like New Zealand, these countries have strong fishing industries
Inhumanity of the blockade
An aspect of the inhumanity of the blockade is to prevent Gaza fishermen from entering the country. to exercise their profession – even within the 12-mile maritime boundary
A reign of terror is maintained. Boats are fired several times a day, dozens of fishermen are injured and some are killed every year. Just in recent weeks, a limit of three nautical miles has been imposed. Several boats in Gaza that planned to meet our small armada were designated to be bombed in the port.
Swedish sailors and campaigners provided the three yachts – Liberty, Mairead and Falestine – which have been part of the flotilla since the beginning of the trip in May . A Danish Socialist MP, Mikkel Gruner, is on Al Awda . Torstein Dahle, a member of the Bergen Harbor City Council and leader of the Red Party in Norway, took the initiative to prepare a fishing boat that can be given to Gaza fishermen and be able to carry the crew and volunteers to break the blockade.
This work to transform the ship began in January of this year. A volunteer team of engineers, mechanics, carpenters and electricians worked for hundreds of hours to complete the work in time to begin navigation.
In many ways, it is a project of direct solidarity of workers and fishermen. in Scandinavia to the fishermen of Gaza. They have generously allowed others to join with them because we have our own positions in our societies and can amplify their message around the world.
Workers Intervene
Other workers intervened to make sure the boats were reaching their goal. Port authorities near Lisbon, Portugal, have tried to prevent the entry of the ship until the port workers union, Sindicato Dos Estivadores and Da Actividade Logistica, tells them that They would have a serious problem if they tried. Usually, national governments and the police try to make life hard, while local governments and popular organizations host boats.
A boat was rammed and damaged by French police boats in Paris. In Palermo, where we are currently, the mayor, Leoluca Orlando, who comes from the popular campaigns against corruption and mafia control of the Church and State in Sicily announced that the port would be renamed as a souvenir of the historic Palestinian national leader Yasser Arafat who died, or more likely murdered by Israel, in 2004.
He also fights to preserve the city as a place of refuge for refugees and to repel the attempts of the right and fascists in Italy to blame refugees for the social problems created by the European capitalist project that resulted only in austerity, social cuts and increasing unemployment of European workers
Participants Freedom Flotilla were warmly welcomed by thousands of Italian and Spanish supporters of refugee rights. open the borders in a common walk through the city wonderfully beautiful at night.
Everything is at the time of the Mediterranean here. The place livens up from 7pm when many downtown streets are closed to cars, and families (including young kids who make my Anglo-Kiwi spirit a bit bad at the same time). comfortable) take their meals late into the night. Sicily city and has a history dating back to 2700 years ago. It was ruled and regulated by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Normans. It is a historical and cultural center for meeting points between Western and Eastern Europe.
Visit of the Ambassador
The Ambassador of Palestine to Italy, Dr. Mai Alkaila, came to visit us on July 18th during our training session to express solidarity and support. There was an unplanned and tearful meeting with Dr. Swee Ang, an orthopedic consultant surgeon; Dr. Ang's trip to Palestine began as a volunteer surgeon at Gaza Hospital, in the Palestinian refugee camp of Sabra Shatila, in Beirut, in 1982. About three weeks after his arrival, the author from 1945-19003 More than 3000 of them were massacred.
These events traumatized the young surgeon and Dr. Ang describes how the love and generosity of the Palestinian people helped bring her back to a meaningful life – but now closely related to the fate of The Palestinian People
Dr. Ang served in Gaza in 1988-89 during the first Intifada and again in 2009 after the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008 which claimed thousands of lives.
The ambassador generously offered lunch the next day that she duly delivered and then served herself – bodyguards discreetly in the background. That day, she spoke to Youssef and to me that she had sent a special message of thanks to the New Zealand Embassy in Rome for New Zealand sponsoring a resolution of United Nations Security Council in December 2016 criticizing Israeli settlements in the occupied territories
This resolution was important because the United States abstained rather than vetoing it, as they usually did something criticism of Israel. This is not a new position for New Zealand, but one of the original sponsors has withdrawn and it appears that New Zealand's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Murray McCully, has agreed to sponsor him without checking with the Prime Minister
. New Zealand and banning New Zealand's ambassador to Israel. Diplomatic relations were reestablished in June 2017 after Prime Minister Bill English wrote a cowardly letter to Israel expressing "regret" over the fallout from the resolution.
Peters not happy
The current Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, who has a strong personal bias towards Israel, was not happy. The resolution is included in the New Zealand Labor Coalition Agreement, which stipulates a commitment to "record a cabinet minute regarding the lack of process followed prior to the sponsorship of UNSC2334 by the national government".
Ambassador Alkaila also expressed her delight at the decision of the New Zealand artist Lorde to boycott Israel.
A reception of the city also took place and the mayor and the ambassador joined and spoke at a support ceremony on the evening of July 19.
Training of American professionals in nonviolent resistance. Advice was given by Israeli soldiers arrested, ill-treated or electrocuted on previous expeditions about what could be expected.
Only a previous blockade of Gaza resulted in casualties. In 2010, a flotilla of six boats driven by a Turkish ship, the MV Mavi Marmara with nearly 500 passengers was assaulted in the middle of the night and 10 were killed and dozens wounded. This led to a prolonged diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel. Turkey as a member of NATO is one of the few Muslim countries to maintain friendly relations with Israel.
Since then, Israel has generally embarked on ships, towed them and evicted participants after a few days of interrogation. My fellow travelers on Al Awda form an extraordinary group. I hope to have the opportunity to talk to them more during our trip and to tell their story over the next few weeks
The blockade must stop
Whatever happens when this trip to Gaza, the siege and the blockade
Israel reveals more and more its racist and authoritarian character. There are 13 million Palestinians. Seven and a half million are displaced or in exile. Six and a half million Palestinians continue to live in historic Palestine alongside six and a half million people of Jewish descent.
One way must and must be found to destroy the apartheid system that seeks to preserve the ethnic superiority of another group and allow the majority of people in the region who want to live in peace and safe to do so.
Mike Treen is the New Zealand representative to the 2018 International Freedom Flotilla, determined to break the illegal blockade of Gaza. The National Director of Union Unite and a veteran human rights advocate reported here in the first of a series of reports for Kia Ora Gaza. Reports are divided on the Asia-Pacific Report by arrangement.
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