http://consortiumnews.com/2011/08/01/mocking-the-gaza-flotilla/
Mocking the Gaza Flotilla
August 1, 2011
A small flotilla carrying human rights and peace activists to
Israel-blockaded Gaza was itself blockaded in Greece after intense
diplomatic pressure from Washington and Tel Aviv. But the Israeli news
media continues to heap ridicule on the passengers. Two of them, retired
U.S. Army Col. Ann Wright and Israeli-born Hagit Borer, respond.
By Ann Wright and Hagit Borer
Being, so to speak, of the “flotilla folk” ourselves, we read with some
interest Roz Rothstein and Roberta Seid’s idle speculations in the
Jerusalem Post on who our shipmates might have been, for idle
speculations they certainly are, the writers having never contacted any
of us.
In fact, at least when it comes to the American-flagged boat, The
Audacity of Hope, we are not nearly as much of a mystery as one might
imagine. Our biographies are all publicly posted at www.ustogaza.org,.
A perusal of our stories would reveal, among other things, that 58
percent of us are women and that our median age is 60.
Similar demographic patterns existed on other boats as well. Many are
retired people; most with modest means. We are people willing to spend
our savings to fly to Athens and stay there for weeks, doubled or
tripled up in hotel rooms, waiting to sail to Gaza.
We are people who felt, who still feel, that we must make the time and
find the means because struggling for justice is the moral thing to do.
Because we have all come to believe, in the words of Howard Zinn, that
“You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” – all notions, one feels, that
Rothstein and Seid view with a mixture of scorn and incredulity.
As Americans, many of us also feel our primary duty is to speak truth to
precisely that power that purports to speak on our behalf – a notion
that is, likewise, rather alien to most Israeli-Jewish society, although
by no means to Jews elsewhere.
A third of us, passengers and organizers of The Audacity of Hope, are
Jews, representing a long and valiant tradition of Jewish progressive
activism in the U.S., Europe, South America, South Africa and elsewhere.
What Rothstein and Seid have neglected to note (carried away as they
were by their enthusiastic description of our Israel-Hating Syndrome) is
that many passengers on The Audacity of Hope have a long and
distinguished record of anti-war activism.
They have been outspoken opponents of the American war in Vietnam; they
have spoken against American involvement in Central America, and in the
past decade, against wars the U.S. has waged on Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many have traveled numerous times to war-ravaged Baghdad and
Afghanistan. Kathy Kelly, one of our passengers, traveled to Iraq 26 times!
No, we are definitely not like other folks, if by “other folks”
Rothstein and Seid refer to themselves. Unlike Rothstein and Seid, we
insist on remembering not only the 23 people killed by rockets from
Gaza, but also the over 1,000 Palestinian civilians killed by Israel in
Gaza in Operation Cast Lead. And the scores killed in Jenin, and those
shot routinely in demonstrations in the West Bank.
Unlike folks such as Rothstein and Seid, we refuse to forget that 1.6
million people in Gaza have been living in an open-air prison for five
years now, or that 2.6 million in the West Bank have been under military
occupation for 44 years – the longest military occupation in modern
history, and a situation with absolutely no current parallels!
That we have turned our attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in
general and to the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians in
particular derives directly from the understanding that these could not
have survived without U.S. government support.
It is the U.S. government that has directly abetted Israel in its
continuing dispossession of the Palestinians, and that has supported and
protected Israel through its decades of refusal to enter meaningful
negotiations.
Insofar as we are Americans, and insofar as our action is fundamentally
political, it is intended to raise the awareness of our own people and
to pressure our own government to change its course.
And yes, horrendous things are happening elsewhere in the world. Some on
the flotilla have been very concerned about that. The IHH – that
organization which The Jerusalem Post links to jihadist groups – has, in
fact, interceded to support the Syrian refugees in Turkey, and delivered
medicine and medical equipment to hospitals in al-Bayda and Benghazi in
Libya.
How inconvenient for your case! But not to worry. One would be
hard-pressed to find any trace of these facts in the mainstream Western
or Israeli press.
Reading your derisive comments – all intended to belittle the flotilla
and its passengers – it strikes us that the main question is not the one
you pose, namely, who we are. Rather, a very different question comes to
mind. Here we are, by your description – a bunch of pathetic losers,
misguided vacationers, professional activists and idealists who ran out
of causes.
A grand total of 1,500 – an overestimation to begin with – and in
actuality a lot less once the Mavi Marmara withdrew.
And yet, the State of Israel sees fit to keep us in the headlines for
months with threats of attack dogs, snipers and anticipated deaths.
Israel pulls out all stops in putting pressure on Mediterranean
countries in general, and on Greece in particular, to make sure we don’t
leave port.
The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, on June 22, called on the
international community “to do everything in their ability in order to
prevent the flotilla and warn citizens of their countries of the risks
of participating in this type of provocation.”
But if we are deluded losers, what does that make the State of Israel
and its hysterical response? If 16 passengers on a small yacht off the
coast of Gaza are bored vacationers with a mental disorder, what does
that make the four fully armed gunboats confronting them?
The fact of the matter is that Israel, without any aid from us, provided
our otherwise symbolic and rather small-scale effort with the
overwhelming amplification that made it headline news in the rest of the
world, and most crucially, it would appear from your article, an ongoing
Israeli obsession.
While we wanted the plight of the Palestinians to be noticed by the
world, we did not set out to have the flotilla become a major world
event. That it has become one, however, became patently clear to us once
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saw fit to travel to Greece to
deliver her heartfelt thanks to Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou
for services rendered – the stopping of our flotilla.
Frankly, we are grateful.
Ann Wright is a retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel and former U.S.
diplomat. Hagit Borer is a professor of linguistics at the University of
Southern California.
