David R.K. Adler, General Coordinator, Progressive International:
This Global Sumud Flotilla is the largest humanitarian convoy in history, to traverse the Mediterranean Sea from Barcelona to Tunis to Sicily to here in Crete and onward to Gaza, with a mission that's very simple but very urgent, which is to break the siege and to establish a permanent humanitarian corridor at sea, to deliver critical aid to the starving people of Palestine. It is not an exaggeration to say that this unprecedented mission, whose vessels number greater than the sum of all previous efforts from 2008 forward of Freedom Flotillaa and its affiliates to try to reach Gaza, has faced bureaucratic sabotage, has suffered from drone attacks in the port of Tunis when we were on the boats and we were attacked with incendiary devices. But, most terrifyingly, just here at sea, before we entered near to Crete, two nights ago, when for several hours, there were a bombardment. I mean, you have to imagine under the cover of darkness we can't see these drones. We can hear them but there's no lights on them and all we can hear are the sounds of explosions. All we have is CCTV footage of the bombs being dropped onto the boats with an obvious intent to damage beyond repair these sailboats and therefore to deter the mission from going forward.
In many cases, that was successful. Some of the boats were damaged or unrepair. And others we were able to repair them. I think there's one little detail that your listeners and your viewers (Democracy Now) might be interested in, which is as they're deploying this illegal, deeply criminal act of violence against a civilian humanitarian mission like ours, they also jammed our communication channels with what? With ABBA (music), with "let lay your love on me", which of course is a a reference, a not so subtle reference to the Swedish activist aboard, Greta Thunberg.
So, it is in the wake of those, really terrifying attacks that kept us up all night and put our lives at risk, that we put out a message to the world, in particular a message to the governments of the Mediterranean, not just to send a declaration of or in recognition of our diplomatic humanitarian ambitions to send that, not just to protect our lives but can ensure the success of our mission which is infrastructural one is to set up a new corridor to reach the people of Gaza when the points on land have been so infamously blocked from access.
Right now we're about 40 boats that have joined together from the three fleets, Barcelona, Tunisia, the Maghreb fleet, and the Italian fleet. And we're meeting six more boats that are now coming from Greece, which should be between 40 and 50 boats. Again, unprecedented number of humanitarian vessels that is now set on the final leg to reach the shores of Gaza.
We are carrying these ships, some of them are humble motor cruisers like The Family boat where I'm stationed, the lead vessel of the broader fleet, some of them are even humbler, sailing boats are packed to the gills, with basic and critical humanitarian aid, baby formula, medicine, food, and water. However, we're not naive about the scale of the suffering in Gaza and the scale of the humanitarian crisis that requires a much larger and more ambitious response by the States whose good faith obligations under international law require them to respond on the genocide convention. So that's why I put so much emphasis on this infrastructural element of our mission. We are not here to drop the aid and go home and pat ourselves on the back. We are here to establish a humanitarian corridor for states themselves to assume their responsibilities and to deliver the aid at the scale that Gaza requires.
Democracy Now, https://youtu.be/79DFojySReQ?si=14O21F3wRqt03dNO