Gaza is Our Human Responsibility: 14 Years Since the Gaza Flotilla Raid

“I heard the gunshots pinging off the side of the boat. It’s when we realized they were shooting at us with live bullets.”

The Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) organized a commemoration for the Mavi Marmara victims, Istanbul, Turkey, May 29, 2020 (AA Photo)

“I heard the gunshots pinging off the side of the boat. It’s when we realized they were shooting at us with live bullets.” Ann Wright, retired Army Colonel and former diplomat sat across from me at a hotel bar in Detroit, Michigan. She was recounting the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla where the Israeli military shot and killed ten people trying to deliver aid to Gaza. Many more were injured, and everyone was arrested and thrown in Israeli prison, including Ann. Today marks fourteen years since hundreds of brave people challenged the Israeli imposed blockade of Gaza. While Ann was telling me the story, my phone was buzzing next to me. Israel had just dropped US manufactured bombs on a cluster of tents that Palestinian families were sleeping in. Videos of refugees burning alive were appearing directly on my phone – and everyone else’s. 

Surrounding Ann and me was a large group of people who were attending the Movement music festival in Detroit – it was just across the way. They were happy and blissfully unaware. And I think in thirty years down the road I’ll always remember exactly where I was when I first saw the video of the baby, being lifted up from the ashes with a missing head. I’m not saying this to indicate I am any better or more compassionate than the people attending the music festival – my taxes paid for those bombs as much as theirs did. I just told Ann that I can’t believe more Americans aren’t losing their minds over this. 

There’s another flotilla to Gaza in the works and Ann told me that the people set to be on the boats were told to expect the worst. And why wouldn’t they? The Israeli equivalent to the Navy SEALS stormed onto a boat full of civilians and assassinated ten of them in 2010. An Israeli bulldozer ran over and killed Rachel Corrie, a 23 year old American girl who was trying to protect a family’s house from demolition in Rafah. This year, Israel deliberately targeted and killed World Central Kitchen humanitarian workers. That’s what the Israeli military does: it kills people, primarily Palestinians and anyone else who dares to get in their way. Israel kills Americans all the time. And Israel knows the United States will never do anything about it. 

After Israel targeted and killed people on the flotilla – for daring to try and feed a starving population – President Obama responded to the slaughter by calling the status quo on Gaza “unsustainable”. Israel tried to blame the humanitarians for what had happened to them that day, but they ultimately lost the propaganda war even to its own allies – but it never resulted in any meaningful repercussions. 

President Obama was right, the world was only three years into witnessing what happens to people when a military completely cuts them off from the outside world. In case anyone here is unfamiliar with what the blockade of Gaza entails: at the time of the flotilla, 1.5 million people were contained to the Gaza strip and could not leave by land, air or sea unless Israel permitted them to do so – and Israel has only “permitted” less and less people over the years. Even if they have cancer and need treatment – even if their dying relative is an hour away inside of Israel’s borders. Israel controls everything that goes in and out of Gaza - including only allowing in the minimum caloric intake worth of food to feed every person there – placing every single person in Gaza in near famine-like conditions. That is when the situation in Gaza is good under such a suffocating blockade. Calling it “unsustainable” is certainly one way to put it. 

In preparation for writing this, I watched the hour long footage from the Mavi Marmara – the ship that Israel attacked on May 31 2010. It’s horrible to watch. There's a clip where you can see the life drain out of a young man’s eyes. I’ve seen that image so frequently on my phone for the last eight months. The Israeli military unit that raided the Gaza flotilla fourteen years ago was the same military unit, Shayetet 13, that raided Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza a few months ago. The scenes that came out of the attacks and raids on Al Shifa were some of the most gruesome we had seen up until that point. Al Shifa is where babies died in their incubators because the hospital couldn’t function under such heavy bombardment and scarcity. 

Israel tried to suppress and cover up what happened on the Mavi Marmara. I guess to a certain extent it was successful, there are plenty of people who never knew it happened. I didn’t know the extent of the depravity until I sat down and asked Ann about it. But I started feeling rather lost that night as I saw what was happening in Rafah and wondered why in the world the entire Biden Administration hadn’t resigned. Particularly Antony Blinken, who looked like a ghost in his congressional hearings just days prior. You have to believe that as humans there’s some ounce of consciousness in these butchers – but they do nothing. They’re not just bystanders - but people who fix and carry along the massacre machines. 

But then I remember: if any of these people acknowledge publicly that setting neighborhoods on fire, killing children, assassinating humanitarians, bombing hospitals, bombing schools, massacring families as they sleep are evil or genocidal acts then they are implicating themselves in some of the worst crimes of our recent history, too. If it’s against international law for Israel to kill children and cause so much destruction that it will last generations – then what about what we did in Iraq? 

I know Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people implicates Americans. The bombs dropped have our flag stamped into the shards that litter Gazan homes and refugee camps. And the people who are left to pick up the pieces of their sons and daughters see it in the rubble and they think of us. They think of our president, who happily signs off on their slaughter. And the children who tried to save their parents burning in their tents will remember who made them an orphan. Wouldn’t you? 

And acknowledging Israel’s crimes also forces us to reckon with our own. If you roll out the piece of paper that lists US-led massacres it will unravel from Saigon to Fallujah. It would cross oceans to all ends of Latin America, too. Sometimes it feels like the world might run out of paper before we could ever write down the names of every person the United States shares responsibility for murdering. 

Does realizing that it’s never okay to drop bombs, blockade a population, and act purely out of false retribution put Americans in a tough spot morally? Maybe posting more than a horrible AI photo of Rafah is a slippery slope to actually challenging the bigger issue: the American people are the largest funders of war and destruction in the world and our wages are garnished by the bombs we export. Not enough for most of us to be prosperous but enough to keep us at bay. And I wonder when we will all become so tired of being ignored. And so tired of not taking to heart our responsibility in all this human suffering. 

Today I’m thinking about Furkan Doğan, the eighteen year old American who decided to take responsibility and joined the Flotilla in 2010. He was shot five times and killed for trying to bring life saving aid to the people of Gaza. Many of the people on the flotilla knew they were risking their life or some amount of freedom and comfort for being good people. That is what makes them truly good, anyhow.