Our hotel, so recently crowded with Flotilla participants awaiting the signal to sail to Gaza, is now filled with tourists perusing maps of the Acropolis and brochures for the Aegean islands.
One of our delegation, retired Ambassador Sam Hart, returned home yesterday, and the rest of us, including AIM leader Jimbo Simmons, Dominican Sister Patricia Chaffee, USS Liberty veteran Joe Meadors and FPM staff Paul Larudee and Deppen Webber will be back Sunday.
Although we never had the chance to step on a boat, we are proud to have been part of this effort, and we believe that it has increased the popular pressure for Palestinian rights. Last year, Israel stopped the Flotilla with their commandos at sea, killing nine. Joe and Paul were on that voyage.
This year, Israel mobilized in a different way, but possibly even more destructive to their attempts to make the world give up on challenging Israel’s abuse of Palestinian rights. There are now many Greeks who are deeply embarrassed and angered by their government’s actions to prevent the Flotilla from sailing. If such rights are denied, what rights are next? Who is running the Greek government, anyway?
Of course, we might ask the same question about the U.S. government and its defense of Israeli threats against American citizens, most of them planning to sail on the U.S. flagged vessel Audacity of Hope. If our own government will not defend the rights of its citizens to sail U.S. vessels, of what use is it?
Clearly, the passengers who gathered here in Athens are very frustrated with the outcome. Nevertheless, it is this frustration that increases our determination to press our cause. Furthermore, we will do so with newly made friendships and alliances that have been forged here in Athens.
As I write, hundreds of volunteers are being turned away from Lid (“Ben Gurion”) airport as part of a “Welcome to Palestine” week of peaceful solidarity events organized by Palestinian groups. Although Israel will continue such tactics, we believe that the movement will grow stronger each time we are thwarted. In the meantime, we will repeat the civil rights mantra “We Shall Overcome” until the day arrives when Israel – like the segregationists of the the American South, the British Raj in India and the apartheid regime in South Africa, will no longer be able to resist the call to justice.
