THE GLOBAL SUMUD FLOTILLA AND THE GLOBAL MOVEMENT TO GAZA: SIDE CONSIDERATIONS
by SERGIO PRATALI MAFFEI
This text is a reinterpretation of the speech delivered at the opening of the demonstration held on 6 September at the Audace pier in Trieste, in support of the mission of the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza.
We do Gaza a disservice when we turn it into a movement because we might hate it and discover that it is nothing more than a small, poor city that resists.
We will do Gaza wrong if we glorify it, because our fascination with it will lead us to wait for it.
But Gaza will not come to us, it will not liberate us.
It has no cavalry, no air force, no magic wand, no representative offices in foreign capitals.
Resistance in Gaza has not turned into a profession.
The resistance in Gaza has not turned into an institution.
It has never believed that it was photogenic, nor that it was a media event.
She did not pose in front of the cameras with a smile on her face.
The wound of Gaza did not turn into a pulpit for sermons.
Gaza is dedicated to dissent: hunger and dissent, thirst and dissent, diaspora and dissent, torture and dissent, siege and dissent, death and dissent.
The enemies can get the better of Gaza.
All trees can cut them down.
They can break her bones.
They can throw it into the sea, into the sand or into the blood.
But she: she will not repeat the lies.
He will not say yes to the invaders.
These are the words of Mahmud Darwish, defined by Saramago as “the greatest poet in the world”.
And these are the words that I want to entrust to the sea, albeit symbolically, as a sign of closeness – and respect – to the Palestinian people.
There were many adhesions of trade unions, parties, associations, clubs, committees to this regional demonstration in support of the mission of the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza.
Events and support for the mission and the volunteers who embarked were organized throughout Italy, putting their safety at risk, and we wanted to promote the same thing in our region, as Global Movement to Gaza, which for months worked in the preparation of the mission. A group born from the ashes of the Global March to Gaza last June and the failure of its attempt to reach the Rafah crossing, hindered and prevented by the Egyptian government which expelled hundreds of activists from all over the world and blocked thousands of protesters traveling by land, stopped at the border with Libya.
From this experience, and from the contribution of other volunteers from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the Màghreb Sumud Flotilla and the Asian Sumud Nusantara, the Global Sumud Flotilla was born, the largest civilian maritime mission ever attempted towards Gaza, made up of ordinary people, activists, journalists, doctors, parliamentarians and entertainment personalities, with the aim of trying to break the siege and thus establish a stable and safe humanitarian channel capable of meeting basic needs and the requests for help from Palestine.
Only a few days before departure everyone learned of the mission, which in reality had been worked on for months. And if everyone knows about the participation of 4 Italian MPs, what few know is that among those who embarked there were also young boys from Extinction Rebellion and Ultima Generazione, two nonviolent movements against which a security law with liberticidal content has recently been passed, which cannot help but remind us of the Rocco code.
The participants in the September 6 demonstration brought a message to the pier, inserted in a glass bottle to be entrusted to the sea and sent symbolically to Gaza. A gesture also designed to remember a similar initiative that the Palestinians themselves had launched in 2022, on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip, when young activists gathered on the beach, writing notes expressing resilience and determination, then rolled up and placed in small bottles, before throwing them into the Mediterranean Sea. The messages were addressed to people around the world, with the hope of drawing attention to the plight experienced by Gaza’s more than two million besieged residents.
In reality, nothing was thrown into the water: the bottles were collected and a digital catalog was created, which also reports the contents, then disseminated on the web, so that they could reach Palestine directly.
But let’s try to contextualize what is happening in Gaza and the meaning of the mission of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which also wants to make up for the indifference and inaction of governments and international institutions.
We have gone from “interesting times”, which remind us of Žižek and the Chinese curse, directly to “dark times”. We have deluded ourselves into thinking that we have defeated forever the ideologies and practices of fascism and Nazism, moreover supported by capitalism, and we find ourselves today with the most powerful man on the planet who is practicing repressive policies never before adopted in his country, and who every day softens us with his weapons of mass “distraction”. And of course our country is his closest ally in Europe. While the Israeli prime minister applies Nazi-type methods in Gaza, with a circle of loyalists who could easily wear the uniform of the Gestapo or the SS.
Meanwhile, in the old continent, which is rearming itself against an imaginary enemy, impoverishing its people, after subjecting it to the single thought, we have a Von der Ley(d)en who made her political career as German defense minister, and a Crosetto who a moment before swearing on the constitution in front of Mattarella received 1 million euros in severance pay as a consultant for Leonardo. Two figures that can immediately clarify to us, perhaps more than others, what direction we are taking in Europe and why.
I therefore abandon my role as referent and spokesperson of the Global Movement to Gaza for Friuli Venezia Giulia, to briefly express some personal thoughts.
The first is actually a fantasy, which I have developed in recent months, participating first in the Global March to Gaza and then in the Global Movement to Gaza itself. A worldwide movement around which, in a few weeks, more than one hundred thousand people from all over the world have united.
I remind you of what 1968 was born from: yes, from an absurd invasion of Vietnam by the United States. From there the protest began, which was later extended to a protest that demanded a radical transformation of society on the basis
I believe that today we find ourselves in a somewhat similar situation. With only one positive aspect, which is the dimensions that protests around the world are reaching even today. Precisely starting from the refusal to passively witness a genocide, which constitutes only the tip of the iceberg of a system of power that is leading us towards a catastrophe with no return, which is first and foremost a sort of mass dehumanization.
I then want to hypothesize three inversions of some common thoughts and slogans, which in my opinion have lost their original meaning.
The first: “think local, act global”. The effects of capitalism, from wars to climate change, now affect communities everywhere on the planet. It is therefore no longer enough to act at the level of individual territories to try to actually change things. If today in Trieste I can save a tree, at the same time in the Amazon we risk reaching, precisely as a result of the cutting of a single tree, one of the sixteen points of no return for humanity. What we must try to achieve then is a global change in the system of power, which today clearly shows all its limits and greed, so much so as to put the survival of the planet and of the human race itself at risk.
The second: “we are 1 percent and they are 99 percent.” We have deluded ourselves that it was the opposite, at least since 2011, when the slogan was coined during the protests in front of the Wall Street stock exchange. Let’s be clear: yes, it’s true, the so-called rich who hold power are a very small minority, but they have a huge following, often silent or indifferent, which allows them to continue to prosper. While we, who demonstrate, who maintain a critical spirit, who are aware of it, constitute a small minority. If only we were a little more fighting, at least 3.5% say the historians of nonviolent revolutions, we could finally really count for something.
The third: “as long as there is hope there is life”. Apparently the most obvious, but it is only the conviction that we can, or rather must, try to change the things that really keep us vital, that can make us say that, despite everything that happens, it is still worth living, at least in the sense of collective living, for a common good, with a spirit of sharing and subsidiarity. In short, of a living for us that is also a living for others, first and foremost the oppressed, as the Palestinians are today, in ways never seen before in the history of humanity. Or what remains of it.
I close with an appeal to believers, of all religious faiths: addressed to evangelical fundamentalists, who contributed decisively to Trump’s election; to the Catholics, who at the Rimini convention applauded Salvini, Meloni and Draghi indifferently; to the Orthodox Jews, who continue to support Netanyahu, to the Islamic fundamentalists who boast some of the most repressive governments on the planet. A simple appeal to common sense, moderation, tolerance, openness to the different, peace.
Yes, that’s fine, let’s stay human. But then, I add: humans from all over the world, unite, before it is too late, because a specter is haunting Europe and the world today, and it is not the specter of communism, but that of war and Nazi-fascism!