As the historic Global Sumud Flotilla sets sail to break the illegal siege on Gaza, South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) issues its full support for this lawful, vital mission and condemns in the strongest terms the violent threats and incitement by the Israeli state against its participants.
We are horrified by these attempts at intimidation by Israel. We reserve our strongest condemnation for Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir’s threat to designate these human rights activists as terrorists. This is a well-worn tactic used to dehumanise Palestinians and those who defend them, providing a smokescreen for Zionist violence. We will not stand for this.
The colonial siege, in place since 2008, has prevented life-saving supplies, medicine, and food from entering Gaza. As United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, stated in his 2024 report, ‘never in post [World War Two] history had a population been made to go so hungry so completely as was the case for 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza’.
States have failed in their duties to humanity by allowing the starvation of Gaza to continue. It is in this shameful context that the brave activists aboard the Flotilla have set sail. They have made it clear that they will do everything in their power to break the siege and deliver life-saving humanitarian aid to Gaza’s people.
The fact that the Flotilla “fully complies with international law” was recently affirmed by United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, at a conference co-organised by the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), The Worldwide Lawyer’s Association (WOLAS), Gaza Tribunal, and the Tunisian Bar Association. Albanese’s position was unanimously supported by all leading international law experts present. It is vital that we don’t allow this truth to be buried by coordinated disinformation campaigns spreading online.
Speaking at the conference, SAJFP’s Jo Bluen, characterised the activists’ work as a courageous act of defiance against a “massacre by malnutrition,” noting that the caloric control of the siege mirrors the racially disaggregated food distribution systems used by the Nazis in the Holocaust in Europe.
We call on all of the world’s nations to finally fulfil their responsibilities under international law and act with urgency to end the siege, and to protect their citizens on board the Flotilla’s 50 boats. We cannot allow Israel to capture them and treat them as terrorists. Failure to take urgent and decisive action to stop this threat from becoming a reality constitutes complicity. The choice to act is theirs. The responsibility to hold them to account is ours.
A central tenet of Judaism is ‘tikkun olam’, our duty to repair the world. Those on the Flotilla, regardless of faith, embody this principle. Those who intercept or malign them are acting in violation of humanity, international law, and Jewish ethics. As GSF reminds us, ‘no smear campaign, and no act of brutality can silence the demand for justice, dignity, and humanitarian aid’.
Jewish communities of conscience across the world join the rest of humanity in saying, we are watching. We will not allow anyone to be terrorised in our name.
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