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The flotilla’s non-violent direct action requires strength and Sumud (steadfastness). It is an active resistance to decades of injustice from an illegal sea, land, and air blockade. It is far from a passive, symbolic, or performative action.
By FATIMA HENDRICKS
It is 4:00 am on the 10th day – September 25 – of our sail, aboard a boat in the Global Sumud Flotilla. We have heard explosions hitting other boats and seen drones piercing the night sky.
Tensions are high as we wonder about the fate of the attacked boats and when our turn will come.
I am on night watch and taking a short break, for morning prayers. Despite the adrenaline, my heart is filled with awe at the magnificent starry night and the whooshing of the waves as they splash against our vessel. The splashing waves remind me of the waves of resistance from oppressed peoples and their allies since time immemorial, some violent and others not.
I was first introduced to the concept of non-violent resistance during my time at the Madina Institute Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies. However, as a South African growing up during Apartheid, there have been moments when I perceived the strategy of non-violence as weak, wondering if liberation would have ever come to South Africa without armed struggle.
In recent years, my perspective has been reaffirmed that non-violent direct action is strategically effective yet difficult to execute. Some describe non-violence as passive, yet it is one of the most testing, active approaches we can take in resisting oppression. Non-violence is far from a cop-out or a weak means of struggle, as I am learning on this flotilla.
As comrades on the flotilla, we have often said, ‘When governments fail, the people set sail.’ Governments and corporations have largely been weak in their tangible material interventions for Gaza, offering mostly rhetoric of condemnation and ‘thoughts and prayers’.
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This 38th flotilla to Gaza, aiming to break the illegal and immoral siege, is the largest and most historic to date. It is galvanising attention on the urgent action required to open a sustainable sea corridor for humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Given the occupying power’s war crimes on previous flotillas and its current aggression toward our flotilla in real time, I recall my chat with Ayesha Vahed, a South African attorney and legal reporter practicing in South Africa and The Hague. When asked, Vahed reaffirmed and explained to me that the Global Sumud Flotilla is protected under international law:
According to International Law, the flotilla mission is a completely lawful, civil, non-violent humanitarian mission. The Israeli blockade, engineered to starve an entire population, is illegal under International Maritime Law. The flotilla has a right to humanitarian passage, based on the fact that the people in Gaza are under an occupying power and have a right to receive aid. This gives the flotilla free passage through international waters, an obligation that has been reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice, which has already ruled that Israel is obliged to allow unrestricted access of aid into Gaza.
Various international lawyers, academics, legal experts, and genocide scholars have mobilised behind this lawful initiative. Furthermore, the confirmation by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip obliges all States to fulfil their legal obligations under International Law. In a situation of genocide, states have an erga omnes obligation, which is an obligation owed to the international community as a whole, to facilitate human rights and protection, which in this case extends to the opening of humanitarian corridors.
Despite this international framework of legality, the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) participants are being described as terrorists. This hasbara campaign is intended to construct a faulty basis for further aggressive actions toward flotilla participants, past and present. However, this type of behaviour is not new to non-violent movements, as was witnessed in the US Civil Rights Movement and the Palestinian Great March of Return.
As we sail in the People’s Flotilla, the mandatory non-violence training we received in Tunis from GSF trainers stressed that non-violence is a dynamic method of action, not an avoidance of conflict. I personally witness the intensity of global mobilisation and organising as intensely active, not passive.
During our training in Tunisia, one trainer shared the history of flotilla missions to break Israel’s illegal siege, and it was moving to meet and hear from those who had been on past flotilla missions, including the Mavi Marmara in 2010 when Israel Occupation Forces soldiers murdered nine activists during the interception of the vessel in international waters.
Our training also included examples of non-violent actions shared by comrades from across the world, including historical examples from the Civil Rights Movement in America, the 1956 Women’s March in South Africa, protests by Turkish women who were excluded from official spaces for wearing the hijab, and Mexican anti-government protests.
The flotilla’s collective action across movements and countries involves broad-based mass participation and is a notable example of non-violent mobilisation, coupled with calls for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. It is a movement built on strategic resistance to an illegal blockade and occupation.
The flotilla’s non-violent direct action requires strength and Sumud (steadfastness). It is an active resistance to decades of injustice from an illegal sea, land, and air blockade. It is far from a passive, symbolic, or performative action.
If people ask me how hard it is to enact non-violence as a strategy of resistance, my response is that it is tough but necessary, given the occupying power’s total disregard for the sacredness of human life. Acting in non-violence requires great Sumud in the face of genocidal evil and violent occupation.
As humanitarians on a mission of hope, and solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, non-violence is our means of resistance, and our language of love.
Dr Fatima Hendricks is an occupational therapist, author and educator living in Cape Town. She is a mother of two and a cancer survivor. Hendricks advocates justice through non-violent action and global solidarity. Her work highlights the devastating impact of oppression on health, education and family life, while inspiring awareness of the Palestinian right to live freely and peacefully.
