An open letter to the people of Israel
From a journalist on the global Sumud Flotilla
By Lorenzo D’Agostino
Exactly one month ago I boarded the global Sumud Flotilla in Barcelona. I did it because, like most people in the world, I was sick of watching images of an extermination war in Gaza targeting children, journalists and medics, as well the legitimate resistance of a people living under occupation for 77 years.
I joined the mission as a journalist, not as an activist. After a month at sea in which Israel treated every one of us indiscriminately like terrorist supporters, smearing us, bombing around our fleet, I’m no longer sure that distinction still makes sense. Never has the proverb felt truer: we are all on the same boat.
Today, October 1, I received a message from the Haaretz opinion editor. “I was wondering if the flotilla would be interested in submitting, as soon as possible, an 800-word opinion piece on why Israelis should support your efforts?” she asked.
Haaretz is Israel’s oldest liberal daily newspaper, often regarded as the country’s main platform for dissenting and critical voices. Yet its criticism rarely goes so far as to break with the political and institutional framework of the state itself. The timing of the request says more than she intended. It reaches me when we are 110 miles from Gaza, after a night of heightened terror tactics deployed against the flotilla by the Israeli army: navy ships circled the biggest vessels in our fleet and jammed our communications. I woke after three hours’ sleep assuming an interception was already happening — and marveled that we were still sailing.
The editor asked for a quick turnaround: "I hear the army is close to you guys but I would love to have the opportunity to shape the narrative before they do. We have to move crazy fast.” I thought for a minute and said yes: while my boat needs me and we’re all exhausted and stressed, I strongly believe in the possibility of dialogue and the importance of circulation of ideas even in the most extreme circumstances. By then the editor had already changed her mind: “Hold up — I’m trying to figure out if it’s better to do afterwards.”
I was puzzled: what use there could be for an appeal to support the flotilla after the army interception? But she insisted the timing was not good: “Also it’s about to be the biggest Jewish holiday here so no one is going to read it until the weekend.”
That exchange encapsulates the problem. The magazine +972’s recent observation is correct:
“Israel is waging a holocaust in Gaza. Denazification is our only remedy. The deadly ethno-supremacy inherent to Israeli society runs deeper than Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich. It must be confronted at its root. This denazification process must begin now, and it starts with refusal. Refusal not only to take an active part in Gaza’s destruction, but to put on the uniform at all — regardless of rank or role. Refusal to remain ignorant. Refusal to be blind. Refusal to be silent. For parents, it is a duty necessary to protect the next generation from becoming perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
The fact that only yesterday the Israeli government could invent yet another fabricated “discovery of documents in Gaza" — this time alleging that the flotilla is Hamas-funded — and expect the public to accept it or pretend to believe it is proof that Israeli society as a whole is brainwashed. I am by no means calling the Haaretz editor a Nazi; I’m certain she acted in good faith. But her belief — surely earned from experience and judgment — that such an op-ed would just slip past Israeli society because of a religious holiday.
How is it possible that religious holidays are considered more important than the Flotilla’s most critical hours, when the Israeli government openly declares it is ‘about to finish the job’ — words that can mean nothing other than the final annihilation of Palestinian statehood? Israel needs denazification. How can the Israeli public sit quietly and celebrate while Palestinians are deliberately starved to death, and hundreds of unarmed humanitarians sailing to bring them food are seized in international waters and jailed as terrorists?
In these final hours of navigation I’m being asked to appear in live links, video messages and public gatherings across Italy in support of the flotilla. This is not the role I am used to as a journalist, but the flotilla has become a spark for people who now know they have the power to act.
I am turning down these invitations and choosing instead to use these precious minutes to address the people of Israel: rise up. Flood the Gaza border. Block the ports. Demand safe passage for the Sumud Flotilla. Make the streets and the ports ungovernable until Gaza can breathe.
The Flotilla is the final call to action. The world has noticed; since our boats sailed, mobilizations in support of Palestine have erupted in unprecedented ways after years of torpor. Follow that example.
It is never too late for a people to save its soul. Italy is proof. After the whole italian society had become complicit in the greatest horror of the twentieth century, the genocide of the jewish people, a minority of brave men and women joined the resistance at great personal sacrifice.
Two years of civil war followed, but denazification was successful and the Italian people could then prosper in freedom for the decades that followed. Through brave resistance action the people can be saved.
The people, not the states: the fascist regime, the monarchy and Italy's colonial borders had to end for Italians to live freely. For the Israeli people to live in dignity the Israeli state as it exists will have to end. It will end: history will inevitably reshape the whole institutional architecture of the region to allow all peoples to live in freedom and equality of rights. That is why the people on the Sumud Flotilla laugh at the 100 years entry bans served to participants of previous flotillas: there will be no state of Israel in its current form in much less than 100 years. The only question is whether that transformation will happen with the help of at least part of Israeli society, or despite it.
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