We write from the ports, the decks of boats, the quays where departures are organized, but also from a memory older than our crossings.
A memory that passes through us and animates us.
On May 8, 1945, while Europe celebrated the end of the Second World War and the victory against fascism, tens of thousands of Algerians were massacred in Sétif, Guelma and Kherrata for daring to demand their freedom. Every May 15, Palestinians commemorate the Nakba: the expulsion, the dispossession, the destruction of hundreds of villages, the exile imposed on an entire people in 1948.
Two dates, two stories, which remind us of what silence, impunity and dehumanization produce when they become state policies. The same colonial mechanism, which claims to bring order while organizing erasure.
On the same subject: File: Genocide in Gaza: experiencing it, saying it, seeing it
This May 15 again, in Gaza as in the rest of occupied Palestine, the occupying army is killing. It buried civilians, children, men and women under the rubble. It displaces, starves and deprives entire families of the future. But 78 years later, faced with a colonial entity that tries to fragment its memory, its lives and its political horizon, the Palestinian people continue to struggle. For his land, for his dignity, for the right to exist in the face of a system built on his crushing.
Behind each crossing, there is the desire to break the siege of Gaza a little further.
Words sometimes fail us, but we will act tirelessly until our governments are forced to assume the legal, political and ethical responsibilities incumbent upon them. Palestine acts like a compass. We refuse to be silent witnesses.
So we set sail again.
For years, hundreds of people from around the world have tried to break the illegal blockade imposed on Gaza. A siege imposed on more than two million people, made possible by the active, diplomatic, economic and military complicity of numerous Western governments.
Our flotillas carry humanitarian aid, but also a political battle.
Behind each crossing, there is the desire to crack the siege of Gaza a little further, to fight against the very idea that a people can be sacrificed in the name of geopolitical interests. Our boats publicly expose what our States help to make invisible. They impose Gaza in political spheres which seek to erase it.
“What governments protect us?”
They are disturbing because their attacks in international waters, the kidnapping of their sailors and their arbitrary incarcerations raise the real questions: who is protecting our governments? Or rather, what are our governments protecting? Human rights and international law or a political order that tolerates the genocide of a people to maintain its privileges?
We know that the sea alone will not be enough.
On the same subject: “There is a story before the flotilla, there will be one after”
The political scope of the flotillas also depends on what is built on land. In the streets, universities, unions, ports, cultural places, wherever a balance of power capable of cracking the current consensus can emerge. Our boats extend demonstrations, boycott campaigns respond to humanitarian convoys, popular mobilizations open spaces that institutions close. These mobilizations must be massive, lasting and coordinated to impose on our governments the political responses demanded by the popular movement.
We refuse to allow Gaza to become just another commemoration.
It is high time that we learn the lessons that the past teaches us. Colonial massacres have always found their justifications in the discourses of “stability”, “security” or “civilization”. They have always thrived on cowardly silence and complicit inaction. They always ended up being denounced. But we refuse to allow Gaza to become just another commemoration.
We are the disruptive generation. The one who will never get used to helplessness.
We are 23 French sailors on our way to open the humanitarian corridor to Gaza, and call on you to form a united front, from land to sea, to build and win the balance of power that will put an end to 78 years of genocidal colonialism.
Signatories
- Yasmine Scola
- Adrien Berthel
- Pierre Mayans
- Noé Tissot
- Malika Baouya
- Scott Moreau
- Karim Tazit
- Nicole Blavy
- Elizabeth Trocheris
- Muhammad Baba
- Raphaelle Primet
- Antoine Jacquet
- Syrin Saoud
- Axel Dumonceau
- Barbara Brizard
- Anne Moro L’Kaissi
- Laetitia Merle
- Titouan Dousset
- Manon Couplet
- Yacine Haffaf
- Léopold Gagey
- Loïg Hascoat
- Lucie Fouquet
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