The sun was shining on August 23, 2008, and everyone in Gaza was waking up in order to get ready for the D Day. It is the day everyone in Gaza has been waiting for a long time; a day we will feel like there are some people in the world who care for our suffering. A day we will feel that we belong to the human race, and our brothers and sisters in humanity care for our daily struggles. Scouts from different scout groups had signed up to be in the welcoming committee on the fishing boats. So, we headed directly to the main port of Gaza at 08:00, and, together with policemen who are there to secure the crowds, we boarded the boats and started the trip to the open sea.

Hours of waiting in the boats made everyone seasick, and, by noon, most of our hope flew away with the wind. It looked like the two boats were not coming. We were screwed. All the dreams and feelings that there was someone who cared for us got smaller and smaller as time went on. Jamal El Khoudari (the coordinator for the campaign) spoke at a press conference that the boats had gotten lost and made some excuse. The other scouts and I in Gaza did not want to listen to excuses. The people of Gaza wanted them here now. The smiles that were on every single face by the morning, the joyful people in the port waiting at sunrise, and the hope of seeing someone who would care for us changed to a huge disappointment. By noon, nearly everyone had left the port and gone back home. On the way back home, I saw Gaza looking darker than ever, and a small tear escaped from my eye. ‘’It looks like there is no one who cares for us,’‘ A boy scout told me. I opened my mouth to tell him that this wasn’t true, but I could not find a word to say.

Just like all the scouts, I went home, took a shower, and tried to rest after a long day under heavy sun. All of us were seasick and sick in our hearts as well. I lay on my bed to sleep and forget about humankind. I set my head on my pillow and thought. “We are on our own, and nobody cares.”

Then my mum came to my room with a smile on her face, ‘’Jamal, the boats are visible on TV.’‘ Mum said. So I jumped from my bed and asked her, ‘’When?’‘ She said, “It is just breaking news.” I can’t remember how, when, or why I found myself on a bus going back to the port with the scouts. I can’t remember how we managed to be together again going to the Port of Gaza. We all jumped on board different fishing boats and sailed to the open sea again. There, on the horizon, I saw three elements: A beautiful sunset, the Liberty, and the Free Gaza. On the east side of the Port, more and more people from Gaza were gathering. This time, their disappointed faces were not there.

In a couple of minutes, those of us on the fishing boats came closer to the Free Gaza, and I saw the peace flag hanging up, and Maria Del Mar Fernandez waving a Palestinian flag and shouting. Suddenly, I saw many kids taking off their t-shirts and jumping into the sea, swimming to the Free Gaza. My small boat got me closer to the boats, and as my feet touched the deck, it gave me a shock. My mind was blown away as I forgot every single suffering I had in my life under Israel’s blockade. I moved over to someone who was so calm and a bit away from all the media.

‘’Hey, welcome to Gaza,’‘ I said with a smile.

Greta Berlin, Today, August 23, 2023

Eighteen years ago today, our two small boats landed in Gaza, the first boats to visit this slice of the Mediterranean in 41 years. This one-minute clip, filmed by passenger Courtney Sheetz, shows our sheer joy as the shores of Gaza come closer.

That’s Maria del Mar Fernandez saying, “I can see Gaza, Oh, my God, Oh, my God.” Palestinian boats came out to greet us; 40,000 Palestinians lined the shores of the port as we sailed into port.

And that last shot is me saying, “I can’t believe we made it,” to Dr. Mona Al Fara and her brother, Mushier, who was on the Free Gaza.

When the boats finally appeared on the horizon of Larnaca, we were overjoyed. We really did have boats. The problem was that Ken was furious and didn’t understand that our decision to hire John was not only practical, but it was also a maritime necessity. After spending a couple of hours cooling him down, he grudgingly agreed that we might have a point. He didn’t have a pilot’s license for the size boat we were taking; the Greeks had already verified that his scuba diving boat license was also not renewed. Again, our individual egos got in the way of the collective desire to sail to Gaza. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it definitely was not the last.

Nikos was mad at Osama and drew a knife on him before being defused; Osama was mad at Sharyn, everyone was mad at Ken, and the passengers who had stayed so patiently in Cyprus just wanted to get the hell on the boats and leave. We also had a boat crew versus land crew friction. We were upset with them because it had taken so long to get to Cyprus; they were upset with us because we didn’t understand how difficult it had been. And when the Americans said, “We meet at 3 pm GMT,” we meant it. The Greeks thought that meant GREEK MAYBE TIME.

So, we might have the boats, but were we going to stick together?

Mary, August 21

^{Liberty and Free Gaza moored at the international port in Cyprus. Notice the Greek flag is at the very top.}

The boats finally arrived, and we went down to see them. They looked so tiny parked next to these huge cargo ships, but the authorities in Cyprus weren’t taking any chances and wanted us to be in the international docking area rather than the marina.

We didn’t realize that we actually had to go through passport control to go to Gaza. We just figured we’d get on a boat and sail off to the territory. After all, it was only 240 miles away. But Cyprus is now in the EU and has to follow the EU maritime regulations. We were leaving the EU to a foreign port, and, just like an airport, we had to show our passports and get them stamped.

I don’t know if we were more shocked at the tininess of the boats or the fact that we were really going to go.

Sharyn, August 21

We had a press link with Gaza today, and they are thrilled we are finally coming. They have been waiting such a long time for us. We could learn patience from them. Israeli prison would be a pleasant rest after all this work and stress, but we have friends waiting for us.

I am so tired and just rang my good friend to cry at him for a while about various internal group difficulties I might once have had the capacity to fix but don’t any more. Coupled with this decreased ability to solve conflicts is an increased capacity to empathize beyond any reasonable amount with what everyone in the conflict is feeling, and to feel very compassionate for individuals while simultaneously feeling alienated with people generally. Argh!

Our boats are covered with flags, and they look beautiful. Not being a flag type person I never thought to bring the Aboriginal flag I was given last time I was in Oz (Australia), which I feel sad about. On the other hand, the Port Authorities don’t seem to like any flags they don’t recognize and were furious that we put the Palestinian flag above the Greek flags, not knowing that the country that owns the boats gets pride of placement on their flag... on top.

Petros, August 22, early morning

Today is the big day. Starting at 05:00, the passengers begin gathering at the pier inside the guarded checkpoint. (We Greeks slept on the boat, our home.) International media are at the dock. Cypriot authorities perform the last formal checks. You can see that they welcome our mission wholeheartedly. “We are with you,” one of them whispers in my ear.

Captain Giorgos and Nikos aboard Liberty are seriously dealing with a broken gas line. That means a bit more delay. We ask Free Gaza to move out first. There’s a new captain aboard: Captain John from the US.

Several times, good-byes are bid between those staying ashore and those going aboard. Finally, at about 9:00 A.M. the lines are pulled in, and the Free Gaza and Liberty head out only to be stopped for two hours, because the Liberty needs to be repaired again.

Finally, the vessels make a half circle inside the marina with a final send-off from cheering supporters on the shore, and then head out past the yellow Cypriot submarine at the end of the quay, and out to open sea. Gaza, we are coming.

At noon, lots of our friends from Sitia come to the boat, bringing us fruit and food. They have invited the local media, and we organize a new press conference. In the afternoon, Free Gaza finally arrives, and now Ken (O’Keefe) is the captain, even though he is not qualified to sail a boat of this size.

We have decided to get us a second captain who holds a Greek license to sail Free Gaza to Larnaka. After that, we’ll see what to do. Giorgos, our Greek captain, has called an acquaintance of his, who will soon join us after settling some personal business, but he will only take us to Cyprus, not to Gaza.

During the night, as Giannis and I take a stroll down the waterfront of this little harbor, we come across Giorgos. He wants to buy us a drink. We make small talk for quite a while. I’m really impressed by his stories. “Last year I went to Kalymnos to attend a local diving festival. When I saw the sponge divers dancing their dance, I was really touched and wept. Everybody else applauded, but I wept.”

What did Giorgos know? Kalymnos is the island of the sponge divers. Quite a few of them are struck by the bends and end up crippled. Their dance involves the first dancer pretending to be a crippled sponge diver who’s trying to get up and dance, bending on a walking stick.

There’s one more thing that Giorgos tells me and impresses me. “I’ve been through lots of difficulties, and I learned not to allow myself to get desperate.”

Greta, Cyprus, August 17

Paul called and said we have no captain for the Free Gaza, because Ken lied about having a captain’s license, and now we are stuck with someone who has no paperwork and is not a legal captain. The English captain refused to work with the Greeks after several big arguments. He insisted that the boats were not safe, and he was not going to pilot what looked like a shipwreck.

Our first mate, Derek, agrees that the two fishing boats are barely seaworthy, but, by now, we have invested over $500,000 in both of them. Derek tells us we could have bought a yacht in Cyprus for what we paid for the two decrepit boats we are now trying to sail.

The steering wheel on one was installed backwards; the fan belt on the other breaks all of the time; the boats weave and shift in the water at the slightest wave movement; we should have a boat engineer on both just to keep the engines going, and still the Greeks say they are shipshape and can take the passengers without worrying.

We’re stuck. We’re going to take them no matter what, but I do tell the passengers what the situation is in case they decide not to come. So far, we have only lost four people, mostly because their schedules simply won’t permit them to stay any longer, and we are so late in leaving. Surprisingly, we still have 44 crazy passengers who are going to go. We all wrote our wills. You just never know if we will make it.

^{That’s Vittorio Arigoni on the left, John, our captain, in the middle, and Ren Tawil, one of the American Palestinians who came with us. They are cheering upon seeing the shoreline of Gaza looming in the distance.}

At one of our last meetings in Nicosia, I asked if anyone knew a captain who could be ready for sailing in 4-5 days. Kathy Sheetz, our nurse, pipes up and says, “I’ll call my brother, John. He’s used to captaining massive research ships. He broke his foot a couple weeks ago, and he’s on leave for the next few weeks. Maybe he will come.”

And damned if he didn’t say, “Yes, send me a ticket, and I can get there right away.” He was on the next flight out of California. We now had a captain with more experience than anyone on large boats except for Giorgos.

The next day, he showed up limping, with a big boot on his foot. He looked exactly like what I thought a Captain should look like, except he had no parrot and his leg was broken, not wooden. When I asked him if he understood we were sailing to Gaza, he growled, “Ya, I’ve never been to Ghana.”

Oh, my God, I didn’t know what to answer. He looked at my shocked expression, chortled, and said, “Of course, I know where we’re going. Gaza. And ya know, my foot is broken.”

I recovered long enough to say, “John, we hired you for your paperwork, not your foot.” We became instant friends.

(When we landed in Gaza on the 23^rd and found we were staying at the Al Deera Hotel, John spent the next 6 days in the lobby talking to Palestinian boys who hung on every word he said about being a Captain. As I post this, John has become an outspoken advocate for Palestinians and has captained one of the boats that tried to leave on Freedom Flotilla II in July, 2011.)

^{Passengers in Cyprus on our way to yet another meeting, waiting for the boats to arrive}

Greta, University of Nicosia, Cyprus, August 8

Thirty-two passengers and ten members of the land crew were now waiting… and waiting… and waiting for the boats. The others were on the boats… somewhere. We had no idea where the crew and passengers were or even if there were any boats. Every day, I received a phone call from Paul or Vangelis or Sharyn. “Yes, we’re on the way. We promise we’re on the way soon.” Little did any of us know that it would be another two weeks before the boats would appear in Cyprus.

We were staying at the University of Cyprus campus in Nicosia, and the average daytime temperature was hovering at 100⁰ F with no air conditioning in our rooms. There were hundreds of cats wandering the grounds, thin and feral, and, of course, we Americans wanted to feed them and adopt them. Two activists actually thought they would smuggle a few cats on board the boats… just in case there were any mice. They whined and meowed all day and all night.

We met every day in the large student headquarters, fortunately the only place on campus with air conditioning. Many of us who had suffered through the heat in Hebron or Jenin or Ramallah had a hard time in Nicosia. It was odd; we could put up with discomfort in occupied Palestine but not in Nicosia.

And, those of us who were the primary organizers had to keep the passengers busy. We were already late by a week. So Ramzi Kysia, Tom Nelson and I cooked up an idea that we would write to Tzipi Livni and invite her to go with us to see the damage the Israeli military had done to the people of Gaza. We thought it a brilliant idea. The three of us lay out under the Cypriot moon one night and composed the following press release:

5 August 2008, Tzipi Livni, Foreign Affairs Minister, Israel

Dear Foreign Minister Livni

On behalf of the Free Gaza movement, we would like to formally invite you to join us on our upcoming voyage from Cyprus to the Gaza Strip. We feel that your presence on this important mission would help alleviate concerns that have been expressed in the Israeli media about our objectives. More importantly, we believe that it would be extremely helpful for you to see firsthand the horrific effects of Israeli policies on the people of the Gaza Strip, as well as to witness firsthand the effectiveness of nonviolent action in bringing about positive change.

While we disagree with many of the statements and policies you have made as the Israeli Foreign Minister, we wholeheartedly agree with a portion of something you wrote two years ago when you said:

“For too long, the Middle East has been governed by zero-sum logic. One side’s loss was seen as the other’s gain. This thinking has brought much suffering to our region” (Tzipi Livni, “The Peace Alternative,” Asharq Alawsat, 18 June 2007).

This is absolutely correct. We seek an end to this suffering. We find ourselves, and you must be feeling this intensely yourself, in truly difficult times. The one thing that is clear is that violence has not worked for anyone in this conflict. As a group of avowed nonviolent peace activists, we hope that you will accept this opportunity, move past the zero-sum logic of your government’s blockade, and join us on this historic voyage to break the siege of Gaza.

Your government’s siege on the people of Gaza has been deemed illegal by numerous human rights organizations, has led to the death of over 200 patients in the last year as a result of being denied adequate medical care, and has caused a man-made humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. Clearly this is not the behavior of a civilized government, nor can these policies ever lead to peace for Israel.

Our voyage may seem to be a quixotic endeavor and therefore easily dismissed, but as a group of individuals who fervently believe that such moves can be vitally transforming and that individuals do indeed have the power to change our world for the better, we hope that you will take our offer seriously. We set sail for Gaza in the next few days. Please join us.

Sincerely Yours, The Steering Committee for the Free Gaza movement, Cyprus

Well, all hell broke loose when this email went out. Half the passengers thought it was a brilliant idea, half thought we were insane and sucking up to the Israelis. The Greeks were furious that we were even considering communication with Israel, one of the many times that our different cultures got in the way. They didn’t understand the irony of what we were doing by forcing Israel to answer us. We weren’t asking for permission to go to Gaza; we were inviting Tipsy (that’s what we had nicknamed her) to come along to witness the devastation in Gaza.

It turned out that the Israeli government was more worried about us than we were about them. They actually responded, stating,

We know you are good people, but you are misguided. There is already a process to transfer goods from charities into Israel.

When we gleefully pointed out that they made a huge mistake by saying there was a process to transfer goods from us to Israel… and not Gaza, we all thought it was a marvelous Freudian slip. In the long run, our attempt at keeping the mission on the front page was tremendously successful, thanks to Israel’s faux pas.

Of course, we were not going to Gaza to deliver goods, even though a small portion of our cargo was hearing aids and toys for children. We were going to Gaza to break Israel’s illegal blockade on the people there.

How was I to know that on June 5, 1967, my life would change forever? and I’d never return to teaching at Hyde Park High School in Chicago. Israel’s six-day war against the Arab world (and specifically against the Palestinians) ended ignominiously for the Arabs on June 10. I went to bed the night of June 5, a middle-class, young schoolteacher, with a three-year-old and a six-month-old, happy to be married to the Arab myth of my childhood. I woke up the next day a Palestinian ready to fight. But Ribhi was not so sure. The people at his job didn’t even know he was Palestinian. He’d told them he came from Argentina.

He didn’t want to fight for Palestine again. He’d done that already in 1948. But I did and dragged him back into his past in spite of himself. I was incensed. How dare the Israelis attack the Arabs the way they did? Look what they were doing to the Palestinians again, driving them into the desert and forcing another 170,000 to leave the violence. And why...why wasn’t anyone coming to their defense? He shrugged and said, “OK, I’ll support whatever you want to do, but I warn you, it’s going to change our lives in Chicago, and you may regret it. You have no idea what you’ll be up against.”

The next week, I began a public relations campaign to get the truth out about what Israel was doing to the Palestinians again, and informed Ribhi I was taking the next year off from teaching. We could afford it, and I decided not to go back until the fall of 1968. He reluctantly agreed. We’d heard there was a large Palestinian community in Chicago that he’d never found, because he wanted to forget his past. It was easy to find them.

By September 1967, we founded PALAID International, the first 501c3 organization for Palestinian relief in the US. We collected medicine, food, blankets, clothing, money, and sent it off to the Palestinian Red Crescent in Lebanon to give to the Palestinian Red Crescent. My God, I look back at all that now and wonder where we got the sheer balls to do that, the absolute energy to put the entire concept into fruition, and the stupidity not to ever realize what danger we were in.

I’d call up US pharmaceutical companies that had offices in the Middle East and tell them (I didn’t ask them) they could donate medications that were close to expiring as well as medical equipment, to us, and could take a write-off, because we were a registered 501c3. Then I’d get dressed up in a business suit and go out to O’Hare Airport to talk to airlines that flew into Beirut and ask them to take the medicine to be delivered to the Lebanese Red Cross there. Our dining room became our strategy room, and along with three other American women married to Palestinians, we girded our loins and took the fight to the media as well.

Local Chicago media loved the story of the plucky American teacher and her Palestinian husband with their two beautiful children, sending medicine to this ‘exotic place’ called the Middle East

.

Between 1968 and 1970, PALAID shipped more than a million dollars of medical supplies to Beirut. Finally, in the spring of 1969, we bought an ambulance in Germany to send to the Lebanese Red Crescent. The Palestinian community in Chicago helped raise thousands of dollars to cover expenses and buy that ambulance. I had no idea we’d be so successful.

In the summer of 1969, Ribhi and I decided it was time to take our children to meet his parents and also to make sure the ambulance our donors had purchased for the Palestinian Red Crescent got to the Red Cross in Lebanon. Our friend, Said Janoun, was a Lebanese doctor who was doing the paperwork. I’d never been out of the US before, so I applied for a passport. In those days, you could put your children on your passport. They didn’t need their own, so they were on mine. Finally, in July, we flew from Chicago to Frankfurt, then Frankfurt to Beirut.

That first time we stepped off Middle East Airlines at the Beirut airport (six years before the country began tearing itself apart in some insane orgasm of self-mutilation, egged on by the evil Israeli government) was breathtaking, with a different language and a totally different smell. I had come home (which makes no sense, since my home was in Chicago), but it’s how I felt.

Ribhi was coming back after 17 years. Of course, he wasn’t coming home. He no longer had one, having been stateless from l948 until he acquired U.S. citizenship in 1968. He’d been on a green card since the early ‘50s, never willing to give up his claim to being a Palestinian, until the Six-Day War forced him to make a choice. At the beginning of our marriage, he was always convinced he’d go back to Safad and reclaim his inheritance someday. He even had worn-at-the-edges pictures of his home, carried two of them around in his wallet, much like European Jews did after World War II. The day after June 5, he woke up, looked at me with tears in his eyes, and said, “I’ll never go home again.” The next day, he applied for American citizenship.

But, if he wanted to travel in the Middle East, he’d be better off with a U.S. passport and the definition of Arab-American than to be a hated Palestinian. Even in l969, long before the catastrophic events connecting Palestinians to ‘alleged terrorism’, most Palestinians were not welcome anywhere except Jordan and Syria. They’d become the pariahs of the Middle East, used as pawns by governments such as Egypt and Lebanon, never gaining citizenship in the Gulf states, although they could work there, viewed with suspicion as the “Jews of the Middle East”, and jailed, beaten, and deprived of their lands by the Israelis.

Only the king of Jordan granted them Jordanian citizenship, although that might have been a good political move since he needed the population increase...and Jordan grew to be almost 60% Palestinian.

We stepped off the plane and into the beginnings of a dossier on us. We just didn’t know it. We thought we were landing in Beirut to reunite with Ribhi’s family, who lived in Damascus, as well as meet with prominent Palestinians about further humanitarian aid we’d funnel through the Lebanese Red Cross to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

How were we to know that our actions would start a U.S. government file on both of us? Ribhi and I were simply determined to help his people.

For three weeks, we met with (Mostly Christian) Palestinians in Lebanon. They were the middle-class of Beirut society, blending in as much as they could into Lebanon’s daily life, yet always feeling somewhat separate, a feeling I certainly understood. That feeling of always, no matter how successful or how talented you were, you were always on the outside looking in. When Palestinians fled the conflict in 1948, they went in two directions: Damascus and Beirut, depending on the area of Palestine where they lived. Many Christian Palestinians from Jaffa went to Beirut and were given Lebanese citizenship. The Muslims were not. Lebanon was more interested in keeping its Christian majority than in giving Muslims citizenship and toppling the fragile lie that, to this day, is still obvious: there are more Muslims than Christians in Lebanon.

These “refugees” were the doctors and lawyers, as well as professors from the American University of Beirut...and many of them were women. I’ve often wondered what ultimately happened to them during the horrible years of Lebanon’s civil war.

Right now, they needed money, medical supplies, building supplies, and teaching supplies for the Palestinians still settled in the squalor of the camps in Lebanon and Jordan. They weren’t turning away from their own people to pursue their own lives; they were inextricably joined with their less-fortunate countrymen.

We’d meet in the salons of these wealthy Arabs, where French, Arabic, and English interchanged with ease in conversation after conversation. And, even in l969, we were told to be careful about whom we talked to once we left. The meetings always appeared to be social gatherings, usually organized by a Palestinian matron, who, underneath her jewelry and make-up, was already a freedom fighter. And there they sat, sipping their tea, speaking in quiet tones, longing for a homeland many of them had never even seen or didn’t remember.

All those names: Diab, Husseini, Jabril, Janoun, Adamany, Talhoumi; if still alive, what do they think of now that so much has happened to destroy their dreams? And after returning to Chicago, it soon became apparent that Ribhi’s admonition to me, “You have no idea what you’ll be up against,” would tear our lives apart.

The New Horizon conference, held in the religious city of Mashhad, Iran, over the past week, gathered 40 brilliant minds (10 of us women) in one room and kept us there for 3 days. The day before the conference, we visited the Holy Mosque there, the largest mosque in the world. It was stunning to see the architecture and to wander through the several courtyards.

We were professors, analysts, strategists, journalists, and activists from around the world: Russia, Croatia, Serbia, the UK, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Algeria, Lebanon, and the United States. One fascinating thing about the attendees was that several Americans were there from the military and ex-CIA/DOD/State Department. The Nation of Islam, a Rabbi, an Imam, and a Priest from Notre Dame were also present, as well as many of us who are activists for Palestine. And journalists, of course, especially Pepe Escobar.

In any other circumstances, many of us would have nothing in common; in fact, we might be on opposite sides, but talking about justice in Palestine and the Israeli/Saudi/American axis of evil pulled us all together.

We Americans came to talk about our government and how appalled we were over Trump pulling out of the nuclear agreement with Iran, and how outraged we were about moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, occupied Palestine.

We were there to talk about Palestine, our successful sailings to Gaza, and El Quds (Jerusalem). We came during the brave Great March of Return in Gaza as Israel had already murdered more than 60 Palestinians, losing their lives to Israeli snipers and drones dropping poisonous tear gas. The iconic images of Ivanka Trump smiling and pointing at the huge plaque erected for her narcissistic father on the side of the American embassy as Palestinians were dying were ghoulish. As much as the Zionists tried to spin the story, their PR effort was no match against the photos of bleeding limbs torn apart by Israeli exploding bullets.

To me, one of the activists at the conference, it was often agony to sit and listen to professors and thinkers talk about theories of a changing world while chaos was being filmed in Gaza. I thought we were there to talk about Palestine, but much of the conference was focused on the influence of Zionists and the murderous behavior of Israel and the US. Little by little, the topics and some of the speakers caught my attention, often providing information I had never considered. The Iranian moderators told us to speak our minds, and we did, sometimes making others uncomfortable. Iranian media was everywhere interviewing us and asking those of us Americans why our government was acting like a spoiled empire. The questions were often hard to answer because there was often no answer.

Everyone had an opinion, and everyone spoke passionately about how Iran is being demonized. The Iranians talked about suing the US for lying about Iran being involved in 9/11, and ex-CIA/DOD men gave them two reasons: the US doesn’t want to pay back the $6 billion frozen in our banks that belongs to Iran, and the axis of evil I now call ISA (Israel/Saudi/America) wants, in fact, needs another war. By the end of the three days, we began to formulate a strategy to talk to the West about Iran.

We were then sent off in groups of three to speak to the people of Iran. I was fortunate enough to be sent to Rascht, a beautiful city on the Caspian Sea, one of the areas of Iran that has been designated as a UNESCO site for its food and its culture. We spoke to professors, students, retired military men, Imams, and children. We ate until we were stuffed with some of the best and freshest food I’ve ever had.

In a couple of the smaller cities, the Iranians had never talked to Westerners before, and they were filled with questions.

For me, the best assignment was in a small mosque filled with people from the town. The little boys, from 10 to 14, sat in front as the elders sat around the sides, and the girls sat behind the boys. And they didn’t move for two hours, listening to our stories. I had to smile just thinking of American children who would have been on their phones or twitching after 20 minutes. And the kids did have phones. They were just polite enough to turn them off. I was asked so many times what America was like, why Americans didn’t like them, and whether America was going to destroy Iran. I have no answers. I have only hope that we will not be that stupid.

At the end, I was surrounded by little boys and girls who wanted to have their picture taken with the tall, blonde American whose red scarf kept slipping off the back of my head. The women surrounded me, pulling me to the side to take more photos, pressing candy and small gifts into my hands, and thanking me.

I have great hopes for the ideas coming out of the conference and our next steps. I have fallen in love with the people of Iran just as I did with the people of Palestine. I’ll return. Ignore what the state department says about going to Iran and go. You will not be disappointed.

My friend, Mary Hughes Thompson, died five years ago today. I want to talk about her life, at least the life I knew from being her friend, her sister, and her comrade for 19 years. She was a woman of determination, courage, and joy. Her life spanned eight decades and three countries. In the last decades of her life, she was an outspoken advocate for justice in Palestine, Iraq, and the U.S. I met her in 2003, when she was 69, back from a trip to the occupied West Bank, and I was getting ready to leave for Palestine.

She was born in 1933 in Manchester, England, and used to tell us stories about what it was like growing up under the bombs of Hitler, how she learned to knit socks, scarves, and caps for the British soldiers. She was only 7 when she learned to knit, and she used that talent her entire life, becoming a master knitter, designing patterns, and teaching knitting classes in Los Angeles. That was just one of her many talents, though.

At 16, she had to leave school because everyone did in those days after the war had ravaged Britain. She was the only girl in a family of 9 children (her sister came along 12 years later, too late to help), and she was in charge of taking care of the house, her brothers, and working as well. Her mother used to tell her she was ‘clever’, but Mary was much more than clever. She was smart, funny, and could write rings around most people.

When she moved to California in 1963, she got a job in the film biz, starting as a secretary, working her way up through the ranks, and by the time she was in her mid 40s, she was a documentary researcher for David Wolper, a writer for “All in the Family”, and a member of the Hollywood Writers’ Guild.

One day, she decided she’d like to learn how to fly, got her pilot’s license, and bought a small Cessna. She once told me her mom had come to visit her from the UK, and she piled her mom into the plane and flew her to Palm Springs for lunch, just because she could. She flew for years until, in her 50s, she decided that was enough and sold the plane.

When I met her, she was already retired and working on human rights. She’d been to occupied Palestine with the Christian Peacekeepers Team (CPT) and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) twice. At 68, while picking olives in Yanoun, she was attacked by armed settlers, who beat her and took all of her possessions. https://www.wrmea.org/003-january-february/american-woman-beaten-robbed-by-gang-of-settlers.html She had no broken bones, but her arms, back, and chest were badly bruised, bleeding, and swollen. The settlers had stolen her two passports, air ticket, credit cards, digital camera, and approximately $1,000 in cash. Yet, she was determined to return, and she would, several times.

When Bush invaded Iraq, she joined the CPT human rights delegation in 2002, and became a witness there before the carnage began, hoping the US would have second thoughts if they knew how many Americans had gone to Iraq in support of peace instead of war. They left just before the war broke out.

I had contacted her because I was leaving for occupied Palestine in July of 2003, and she became an invaluable source of information. We realized we lived only a mile apart in West Hollywood, and we became fast friends for the rest of her life.

In 2005, we went to Palestine for the Women in Black conference, fooling the Shin Bet interrogators who kept us at the Ben Gurion airport for 8 hours. We had carefully crafted a story about how we were cousins, saying I was bringing my crippled cousin to the Holy Land so she could walk where Jesus walked one last time. She was in a wheelchair, had borrowed a bottle of heart medication (and put aspirin in it), and had a cane as well.

As they kept taking me off into one small room after another for hours, strip-searching me and sending my clothes through an X-ray machine, they left Mary in the baggage area. She got weaker and weaker and smaller and smaller, bent over the arm of the wheelchair, crying softly. “Where is my cousin?” she kept whimpering. They didn’t know what to do with her. Passengers kept passing her wheelchair, giving the Israeli guards dirty looks.

She’d done such a good acting job that when they finally let us out, I believed she was ill. We took a cab to Jerusalem, and I was asking if she was OK. She wouldn’t answer me, only looked at me sadly. When the cab pulled up in front of Damascus Gate, she leaped out of the cab, grabbed her roller bag, and took off down the street. It had all been an act, fooling even me. That’s the Mary I’ll remember.

We returned to occupied Palestine one more time in 2007, traveling through Jordan this time with Holocaust survivor, Hedy Epstein, and journalist, Alison Weir. The apprehension we felt was palpable when we approached the Sheik Hussein crossing, where most pilgrims entered the Galilee. We were sure we’d be stopped. When Mary and I walked through passport control (by then we had new passports), they asked us why we were coming.

“I just want to walk the steps of Jesus one more time.” She replied.

Well, it worked the first time. It worked this time as well. When they began questioning her, she kept nodding her head and saying “what?”

“She can’t hear, you’ll have to shout,” I said. ‘What’d you need to know?” Mary looked at me and said, “What?”

“Why are you here? Where are you staying?” the guards shouted.

I faced Mary and said slowly to her. “Tell them we are going to Nazareth.”

Mary had tears in her eyes. “But I don’t want to go to Nazareth. I want to walk in the footsteps of Jesus in the Holy Land.”

I shrugged my shoulders, looked at the guards, and rolled my eyes. In the meantime, the passengers were piling up at the small crossing. They waved all four of us through. We grabbed the first cab we could find, driven by a Palestinian/Israeli, and took off for Ramallah.

We attended Issa Amro’s wedding, worked in Hebron, went to Bi’lin, documented what we witnessed, wrote PR releases and articles.

She and I were already working on a new project, had been since 2006, sailing boats to Gaza. She was the co-founder of that initiative, and we actually made it five times to Gaza in 2008. https://www.freegaza.org/How-We-Made-It-In-Spite-Of-Ourselves/ After that August, she worked on the land crew in Cyprus three more times, sending boats back to Gaza.

In 2010, Mary was supposed to be one of the passengers on board the ill-fated Freedom Flotilla I, when our ships were attacked and ten of our passengers murdered by Israeli commandoes who attacked all six ships. When she couldn’t get on board one of the boats, she came back to the Free Gaza office in Cyprus and worked tirelessly for over three weeks, handling media questions from the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

From 2011 to her death, Mary wrote, spoke, and advocated for justice in Palestine. Since we could no longer get into Gaza, she became one of several of us boat passengers on board that first successful trip to go out and speak to audiences about what we’d done and what we’d witnessed. When the book about our trip, Freedom Sailors, was released, she toured the West Coast with me, speaking to audiences about that first successful trip.

One of her last messages to those of us who worked, loved, and laughed with her was typical of Mary. “Please don’t be too sad for me. I’ve really had a life filled with so many blessings and so many beautiful friends. So many things I wish I’d done, promises I don’t have time to keep, friends I can’t hug one last time. Please don’t cry for me. I’m filled with gratitude for you. I love every one of you more than you could know. Mary”

Dearest Mary, you will be terribly missed by all of us. I’m proud to have known you and call you my friend. May you rest in Palestine.

When we arrived safely in Gaza on 23rd August after over 30 hours at sea, we were welcomed by tens of thousands of Palestinians lining the shore.

Four of us Americans, Mary Hughes Thompson, Paul Larudee, Riad Hamad and me had begun this movement in the fall of 2006. We’d succeeded beyond our wildest expectations that day we landed in the port. When we left Gaza 6 days later, we made the Palestinians three promises; 1. We would go back to our countries and talk about what we had seen, 2. We would take out Palestinians who needed medical treatment or had fellowships (in our 5 successful trips, 17 Palestinians accompanied us back to Cyprus) and...

3. We would return.

Since Operation Cast Lead in December 2008-January 2009, no boats have sailed into the shores of this tiny enclave, the only territory on the Mediterranean that has no right to its own waters and no right to fish beyond a tightly patrolled 6 miles off its coast. Israel had begun stealing our boats and kidnapping our passengers in June 2009. Yet we sailed.

In 2010, Israel murdered 10 of the Free Gaza movement’s passengers on board the Turkish Mavi Marmara as well as injuring dozens of others on all six boats. Yet still we sailed. Since 2010, the Freedom Flotilla has sailed 15 times to Gaza in flotillas as large as 8 boats and as small as one. Israel has brutally stopped everyone; passengers have been roughed up, kidnapped, thrown into prison, and the boats have been stolen. Still we sailed.

And now, the Palestinians in Gaza have been slaughtered by Israel in a two-year genocidal fury. Governments have become impotent; their words are empty. It’s up to civilians once again to sail to Gaza, this time on dozens of boats.

Forty-four countries and hundreds of people are sailing to Gaza to break Israel’s illegal siege, open a corridor and deliver humanitarian aid. The Free Gaza movement had morphed into the Freedom Flotilla which had grown into the Global Sumud Flotilla. What had begun as a movement of Internationals from the West had become an initiative of the Global South.

Two weeks ago, I stood at the shores of Tunis and watched as boats began to leave for Gaza. At 84, I was now the oldest activist and knew it was impossible for me to get on a boat and sail. But I had hopes that at least some of the boats would make it through to Gaza, delivering food and medical aid. We weren’t so naïve as to believe what we carried would make much of a dent to the people Israel was starving. But this flotilla, just like all the rest, was determined to open a humanitarian corridor in the sea, since Israel was locking up the extermination camp of Gaza and using its people for target practice.

Today, October 3, 2025, the last of the boats have been intercepted, the passengers kidnapped, and our boats stolen. Early this morning, I was inundated with questions, “What was the point?” “Why spend so much money and effort on a mission you knew would fail?” “What did you accomplish?”

Three reasons still stand, the same reasons we went in 2008 and broke Israel’s illegal siege five times.

1. If governments won’t stand up and stop Israeli war crimes, it’s up to civilian society to stop the slaughter of civilians. None of us wants to board rickety boats and sail, only to be kidnapped and arrested by the IOF, but after watching two years of Israeli genocide, civilians from 44 nations said, “Enough. We’re sailing to Gaza,” and three months later, the flotilla sailed.

2. This time, the world was watching, cheering on the boats, marching and demonstrating, and spreading the word. Social media has made a huge difference, and everyone under 40 no longer reads/watches mainstream media. The money spent on buying and outfitting the boats has been minuscule against the money and weapons the West has sent to Israel to murder and maim Palestinians. And it’s not just our boats sailing that is making a difference. Dockworkers around Europe are refusing to load Israeli arms shipments.

3. We may not have been able to deliver food (which Israel stole), but the Palestinian fishers were able to fish these past two days, feeding their families and their friends, because Israel couldn’t handle rounding up 44 boats. It took 14 hours to capture all of them, and at least one sailed into the waters of Gaza.

The next time, we will double that number. Millions around the world watched as well-armed Israeli terrorists boarded our boats and aimed their guns at civilians who had their hands up. The optics were horrific. More than half of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Israel, and that number is even higher among the young.

As of this writing, another Flotilla has left, The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said that 11 more ships are sailing toward the Gaza Strip to break a years-long Israeli blockade. This new convoy, named “ThousandMadleens to Gaza,” is now off the coast of Crete.

In 2008, we promised the Palestinians in Gaza we would return. We intend to keep that promise until Gaza is free.

Ali, Mustafa (another ISM volunteer), Mahmoud, and the tank spewing DDT at the four of us,

Jenin has a long history dating back to the Bronze Age. It evolved into a regional hub with a marketplace, government buildings, and other infrastructure, and is the primary city in Area A of the occupied West Bank. Allegedly, it is supposed to be self-governed by the PA with no interference from the Israeli military, but that does not happen.

The Jenin Refugee Camp was set up in 1953 by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to accommodate Palestinians displaced during the 1948 Nakba. The Palestinians living in the camp aren’t from Jenin but are from the villages surrounding the city and are often marginalized. When you hear people talking about Palestinian resistance in Jenin (famous for its resistance against Israeli terrorism in 2002), most of the resistance fighters come from the camp. When I lived there in 2003, it was no longer a ‘tent-camp,’ but was a thriving small suburb of around 12,000 Palestinians with all the amenities of any suburb. It’s where the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) had their apartment, located on a third-floor walk-up next to the radio station and kitty-corner from a large “service stand”. I lived there during the summer of 2003, when the Israeli military was still ubiquitous and often locked the entire city down.

The story below is just one of dozens I wrote while living there. It’s the story of how I met journalist Ali Samoudi shortly after arriving in Jenin in July 2003. He was working for Reuters, and his journalist friend was working for Agence France-Presse (AFP). They were the only journalists covering Jenin when I was there. Remember, no social media existed then, and cameras were whatever could be found that were portable.

Early July 2003

Two men just came in our door, saying they were journalists and had come to meet the new ISM recruits. Because I had become the ‘den mother’ to the 12 of us, I was delegated to speak to them before letting them into the apartment, which, much to my dismay, was a mess. (It consisted of a living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. Mattresses were everywhere, and I’ve learned over these past few days that activists are also anarchists and don’t believe they should clean up after themselves, especially in the bathroom.) Naturally, at 62, I’ve become the mom.

I let them in, offered them tea, and asked them to pull up a mattress to talk. They were wearing PRESS jackets and wanted to interview the new recruits and were happy to talk to any of us who were not out on some mission. So, five of us sat down to be interviewed: Dani, Frances, Corolla, Sam, and me. We listened to their stories, especially the one from Ali Samoudi, who told us that he was recovering from wounds he’d gotten when the Israeli military tried to blow up his car, and he was just lucky he’d not stepped in completely. Of course, the five of us were appalled as well as fascinated that this 36-year-old, stocky man who walked with a slight limp, could be so matter-of-fact about his brush with death. We had SO much to learn.

The next day, Ali showed up and asked me to come with him. He and I had talked briefly after our interviews because he was the same age as my son. He asked if I wanted to tour the city (he had been born in the Jenin refugee camp), and I eagerly accepted. From that moment on, we became friends, and I knew if I wanted to learn about Jenin, Ali was the one to be my guide.

For the next two months, Ali would show up a couple times a week and ask me to go with him as he ran errands or picked up things or sent off his stories or just wanted tea and talk during the curfews (which were ongoing the entire 2 months I was there). During one conversation, when I sat in the passenger seat (with no seatbelts) next to him as he expertly drove up a narrow road to the top of a hill overlooking Jenin, We were on our way to some pick-up place at the top of the hill next to what looked like an electrical tower where he would drop off a package of tapes and pick up new ones. I asked him why he wanted me to go with him.

“Because you’re blonde.” He said.

“Because I’m blonde? Why does that make any difference?”

“If the military sees you in the front seat of my car, they aren’t going to shoot me.” he grinned at me. I was now his human shield and honored to be friends with this smart, funny, and brave man.

One day, he showed up and told me I needed to come with him and Mahmoud, because they were filming the tanks in the streets that were spewing gas. Tanks loaded their back ends with some kind of gas, then munched through neighborhoods and around hospitals and sprayed it on everything and everyone. Off we went to a corner of a Jenin street and waited. Sure enough, a tank came down the street, saw four of us standing there filming them, and burped down the street after us. What the hell? We ducked into a side street just as it rumbled past and blew the gas out of its rear. And there was Ali, not underneath the shelter with us, but standing so he could be seen taking photos as though he was on a picnic and not being attacked.

I knew instantly it was DDT, because I’d grown up in the Indiana countryside in the 40s and 50s and knew that familiar smell. We had been sprayed from the tank that was now busy running over trees, median strips, stoplights, and anything else in its way. Ali looked at me and grinned.

“See what being blonde does? We could have been in real trouble if you weren’t here. We got some great photos. Come, we’re going to talk to the Red Crescent.

The Palestinian Red Crescent told us that the occupation forces have been gassing the Palestinians in Jenin for years, coming in whenever they feel like it or are bored or are in a particularly vicious mood, and spraying homes and hospitals. The increase in fetal deaths, deformed babies, and miscarriages has increased immensely.

The soldiers also jump out of the tanks armed with tear gas launchers. They post soldiers at the doors of homes, preventing the people from leaving, then drop the gas into the windows. Many children under 6 months have died in the past three years, and they haven't even been counted in the total death toll of Palestinians, because they are listed as "other causes".

I decided to write this story down because no one is talking about the irony of Israel gassing Palestinians.

So, other than being terrified by the tanks today, what else have I accomplished? Early this morning, Corolla, a Swedish woman, also blonde, and I walked the man from the radio station home to his wife and four children. He had been working at keeping the radio open for the past 24 hours and sleeping on the floor.

His wife and children were so happy to see him that they flung their arms around him, asking us to please... please take care of him. We waited while they served tea and drinks, and sweets to us, then we walked him back. He asked us to walk with him so he wouldn't get shot at by the snipers. In thanks, he bought two chickens and some vegetables from a secret market that is open no matter the curfew, and is cooking for us tonight.

Finally, late this afternoon, I went in the ambulance with the Jenin hospital driver while they delivered employees back to their homes and picked up the night shift. Again, they hope that one international woman will be able to save them if the soldiers decide to shoot. So, Ali was right, and I’ve become a shield, along with five other internationals, sitting in front of ambulances so the Israelis could see us. The ambulance drivers believe they will not be attacked, because the Israeli military might be reluctant to shoot us after the uproar over Rachel Corrie a year ago.

The Next Day

We woke up this morning to see a truck parked behind the ambulance that Francis and I had been assigned to ride in. Between our Arabic and the better English of most people, we figured out that the driver wanted the two of us to go with him as he picked up bread to be delivered to the hospitals. We weren’t due to ride yet, so we agreed.

Francis and I climbed into this farmer’s rickety truck, decorated with plastic grapes and leaves on the front windshield, and took off. We had no guarantee that soldiers wouldn't shoot us, because we were no longer in an ambulance, which, at least, provided us with some semblance of protection, but we went anyhow.

Two hours later, four hundred loaves of bread delivered, and we were back at the apartment, to face Ali and the ambulance drivers who had been waiting for us.

Ali was incredulous, "Why did you go with him?"

"Because we were asked to,” said Francis.

"I at least know where I’m going when I ask you to come with me.” It was the first time I had ever seen Ali worried, not for himself, but for us.

The ambulance driver agreed, “Please, don't go with him again. He's mejnuni (crazy)."

Crazy... but who wasn't crazy? If crazy is what it took for us to do what we did, we were all "mejnuni".

Ribhi was a city Arab, born in Bethlehem during the Jewish riots of 1929. The family myth was that he had been born in a cave because of the fighting between Palestinians and Jews. He’d gone to all the best Christian schools in Jerusalem, even though his family was Muslim, then moved back to his family’s property in Safad after high school, where his grandfather had bought a huge slice of the mountains around the Lake of Galilee. His granddad had earned his money selling gold watches up and down the Americas back in the late 1800s. He’d been gone for two years, and when he returned, he was mounted on a beautiful, prancing, white Arabian horse. All of the people in Safad came out to greet him.

“Hindia,” he said to his wife, “Take your pantaloons off.”

“But I can’t, not here in front of everyone.”

“Yes, you can. Take them off now and tie the bottoms together.

And he opened his saddlebags, filled them with gold coins, and promised his wife that he’d never leave again. They raised 5 children and watched Safad grow from a small farming village to 11.000 people by 1948, populated by 9500 Arabs and 2400 Jews. Life was idyllic. Ribhi’s father, the oldest child, began working in Bethlehem in 1928 while the other sons went off to become engineers, one of them in the US.

In 1948, Ribhi was 19, the oldest child in a family of 6 children. He’d finished high school and was working as a draftsman/carpenter in Safad when his family began to hear rumors of Jewish massacres and dispossession of Arabs. So late in 1947, he answered a call to become part of a local Palestinian militia trained by a Syrian colonel who’d come from Damascus to help. He was the proud possessor of some kind of repeating rifle that often jammed when he was practicing with it, and the militia that the colonel organized was poorly trained and with little communication between the young men who were stationed around Safad.

That first week in May 1948, Ribhi’s younger brother, Subhi, raced home from school and yelled that Jews were killing children in a playground, and he had to come right away. Ribhi grabbed the rifle and his helmet, ran to the school, and hid behind small sandbags, shooting at a better-armed Jewish militia. Pieces of the children were scattered in front of him like broken dolls, blood seeping from their wounds, and he heard the cries for help from the ones still living.

He stood up behind the flimsy barricade to get a better look at the carnage and was hit by shrapnel when a grenade exploded in front of him, wounding him in several places. Screaming for help, his brother picked him up in his arms and took him home, both of them covered in his blood. Although the wounds were all superficial, one piece had sliced into his throat and severed his vocal cords, and he couldn’t speak. When Ribhi took his helmet off, on the top of his head, resting on his hair was another piece of shrapnel. It had pierced his helmet, and if he hadn’t grabbed it that day, he would have been dead.

His father and brothers wrapped his throat, then treated the wounds on his arms and hands, and made arrangements for him to leave to see a doctor in Beirut whom his dad knew. Ribhi frantically tried to tell them he'd be OK, just give him the night to rest, surely his voice would return. But he wasn’t making any sense. Fortunately for the family, his father didn’t think he made any sense either and insisted he leave.

He didn't want to, but he had no choice, so he climbed onto the back of a small donkey, his blood-soaked neck bandaged, and rode the back roads from Safad to Tyre to Beirut. Along the way, he saw mutilated bodies, burned-out homes, as well as corpses of horses and donkeys. He’d lost the ability to talk, but somehow, he got word back to his family to run and hide.

They gathered what they could, took the key to their house, and fled to Damascus the evening of May 9th. A jeep with a blaring bullhorn had come through Safad and told them to leave, that the same thing would happen to them that had happened at Deir Yassin and Tiberius. That jeep was driven by the Palmach, one of the European Jewish militias. On May 10, 1948,, the young men of Safad who stayed to protect the town were lined up against a wall and murdered when the Palmach took over the town. Ribhi’s family was lucky to escape with their lives.

When they arrived in Damascus, his stepmother realized no one had picked up the jewelry, so they sent the youngest boy, Munir, back to get it. He was 9, and he walked back. When he returned two weeks later, he told them the home was already occupied and he couldn't get in. The family never talked about sending a nine-year-old back to get their possessions, and neither did Munir, but the story was that his hair turned white overnight. When I met Munir in 1966, his hair was, indeed, snow white.

The surgery in Beirut removed some of the shrapnel, but parts were still in Ribhi's neck, too close to the artery to remove, but he slowly recovered his voice. However, the repair now gave it a throaty, sexy sound. You could see the pieces on X-rays (and he kept them there to remind himself of all he’d lost, even when he could have had them removed). On the side of his neck were three small scars that crisscrossed, and I could feel the edge of one of them when I met him 15 years later. He’d lost everything; his homeland, his home, some of his family, part of himself. The family survived, but the trauma was always there, close to the surface. Loss was something they walked around with, all of them. He and two of his brothers came to the US in 1952 and got degrees in engineering, as though they’d be ready to reconstruct Palestine when asked to return.

When I met him in 1963, he was a green card holder, not willing to give up on the dream of going home on his Palestinian laissez passer... until Israel attacked and won against its neighbors in 1967. He turned to me and said, “I’ll never return,” and applied for US citizenship the next week.

He, like thousands of others, never returned, not even to visit. And now, Israel has launched the second Nakba, the second genocide, the second ethnic cleansing to haunt another generation of Palestinians. The largest refugee population in the world has become refugees again. I wonder, if he were alive, what he would say now. He died in 2018 at almost 90, always hoping that one day....

We seem to have slipped into the 1940s again, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” has become an ever more distant dream. How little we have learned. Here is just one story from 32 years ago about Michael, my Palestinian son.

In 1993, Michael and I were in St. Maartins, and we decided to go out on one of those boats that spends the day sailing around the islands, pointing out places of interest, eating lunch, swimming, then watching the sunset over the island.

Eighteen of us were on the boat, sixteen from New York on a traveling cruise, and the two of us. The New York Trade Center had just been bombed, by a truck parked in the garage so everyone was talking about what had happened. Michael and I were listening with half an ear, too busy looking at the scenery to pay much attention to the conversation.

Michael had just emerged from the water and wrapped a towel around his head, covering his blond hair. He put his Arafat-type glasses on his nose and stretched out on the deck. One of the men in the boat blurted out, "Good God, son, you look exactly like an A-rab."

There was a slight pause as Michael sat up and said, "That's because I am one."

"Naw...it's not possible. You're too blond."

With no reply back, the guy went on to say, "Well...if you’re an A-rab, I hope you're one of the good kinds, not one of those… you know…those militants."

"And who are they?" replied Michael, (I’m thinking, OMG, we’re on a catamaran and this is the time Michael has decided to make a stand?)

"You know, those Palestinian guerrillas."

My 26-year-old son (who swears he couldn't care less about his heritage) looked straight at those l6 New Yorkers and quietly said, "I'm Palestinian....and I'm proud of that. Never assume when you pick on a group that one of them might not be sitting next to you."

I was so proud of him, that I could hardly stand it. The New Yorkers were quiet all the way back to the dock, not a word from any of them as they stared at the two of us. They probably thought Michael was going to pull out an AK-47 from his Speedo and blow them away. That was the day my son became a freedom fighter.

For those of you who saw the film Amadeus, remember when the Emperor said to Mozart's opera The Abduction from the Seraglio, “Too many notes. Just cut a few and it'll be perfect?"

"Which few did you have in mind?" Mozart answered.

So many words have been written these past few months by brilliant, thoughtful, passionate supporters of justice for Palestinians and Lebanese. Are there any words left? Is there anything any of us can say to make people hear? Are we just talking to each other? Is it possible that people’s eyes and ears are fed up with the constant menu of atrocities that we’ve become numb to the photos of civilians torn apart, babies with no limbs, women and men crushed to death in the rubble?

Millions of us breathed carefully after a ceasefire was called in Lebanon on November 27, 2024. Would it hold? Would it be a real ceasefire? Can we believe anything the Israelis say? Israel would have three months to get out of Lebanon.

On Sunday, January 26th, the day Israeli forces were due to withdraw from southern Lebanon, the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health reported the Israeli army had shot and killed at least 24 people, including six women, and injured 134 others, among them 14 women and 12 children. What the hell kind of ceasefire is it when the occupier of Lebanon, Israel, continues to murder civilians? As of this writing, Israel is still there and the deadline has been extended until mid-February.

OK, so what about the ceasefire in Gaza on January 15, 2025? Certainly, this one stopped the killings in the enclave that’s become an extermination camp for Palestinians. How naive of us to make that assumption. Israeli forces killed at least 87 Palestinians, including many children, in the hours after officials announced that Israel and Hamas have reached a long-awaited ceasefire deal, and the killing continues despite the ceasefire.

And that’s not the end of the carnage Israel has wrought since these faux ceasefires. In Jenin, the West Bank, the bastion of resistance to Israeli occupation, at least 19 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in deadly raids after the Gaza ceasefire.

Two days ago, Trump said he was going to buy Gaza. "I’ll just cut a few and it'll be perfect,” was Trump’s answer to what to do with Palestinians in Gaza (he opened his big mouth and said there were only 1.8 million of the 2.3 million people left, therefore agreeing with those of us who have said Israel has slaughtered close to 500,000 Palestinians in Gaza).

“Which few did you have in mind?” we’ve all responded. Which… indeed.

Gaza is not for sale. Palestine is not for sale.

I wrote this piece sitting in Latakia after a ten-day tour up the coast from Damascus. Every student, teacher, nurse, mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, dentist, and average Syrian we spoke to knows exactly who designed this terrible war in Syria and it sure as hell was not Assad. His popularity went from 60% before the war to 98% now.

They told us stories of the foreign mercenary terrorists, shipped in through their NATO partner, Turkey. These terrorists were paid with American dollars and promised anywhere from $300 to $1000 a month. Some recruiters even threw in women as an added incentive. Most of these so-called moderate rebels were NOT Syrian.

"Don't apologize. I don't want to hear your apologies. I want to know why your government decided to destroy Syria. For what? It wasn't enough to start an uprising? Your terrorists had to destroy our heritage, our culture. I don't want you to apologize. I want answers." demanded the Armenian/Syrian businesswoman who runs the Baron Hotel in Aleppo, where dignitaries from Churchill to TE Lawrence stayed. The rooms were all empty now.

Snipers, until the past year, took up positions across from the hotel front portico and shot at each other and anyone else who walked in their path. We listened in silence to her stories in the bar downstairs. She had given us a tour of some of the famous rooms and was now leading us to the bar where Agatha Christie and Lawrence of Arabia drank apéritiffs.

I was shocked as the 8 of us filed in. 45 years ago, my husband, Ribhi, and I sat on the same chairs at this same bar in the Baron Hotel and had a drink, our children sitting in the brown leather overstuffed chairs. Now all of the bottles in the back were filled with fake wine. There was nothing to serve, everything was left as is before Aleppo was attacked. The ‘rebels’ stole everything drinkable, smashed up the bar, and left. We could see the repairs on the sides of the archway where bullets had hit.

I sat on one of those worn, stained bar seats and stared at the bottles, remembering…just remembering. After two hours, we left. We had no words of encouragement.

The 300,000 Syrians that Americans whine about being killed in the 'alleged civil war' are primarily soldiers. ISIS/AlQaeda came into areas, took them over, murdered every Syrian soldier captured and raped Christian women in the Christian villages they pillaged. They left everything they touched in tatters. The stories we heard broke our hearts.

Halfway through the tour of the Armenian quarter, our usually upbeat guide, Abdul, broke down and cried. "Why? Why? Why would your government destroy the most beautiful part of Aleppo? For what reason? There was nothing here to gain except to destroy our heritage, our beauty."

We had no answer. There IS no answer.

What happened was pretty obvious if you were here. Call it the US/Israel/Saudi/Turkey axis of evil or just call it the Israeli/NATO/US terrorist network.

We Americans no longer apologize. Apologies were empty words. We listened and recorded, took photos, and promised to tell their stories when we returned to the US.

“And I didn’t come back and tell their stories because of Gaza. Now, it’s time to tell the stories of the people we met, talked to, and shared on that trip.”

The final week we were there, in July 1969, we hired a taxi to take us to Damascus to see where his parents lived and to visit relatives. There was no six-lane highway into Damascus then and no border patrols either. Vehicles left Beirut, driving past some beautiful small villages like Zahle, and over the mountain on a two-lane highway. It would take four hours with a stop at several places to eat along the way. vendors clamoring for our business at the small wayside restaurants. Ribhi and the kids wanted to stop at every one of them, just to see what the food tasted like. I was not so willing to put things in my mouth when I didn’t know their origin (I got over that Mid-Western attitude after that first trip.) As the kids munched on falafel and looked out the window, we saw donkeys trudging along the sides of the road, villagers who waved at us, little boys herding goats, and the occasional camel off in the distance.

When his parents fled in 1948, they had joined almost 100,000 Palestinians fleeing Israeli massacres to immigrate to Syria. At the time, Syria was headed by Shukri al-Quwatli who fought the French after WW I and was sentenced to death by them, but fled to Egypt instead until he was called back to Syria to serve as President. I realized I was in for the education of my life that summer, and I’ve never forgotten the stories I was told.

His parents and brothers lived in Yarmouk Camp in Damascus, but it wasn’t a refugee camp at all, not like the tents I’d seen in the Bekaa Valley we had visited. It was a modern section of Damascus, opened in 1957, filled with Palestinians of all kinds, from doctors and lawyers to street vendors. His family occupied the entire top floor of a five-story building.

Three sons (all engineers) and a daughter (a professor) worked and lived outside Damascus making their parent’s lives quite comfortable. Syria had set up a set of laws for them from the very beginning. Although most still held Palestinian citizenship (although if they left Syria, they traveled on a laissez-passer, since they had no passports), they had the right to own more than one business, as well as the right to lease properties. They could join a union and travel throughout Syria. Ribhi’s two half-brothers were in school, one in dental school and one in engineering school. The Syrian government paid all their expenses.

I learned all of this information from Ribhi after he’d spent three days talking to the family, worried that the information we’d gotten through US media meant they were somehow marginalized and demonized, huddled in squalor and worried for their lives. It simply wasn’t true.

We ate, we laughed, we ate some more, we talked (OK, I listened, they talked), and they reminisced about their home in Safad and what it had been like growing up there. I learned that Ribhi had been a soccer player, one of the best in Palestine before 1948. His parents kept saying to me. “lays ladayna suar, nahn asfun” (we have no photos, we are sorry) The week flew by.

On that final day, we loaded up our belongings and every gift we received and sadly departed, heading back down the mountain and straight to the airport in Beirut. It would be another five years before we returned.

The six-day war is what they called it in 1967. The Israelis attacked first, decimating the Egyptian air force, and that was all it took to win. I went to bed the evening of June 4, a high-school English teacher…and woke up the next day an activist for Palestine. I was incensed by the coverage in the US.  How dare the media attack the reputations of the Arabs.  Why...why....wasn't anyone coming to the Arabs' defense?

Over the next three years, I found out why.  In my stupidity, my total naivete, I thought we could make a difference.  In the end, my foolishness helped destroy our marriage and damned near destroyed my children.

I was going to begin a public relations campaign for the Palestinians and get the TRUTH (as we knew it) out.  For three years, my husband, Ribhi and I founded and ran a 501C3 organization in Chicago called PALAID International, collecting medicine, food, blankets, clothing, and money and sending it to the Lebanese Red Cross in Lebanon, who then forwarded the supplies to the Palestinian Red Crescent. I contacted pharmaceutical companies and asked for donations. After all, we were a registered charity. Then I went to the offices of SAS (Swedish Airlines) and asked them to transport the goods to Beirut. After all, we were a registered charity. And they all agreed. They ALL agreed. We were astounded.

We raised enough money for an ambulance and bought one in Germany to be sent through the Lebanese Red Cross to the Palestinian Red Crescent. In 1969, it was still possible to deliver goods from Lebanon to Palestine.

My God, I look back at all that now and wonder where we got the sheer BALLS to do that, the absolute energy to put the entire concept into fruition, and the stupidity never to realize what danger we were in. We became one of the faces of Palestinians in Chicago, interviewed all the time, and ended up on lists we never knew existed.

Then in 1970 when the Palestinians realized they were not being heard, they began hi-jacking airplanes. We suddenly started getting phone calls from some vile organization of Jewish lunatics.

"If anything happens to any of those people on-board those airplanes, something will happen to your kids." “You want your kids alive? Stop what you’re doing.”

"You’d fucking better be ready.  I’d worry about my kids if I were you." (I’ve taken out most of the swear words, but you get the idea)

We called the police.  They said nothing could be done about the threats unless something happened. I asked them to put a tracer on our phone. The phone company wouldn’t agree because nothing had happened.  Finally, one policeman (off the record) told me to buy a whistle and put it next to the phone and wait for the next callers, then blow it into the receiver. It would break their eardrums.

I did, as often as they called. Yet, the threats continued, usually between 2 and 3 am.  Finally, I picked up my young children and hid them in Rockford, Illinois for several weeks. We closed PalAid.

The police finally were able to tell us the threats had come from The Jewish Defense League. They had done their job, and intimidated us into stopping because we were afraid for our children.

Watching Gaza burn, bearing witness every damned day to the Israeli slaughtering of women and children has driven so many of us to despair. Now, these Jewish terrorists have begun invading, murdering, and maiming Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. I pulled out my writings from 2003, 2005, and 2007, mostly to remind myself that Israel has been slaughtering Palestinians for decades. Do I share? How much detail do I have to add? The story is going to stand as is. This one comes from 2005, nineteen years ago.

At least I'm a Jew - Greta Berlin

September 7, 2005
By: Greta Berlin

Last Saturday, after the demonstration in Bil'in, several of us boarded a bus bound for Hebron, a town of 130.000 Palestinians, 600 lunatic settlers, and 10,000 soldiers and police to 'guard' the settlers. Arriving at noon on Saturday, the day most settlers run rampant over everyone, we were told to immediately go to the top of the hill that separates settlers from Palestinians.

Within a half hour, several settler boys between10-17 came strutting down the road toward the Palestinian children playing in front of us. The children left immediately, and we turned on our cameras as they approached us. The older boys egged the younger ones to pick up stones and throw them at us two women sitting on a stoop. Stones flew through the air, hitting me in the hand and thigh. Two soldiers who stood there watching finally called the police (only police can arrest, soldiers cannot).

I screamed at the settler brats and started up the hill after them, only to be pulled back by the soldier who said, "I'm sorry, but they get very upset when they see a camera. You need to put it away."

"Put it away? Not on your life. You think I'm going to let those damned thugs get away with throwing stones at two women who were sitting there doing nothing?"

"I know, I know, but there's nothing we can do about it. They're under 12 years old."

"Then take their parents in. Collectively punish them the way you do the Palestinians. Fine the crazy bastards."

We had plenty of videos (and several photos) and could see which boy had hit me. The soldiers suggested we take the evidence and my statement to the police station in the next couple of days. If we left, they would stop the stone-throwing right away. Well, these nasty kids began a full-on riot, throwing stones at the police and army, throwing pipes off the top of their settler apartments at homes beneath them, screaming obscenities, throwing garbage, peeing off the top of the complex, and flashing mirrors in the faces of the soldiers. Little settler girls came down and threw stones at us. It was so disgusting, that we finally left and I headed to a clinic to get treatment for my cuts and bruises. The rioting went on for hours, into the night, where they threw boulders onto the homes of the Palestinian homes nestled beneath the illegal Israeli enclave.

The next day, one Palestinian man called us and asked us to come to his home. The settlers had come the week before and cut through every grapevine, vines that were over 100 years old, thick as my thigh. He met us at the door, a slight, stooped man holding a small shovel, and told us his story. He had called the police to beg them to stop the destruction of vines that had been in his family for generations. Instead, they came to the door and said, "Go back in your house, leave them alone, or we'll kill you."

He had no choice. Every single vine had been cut in half, the wilted leaves and crushed grapes spread over his back garden. He took us out and pointed at one stump. "But that one…just look. …that one has a shoot growing already. They'll come back someday. They’ll grow again."

My God, what could any of us say?

I spent the next two days at the police station making out a report and giving them video and photos of the attack. One Iraqi/Israeli policeman said, "I sympathize, but there's nothing we can do. They're under 12."

"That hasn't stopped you from punishing Palestinian families when their kids throw stones... and you have 300 Palestinian children between 13-14 years old in jail for throwing stones."

After an hour of increasingly hostile conversation, he finally admitted that the last time he had tried to stop these thugs, they had slit all 4 of his tires. Another policeman said that they had broken his windshield. I said, "Welcome to Germany." and left.

Nothing will happen. Nothing will be done. These illegal, (mostly American) settlers have forced stores to shut, nailed Palestinian front doors closed, thrown excrement and stones on the tops of homes, cut the olive trees, and chainsawed the grape vines.

Today several of us went to Qawawis, a small village of 40-45 shepherds. We went for the day to protect them from the settlers who had beaten them and poisoned their sheep. In pure Palestinian hospitality, they insisted we come in and have tea and pastries, these shepherds who had so little had made a spread for us. We sat and listened…

Eight settlers had beaten a man yesterday. He’d already been badly beaten the year before and had gone to Iraq for surgery. He refused to make a complaint, more afraid of settlers; knowing that even with three internationals who were there every day, two UN observers who came part-time, and one Israeli from Tayyush, they would wait like some black widow spiders and come back and kill him. They’d already killed one shepherd.

I am tired, I am hot, I am dusty, I finally had a shower after three days. I am burned, and I wonder what the hell I'm doing here and if we make one God damned bit of difference. Israel is committing silent genocide on people who have been ignored and villainized. Their children look at us with big eyes, tug at our clothing, and ask us why our government doesn't stop what is happening.

What do I tell them? That Israeli occupation police and military can’t stop them?

The Sephardic Jewish policeman who took my statement and photos of my huge bruise admitted to me that he knew he was a second-class citizen in a racist society.

"But at least I'm a Jew," he said.

God help us all.

Photos of settler house and boys from Hebron as well as the woman who invited us into her abode, Qawawis, 2005