From campus to a Gaza flotilla: the experiences of an activist academic [republished]

[NOTE: as originally published on TheConversation.edu.au February 22. 2012]

Canadian academic David Heap last year took part in an activist mission to challenge the Israeli military blockade of the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

The Israeli government claims the blockade is necessary to maintain security for its citizens and prevent terrorism. Palestinians, their supporters and human rights experts say the policy amounts to collective punishment that is damaging the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

After a previous aid flotilla to Gaza was raided by Israeli special forces in 2010, leaving nine activists dead, more attempts to send boats carrying supplies to Gaza were launched, including the Canadian Boat to Gaza, carrying Heap.

Here Heap explains why he risked his own safety to stand up for an issue he passionately supports.

Last year, at the University of Western Ontario campus where I work, a student group called Solidarity with Palestinian Human Rights joined with other community groups in London, Ontario to help raise tens of thousands of dollars in support of the Canadian Boat to Gaza, a civil society campaign to challenge the blockade of Gaza.

The illegal blockade of course affects students and university staff along with everyone else in what has aptly been called the world’s largest open-air prison.

The security justification

Despite marginal improvements following the pressure arising from the 2010 Freedom Flotilla, aid deliveries to Gaza still supply a fraction of what the population needed before the current blockade was imposed in 2007.

As the Israeli NGO Gisha documents extensively, the Palestinians of Gaza have been deliberately “put on a diet” by the continuing military blockade which allows in only a calculated minimum of restricted supplies: a form of collective punishment. The situation in Gaza is recognised as dire by international humanitarian NGOs, and the blockade has been characterised as a serious violation of international law by experts at the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCR) as recently as September 2011.

As my colleague, Dr. Ziad Medoukh (head of French and coordinator of the Peace Studies Centre at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza) notes: schools supplies, computer equipment and books are still among the goods that are severely restricted and only sporadically available in blockaded Gaza.

The hopes and aspirations of a whole generation in Gaza are being needlessly stunted due to senseless restrictions which have nothing to do with anyone’s “security”.

Complete blockade

Those who finish their studies and earn scholarships abroad are often caught by restrictions on human movement (a freedom which should be enjoyed by everyone under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) which cruelly curtail travel for academic, medical, commercial or family purposes.

While the occasional partial opening of the Rafah border with Egypt for some people (though few goods) is a positive development, Palestinians also have the right to free shipping traffic through the port of Gaza — the only Mediterranean port closed to shipping — and to the peaceful use of their own territorial waters, which they are currently denied.

They cannot depend on the whims of a neighbouring country to keep goods and people flowing in and out of Gaza.

The Canadian Boat to Gaza

These are some of the reasons why I was aboard the Tahrir, the Canadian Boat to Gaza which was part of the Freedom Flotilla II in July 2011, when we attempted to sail from Greece but were prevented by Greek authorities under international pressure.

A Google Maps screenshot showing the Tahrir was in international waters when confronted by Israeli naval forces. Lina Attalah, Almasy Alyoum, Cairo

The Israeli blockade of Gaza had been effectively outsourced to Greek ports, but our campaign continued undaunted. When the Tahrir, together with the Irish boat to Gaza (MV Saoirse), sailed from the southern Turkish port of Fethiye on November 2, 2011, I was again on board.

Though fewer in numbers than in July, the volunteers on the Tahrir were united in our determination to challenge the blockade of Gaza peacefully, through non-violent direct action. Apart from our Greek captain and five international journalists, our numbers included three Canadians, a U.S. citizen, Michael Coleman of Free Gaza Australia, and Palestinian student Majd Kayyal who has never been able to travel to Gaza directly, a mere 135 kilometres from his home in Haifa.

After about 50 hours at sea with almost continuous media coverage, our satellite communications were cut by the Israeli navy shortly after noon on Friday November 4, in stark contrast to the Greek authorities, who never interfered with communications or with media professionals when they stopped the Tahrir last July. Our last recorded GPS position was some 45 nautical miles from the port of Gaza, in international waters with a course set towards Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza. At no time did we set a course for Israel or Israeli waters.

Israel’s overwhelming use of force

In July, Greek authorities managed to take control of the Tahrir and more than 40 people on board, using only one small cutter and two Zodiacs carrying a total of six coastguard officers; in contrast, the Israeli navy deployed overwhelming force against our two small vessels.

The Tahrir, now with just 12 people on board, and the Saoirse, with 15, faced hundreds of heavily armed Israeli troops on at least three warships and between 15 and 20 assault boats equipped with water cannons and mechanical lifts.

Despite recognising that we were unarmed and would present no active resistance, the Israeli navy sent about two dozen heavily armed commandos to storm our vessel. I was tasered during the assault, and later bruised while being forcibly removed from the Tahrir.

Detention in Israel

Ironically, after being illegally kidnapped on the high seas, we were told we had illegally entered a country we never had any intention of visiting. Our six-day detention was marked throughout by manipulation and misinformation on the part of the Israeli authorities.

For example, we were told that if we signed a document waiving our right to appeal before a judge we would be deported home within 24 hours: Ehab Lotayef of Montreal signed such a waiver twice within the first 48 hours, and was nonetheless detained for six days, just like those of us who signed nothing.

Although cut short, the voyage of the Tahrir served to draw attention to the injustice of the blockade of Gaza, as well as to educate and mobilise Canadians and others against the blockade.

An ongoing campaign

Pulitzer Prize winner and civil rights activist Alice Walker from the US Boat to Gaza says challenges to the blockade of Gaza are the Freedom Rides of our time – and like the 1960s civil rights movement in the U.S. South, we must keep up the struggle despite attempts to intimidate us.

As my colleague Ziad notes, the Palestinians of Gaza are left with “a hope in international civil society solidarity which is organising throughout the world in order to try, through peaceful actions, to break this blockade.” (author’s translation)

He observes that though we did not reach the shores of Gaza this time, our message of solidarity was received throughout Palestine.

That is why we have to keep on challenging this blockade.

Musical winterlude 2 (+post-script: the Power of Song)

Contrary to the impression an earlier post might have left, I am not opposed to seasonal singing generally (just to artifically “festive” piped-in muzak). Live singing is good at any time, and especially when family and friends get together. On December 26 and 27 my family gathered at the long-term care facility where my parents live for sing-songs with a few friends.  We sang labour classics like The Banks are Made of Marble, Solidarity Forever  (with some of the great new lyrics from Wisconsin), Union Maid, Joe Hill, Preacher and the slave (Long-haired preachers come out every night), peace songs like Ain’t gonna study war no more and protest songs of hope like Oh Mary don’t you weep, We shall overcome, We shall not be moved  and If I had a hammer. There were a few funny songs like I am an Anglican (sort a a religious in-joke) and Old time religion. We ended up (dad gets tired quickly – my parents turned 86 this year) with How can I keep from Singing? (I had difficulty controlling my tears, predictably) and the Irish freedom song Kevin Barry (which for me recalled my Irish cellmate from Givon prison in Israel).


Post-script: my brother Danny sent this link to the CBC program Definitely not the Opera from December 31, on the Power of song, with some powerful first-hand stories from different times & places (including Dan Hill having to prove he was himself by singing his own song for Bahamian police).

How can I keep from singing?

This song is part of what kept me going while imprisoned in Israel for six days, following the capture at sea of the Tahrir (the Canadian Boat to Gaza) on November 4, 2011.

My life flows on in endless song, above earth's lamentation
I hear that real, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation.
Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing.
It sounds an echo in my soul: how can I keep from singing?

What though the tempest round me roar, I hear the truth it liveth.
What though the darkness round me close, songs in the night it giveth.
No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock I'm clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

When men and women conquer fear, with prison doors wide swinging.*
When friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing?
In prison cell or dungeon vile, our thoughts to them are winging.
When friends by shame are undefiled, how can I keep from singing?

There are a number of versions of this song, originally a Christian hymn, but the one I was familiar with since childhood was as recorded by (among others) Pete Seeger, which downplays religious aspects of the lyrics (How can I keep from singing? is also the title of Seeger's biography by David King Dunaway). However, the line at the beginning of the third verse in that version:

*When tyrants tremble, sick with fear, and hear their death-knell ringing,


has long troubled me, since I oppose the death penalty for anyone, even tyrants. As a teen, I rewrote the line in a sort of half-assed way ( ... and hear those peace bells ringing -- only two words changed, and still leaves the question, why should even tyrants be "sick with fear"?) but only for my own use, and perhaps singing to my kids, in later years.

(As an aside on this point, I entirely concur with Ariel Dorfman, who wrote in an open letter to the bloody-handed ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet following the latter's arrest: I want you to know, General, that I do not believe in capital punishment. What I do believe in is human redemption. ...I highly recommend the full interview, especially Dorfman's poetic "sentence" for Pinochet's crimes... but I digress...).

So when a few years ago I began singing (again) with my dad, who has been suffering from Alzheimer's now for some five years, this song was a natural part of our shared repertoire, and that particular verse of course came up as problematic, for both of us. He told me someone at their church had a better replacement verse for that line, so I asked my friend Becca Whitla, music director at Holy Trinity in downtown Toronto (my parents' congregation and the one I grew up in). She told me about the powerful new line I now use at the beginning of the third verse:


When men and women conquer fear, with prison doors wide swinging,


and she also told me that the person who had penned the substitution was in fact dad (he no longer recalls having composed the change -- only that there is a better verse). At the time, of course, I had no idea how that new line would end up speaking to me.

So all of this added up to a pretty heavy emotional charge for me when I sang this song in prison, mostly as a sort of personal meditation (since I never did get around to learning how to meditate "properly"). I knew that evoking memories of dad (and of my family more generally) would make me cry, and my personal concentration "game" was that I had to sing it through completely, without stumbling, or start over, repeating until I got it right and complete. The somewhat controlled crying response was also, I think, a healthy outlet.

Those last four lines were also the message I sent my family when I had a chance to get a message out of the prison -- a bit cryptic, perhaps, but my hope was that the message would read clearly as one of hope. It prompted another memory from my sister Margaret, who recalled that when Québec trade-unionist and socialist Michel Chartrand was jailed for four months in 1970 (under the War Measures Act), dad wrote to him and sent him this song (with Margaret's translation into French, now sadly lost).

There were other songs I sang while in prison in Israel (perhaps I will write about them too) but this was the one I came back to in order to pull myself together and face whatever we had to face. We prepared for many things during the long lead-up to the voyage of the Tahrir, but I never realised that I would find my way back to these songs. I have very few regrets about the whole experience -- as I have said more than once publicly, I would go again in a heart-beat -- but if I had to do it over, I wish I had begun singing earlier, on the deck of the Tahrir.