Gabe Schivone, a student at the University of Arizona, recently returned from Greece, where he was planning to join the flotilla to Gaza. His boat never left port and he returned to the U.S.
After a lot of phone tag, he and I finally did a short Q&A over email. His answers may be predictably partisan, but his outlook is worth considering. It’s far from a majority view among his peers, but it’s also far from insignificant. His answers have not been edited or redacted at all from the email.
David A.M. Wilensky: How did you end up on the flotilla?
Gabe Schivone: In short, I applied and was selected. I was the only undergraduate student and only passenger from Arizona, and represented primarily National Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and a border humanitarian group I work for called No Más Muertes/No More Deaths.
More broadly, I was able to go and so I went. I had the resources, the time, the opportunity, and the intention to take advantage of the unjust privileges unique to me (such as American citizenship, my student status)—to shake these privileges off by using them practically and symbolically as a form of nonviolent direct resistance to US-Israeli policy against the Palestinians.
DAMW: How would you summarize what happened with the flotilla this time around?
GS: The US and Israel could not tolerate a ship of nonviolent human rights advocates (mostly women in the case of the US Boat) making a public voyage on the world’s stage to highlight the inhumanity and brutal violence of the US-Israeli occupation of Palestine. So they enlisted subordinate states such as Greece to be surrogate enforcers—more like hired thugs and mercenaries—to carry out a policy of siege across the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. Nearly all the boats were prevented from leaving their harbors. In effect, the US and Israel outsourced enforcement of the occupation, including the siege of Gaza, all the way to the shores of Greece, thereby extending its scope and reach.
But one ship (Dignite/Al Karama) slipped through the long hand of the outsourced occupation (yesterday morning, Tues. July 19) and had to be dealt with directly by US-Israeli force on the high seas. In usual fashion, Israeli forces piloting US-enabled military vessels and equipment illegally intercepted the ship in an undeniable act of piracy, kidnapping all of the passengers and taking them to a state they had no intention of visiting. As they proclaim in Monday’s (July 18) press release, “Dignité’s action should not be considered as a mini-version of the Freedom Flotilla 2, but as an overture to what is to come. It is a message that while addressed to the Israeli government, the international community and to the trapped population in Gaza: We in the Freedom Flotilla 2 will not give in until this inhumane and illegitimate blockade completely is abolished. Right up until the day we are headed to Gaza.”
DAMW: Do you have plans to get more students involved in the next flotilla? Is there going to be a next flotilla?
GS: Absolutely. As soon as possible we will organize another flotilla—and another and another, until Israel ends its occupation and siege.
Students and youth are leading resistance movements engulfing Europe and the Middle/Near East. Those of us involved in the wide flotilla efforts will connect the flotilla with these movements directly and mobilize among these formidable nonviolent forces. As international youth we understand that we are part of these movements—they are us, we are Gaza, we are everywhere in the world where miserable conditions are imposed on people by world governments and bosses and threaten our future and the future of our grandchildren. We believe the world should know and understand this reality. This is what the youth flotilla movement is all about.
DAMW: Write your five-word flotilla memoir.
GS: Staying human overcomes all adversity.
