‘THE question here today is not why we are sailing. The story is not at all about the mission we are about to embark. The story here is about Palestine,’ Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said at the Global Sumud Flotilla news conference in Barcelona yesterday afternoon.
She continued: ‘The story here is how people are being deliberately deprived of the very basic means to survive, and the story here is how the world can be silent.
‘Israel,’ Thunberg continued, ‘is very clear about their genocidal intent. They want to erase the Palestinian nation. They want to take over the Gaza Strip.
‘If that doesn’t make people act, if that doesn’t make people go out of their couch and take action, fill the streets, get organised, then I don’t know what will.’
Thunberg, who is part of the flotilla’s steering committee and is on board the Global Sumud Flotilla, declared it would be the ‘biggest attempt ever to break the illegal Israeli siege over Gaza’.
In addition to the ships leaving Spain yesterday, dozens of other vessels are expected to leave Tunisian and other Mediterranean ports on September 4th, said Thunberg, who was previously arrested and deported from Israel after taking part in a Gaza aid flotilla mission.
As well as Thunberg, the flotilla will include activists from several countries, European lawmakers, and public figures such as former Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau.
‘We understand that this is a legal mission under international law,’ said Portuguese MP Mariana Mortagua, who will join the mission.
‘This is a non-violent mission that is aiming to open a corridor of humanitarian aid,’ Saif Abukeshek, a Spanish-Palestinian activist who is a member of the flotilla’s steering committee, told yesterday’s press conference.
‘We cannot ignore the fact that Palestinians are being starved to death because there is a government that is intentionally starving those people to death.’
Yasemin Acar, an organiser with the Global Sumud Flotilla, said that while the boats can carry only limited aid for a population of two million people who are ‘currently being starved’, the flotilla is not merely symbolic.
‘We are really determined to break the siege,’ Acar said. ‘And if they (Israeli authorities) attack us once again, if they intercept us, kidnap us and imprison us, … we will come back even stronger.
‘We are sending a message to the Palestinians that we are in solidarity with them, but in action. Our lives are not worth more than their lives.
‘We are sending another message to our governments, to our very complicit governments around the world, that they don’t represent us, they don’t speak on behalf of us.’
900 Israeli soldiers killed, 6,210 wounded
The Israeli military announced yesterday that since the beginning of the Gaza genocide on October 7, 2023, a total of 900 Israeli soldiers have been killed and 6,210 others wounded.
Among the dead are 295 reservists and 154 career troops, the report said. The figure includes 311 soldiers killed on October 7-8, during the Hamas-led operation Al-Aqsa Storm and the ensuing fighting along the Gaza border.
Since then, the report added, another 589 soldiers have been killed, 456 of them in the ground offensive inside Gaza.
The report noted that the Golani Brigade has suffered the highest losses, with 114 dead, since the devastating Israeli war on Gaza began.
The military said 6,213 soldiers have been wounded since the war began: 925 seriously, 1,540 moderately, and 3,748 lightly. Of those, 2,883 were injured in the Gaza ground offensive. Ten soldiers remain hospitalised in serious condition.
The brave Palestinian resistance, led by the Al-Qassam Brigades, is fiercely countering the Israeli offensive in Gaza, using ambushes, tunnels, and tactical ingenuity to expose Israel’s vulnerabilities and high casualties.
With traps and tactical ingenuity, Al-Qassam fighters outmanoeuvre invaders in Gaza. On Sunday, Israeli media reported renewed fighting between Palestinian resistance fighters and the Israeli military in Gaza City’s Zaytoun neighbourhood, resulting in the death of at least one Israeli soldier.
Reports also stated that nine other soldiers had been wounded, amid fears that four may have been captured. Israeli helicopters were reportedly evacuating soldiers under heavy fire.
Military experts described it as a ‘significant tactical setback’ for the Israeli forces, undermining the regime’s narrative regarding the strength of Hamas.
The Israeli military is known to hide the numbers of its dead and wounded in an effort to maintain morale among its soldiers and convey the image to the Israeli public that it is winning the war against Hamas and the Palestinian resistance.
In February, Israel’s then newly appointed Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, revealed a significant discrepancy between the actual war losses in Gaza and the figures previously reported by the Israeli military, stating that the number of soldiers killed and wounded is much higher than officially disclosed.
Zamir said there were at least 5,942 registered ‘bereaved families’ since 7th October, with some likely having more than one family member killed in the Israeli war on Gaza.
