The pro-Palestine rally at Hyde Park on June 7 marked Al Naksa (The Setback). It refers to the six-day war, June 5–10, 1976, which led to the Israeli expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land and the unlawful Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

The protest paid tribute to the ongoing resistance against Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Among the speakers to address the protest were four Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) activists who, together with more than 360 others from more than 40 countries, were kidnapped on May 18 in international waters by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). They were forcefully detained, physically and psychologically brutalised and spat out after a five-day ordeal.

Anny Mokotow spoke publicly, for the first time since her return, at the rally, as a member of Jews Against the Occupation ’48 and the Loud Jew Collective.

I sat down with Mokotow to create an edited version of her speech.

I would like to talk about the spirit of the flotilla, the bravery of the Palestinian people and the barbaric and psycho monstrosity known as the IOF.

I do so as an anti-Zionist Jewish person, who sailed on an international mission to break Israel’s illegal blockade of the Port of Gaza. I sailed to defy the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s position, which enables Israel’s piracy in the Mediterranean. 

The Global Sumud Flotilla sailed with revolutionary politics and the humanitarian goal to deliver aid, messages of support and hope to those in occupied Gaza and occupied Palestine.

We didn’t make it and this shames me, yet the government’s response shames me more.

The flotilla........

© Green Left Weekly