The Coming Freedom Flotilla: An Interview With Dylan Saba
A new aid flotilla to Gaza will be sailing to break the blockade on the Strip. Palestinian-American lawyer, writer, and journalist Dylan Saba will be on that flotilla.
Aid flotillas have been sent to break the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip before, but never under such grave circumstances. After months of siege and a famine that many aid organizations have never seen the likes of before, an effort to break that siege with thousands of tons of aid for Palestinians in the enclave is about to set sail within the next few days.
I spoke with journalist Dylan Saba, who will be on the flotilla, from an undisclosed Mediterranean city from which the ships will be launching, about the plans for the flotilla to distribute aid, the values of different tactics of nonviolence, and about Dylan’s own family in Gaza.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Séamus: Many people, when they think about a Gaza aid flotilla, they maybe remember the Freedom Flotilla that launched back in 2010. That was 14 years ago. Can you tell me about this current flotilla that is being launched within the next several days to Gaza? How similar is it to the ones that came before it?
Dylan: The 2010 flotilla was quite high profile because of the raid that resulted in Israel killing [9] people on the boat and injuring [30] people, and another person died [later on]. So, a total of 10 were killed. But there were flotilla before that and there were flotilla after organized by the same Freedom Coalition. So there were a couple of successful flotillas that did in fact make it to Gaza to deliver aid before 2010. And there have been a number of flotillas after, although no flotilla after has successfully avoided being raided by the Israelis, but with varying degrees of violence, like one in 2016 and one in [2015]. Those two resulted in raids where the Israelis boarded, commandeered the ship in international waters, and then took it to Ashdod Port, and detained the folks on board and ultimately deported folks back to their countries of nationality.
So this flotilla is in the same or similar vein as the recent missions. Like the 2010 flotilla with the Mavi Marmara, [it will] involve quite a large passenger ship. I’m not at liberty to give details on the number of boats that will be sailing with us and the departure location and time. But what I can say is that it will be broadly similar. I think that the biggest difference right now obviously is the context.
Gaza has been under a blockade for many years at this point but the famine conditions in the Strip are new. There’s been a calorie restriction on the people of Gaza and a real, severe limitation on the kinds of materials that can get through the Israeli blockade, not just in terms of food, but on supplies. But we’re obviously in a whole different world now with the genocide, the war, and the militarily-enforced famine. So aid has taken on a whole new significance because it is literally a matter of life and death for Palestinians in Gaza, and in particular Palestinians in the north of Gaza that have been cut off from all sources of aid and sustenance for the duration of the war, and conditions just continue to severely degrade.
The plan is to take the 5500 tons of aid that we’ll be sailing with and deliver them to Gaza, and we are in contact with Palestinian organizations on the ground who will be able to, should we make it through the blockade, will be able to distribute that aid, and the goal ultimately is to get this aid to Palestinians in the north of Gaza.
S: Before I ask more about the current context—currently you’re calling in from a burner phone. You can’t talk about the details of how many ships, where it’s launching from, publicly, so my question would be: how did you find out about this flotilla even being launched? Because I think many people, including myself, did not know that there was even a flotilla being organized until you yourself announced that you’re going to be on it.
D: I heard about it through word of mouth, just in New York, in my community of diaspora Palestinians. We were in contact and had received a visitor from abroad, a Palestinian who was giving us some updates on the situation on the ground, someone with direct knowledge, and I heard about it basically in passing that this flotilla was being organized. So, I immediately volunteered myself as a journalist and that’s the capacity in which I’m joining this flotilla. I’m joining to write about this and to document the journey as a way to bring attention, not just to the flotilla, but [to] the humanitarian paradigm in Gaza and its relationship to Israel’s military operation. But it was basically serendipitous that I heard about this happening, and I basically just elbowed my way onto it.
S: When the context is famine, when international aid to Gaza is such an issue at the forefront that is being more readily discussed within the context of [how] now Western aid workers being killed by Israeli airstrikes, do you personally think that circumstances will be different when you and the flotilla attempt to cross into blockaded waters?
D: Yes, I think that the circumstances are different. But what I will say is that I think there are pressures pushing in different directions. So, as folks know, this is the most reactionary, fascist, right-wing, like downright insane Israeli government that the state’s ever had, as evidenced by their conduct during this genocide. So for that reason, we’re expecting a level, or anticipating the possibility of a level of violence from the Israelis that is an order of magnitude even worse than what they’ve shown the [Freedom Flotillas] before. However, the context is also different in a way that pushes in the other direction, right?
There’s also more scrutiny on the Israelis than there’s ever been before. Their support in the West is faltering to say the least. I mean, they have thus far retained the support of the Biden administration but that was really tested with the strike on the World Central Kitchen workers. Now, whether that was because it crossed a line for the administration, for Biden personally, whether it had to do with the connection with a DC insider, I can’t really do much more than speculate. But I think nevertheless there will be a lot of scrutiny on how the Israelis respond to our mission.
I think that, in a way, that can cut against the pressures I was just talking about where you have basically a rabid right-wing government that feels pushed into a corner and threatened and has been lashing out in ways that are less than rational, to put it charitably. In total, it creates a situation of heightened tensions where it’s not really clear how that balance of forces is gonna play out, so for that reason we have to really just be open to a lot of potential contingencies.
To answer your question, I am personally, and I think us collectively, are anticipating the possibility of, yes, violence and mistreatment, because even if the diplomatic pressure is such that the Israelis are aware that they don’t have a lot of bandwidth to kill people, that does not mean that they will treat us well.
Historically, they’ve been very violent. They’ve tased people, beat people up, held people, detained people on the ship for many hours. Once the ship is brought to port, there’s a lengthy processing component where the folks are handed off from the army to the police and there’s just a lot of opportunity for violence throughout that process.
S: If Israel were to raid the flotilla as it has done in the past, do you think that anyone inside the White House would be concerned? Do you think that were American citizens, who I presume will be on the flotilla aside from yourself, if they were detained in the course of doing this, that [Biden] would voice that concern with the Israeli government?
D: I would hope so, I would hope so. I think that it in part depends on what kind of attention there is on the flotilla, before and during the mission. Part of our philosophy in doing this is that, the more of a spotlight there is on the mission itself, the more diplomatic pressure we can bring to bear on Biden and other heads of state. Because this is a multinational coalition: there will be Americans on board and there will be people of probably a dozen other nationalities, some Western, some non-Western. But the hope is that we can translate media attention into diplomatic pressure to bear on the Israelis.
Should we be detained, I imagine there would be pressure on the Israelis from the Americans to release us and send us back. I also think that the Israelis would not be that interested in holding us for any lengthy period of time, because I imagine from the Israeli point of view, they basically want this to go away. That is part of the strategic logic of the flotilla from the outset, right, is to force the issue, in a media sense, force the issue of aid, demonstrate its connection with the military operation, and put the Israelis in a situation in which basically any way they handle it is harming their war effort in a narrative sense and [harming] their standing in the international community.
S: Do you know [the details of the] plan that has been thought through and coordinated with either aid organizations in Gaza or perhaps even the Palestinian government to distribute this aid after it were to land?
D: That’s a great question because it is certainly a logistical challenge. Even just, you know, tabling the whole Israelis thing. It’s a logistical challenge to get that much aid, by water, into the relatively small ports of Gaza and the aid off it. I don’t think that I should go into details but I can tell you that there is a plan and there is the technology by which to offload the aid onto the shore.
Ideally, what will happen is that we will make the journey to Gaza, offload the ship, probably stay there a couple of days and then sail back to the Mediterranean city from which we’re departing. I do think that a raid is likely but in the event that we are able to negotiate passage, and presumably that would come from diplomatic pressure to let us through, then there [are] the plans and the capabilities to offload, distribute, in a relatively short period of time.
S: Why specifically did you want to be on this flotilla outside of your obligation as a journalist to cover this and to put a spotlight onto it?
D: It’s a great question and it’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about. I’ll speak generally first and then speak for myself. I think that there are different logics for why folks are participating in this, and they range from kind of broad to more narrow, and the broadest are the folks who have a spiritual or ethical commitment to nonviolence.
That’s ultimately what this is, it’s a direct action. It’s a non-violent, direct action. We are civilians. We are unarmed. We are attempting to deliver essential humanitarian aid to the people in the world who need it most. And we are willing to confront the violence of the Israeli military, their genocidal violence, because it’s imperative to do so. And there are some folks who feel that nonviolence is an ethical and spiritual imperative and are acting out their politics or their ethics in that sense.
There are some folks, and this is a slightly narrower kind of conception of duty, subscribe to belief in strategic non-violence. There are theorists of this in political science, like Gene Sharp, Erica Chenoweth, and Maria Stephan, who say that engaging in strategic non-violence is an effective, or the most effective way to counter entities that have a monopoly on the use of violent force, that strategic non-violence has low barriers to entry, [as in] a lot of different people can participate in it, and ultimately what you can do is draw out or elicit overreactions from the armed state in such a way that undercut that state’s legitimacy and can be an effective strategy for destabilizing regimes.
Then there’s an even narrower conception, which is what I would call a tactical non-violence. That’s a view that says, okay, non-violence doesn’t necessarily need to be the overarching strategy of resistance, but in particular instances, can have tactical benefits. So it may not be a kind of political call for widespread participation in non-violence, but in this instance it can bring benefits to bear on the greater struggle for liberation for [many] of the same reasons as the strategic non-violence conception.
The point of this, at least in my view, is that no matter how Israel responds, it’s a bad look for them. It undermines their effort in the narrative sphere.
But I think that the reason I in particular feel compelled to participate is really to tell this story from the inside. I have been following this very closely and it’s my assessment that the war is entering a state of change. Israel purports to be preparing for the Rafah invasion. I think that there are some really, from their perspective, compelling reasons to do that. Benny Morris just recently made the argument for it in the pages of The New York Times. But I also think that there’s some really compelling reasons not to do it, both for their own military morale reasons, for the potential of upsetting [the] long-standing peace agreement with Egypt, for the potential that they cross some red lines with respect to [their] United States supporters or the international community.
So I don’t know really whether that invasion will happen but, whether or not it happens, I think that with respect to Gaza, the Israelis, at a certain point, will come to terms with the fact that they have failed to achieve their military objectives through the use of military force. And from my estimation, what that signals is that they are not going to give up on those objectives, being the “eradication of Hamas”, which really means a position of a new governmental force or a new mode of governance in Gaza, and the pacification of Palestinian resistance in the Strip. I don’t think that they are just going to give up on those goals and I do think that they are going to use direct control over the humanitarian situation as a way to advance those objectives.
And so my concern is that in the West, in the United States, the image of guns going silent, although we know the guns will never truly go silent and bombings and raids will continue, [will be] the kind of image that Israel and the US will try to project will be interpreted as, you know, a victory. And I think that, while it’s probably plausible and probably correct to call it a military victory for the Palestinian resistance, I worry that the risk to Palestinian life will continue and only [intensify] if Israel continues to be able to sustain famine conditions with backing by the United States.
So my objective as a journalist and as a commentator and storyteller here is to expose the relationship between Israel’s control over the humanitarian situation and their military operation and military objectives in order to keep the pressure on Israel, keep pressure on the United States, until we have a situation of status quo that is sustainable for Palestinian life.
S: As a Palestinian, have you ever been back to Palestine? Have you ever been able to?
D: I have. My dad’s Palestinian, and his family is from Gaza. The first time that I went back to Palestine was before Gaza was cut off from ‘48 [Editor’s note: Palestinian territory that was taken by Israel during the Nakba of 1948] and from the rest of Palestine. I was able to enter Gaza for New Years in the year 2000, so it’s 24 years ago that I was able to visit my family home in the north of Gaza, and I didn’t return to Palestine for another 12 years. In 2012, I spent a summer in the West Bank, traveled around ‘48, but I was unable to enter Gaza and really try and enter then.
I don’t think there’s a scenario in which we personally make it to the north, but it is personal to me. My dad’s cousins—I have family members who are in the north still now, and have been sheltering in a church for more than six months, and I am definitely carrying them with me on this journey and it’s very personal for me. Inasmuch as it is an active narrative intervention and a political act, it is also a symbolic and personal act for me to at least attempt to bring it to them.