Shut It Down by Lisa Fithian

Author:Lisa Fithian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

In December 2008 the conflict between Israel and Palestine exploded when the Israeli government began a three-week military offensive on Gaza known as Operation Cast Lead. About fourteen hundred Palestinians were killed, many of them civilians. In the months afterward in Gaza, electricity was down, hospitals were destroyed, and fishermen were shot and killed in their own legal waters. With no legal way in or out, tunnels had become a lifeline for desperately needed resources in Gaza, but now those tunnels were under attack and many were destroyed.

In early 2009, at the initiative of the Palestinians, the International Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza was formed, and Code Pink—a US-based, women-led peace group started in 2002 in response to the war in Iraq—led delegations to Gaza, bringing hundreds of internationals to witness the destruction and commit to organizing when they returned home. It was during one of those visits that the idea of an international march in Gaza to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Operation Cast Lead took root. Eventually forty-two countries became involved, each organizing local campaigns and preparing people to come to Cairo and then on to Gaza in December 2009.5

Ships to Gaza

During the summer of 2010, the first big international Freedom Flotilla sailed to break the siege of Gaza. It was filled with activists and humanitarian aid workers, and the IDF attacked, killing nine people on the Turkish ship the Mavi Mamara. This fueled great global outrage, and friends of mine in the US decided it was time to step up our resistance. We organized the first US Boat to Gaza, called the Audacity of Hope, which attempted to sail from Greece in the summer of 2011. Our boat was sabotaged and our mission thwarted by the Greek government, which caved to the US and Israeli pressure. (Greece was facing a severe economic crisis at the time, and their own uprising was in progress in the form of a massive popular occupation in Syntagma Square outside the Hellenic Parliament building. I participated in that occupation and was awed by the organization and fierce resistance of the people.) Since that flotilla, I have been the nonviolence trainer and ground crew for the Women’s Boat to Gaza in 2016 and the international Freedom Flotilla in 2018.

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