Dr. Hanan Chehata interviews Greta Berlin Co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement

9th June 2010

"One of the things that Israel does NOT seem to get clear is that every time they do this we will come back with more. Every time that they decide that maybe if they are going to kill people we will give up, we will come back with more. They severely wounded two of the captains, the Turkish captain on board the Mavi Marmara and the Greek captain on board the Spendoni.

This was done deliberately, this was done to send a message to the captains that they should not be working with us but we've already had three captains write to us in the last week and say "if you need more captains, please give me a call. Please let me know". People are not intimidated into doing what Israel wants them to do, so of course we're going to come back. We are going to come back until Israel lifts that blockade and until Israel abides by the international law that says it doesn't have any right to do this and if governments aren't going to do it then civil society will."

HC: You are one of the co-founders of the Free Gaza Movement. Can you tell us a little bit about what the Free Gaza Movement does and why it was set up to begin with?

GB: We set it up in September of 2006 after Israel had massacred so many people in Lebanon and there were a group of us who were sitting around and saying, "what can we do for the people of Gaza" because everybody was paying attention to Lebanon and once again the Palestinians were on the backburner, nobody was paying any attention to them and we had one of our colleagues in Australia who said, "I've always wanted to buy a boat, maybe we could sail it from New York and then we could pick up people in Europe and sail a boat to Gaza". The five of us went "wow, what a fabulous idea. We're gonna buy a boat, buy it in New York, sail it down the European Coast and go to Gaza." Well of course that was an impossibility, but the five of us who were the original founders had worked with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Many of us had been kicked out. We had been told we could not come back to the West Bank. We were trying to figure out another way of getting in to help the people of Gaza because Gaza was kind of isolated. Nobody paid any attention to it. Everybody was worried about the occupation of the West Bank and Israel had said in 2005 they had pulled out the settlers out of Gaza and Gaza was no longer occupied, which of course is a lie because it was and continues to be occupied. So that's how we started. Five of us; three Americas in California, two Australians who lived in London; four women and one man.

HC: Have you succeeded in getting any boasts into Gaza so far?

GB: I actually think that that is a very good question because what Israel is doing is trying to spin this story that we should have known better. That we should never have come with a Flotilla but this is our ninth voyage. We got in successfully five times. We were not stopped. We were threatened. We were threatened constantly but we managed to get in five times and we delivered some supplies, we delivered some people, we brought in members of Parliament, we took some of the Palestinian students out and we were never stopped. So we had already set a precedent. We had already said to Israel you have no right to do this, you have no right to occupy Gaza, you have no right to put this blockade into effect and Israel in essence agreed with us so there is no excuse for them doing what they did.

HC: Were you expecting this level of Israeli confrontation?

GB: We were expecting some kind of confrontation because Israel was rumbling for weeks and the last three voyages we had done were all brutally interrupted one way or the other. We were rammed; our boat was rammed in December 2008. They tried to tip one of our boats over in January 2009 and then in July of 2009 we were boarded. We had just one boat, we were boarded and all of our passengers were hijacked and taken into Israeli prison. So we knew that they had the potential of doing something violent but we never thought that they would massacre anyone.

HC: So Israel's behaviour is definitely escalating?

GB: It is escalating because they are more and more afraid. We spent a year putting this Flotilla together. We spent a year organising a coalition. The coalition came from a wide variety of people interested in trying to get the world to pay attention to the fact that Israel is, what I call, committing slow motion genocide on the people of Gaza. So when we said we will return, I don't think Israel ever though that we would return with 6 to 7 boats.

HC: Israel maintains that the blockade is legal and necessary to prevent "terrorists" in Gaza from attacking Israeli citizens. Do you think there is any justification in that stance?

GB: There is absolutely no justification. That is really a two part question. I'm not an expert in international law but all experts who are have already said that Israel's blockade is illegal and I will go by their particular point of view. I think what people need to recognise is, who is going to protect the Palestinians? What kind of security do the Palestinians have? Since the year 2000 there have been 30 people killed by rocket fire, thirty. That's about three a year. No civilian should ever be killed, for any reason, in any conflict but Israel in that same time has managed to kill three thousand Palestinians in Gaza! That's about (a ratio of) a hundred to one. So what is Israel saying? That one Israeli life is worth one hundred Palestinian lives?

Who is going to protect the Palestinians? Who is going to guarantee their security? Why don't they have a right to security? Why don't they have the right to secure their own borders? Why is it only about Israel who has the fourth largest military in the world?

HC: How would you respond to claims that you are actually helping Hamas who, as far as Israel is concerned, is a terrorist organisation?

GB: Well the only terrorist I saw in the Middle East in all the times I've been there has been Israel.

HC: In terms of the people on board the Flotilla, Israel is saying that those on board the ships were violent activists not humanitarians and that they were armed with weapons and were not peaceful people? How would you respond to that?

GB: Yes well, an aluminium chair leg is certainly a great match for a machine gun which is what the Israelis had! I'm a big advocate of non-violence. I don't think that violence really accomplishes anything. The only thing violence really does accomplish is that it simply moves the chequer pieces around so that the people who won that war, who were the victors in that war, are the ones who get rich, so I don't think that violence really accomplishes anything at all.

However, if somebody came to my door with a machine gun and tear gas and sound bombs and all of the other things that these Israeli soldiers had, you can bet that I would do whatever I could in self-defence. If that means the bottom of an aluminium chair that's what I would use but nobody has the right to attack my home, my children or my ship!

HC: Lastly, with the violence that you saw last week, are you planning to continue taking boats to Gaza with aid?

GB: One of the things that Israel does NOT seem to get clear is that every time they do this we will come back with more. Every time that they decide that maybe if they are going to kill people we will give up, we will come back with more. They severely wounded two of the captains, the Turkish captain on board the Mavi Marmara and the Greek captain on board the Spendoni.

This was done deliberately, this was done to send a message to the captains that they should not be working with us but we've already had three captains write to us in the last week and say "if you need more captains, please give me a call. Please let me know". People are not intimidated into doing what Israel wants them to do, so of course we're going to come back. We are going to come back until Israel lifts that blockade and until Israel abides by the international law that says it doesn't have any right to do this and if governments aren't going to do it then civil society will.

Download the full interview transcript