Free Gaza Scotland
We at Free Gaza Scotland unreservedly accept and adopt the points of unity and mission statement of Free Gaza.
We are working on several different things at the moment.
- We are trying to find out what is happening with the cargo taken by the Israelis. We want it all to be delivered to it's correct destination.
- We are pursuing a complaint about the illegal attack on us in international waters through both the Foreign Office and Lawyers.
- We are trying to have returned to us all of our personal belongings and equipment, especially the footage taken by journalists and passengers on board which is evidence for a proper inquiry into what happened when we were attacked.
- We are also pursuing a case to have our boats returned to us by Israel. They are now holding 3 Free Gaza Movement boats the 'Spirit of Humanity', the 'Challenger 1' and the 'Rachel Corrie'.
- Most importantly The Free Gaza Movement is planning the next flotilla along with our coalition partners from the last flotilla IHH from Turkey, The European campaign To Break The Siege, Greek Boats To Gaza and Swedish Boats To Gaza.
The Free Gaza groups around the world are trying to raise enough for boats from each country where we have a group but will work together to achieve this if we cant do it individually in time for the next flotilla in the early autumn.
In Scotland we are hoping to work with as many different Scottish groups and people as we can to get a boat from here. We are already liasing with Tayside Justice For Palestine who sent a large amount of medical cargo with the Rachel Corrie (The FGM cargo boat) and had Ali on board the Mavi Marmara and are hoping to work with Glasgow Justice for Palestine who also sent medical equipment on the Rachel Corrie and had Hassan on the Sfendoni. We would welcome the help of any other groups who are interested.
We are currently having some difficulty with our Pay Pal account so if you wish to make a donation please send a cheque or postal order to Free Gaza - Scotland :
PO Box 23980
EDINBURGH
EH7 9BJ
Or alternatively use the paypal button on the freegaza.org site, this will go to the Main FGM account and anything donated here will also be used for the next boats.
We had 6 boats in the flotilla altogether, The Free Gaza Movement had the 'Challenger 1' the smallest one in the fleet with only 17 people on board. There were also 2 other passenger boats the Mavi Marmara, sent by the Turkish Charity IHH which had around 600 passengers on board consisting of MP's from around the world including one from Israel, journalists and aid workers. There was also the Sfendoni which had been sent by the European Campaign to Break the Siege with around 50 passengers. There were also 3 cargo boats there which had been sent by the Greek boats to Gaza, Swedish Boats to Gaza, Algerian civil society and Kuwait civil society. We also had financial support for the 3 Free Gaza boats from Malaysia and the International Campaign to End the Siege.
We set off from Crete on the 27th May 2010 and met up with the rest of the flotilla just south of Cyprus late at night on the 29th, on the 30th we transferred people and supplies between the boats and set off for Gaza around 4pm.
All of the boats were contacted by the Israeli Navy and instructed to turn round. This is a normal event for our boats going to Gaza as you can see from the video of the 'Spirit of Humanity' attempt last year. We responded as we always do by letting them know that we were civillian ships heading to Gaza carrying aid, MP's from around the world, journalists and aid workers, we also point out that the Israelis have the responsibilty to allow us through with essential supplies and not fire on civilian ships.
We saw small lights in the water all around us and on the radar we saw another large vessel coming in fast so we knew that they were coming in for us. We were still at least 70 miles off the coast and well inside international waters at this time. Very quickly we saw 6 small commando zodiac boats cutting through the flotilla, most of them heading for the Mavi Marmara, these were quickly followed by more which headed for the cargo boats first and one each to the other 2 passenger boats to shadow them until they were ready to board us.
The zodiacs were all around the Mavi Marmara, she was circling in an attempt to keep them off and they were firing sound grenades and smoke bombs from the zodiacs into the Mavi Marmara, we were also hearing gunfire from the Israelis at this time. A helicopter came down and hovered above the top deck of the Mavi Marmara and a few soldiers dropped down before she lifted off again and returned a few minutes later. We could see and hear confusion on board from the moment the Israelis started firing although there were still people taking pictures from all along the decks. At this time our boat 'Challenger 1' was asked by the Captain on the Mavi Marmara to try to get far enough away to get a message out to the world that we were under attack, so we opened up our throttles and headed as fast as we could for Gaza but we began to lose sight of the rest of the boats although we could see a helicopter above the Mavi Marmara and continuous flashes of percussion bombs and smoke bombs, we hoped that the flashes were not anything more damaging and at this time we did not know that there had been deaths on her from the first attack onwards.
The Israelis came on to the boats with a lot of force, our small boat had 10 women and 7 men but they still came on with 20 commandos using sound grenades, weird paint bullets, smoke bombs and tazers but fortunately no live ammunition like they used on the Marmara. We do not lay hands on them, we simply stand in front of them and try to shout to them with our arms out so that they can clearly see that we are unarmed and we will also try to linkarms around the wheelhouse door or around the camera folk so that they they can have a wee bit more time to take pictures but they still came on with violence, firing one of the sound bombs directly at one of the Belgian women on board from around 6 feet, bursting her nose, they tazered the photo journalist who was up on the fly deck with me to stop her from taking pictures, they beat 2 women and were pretty rough with the rest of us and in order to get through the glass sliding door they simply shot it and smashed it without even pausing to warn anyone that they were about to do this. They also smashed up lots of other stuff pretty much wrecking the boat.
I was up top out of the way on watch to start off with so was not involved in this stuff therefor was perfectly ok. They detained 2, Huwaida and Anna at the front of the boat with hoods on and their arms tightly tied behind their backs after beating them up a bit until we managed to demand that they be brought back to the rest of the group which took a fair bit of negotiation during which at one point I had a cocked hand gun pointed to my head and was told to sit down and shut up or be shot.
We were processed in at Ash Dod where we were paraded off the boats for the cameras and were constantly filmed, they did have medics and doctors there who we were filmed speaking to but they were not interested in dealing with any injuries and we were also informed of our rights but none of them were respected from having consular and legal access to having the right to refuse deportation until our lawyers had a chance to act on our behalf.
We were taken to a new prison at Beer Sheeva with absolutely no possibility of contact with the outside world, they had taken away all of our phones before we left the boats as well as all of the rest of our bags, cameras, computer stuff and any other electronic equipment so when we were put on the Turkish planes all we had was the clothes we came off the boat in. None of our bags or other belongings were returned to us by the Israelis.
In jail when we first arrived on the Monday we later heard that our Consular officials had been outside but were not allowed access to us. At every stage of our captivity whenever the Israelis brought food or drink or showed us to medical officials or we relaxed in any way they would also bring cameras to show how 'well' they were treating us, we were constantly being paraded for the cameras from when we first came off the boats until we were finally deported.
On the Tuesday we were given access to the Consular staff and also the Lawyers were allowed in although they were only given enough time to make a list of those who wished legal representation, again the cameras came out to record these visits. Shortly after the consular officials arrived we were served up the only hot meal of our detention, a bit of fish, some stuff that I think was barley or cracked wheat and some veg, up until then the only food we had had was some bread, cheese, cucumbers and peppers, after that we received a few warm bits of potato with an egg for our final meal that night.
Another incident immediately after the lawyers left which was particularly nasty was that they called one of the women into the office who had lost her husband in the assault on the Marmara, threw pictures at her and told her to identify the body. When she had last seen her husbands body she had at least had the comfort of knowing that it had been properly prepared for burial but by the time the Israelis took the photo it had been left in the heat and had bloated almost beyond recognition with the eyes opening again, the cold and callous way in which she was just sent out of the office again even although she was in a state of collapse due to shock was quite horrible.
In the airport they broke every deportation law around, constantly lying to us and behaving very aggressively. It began at 6.30am when they woke us up to say that we were all going to be leaving and should get ready to go. Some of us still refused to sign the documents which said we agreed to deportation as this is agreeing that they are correct to be deporting us since we entered Israel illegally, which we did not. The normal legal procedure after refusal to sign is that we should have 72 hours for our legal team to work on our behalf and they have to bring us before a judge who then decides on whether or not to deport us. What happened was that we were told that we were being transferred to another prison and put into high security meat wagons and as they shut the door they told us that we were off to the Airport. We were then kept inside these metal boxes for 5 hours even though it only took 1 and a half hours to get to the airport, one of the women with us was pregnant and another one was a retired US Colonel, even shouting that one of us was pregnant and that we needed toilets we were ignored for 5 hours.
When we entered the airport we were immediately completely surrounded by soldiers, some of us were jostled right from the start and we had to go up a flight of stairs to reach the main terminal, all the way up we were being shoved by the soldiers and having our photos taken by them while they jeered at us. Once there we were made to stay in a very small area where we were shouted at if we stood up and constantly surrounded by police and soldiers in an extremely intimidating way. We had to watch as all of the men were processed through to the flights, during the course of the evening I watched as the 'walking wounded' were made to walk unaided, even by crutches, through the airport to where they would get on the flight. Watching people with gunshot and other wounds being made to shuffle and struggle on their own when they were obviously in pain and finding it really difficult was one of the most sickening experiences of the day. 4 people were beaten up, one of whom I was close enough to see exactly what happened, all he did was to shrink back in his chair as he was being shouted at but he still ask to see his embassy before signing anything since he didn't want to go to Turkey for this he was dragged off his chair and kicked and punched by around 15-20 soldiers.
By this time we too had discovered that we were being deported Turkey in spite of the fact that we had not come from there and by law we should have either been returned to our country of origin or our country of departure. It became clear to us that the best we could do though was to leave without signing any forms agreeing. We left Ben Gurion airport at around 1am on Thursday after being eventually put on the planes around 11.30 - 12pm on Wednesday.
Throughout the day on Wednesday the consular staff from all of the various embassies as well as our legal teams were trying to reach us in the airport but were not allowed access to us, the British Consul did manage to see us very briefly before we left the prison but it was literally just enough time for him to see who was all in the vans, he was not allowed through to us at the airport. From what we have since been told the advice of both lawyers and consuls was not to go to Turkey. We have still not had any of our personal belongings returned to us.
Theresa McDermott
Free Gaza - Scotland
crew on the Challenger 1
The next boats will be going to Gaza in the spring, this time there will be several boats including a cargo boat.
Free Gaza - Scotland will be sending out Art and Sports Equipment as well as toys for the children at the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme. You may have seen some of them interviewed by Ross Kemp in his program about he Middle East. Can you help us by either donating through the Paypal button or sending cheques to Free Gaza - Scotland, PO Box 23980, Edinburgh, EH7 9BJ. Or if you have any spare sports equipment, toys or art equipment i.e. crayons, coloured pencils, paper, modeling clay etc which you think will be of use please send them.
Everything you donate to us will go on the boats to Gaza it will NOT be used for office expenses or our personal expenses, we are volunteers and do not get paid.
Books - The Free Gaza flotilla will carry a precious cargo of books requested by besieged universities in Gaza. Details of how you can support the students continue their studies are on our "Right to Read" page, along with details of the books they requested on our Amazon wish list.
The Free Gaza Movement intends to get more boats together and return to Gaza as soon as possible. We have a responsibility to the People of Gaza to carry on trying to break the insufferable conditions of blockade under which they are living by not only physically trying to reach them but also by drawing attention to their suffering, letting the world know what is happening in the prison that is The Gaza Strip. We believe that with more boats, more people and more aid we will be able to sail once more into Gaza Harbour and we intend to do this soon.
I believe that from Scotland it should be possible to contribute a boat to the next FGM effort to reach Gaza and to this end am asking for donations in order to buy a boat. This is a tall order but there has been so much support from Scotland and so many people are already engaged in the issue of Palestinian rights that it must be possible to do this.
Once we get the boat we can use it to open all sorts of connections between The Gaza Strip and Scotland. We already have some people with connections in Gaza and one of the benefits of being part of the FGM is that they have coordinators within Gaza who can help us. We can take a boat with as much aid as it will carry and a few people to establish these links and then return at regular intervals to deepen these links, while not using the boat it would be available to the Free Gaza Movement as a whole to help with their ongoing missions.
This might be a dream but it is a very achievable dream with your help.