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palestine
The Sumud of Direct Nonviolent Action
The Gaza-bound flotilla's nonviolent direct action requires strength and steadfastness. It is an active resistance to decades of injustice from an illegal sea, land, and air blockade.
Sep 24, 2025
It is 4:00 am on the 10th day of our sail, aboard a boat in the Global Sumud Flotilla. We have heard explosions hitting other boats and seen drones piercing the night sky.
Tensions are high as we wonder about the fate of the attacked boats and when our turn will come.
I am on night watch and taking a short break, for morning prayers. Despite the adrenaline, my heart is filled with awe at the magnificent starry night and the whooshing of the waves as they splash against our vessel. The splashing waves remind me of the waves of resistance from oppressed peoples and their allies since time immemorial, some violent and others not.
I was first introduced to the concept of nonviolent resistance during my time at the Madina Institute Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies. However, as a South African growing up during Apartheid, there have been moments when I perceived the strategy of nonviolence as weak, wondering if liberation would have ever come to South Africa without armed struggle.
If people ask me how hard it is to enact nonviolence as a strategy of resistance, my response is that it is tough but necessary, given the occupying power's total disregard for the sacredness of human life.
In recent years, my perspective has been reaffirmed that nonviolent direct action is strategically effective yet difficult to execute. Some describe nonviolence as passive, yet it is one of the most testing, active approaches we can take in resisting oppression. Nonviolence is far from a cop-out or a weak means of struggle, as I am learning on this flotilla.
As comrades on the flotilla, we have often said, "When governments fail, the people set sail." Governments and corporations have largely been weak in their tangible material interventions for Gaza, offering mostly rhetoric of condemnation and "thoughts and prayers."
This 38th flotilla to Gaza, aiming to break the illegal and immoral siege, is the largest and most historic to date. It is galvanizing attention on the urgent action required to open a sustainable sea corridor for humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Given the occupying power's war crimes on previous flotillas and its current aggression toward our flotilla in real time, I recall my chat with Ayesha Vahed, a South African attorney and legal reporter practicing in South Africa and The Hague. When asked, Vahed reaffirmed and explained to me that the Global Sumud Flotilla is protected under international law:
According to International Law, the flotilla mission is a completely lawful, civil, nonviolent humanitarian mission. The Israeli blockade, engineered to starve an entire population, is illegal under International Maritime Law. The flotilla has a right to humanitarian passage, based on the fact that the people in Gaza are under an occupying power and have a right to receive aid. This gives the flotilla free passage through international waters, an obligation that has been reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice, which has already ruled that Israel is obliged to allow unrestricted access of aid into Gaza.
Various international lawyers, academics, legal experts, and genocide scholars have mobilized behind this lawful initiative. Furthermore, the confirmation by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip obliges all States to fulfill their legal obligations under International Law. In a situation of genocide, states have an *erga omnes* obligation, which is an obligation owed to the international community as a whole, to facilitate human rights and protection, which in this case extends to the opening of humanitarian corridors.
Despite this international framework of legality, the Global Sumud Flotilla participants are being described as terrorists. This hasbara campaign is intended to construct a faulty basis for further aggressive actions toward flotilla participants, past and present. However, this type of behavior is not new to nonviolent movements, as was witnessed in the US Civil Rights Movement and the Palestinian Great March of Return.
As we sail in the People's Flotilla, the mandatory nonviolence training we received in Tunis from GSF trainers stressed that nonviolence is a dynamic method of action, not an avoidance of conflict. I personally witness the intensity of global mobilization and organizing as intensely active, not passive.
During our training in Tunisia, one trainer shared the history of flotilla missions to break Israel's illegal siege, and it was moving to meet and hear from those who had been on past flotilla missions, including the Mavi Marmara in 2010 when Israel Occupation Forces soldiers murdered nine activists during the interception of the vessel in international waters.
Our training also included examples of nonviolent actions shared by comrades from across the world, including historical examples from the Civil Rights Movement in America, the 1956 Women's March in South Africa, protests by Turkish women who were excluded from official spaces for wearing the hijab, and Mexican anti-government protests.
The flotilla's collective action across movements and countries involves broad-based mass participation and is a notable example of nonviolent mobilization, coupled with calls for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. It is a movement built on strategic resistance to an illegal blockade and occupation.
The flotilla's nonviolent direct action requires strength and Sumud (steadfastness). It is an active resistance to decades of injustice from an illegal sea, land, and air blockade. It is far from a passive, symbolic, or performative action.
If people ask me how hard it is to enact nonviolence as a strategy of resistance, my response is that it is tough but necessary, given the occupying power's total disregard for the sacredness of human life. Acting in nonviolence requires great Sumud in the face of genocidal evil and violent occupation.
As humanitarians on a mission of hope, and solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza, nonviolence is our means of resistance, and our language of love.
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'Enough Words': Colombia's Petro Urges Armed UN Force to End Gaza Genocide
Such a force could be authorized under the UN General Assembly's veto-proof United for Peace resolution.
Sep 24, 2025
In his stirring final speech to a United Nations General Assembly, Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday called for an international armed intervention to end Israel's nearly two-year genocide in Gaza.
"We need a powerful army of the countries that do not accept genocide," Petro, who is in his last year in office and is limited under Colombian law to a single presidential term, told world leaders gathered in New York. "That is why I invite nations of the world and their peoples more than anything, as an integral part of humanity, to bring together weapons and armies."
"We must liberate Palestine," he asserted. "I invite the armies of Asia, the great Slavic people who defeated Hitler with great heroism, and the Latin American armies of Bolívar."
"We’ve had enough words; it’s time for Bolívar’s sword of liberty or death,” Petro argued, referring to the 19th century Latin American independence hero Simón Bolívar.
(Petro's remarks on Gaza begin shortly after the 34:00 mark in the following video)
Connecting Israel's obliteration of Gaza to renewed US militarism in the Western Hemisphere, Petro said that “they will not just bomb Gaza, not just the Caribbean as they are doing already, but all of humanity that demands freedom. Washington and NATO are killing democracy and helping to revive tyranny and totalitarianism on a global scale."
“[US President Donald] Trump not only lets missiles fall on young people in the Caribbean; he not only imprisons and chains migrants, but he also allows missiles to be launched at children, young people, women, and the elderly in Gaza," he added. "He becomes complicit in genocide—because it is genocide, and we must shout it again and again. This chamber is a silent witness and an accomplice to a genocide in today’s world.”
Petro's "enough words" rallying cry is complicated by the fact that Israel's allies Britain, France, and the United States—which largely arms Israel's genocide—wield veto power at the UN Security Council.
However, there is veto-proof action the world can take by invoking the United for Peace resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in 1950. The measure is designed to empower action when at least one of the five permanent Security Council members uses a veto to thwart functions mandated under the UN Charter.
The resolution—which has been implemented more than a dozen times—allows the UNGA to take actions ranging from rejecting Israel's UN credentials to mandating an armed protection force for Gaza, if approved by two-thirds of UN member states.
There are also examples of nations acting unilaterally to end genocides and other human rights crises, although Colombia is obviously in no position to do so in Gaza. These include Vietnam's 1978-79 invasion of Cambodia during Pol Pot's reign of terror and, to a lesser extent, the contemporaneous Tanzanian invasion of Uganda to end the murderous rule of dictator Idi Amin.
India's 1971 invasion of Bangladesh during a US-backed Pakistani genocide and NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia to ostensibly protect Kosovar Albanians were also couched as anti-genocide interventions by their perpetrators, although critics ascribed ulterior motives to both wars.
Petro's speech came as Israeli forces continued Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethically cleanse around 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza City area. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including forced starvation and murder—and other officials have vowed to take control of all of Gaza, where Trump has proposed ethnically cleansing Palestinians and transforming the strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
Gaza officials said that least 84 Palestinians were killed throughout the strip on Wednesday, including at least 22 people massacred in an Israeli strike on a warehouse near Firas Market in Gaza City, where forcibly displaced civilians were sheltering. At least 15 of the victims were women and children.
Early this morning, an Israeli airstrike on the Firas Market in Gaza City’s Al-Daraj neighborhood massacred at least 22 Palestinians, among them 9 children and 6 women.
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— Josep Goded (New Main Account) (@josepgoded2.bsky.social) September 24, 2025 at 5:05 AM
Throughout the course of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, Petro and Colombia have backed up their rhetoric with action. In April 2024, Colombia asked to join South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague and subsequently did so. The following month, Petro announced Colombia's suspension of diplomatic relations with Israel.
Colombia, along with South Africa, also co-chairs the Hague Group, a coalition of more than 30 nations whose representatives gathered in the Colombian capital Bogotá in July for an emergency summit and issued a joint action plan for “coordinated diplomatic, legal, and economic measures to restrain Israel’s assault on the occupied Palestinian territories and defend international law at large.”
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Italy Deploys Naval Ship to Aid Sumud Flotilla Following Drone Attack
"States have a responsibility to ensure the safe passage of the flotilla," said Amnesty International.
Sep 24, 2025
The Italian government says it has sent a naval ship to assist the Global Sumud Flotilla after it was attacked by several drones.
Organizers of the flotilla said that the boats, which are carrying humanitarian aid for the starving people of Gaza, were attacked by a swarm of 15 drones early Wednesday morning, with the convoy in the Mediterranean Sea about 600 nautical miles from the enclave.
According to Drop Site News, at least eight attacks and six explosions were reported as flash bang grenades hit at least six of the boats. One person has been injured, and two of the boats have been damaged. They also reported that an "unidentified chemical device" was dropped onto one of the boats before falling off into the water.
In a statement issued Wednesday, Italy's defense minister Guido Crosetto said: "Regarding the attack suffered in recent hours by the Sumud Flotilla vessels, which also include Italian citizens, carried out using drones by currently unidentified perpetrators, we can only express the strongest condemnation. In a democracy, even demonstrations and protests must be protected when they are conducted in compliance with international law and without resorting to violence."
"To ensure assistance to the Italian citizens on the flotilla," Crosetto said that he had "authorized the immediate intervention of the Italian Navy's multi-purpose frigate Fasan," which he said was "already en route to the area for possible rescue operations."
The deployment comes after labor unions in Italy led a nationwide strike in solidarity with Gaza on Monday, with hundreds of thousands of people in 75 cities and towns rallying to support Palestinians as well as the Global Sumud Flotilla.
Hundreds of other elected representatives to the European Union also issued calls on Wednesday for their own governments to provide protection to the flotilla.
While the perpetrator of the attack is not yet known, the flotilla organizers have suggested that "Israel and its allies" were responsible. Israel blocked two other efforts by activists to reach Gaza earlier this summer.
The flotilla's roughly 350 participants—which include humanitarians, doctors, journalists, lawyers, and other activists from at least 44 countries around the world—have repeatedly insisted that they are unarmed and that their goal is to peacefully protest Israel's siege of Gaza and deliver about 250 tons of food and medical aid to the people of Gaza, who are starving en masse under a near-total blockade by Israel.
On Tuesday, Israel's foreign ministry threatened to take "the necessary measures" to prevent what it described as the "Hamas flotilla" from breaking what it called a "lawful" blockade of Gaza.
In a statement posted to Instagram, the flotilla organizers said, "We welcome the recognition by Minister Crosetto of the democratic and non-violent nature of our mission, and his condemnation of the recent attacks on our vessels."
The group called on other UN member states, "in particular those whose nationals are aboard our ships—to ensure and facilitate effective protection, including maritime escorts, accredited diplomatic observers, and an overt protective state presence." The group emphasized that "such measures must remain protective and facilitative in nature, consistent with the principles of non-interference and the humanitarian purpose of our mission."
Israel ordered the group to turn over its humanitarian aid to Israel for it to be distributed in the strip. Organizers have refused to do this, arguing that Israel's blockade of aid, which has allowed only small amounts of aid into the strip, is illegal under international law.
Brazilian organizer Thiago Ávila, has said there is no reason to believe Israel's promises to distribute aid.
“We can never believe an occupying force who is committing genocide that they will deliver aid–it’s not in their interests,” Ávila said on his Instagram.
Last week, a commission of independent experts at the United Nations released an extensive report concluding that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. This has included its blockade of aid entering the strip, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 400 people, including at least 145 children, with many dying in recent months.
At least 65,419 Palestinians have also been killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 2023, and at least 167,160 have been wounded.
In a statement Wednesday morning, Amnesty International condemned the attacks on the flotilla and Israel's "threatening and dehumanizing statements" against its organizers, which it described as "a shameless attempt to intimidate them and their supporters."
"States have a responsibility to ensure the safe passage of the flotilla, especially as they have repeatedly failed to get Israel to comply with its most basic obligations to ensure Palestinians in Gaza have adequate access to food, water, medicine, and other supplies indispensable to their survival," Amnesty said. "They must step up pressure on Israel to ensure safe passage for the flotilla and to lift the blockade once for all."
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