The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

The Global Sumud Flotilla has embarked on the most dangerous leg of its mission to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip and deliver lifesaving aid to Palestinians in the midst of genocide. As of Monday morning, over 40 vessels with delegations of peace, activists from around the world on board are just over 300 nautical miles from Gaza, and they will be entering the high risk zone within the next 24 to 48 hours. Naval ships from three countries, Spain, Italy, and now Turkey, are now accompanying the fleet as a security escort. Joining us on the Real News today from onboard the Flotilla fleet, our broadcast journalist and humanitarian Iara Modarelli and musician from New York, Leila Hegazy. Thank you both so much for joining us today on The Real News Network. I truly appreciate it. I know this is a very intense time for you both and everyone with the Flotilla fleet. I wanted to ask if we could start by just filling our viewers and listeners in what is the Global Sumud Flotilla? Can you talk a bit about that and also your personal paths to becoming part of this flotilla fleet, and could you tell us also a little bit about the struggles and obstacles that you all have faced just to get to this point right now?

Leila Hegazy:

Sure. So the Global Sumud Flotilla is a fleet of boats from over 40 countries. We left from places like Barcelona, Tunisia, and Italy in community with each other to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza, which has been going on for far too long and has only intensified in the past almost two years. This is an urgent moment, and we have, as civilians witnessed the complete failure of our governments to act, and especially in light of the UN’s recognition that this is a genocide as many other genocide scholars have already recognized. The moment is now, and we can no longer wait for governments to act. We have to act. There have been multiple struggles along our journey, and some of them include boats breaking down storms, unperceived, unforeseen circumstances that have challenged the mission. We’re all here way longer than we expect it to be, and yet we’re undeterred because the mission’s goal is the same. We have to break the siege on Gaza no matter how long it takes. And yeah, all of us, of course, we miss our families. We didn’t really know how long we were going to be on the sea and we still don’t really know what’s next. The Israeli military may intercept us or they may not, and we’ve never actually sailed with a fleet of boats before. So this is a really sort of historic moment. It’s unprecedented, and we’re just going to have to see what happens next in the next couple of days.

Iara Modarelli:

And to jump in there, it’s important to mention that despite Israel’s claims, false fabrications that we’re terrorists to try to manufacture consent to attack us, we are a nonviolent peace or humanitarian mission carrying nothing but aid baby formula, food, water, prosthetics, I mean medicine. That’s what we carry. And we embarked on this mission a little bit under a calendar month ago. We did base a series of events on our journey on we face bureaucratic sabotage and bureaucratic warfare at some of our ports before departure, we adopt many ports due to, like Leila said, vessels breaking down, vessels being drained of fuel, another act of bureaucratic warfare. And much more importantly, we have already faced two drone strikes on two of our vessels, one of those being Leila and my vessel, the alma, the mothership of this mission, another one, another drone strike on the family vessel, both within the scope of 24 hours.

So we can now confirm there’s an investigation underway tying these attacks to a foreign national Indonesia that has linked to massage. So that was the very first attack that we faced before we even left the Port of Tunisia. We then faced another attack off the coast of a Greek territorial waters, where for around three hours or longer, we had witnessed around 15 drones covering above head. Those drones being DIJ drones linked back to Israel as well. And those drones were deploying after a few hours smaller drones, which exploded. And so for three hours, the entire fleet of 500 plus participants was waiting to see whether their vessel would be the next one to be attacked. And we face these relentless attacks by Israel to try to intimidate us, to try to scare us, to try to get us to step off this mission and to try to remains.

And we’re sailing. We are now 24 to 48 hours away from potential interception, and Israel has in fact published their lands to intercept us. So we don’t know, as Leila was saying, whether we can trust that these plans will indeed be what Israel does. After the Israeli foreign ministry claimed that they would do everything in their power to protect the participants of the, and then they bombed us. So we have no idea what’s going to happen. This is a historic mission. It’s unprecedented, and we’re entering the red zone, and we don’t know what exactly is going to happen, but we are practicing for, we are doing our daily bills. We’re ready for a potential interception. Israel claims that what they’re going to do is board our vessels, intercept us and take us to a so-called bloating prison. And that if we resist whatever that might mean, that they will then detain us for longer.

We don’t know how this is going to go down, but they have said that they would potentially sink the smaller vessels and board the larger vessels. That’s all the information that we have. As of right now. All we can really do is prepare and stay safe. We don’t fear the Zionist entity because when you’re on the right side of history, there really is nothing to fear. And so I know I can speak for myself by saying that there is no fear of an entity that is a genocidal entity that murders babies and children and civilians for two years now. Our mission is to center Gaza, and our mission is to ensure that people understand that we are doing this because our governments are refused to do their work, and that this mission really should not even exist, but it does because of failure of our governments to act. So here we’re in international waters, sailing into the unknown, doing what our governments refuse to be.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I want to talk about the next 24 to 48 hours here. You laid out ER, and I really appreciate it. There is so much right now that we don’t know what will happen. We have historical precedent to know what could happen, and frighteningly that includes everything from capture an imprisonment and beating like Chris Smalls endured just a month and a half ago, or even killing members of the Flotilla, which has also happened at the hands of Israel in years past. So I want to ask, with all of those unknowns, how are you all feeling right now as you sail closer to Gaza? Has the introduction of naval ships from Spain, Italy, and even Turkey changed the feelings of the people on board? Has it changed the political dynamic here? So I wanted to just ask about that and also if you have any messages to people around the world watching this, about what they can do over the next 24 to 48 hours to help ensure your safety and the success of this mission.

Leila Hegazy:

So the first thing to recognize is that it is completely illegal under international law for Israel to intercept us. And I feel like that should not be taken for granted. I know there is historical precedent for these kinds of interceptions, but we have to repeat this over and over again that these interceptions have often happened in international waters. And even if we are intercepted closer to Gaza where we’re intercepted in Gaza’s waters, Israel has absolutely no right to control those waters. The siege is illegitimate under international law. We are following the law. We have every right to deliver this aid as humanitarians. We are not breaking the law if they decide to board our vessels and essentially kidnap us. That is a war crime, and that can’t be overstated enough. That will be considered an act of piracy, and it will be. This is what they’ve done before.

We don’t know exactly what this will look like with over 40 votes, but that has yet to be seen. I think as far as the countries that have sent naval ships, some people are feeling comforted by this because it is also unprecedented for this kind of international support to be that visible. I think it is kind of sending a message to other major nations around the world that they have a requirement to act and we’ll see what they do in the next two days. And at the same time, as much as it is comforting, it also when we see governments that are complicit in the genocide and they either still haven’t acted or they’re sending naval ships, we still call for a complete divestment from Israel. We still call for the end of all complicity, whether you’ve sent a naval ship or not, nobody’s record is clean in terms of the EU or the United States or any of these governments that are so complicit.

So is there really anything that these governments can necessarily do to wipe their slate clean? No, and we still call on all of our representatives at home and all of our home governments to do the right thing because at some point it is better late than never, and we won’t forgive and forget or forget, but it is better late than never. So if we are killed on this mission, we want to make it very clear that we do hold our governments responsible, our complicit governments. I’m from the United States. My government is doing absolutely nothing for me or other US citizens on board this flotilla. We are humanitarians. They have not come out in support of anyone on this mission or even negated these really dangerous claims that the people aboard this flotilla a Hamas, which is honestly, it puts us in so much danger that the Israeli government has made these preposterous claims.

So I would like to see my home government at home, my representatives actually coming out to negate these claims, but also ensure safe passage for the Flotilla. And I’m sure that Yara can agree with this. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We have already been in danger. I don’t even know how to explain what it is to be huddled in the dark, not knowing if your boat is the next one to be hit, not knowing if our colleagues across the waters are even okay. Initially, these explosions that we heard the night of the drone attacks were extremely loud and at the same time, they were only, we got a small taste of microcosm of which Palestinians face, daily Palestinians are under constant drone surveillance. They’re under constant fear of bombardment. We’ve had a little taste of that. And we are not just calling for our own safe passage. We’re calling for the end of the genocide and the end of complicity in these horrific conditions that affect Palestinians every single day. So yeah, we are here. We are not cutting anybody any slack on this mission. And if anyone has sent naval ships, it’s because of our mission actually that we have forced governments to act and we hope that more continue to act.

Iara Modarelli:

And to add onto that, it’s pretty incredible that Israel has so much impunity that they can essentially announce that they’re about to commit another war crime and the world remained silent. We did fear that Israel, a couple of days ago, actually one day after these completely illegal attacks on us, was calling multiple embassies to again, manufacture attack us even harder a second time. So they were quite literally calling the, we know that they called the German embassy, the Luxembourg Embassy, and we know that they called the Italian embassy and they talked to representatives of those embassies and announced that they were going to hit us harder a second time, and that we should turn back, or that we should give this aid to Greece so that they could take that aid to bay. I mean, absolutely ridiculous. So they were quite literally announcing that they might kill us on another attack.

This is when the global support started urging quite a lot and representatives of states started coming out and sending these navy ships to support us. But it’s very important to remind people that they haven’t sent these ships because they want to protect the global UD papilla participants. They sent them because it’s their absolute duty as voted by their own citizens to protect us. This is their beauty. So they’re not doing us a favor, they’re doing their job as they should, and in fact, they’re doing their job a little bit too late because this mission should not have to exist, and they should have brought this aid to Palestine and to Gaza in the first. So I don’t feel any kind of protection. In fact, looking at these ships. I almost wonder whether they’re just a stunt, whether they have announced that they’re not going to accompany us the whole way.

So it’s almost just for show that at least that’s the feeling that I get when I see them here in the horizon, barely visible. It’s for show. It’s so that they can say that they helped and they really didn’t. So I’m not under any impression that our very complicit governments are doing anything other than PR on this mission. As to your question on how we feel surprisingly calm, it’s a very strange feeling. I feel surprisingly calm because I know that I’m going up against the most ruthless military force in the entire world right now, the most ruthless baby killers and genocidal maniacs. But I feel calm, and I think that that calm is because I’m in a collective of 500 plus people that are all doing this for the right reasons. And the question is always asked, what would you have done in the past that just say, world War I, world War ii?

Would you have spoken out? And there’s a feeling of calm and purpose in being here and in knowing that we are doing absolutely everything that we can from our side to call for an end to this horrific, abysmal genocide that we’ve seen unfolding livestream in front of our faces for nearly three years now. So I think there’s almost more to Greta Thunberg words the other day, she was interviewed by Reuters and she said that she does not fear Israel. She rather fears a world that lacks empathy and lacks care and lacks humanitarianism. I mean, this is what I’m really afraid of is a world without empathy. Right now, what we’re doing is extending soar to our brothers and sisters in Palestine. We’re using our passports of privilege to center and recenter and recenter again, the narrative that is Gaza. So it’s very important to us that people understand that we’re not heroes, that this mission should not exist, and that the focus of this mission is Gaza. We don’t want to exaggerate or cause mass panic or hysteria whenever a drone flies above head because we understand that Palestinians fall asleep and wake up to the sounds of drones and bombs every single day. So we are not the story. We are using our passports of privilege to center the story to

Maximillian Alvarez:

Gaza. Well, and on that note of centering Gaza, I know I only have a few more minutes left with you both, but I want to quickly sort of ask about the scale of need in Gaza and the objective of this mission. Of course, you, you guys are loaded up with lifesaving aid, water, baby formula, the essentials for life that people in Gaza desperately need. And I know that as well as you do, and so does our audience. We’ve been publishing on the ground documentaries from Gaza in the West Bank, over 30 of those in the last two years alone. We’re publishing videos from our reporters in Gaza, like Ruwaida Amer who is starving. I’m talking to her on WhatsApp as she is starving over these weeks and months. And I am at my wit’s end. I know how desperate the situation is there. And I wanted to just sort of ask if you could say a little bit about the aid that you are delivering, but also the hope of establishing a corridor that more aid could reach Gaza through.

Leila Hegazy:

So something that I feel is so important to mention is that Besan asked for a fleet and the public delivered a fleet the last time a Flotilla went out. She said, why just one boat? Send many boats, send as many boats as you possibly can, and the people listen. And this mission is really in a lot of ways inspired by that call for the whole world to hear that actually there’s power in numbers that this lifesaving aid, it’s so urgent it actually get to Gaza. So we have to use all the available means to get it to Gaza. And what better than not just one boat, but many, many boats we have on our boat, all kinds of aid that is so crucial that people, all of us who have been talking to people in Palestine and even made friends in Palestine have been saying that they need this.

We have rice, we have, I know baby formula has been mentioned a bunch of times. We also have things like sanitary pads for people who menstruate because unfortunately, menstruation under genocide is an entire nightmare, right? Think about what that’s like to be not just living through a genocide, but contracting all kinds of infections from a lack of hygiene, lack of sanitary conditions. We have lots of food that can be made in a tent because obviously people who are living in tents, they can’t be making really elaborate meals. We have rice, we have lentils, and just things that people who need aid immediately can actually use. So the moment is really now, and this mission could have been organized over a period of six months or more if it were going to be executed absolutely perfectly. But the people understood that we don’t actually have that kind of time and that there is an urgency to this moment that this aid arrived right away. And this aid is exactly what the people in Palestine have been asking for. Literally as they live stream this genocide, they’ve been asking for these things and we’ve delivered on these things. We hope that the international community has our backs and just insists that this aid actually get to Gaza because people are dying every single day. We wish we were in Gaza two weeks ago, a month ago, even if it were possible. But every day that we’re not in Gaza, people are dying.

Iara Modarelli:

We’re aware that this aid is butted up in the ocean when it comes to what people in Gaza actually need. Unfortunately, we can’t bring everything. And we also very unfortunately know that there’s high likelihood that it won’t even reach Gaza. But to echo what a lot of Palestinians have said, if we break the seeds and we create a humanitarian corridor, our mission is victorious. But if we don’t break the seeds, our mission is victorious as well. So there is no failure if we don’t break the seeds, because what our goal is, other than of course, bringing the aid to a besiege, people living under genocide for years, is also to deliver hope and to deliver a message to the people of Palestine that they’re not alone, and that we are willing to put our bodies on the line because we understand and we accept that our lives are not more important than those of Palestinians.

And I think that this is something that people need to truly, I mean, unfortunately, a Westerner’s life in the West matters more than that of a Palestinian. And so we can use this opportunity, put ourselves on the front line, and to expose ourselves to the danger of this ruthless army knowing that they won’t just bomb us to Smiths because then they can’t. Because under, we have some sort of diplomatic protection based on the countries that we’re from. So we know that they are not going to massacre us in the way that they are doing to Palestinians. We know that in 2010, the ma faced 10 plus activists were murdered by Israel in cold blood. But we have protocols in place here to show that we are a complete nonviolent humanitarian mission. We will be live streaming their war crimes, and they will, if they do anything to us, once again, expose themselves to the world and once again, commit another war crime.

So if anything happens to us, Israel will be investigated and Israel will have committed yet another war crime. And so that kind of gives me that reassurance that the international community is watching. We have trackers on us at all times that they can follow, and we have a supportive team of lawyers that will be present once we get potentially detained there to help get us out of prison. And aside from that, we have an international community, which is watching millions of people are watching, and I would encourage them to, if anything happens, of course, to contact their representatives and ask for our safe return home. But if we can do that for Westerners, I would expect you do the same for Palestinians. So it’s so unfortunate that Westerners have had to spearhead this mission so that the world pays attention, but we are using that and we’re using that leverage to actually create more attention here. Because the unfortunate truth is that millions of people are desensitized. The news cycle has recycled so many images of beheaded babies that people fail to even feel anything. So we have to take it to the next level. We have to escalate and we have to act not just in words, but now in actions and real tangible actions. This is a direct quote from Palestine, as Lola said, and we have responded.

Maximillian Alvarez:

The final question that I want to ask y’all before I let you go is the same question that I asked labor leader Chris Smalls before a day and a half before the Freedom Flotilla that he was on earlier this summer was intercepted by Israel. The crew was captured and imprisoned, and Chris himself was even separately beaten by Israeli military members and held in prison for longer than other members of the fleet. But I asked Chris, and he knew full well what he and the rest of the crew were sailing into, like you all, he was very aware of what the IDF is capable of. I mean, we all are. We’ve been watching it over the last two years, if not for the last 70, right? We have seen the inhumane violence that Israel and its military are capable of and the way in which they will use that violence with no accountability against Palestinians and people who stand with them. So I wanted to give you both the somber but realistic opportunity. If this does go bad, and this is your last kind of mission, what do you want your final message to the world to be?

Let me ask you that point blank, and then I’ll let you both go.

Leila Hegazy:

Number one, personally, I can say for myself that if I’m killed on this mission, I hold my government completely responsible, completely responsible for the genocide and Palestine. And it’s worth mentioning that at home organizing circles I’m a part of, we refer to this genocide as the US Israeli genocide because this could not happen without the help of the United States. The United States and leaders in the United States could end this genocide with a phone call. They have refused to do so and have only sent more bombs. They have even written messages on the bombs that go to Gaza. So it is honestly just as much as Israeli society is twisted and demented and genocidal, so is us society, and they have failed in an extremely important moment, not only to stop and act of genocide, but to end their own complicity in it. Also, aside from my own government, Palestine will be free.

And if just because we are killed on this mission, I hope that doesn’t happen. I hope it doesn’t come to that. But just because we are killed on this mission, something that Israel has to understand and it just fails to do so, is that you can kill and kill and kill, but you won’t win. You can kill all you want, but that is not what an actual victory looks like. The world has opened its eyes to the reality of Palestinian freedom. It’s closer now than ever before, and it’s going to take a lot more than killing a few hundred activists to stop a free Palestine. Palestine will be free with or without the people on these boats and with or without all of these countries running PR campaigns to play both sides and make them look good so that they’re not remembered poorly in history books. So Palestine will be free. And if we are just a small part of exposing Israel to the world, we’re proud to be here, and there’s nothing more that we would rather die for.

Iara Modarelli:

So well said. And I echoed all of those sentiments. I think if you read history books, you’ll see that before any empire polls, they become much more violent. And I think we’re seeing the final stages of the settler colonial empire that is called itself Israel, and as an extension of the West. So if we play, but a small part in the end of this vicious, cruel, blood thirsty empire that kills and kills and kills with impunity, then it’s an honor to be on this mission. It is an honor, and there is nothing that I would rather do in my life than die for my principles. And so it is an absolute honor to be here, to be able to detail, and also we owe this to Palestinians. This is the bare minimum that we could be doing right now as human beings. The absolute bare minimum Palestine has awoken the entire world to the evils of settler colonialism.

I mean, think about pre October 7th. Palestinians were being murdered since 48, and nobody was listening. After October 7th, the world awoke and the world started understanding what had been happening in Palestine for all these years and how evil and genocidal these psychopaths really are, how evil the society really is. So thanks to Palestinians, the world, the western world is not a free world. But Palestinians have helped us get closer to our own freedom by understanding that we were never free to begin with. And so if we can do anything for Palestinians, we absolutely owe it to them to be on this mission. Palestinians don’t need anyone to save them. They can save themselves. We’re here as an act of solidarity to say thank you for what they have done for us, and that this is the very bare minimum that we could do in return to thank them for waking us all up.