Another Global Sumud Flotilla — the largest to date — is setting out across the Mediterranean Sea in a multinational civilian effort to open a humanitarian aid corridor to the war-torn Gaza Strip.
Longtime Eureka resident Sacha Marini is among the hundreds of volunteers taking part, traveling aboard one of dozens of vessels in the waterborne caravan carrying food and medicine in an attempt to bring much-needed supplies to the Palestinian people facing famine, disease and displacement.
According to a release, Marini explained the decision to friends and family by saying, “With ever escalating repression, genocide and destruction worldwide, I feel inspired to stand in solidarity. To meet the moment with collective people power.”
Marini is not alone in representing the North Coast. Three others from the region are also on the crossing, including Windfield Beaver, whose journey with a previous flotilla attempt late last year was chronicled in the Journal’s Oct. 9 cover story, “What Else Can We Do?”
In the end, his boat and 40 others carrying nearly 500 volunteers from dozens of nations were intercepted short of their destination by the Israeli navy in an action the country’s government defended as a matter of national defense but one met with condemnation by some world leaders.
At the time, the Orleans resident described the mission as an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people. “Like, for me, I want to live in a world that doesn’t treat people that way and they are included in that world I want to live in. So, I can’t stand by while they are just being slaughtered.”
More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched an offensive into the Gaza Strip in response to the violent Hamas-led attack on the nation on Oct. 7, 2023, which left 1,200 dead and saw hundreds taken hostage, mainly civilians.
The Palestinian deaths include several hundred that occurred after a fragile ceasefire was reached nearly seven months ago in the war, according to Gaza health authorities, many of those women, children and the elderly, with another 172,000 injured between October of 2023 and April 16.
According to a United Nations’ assessment, more than $71.4 billion will be needed for recovery and reconstruction in the Gaza Strip over the next decade following the conflict, which has seen nearly 400,000 housing units destroyed or damaged, as well as nearly all schools, and left half of the region’s hospitals nonfunctional.
The war, according to the report, left a “catastrophic impact on human development across Gaza, which is estimated to have been set back by 77 years. Around 1.9 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, and more than 60 percent of the population has lost their homes. Those bearing “the greatest burden,” the report states, are “women, children, persons with disabilities, and those with pre-existing vulnerabilities.”
The Israeli sea blockade the flotilla is hoping to challenge predates the war by almost two decades, having been enacted following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007.
According to the Global Sumud Flotilla, 56 vessels officially left from a Sicilian port on April 26, the latest and largest attempt in the ensuing years to establish an aid corridor.
“The flotilla departs with a clear set of objectives: to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade, advance the opening of a permanent humanitarian corridor and intensify coordinated international pressure on governments and corporations complicit in its enforcement,” the announcement states.
Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise and the rescue vessel Open Arms are also accompanying the fleet, according to GSF, which set course a few days after the Brussels Declaration was adopted by “hundreds of Parliamentarians from across the globe who gathered at the first Global Sumud Parliamentary Congress” on Israel’s actions in Gaza in an effort to “turn condemnation into action.”
“This flotilla is not an isolated act; it is part of a growing international effort to expose and interrupt the systems that sustain the blockade, from global shipping routes to state policy,” the GSF says in release. “As the vessels now move beyond Italian waters, the mission enters a phase in which each mile traveled carries increasing political, legal, and humanitarian weight. This journey represents a coordinated act of international civil resistance at sea.”
In a message from Marini before the departure, relayed to the Journal by her local support team, she says her vessel was a sailboat, like most in the fleet, and it was “carrying boxes of humanitarian aid which consists of basic food staples.”
Marini says she was not traveling with Windfield Beaver, his brother Silas Beaver or the fourth member of the North Coast contingent, Arcata resident Greg Terry, noting that “except for the brothers, none of us knew each other until we got here.”
“I think it’s really great that such a rural place as Humboldt has a clear commitment to Palestinian liberation, which was also shown in the Cal Poly Humboldt encampment [two] years ago,” she says.
“Each boat has a mix of people from various nationalities,” Marini says. “For example, there is a strong contingency from Ireland, who link the Palestinian struggle to their own land rights struggle. I am actually the only native English speaker on my boat, which has eight people onboard.”
The release announcing Marini’s participation in the flotilla notes she has “an extensive background of championing restorative justice and human rights in the criminal system.”
Before retiring in the fall of 2024, Marini spent nearly two decades overseeing the Boys and Girls Club of the Redwoods’ Teen Court, a diversion program based in restorative justice that’s led by local youth for local youth under the guidance of adult mentors with a focus on providing kids who have strayed off course a chance to reset.
“I want to be part of a world where we actually care about each other,” Marini says in the release. “Be human. The flotilla is a public expedition occurring out in the open, so please share with friends and amplify the movement. But most importantly, all eyes on Gaza. All together for Palestine. Fight imperialism worldwide. U.S. empire out of everywhere.”
Kimberly Wear (she/her) is the assistant editor at the Journal. Reach her at 442-1400 or kim@northcoastjournal.com.
This article appears in Know Your Rights.
