By Paul Larudee
The recruitment of Vangelis Pissias to the project to break the siege of Gaza by sea began sixteen years ago, when our beloved friend and collaborator, Riad Hamed, was tragically found dead at the bottom of a lake in Texas, his hands and legs tied. He was part of our movement, and he had used his experience as a logistics professional in West Asia to inspect potential boats for the project.
We had to find another way. So we asked another friend, Georgia Milonaki, to help. She introduced us to Vangelis. I didn’t know him. We communicated only by encrypted email in very short phrases. “Here is a picture of a boat that is suitable. If you approve, send €9999 to person A and another €9999 to person B and another €9999 to person C, etc.” We found donors and sent the money without knowing more than the name and email address. Several months later, I arrived in Greece and met Vangelis at the house of Mikhalis and Litsa Tiktopoulos.
As you know, we succeeded in breaking the siege of Gaza on August 23, 2008, and we could not have done it without Vangelis. He died a national treasure to many in Greece, and for good reason. He was undoubtedly born with great leadership and organizational skills, but he developed them much further in the underground resistance to the repressive Greek dictatorship, 1967-74. Afterwards, he became a university professor of marine hydrology, but continued to lead the struggle for justice in Greece and throughout West Asia, borrowing on his upbringing in the large and historical Greek community in Alexandria, Egypt, which lent him a measure of proficiency in Arabic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suBW3uf-qmc&t=4s
Vangelis had the mind of a general, an engineer and a philosopher. He managed to keep the entire project of boat construction and logistics totally secret until the last minute, and thwarted the Israeli attempts to shut it down. He had contacts and allies everywhere - in Crete, Cypress, in Gaza, even in the tiny island of Kastelorizou, which played an unexpectedly important role.
It was an extraordinary accomplishment, and I was privileged to be at his side for much of it. Of course, all of us made it happen, but without some of us, the project would have succeeded nevertheless. Without Vangelis, I’m not so certain; he was as close to being indispensable as I can imagine. He continued in the subsequent voyages to Gaza and the 2010 Flotilla, which was attacked by Israeli troops, with a loss of ten passengers. At one point during the arrest of the remaining hundreds, Vangelis and I found ourselves in a sizeable holding room. He was injured with a broken leg. But when a group of Israeli uniformed thugs attacked me (for insolence, I guess), he fought them, anyway. I practice nonviolence, but he thought it was foolishness.
But mostly we were alike. Vangelis was more than a colleague and collaborator for me. He was a friend or brother, perhaps even a twin brother, since we were born only three months apart. We loved analysis, strategy, planning, how to change things, how to fight injustice through practical means, how to defy the powerful in ways they do not expect. This was our entertainment and our joy. We enjoyed doing the impossible, and I know many of you enjoy the same. And of course, we enjoyed good food, good wine, good music and good company, especially at a particular obscure restaurant in Athens where the food was so good that the owner refused to put a sign outside for fear of attracting too many people.
That restaurant no longer exists, and now neither does my brother, Vangelis. He was a champion, a general, a genius, and a dear friend and brother to thousands of people everywhere. We shall all miss him.
I visited him last year for what became the last time. We last spoke in July. The world is poorer without him.