By Free Gaza
On the day our first successful flotilla left Gaza, August 28, 2008, we were presented with Palestinian passports. The 44 of us who received them treasure them. The brutal assassination of Ismail Haniyeh has shocked us all. He was very humble when we met him in 2008, lived modestly in a refugee camp in Gaza, and was not ostentatious the way Abbas and the PA were when they tried to take over Gaza after Hamas won the election. Abbas had a mansion in Gaza. Haniyeh had a modest 3-bedroom house.
Here are just some of the comments from our passengers on that first trip. “The news today about the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh was truly shocking - here’s my view for what it’s worth. I met Ismail Haniyeh several times in Gaza and interviewed him once … becoming one of the few western journalists to do so … that’s what journalists do for a living: interview interesting people. So please don’t insult my intelligence by calling me a terrorist sympathiser, that’s just lazy and ignorant. Any journalist worth their salt would have jumped at the same interview.” Yvonne Ridley
Kathleen O’Connor Wang was demonstrating in Washington DC and talked about how we all received our passports from Haniyeh. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0UIty4rcQg/ said, “I am in mourning.”
We were so thrilled that day, August 28, 2008. Haniya gave diplomatic Palestinian passports to 44 international peace activists who returned to Cyprus with a few Palestinians residents on board. We thought we’d opened a sea lane from Cyprus to Gaza. In fact, we were able to sail into Gaza four more times before Israel began attacking us. Here are a few more photos of very happy passengers.
Our deepest sympathies go out to the Palestinians of Gaza and to the remaining family members of this kind and quiet man who had been working on a ceasefire resolution before being assassinated by Israel.