“We Are Committed to Sailing to Gaza – Ahoy!”

An Interview with Hedy Epstein and Greta Berlin

by Silvia Cattori

Global Research, August 12, 2007
SilviaCattori.net

"Hedy Epstein and Greta Berlin, two among other personalities promoting the project, "Sailing a boat to Gaza" explain, in the interview they gave to Silvia Cattori, why the boat "Free Gaza" will not sail this summer as initially planned, but next spring.

Silvia Cattori : Last May you had announced that you were going to sail for Gaza in August, 2007 [1]. Why has the date for trip been moved to the spring of 2008?

Greta Berlin : There are three main reasons.

First. We moved the date, because we simply don’t have the money to buy the boats that we need.

Second, we realized that many of the logistics such as registering the boat, getting insurance for the trip and finding a committed captain and crew were going to take longer.

And, of course, the most important reason to move the date is because finally we decided to coordinate the action with the 60th anniversary of the “Nakba”. [2]

Silvia Cattori : Hadn’t you a responsibility in respect of the people suffering siege in Gaza that reckoned on the arrival of a boat to mobilize the public opinion? If your departure is postponed, won’t they be disappointed?

Greta Berlin : We are determined to carry out this project. In the past year, dozens of us have worked hard, and we don’t intend to stop.

Hedy Epstein : We are more committed than ever. We don’t want to disappoint anyone, including ourselves......

Greta Berlin : The world is busy starving the Palestinians of Gaza into submission, simply because they exercised their human right to vote democratically for the party they wanted in power. I find it obscene that, just because the US, Israel, the EU don’t like the party’s goals, they are suddenly called ’terrorists.’ Israel funded Hamas back in the l970s as a counter to Arafat’s secular government. Why is Hamas, then, suddenly a terrorist group when they are resisting occupation?

Hedy Epstein : In the case of the US, we have dealt with numerous so-called terrorist organizations, such as The Stern Gang, the Irgun, and the Hagganah, the original terrorists in the Middle East. They all later turned up in the Israeli government, holding office from the top down.

We all know that the Israeli authorities have a total control of land, air and sea space, leaving the people in outdoor prisons. In some ways what we are doing is to test the ’veracity of their lie’ that they have left Gaza.

Gaza is submitted to an inhuman blockade. In 2000, before the second “Intifada”, (uprising) Gaza fishermen were catching 823 tons of fish per month to feed their families and sell in the market. After Israel closed Gaza and refused to allow the men to fish, they are barely able to catch 50 tons a month, not enough to feed their families or to sell. And, the fish that they can fish are tiny, and fishing so close to the coast destroys the spawning cycle......

Silvia Cattori : What is your next move now to surmount the obstacles to completing this project?

Greta Berlin : We’re doing everything we can to publicize the project and to raise money for the boats. We need close to $250’000 to buy at least two or three of them, and, in the space of about two months, we have collected close to $30’000. So we know it can be done, if everyone reading this interview and others like it, will contribute by going to our website, www.freegaza.org, and clicking on DONATE....."