Activists Organize Gaza “Freedom Flotilla”
It has been six months since Israel’s genocide in Gaza began. The death toll has surpassed 33,000 and Israeli violations continue to mount. Human Rights Watch just released a report accusing Israel of using starvation “as a weapon of war” against Palestinians and particularly children. Doctors Without Borders has also accused the Israel Defense Forces of targeting aid workers after the killings of seven World Central Kitchen staff, saying “the pattern of attacks is either intentional or indicative of reckless incompetence.”
Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterrez issued an urgent call to end Israel’s war, saying it has unleashed “relentless death and destruction to Palestinians in Gaza.”
In the absence of international action to stop Israel’s genocide, advocates of Palestinian rights are planning to set sail in late April on a number of ships carrying thousands of tons of aid directly to the people of Gaza as part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
Among them will be Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian American human and civil rights attorney, activist, and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. Arraf spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about the flotilla and the impacts of the war six months in.
Sonali Kolhatkar
joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.
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