Thank you from Gaza: the Freedom Flotilla reminded us that we’re still human
A crowd next to the Freedom Flotilla ship Handala in Syracuse, Sicily, in July 2025
Lina Ghassan Abu Zayed writes in The New Arab on 8 October 2025:
It’s been two years since we, as Palestinians, last felt alive in Gaza. Since then, we’ve buried family, watched our dignity empty with our homes. The sound of mortar shells closing in haunts our dreams, while Israel grows bolder and ‘leaders’ cower in silence.
We scavenge for hope, as scarce as food or a signal to write these words. Last week, I was waving my laptop in the air, moving from corner to corner of a makeshift room that once held happy memories. The Israeli occupation only knows how to take: land, food, electricity, life itself.
Finally, I detected a faint signal. When I opened social media, my phone seemed to roar back to life. In this time of hopelessness, amid genocide, the images and voices reaching me said, “You are not alone. We see you, we’re with you, we’re coming to you.”
Across the world, people were rising: streets in London, ports in Italy, another global flotilla sailing to Gaza. For us, this means something; it really does. Life here now revolves around one word: survival. But for a brief moment, as we watched the world rise, we felt our souls return. We felt ourselves again.
It’s a strange feeling knowing that someone who isn’t your family, your race, or your faith rises for you. For me, it felt as if the world was affirming our existence while another tried to erase it