The Gaza Flotilla Is Getting Closer. Attacks Are Just Starting to Ramp Up.

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With Gaza cut off from food and aid, activists have taken matters into their own hands, attempting to circumvent Israel’s blockade themselves via the Mediterranean.

One of the boat passengers is Zue Jernstedt, a veteran and member of About Face: Veterans Against the War^[2]. She’s on the so-called veterans’ boat of the Global Sumud Flotilla, a group of 52 vessels making their way east. For the past five months, boats have been attempting this journey. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg got arrested when making this trip back in June; this time, Jernstedt is traveling alongside Thunberg.

Israel has warned the activists to stay away. As Jernstedt and the rest of the flotilla get closer, Israel’s warnings feel more like threats.

On a recent episode^[3] of What Next, host Mary Harris spoke to Jernstedt about why she’s joined the movement to deliver aid to Gaza. The episode was recorded on Thursday, and this transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mary Harris: How did you get connected with the flotilla? 

Zue Jernstedt: I worked with ISM, the International Solidarity Movement, in the West Bank. I worked with a Palestinian American who was actually there first and did the training with me. We spent our first few weeks together before she went home. She messaged me about the flotilla a few weeks ago. And I signed up and left within a week.

If I heard about a flotilla delivering aid to Gaza, with a very high likelihood of the Israeli military targeting me, spending weeks on a boat with people I didn’t know beforehand, I’m not sure I would jump to sign up. Why did you? 

Honestly, I don’t think everyone should jump to sign up. It is a very difficult thing. I jumped to sign up because my friend told me there was a veterans’ boat.

Why did you want to be with veterans?

We all know the standard operating procedure. We all have our basic orders. We can all operate under stress.

You have a shared language. 

Exactly, and we all speak very directly to each other. We don’t get as upset about personal things. Everyone here is great, and we lean on each other for emotional support. But when things are rough, we don’t have to coddle each other. No one whines about having to clean the bathroom or having a night shift. We know what has to get done, and it’s something we’ve done before. So, the fact that I knew I would be with other veterans who believe that Gaza should not be starved and that the siege was illegal was good enough for me. And the fact that I hold a special place of privilege with my veteran identity in the United States. And that the headline would be a lot better if I’m injured. “U.S. Veteran Is Injured” holds more power, which is silly, but it is true in the States because we are like a play piece that politicians use, talking about “their veterans.” We all know that us being here is a privilege that we’re using.

Does it feel like it’s getting more tense as you get closer? 

Definitely. We were bombed, flash-banged two days ago. And last night, it was a psyop thing. We got backdoor calls from the government saying that they’re going to kill us and to abandon the mission. That’s why they said, “Drop it off at Cyprus. They’re going to kill you.”

Hold it. They were calling your cellphones?

They weren’t calling our cellphones. They were contacting people, certain governments. I believe the German government, and maybe Spanish, got information that we were going to be harmed, but not through official channels. Like I said, it’s psyop. It’s how they operate to scare you, making it seem like they don’t care if they sink your boats, they don’t care if they kill anybody, to create terror and fear. It’s the same thing they do to people in Gaza. They do all these psyops to scare them all the time. It’s not just that they dropped the equivalent of two atomic bombs on them in 2024^[4]. It’s also that they have been psychologically torturing these people. It’s a very regular thing for them.

On social media, I know the flotilla has asked followers for assistance, calling their representatives. What do you think that assistance needs to be? What specifically do you want people who are not with you to do for you? 

You can call your representatives. That’s great. That’s the most basic thing you could do. I mean, I would start pressuring your own local government: show up at your city hall, start talking about Palestine, talking about how whatever city or state you’re in is complicit. I guarantee it is invested in Israeli technology with your police departments, and bonds with Israel. They’re all complicit. Find that out and start saying, “We want to divest. The least we could do is stop giving them money. The least you could do is stop them from having a genocide.”

I think some of what you’re saying might frighten some of my listeners who worry about growing antisemitism and how some of the language you’re using reminds them of language used by other people to commit horrible atrocities against Jews. What would you say to someone who’s having those feelings right now? 

Well, when I refer to people who support Israel, I’m not saying Jewish person. I’m saying Zionist.

For some Jews, Zionism and Judaism are deeply connected.

For them, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. They can say that all they want, but they cannot take away the fact that many Jewish people do not agree with it. This isn’t about a religion. It’s about an ethnostate of apartheid. It’s about treating everyone equally. It’s not that “Jewish people shouldn’t even live in Palestine.” Jewish people should live in Palestine. They shouldn’t have an ethnostate where they treat other people subhumanly. Everyone should live equally. When Zionists speak to me, it reminds me of something. It reminds me of things that have happened in the past to Jewish people. When you see Gaza, when you see children starving, the only pictures I’ve seen of children that skinny were children from concentration camps, which terrified me as a child. And I didn’t understand how people let that happen. Antisemitism is wrong. You should not judge anyone on their religion. Absolutely not. But you can’t conflate Zionism with Judaism.

Israel said it’s going to take necessary measures to prevent your entry into a combat zone. I’m wondering how you’re preparing for that. Another member of the flotilla is Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. She’s been on a flotilla like this one before. And in fact, she was detained. Has she given you advice about what’s about to happen? 

I haven’t spoken with Greta one-on-one like that. We have had larger discussions about safety and about the possibility of detainment, where she did speak about her experience.

What did she tell you about? 

She just spoke on how they came onto the boat, they threw food at her and took pictures for the photo op. They didn’t let her sleep when she was in detention; they stripped them down to their underwear. It was dehumanizing what happened. And their experience was actually quite mellow compared to other flotillas because of how social media had been reacting to it. They couldn’t paint them as these dangerous people when Greta’s wearing a frog hat. She is just a sweet little girl. They had to go with the “selfie cruise” narrative, which meant they had to treat them with basic decency because they couldn’t pass them off as some evil infiltrator.

Some people might look at what you’re doing and say, “These past missions have ended in failure,” and think, “Well, this mission is probably going to end in failure too, in some way. So what’s the point?” What would you say to someone who asks that? 

I would ask them what they were doing. I would ask them if they got it right the first time every single time. Whenever they learned something, did they do it right the first time? When people play sports, are they automatically just the best? This is humans coming together who don’t have the backing of any government, who are just humanitarians coming together to try at least to feed people. Half of it isn’t if we get there or not. It is also showing Palestinians that they’re not alone in this and that we’re at least trying our hardest to get there.

Do you have a vision of what happens over the next few days? Maybe multiple visions, like a worst-case scenario and a best-case scenario?

My best-case scenario would definitely be that we get to the shores of Gaza and hand off our aid and establish a humanitarian corridor. Then we can have more ships that are heavily laden with food come in, and we can stop the block of humanitarian aid to Gaza. Hopefully, the U.N. will finally kick out Israel for war crimes and genocide, and we’ll actually be moving toward peace and rebuilding. I mean, the worst-case scenario is I lose some of my comrades, and we don’t get food there. That’s, I think, the absolute worst.

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