2 US Handala crew members released from Israeli detention as others begin hunger strike

Huwaida Arraf and Bob Suberi, two crew members of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla humanitarian vessel Handala, have been released from Israeli detention. Both are US citizens and were abducted illegally along with their nineteen crewmates by occupation troops in international waters as they neared Gaza to deliver vital medicines and baby food during Israel’s starvation blockade.

Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian-American civil and human rights lawyer and long-time social justice activist at the forefront of legal, political, and grassroots efforts for Palestinian liberation for over two decades. Arraf co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) – which has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize – and helped lead the Free Gaza Movement, which has organised sea voyages since 2008 to confront Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza.

Bob Suberi is a first-generation Jewish American, born in Los Angeles in 1948 to Palestinian Jewish parents who moved to the US before the Nakba, the catastrophe in which 800,000 Palestinians were driven at gunpoint from their homes, with many rapes and massacres. Suberi was raised as a Zionist immersed in nationalist ideology, but in 2019 after visiting the West Bank and witnessing the realities of occupation first-hand he says he began to unlearn decades of ‘hasbara’, pro-Israel propaganda. Since then, he has participated in protective presence efforts in Masafer Yatta and joined the Handala mission in 2023before returning this year for the final leg of the journey to challenge the blockade.

At the same time, Australian crewmembers Tania Safi and Robert Martin have embarked on a hunger strike in protest at the participation of their country’s government in Israel’s genocide. In a withering letter announcing their action, the pair wrote:

To FGA, to our government, to all:

Rob and I will be participating in a collective hunger strike with the other 19 crew from
‘Handala’.

As the two «Australians,, aboard, we call on our government to stop trading with Israel. To stop
sweeping their war crimes under the rug in the same way your system hid the massacres of
Indigenous communities, of the white Australia policy, of the stolen generation, of the deaths in
custody, of the Imprisoning of Aboriginal children and Torres Strait Islander children.

We call on our government to stop sending weapon components to Israel that are used in
their genocidal rampage in Gaza, Palestine and the wider region – we demand you stop denying
this truth, too. We demand our government stop protecting Israel from any accountability or
consequence.

Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and senator Penny Wong, we have seen you be selective with
your compassion, and we have seen you in moments of integrity, too. We call on you to
prioritise what’s left of your humanity, not your paychecks.

We demand you value our lives and safety in the same way you should have valued Zomi Frankcom, in the same way you should have valued each and every Palestinian killed in Gaza and Palestine by Israel and their allies. We demand you ensure our safe, immediate release from those same forces who have abducted us, and illegally intercepted our nonviolent action to
bring baby formula to starving Palestinian babies.

As you said, Albo, “Israelis continue to demonise all Palestinians.” We count on you to do
better-NOW.

Tan (Tania) Safi
Robert Martin

The Handala is the third Freedom Flotilla vessel attacked in international waters by Israel this year, after the Conscience was bombed by drones close to Malta and the Madleen pirated and its volunteer crew abducted near the coast of Egypt. Despite the presence of a UK citizen among the Handala’s crew and the Madleen being a UK-registered vessel, the Starmer regime has remained silent about Israel’s criminality, though he has found time to post on X repeatedly about England’s women’s football team.

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