The ship named for a cartoon figure of a barefoot refugee child left from a port in Augusta, Sicily on Sunday, Ann Wright reports.
Handala in Cobh, Ireland in June 2024. (Freedom Flotilla Coalition)
By Ann Wright
As the genocide of Palestinians continues with the daily massacres of hundreds of starving people being targeted and killed by the Israeli military as they come to attempt to get food, another ship of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla coalition “Handala” is sailing to bring attention to the criminal actions of the State of Israel and its leadership.
While President Donald Trump, his cabinet and the U.S. Congress meet with the International Criminal Court (ICC) designated war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the small ship named Handala and a group of 18 participants left Sunday for another mission to break the illegal Israeli naval blockade of Gaza and end the genocide.
Handala Moves to Mission Launch Port
The flotilla ship Handala moved on July 10 from its port for the past year, Augusta, Sicily to its mission launch site in Siracusa, Sicily. Local organizers in Siracusa held multiple events for the citizens of Sicily to join in challenging the ongoing Israeli genocide of Gaza.
According to a press release, “the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) [launched] Handala — a civilian boat setting out to challenge Israel’s illegal, deadly blockade of Gaza. The vessel will carry life-saving humanitarian aid and a message of solidarity from people around the world refusing to stay silent as Gaza is starved, bombed, and buried under rubble.”
The Handala sails just weeks after Israel’s illegal attack on the Madleen, another Freedom Flotilla boat illegally seized by Israel in international waters.
Madleen on June 1, 2025, shortly before departure. (Tan Safi /Freedom Flotilla )
Twelve unarmed civilians — including a member of the European Parliament, a doctor, journalists and human rights defenders — were abducted by Israeli commandos and taken against their will to Israel, where they were interrogated, abused, then deported. Their “crime?” Attempting to bring food, medicine, and solidarity to Palestinians under siege.
Two months ago, Israel bombed another of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla coalition ships, the Conscience, while it was in international waters off Malta and only hours before the coalition was bringing 40 international participants onto the ship to sail to Gaza.
A tug vessel sprays water to extinguish a fire aboard The Conscience, a a ship from the Gaza Freedom Flotilla during a nighttime emergency on May 2. (Wikimedia Commons /Public Domain)
Several of the crew of the Conscience were injured by the shrapnel from the bombs dropped by drones. An Israeli C-130 aircraft had flown from Israel into Malta airspace in the hours preceding the bombing and returned to Israel immediately after the explosions on the “Conscience.”
In a demonstration of U.S. complicity in the attempts to stop flotilla ships, in the afternoon before the bombing, the certification and flag of the Conscience was declared void by the issuing country Palau, which is economically and militarily dependent on the U.S. through the Compact of Free Association. Someone in the U.S. government apparently gave orders to its compliant state Palau to decertify the ship.
Israeli Massacres of Palestinians in Gaza Continues
The Handala has launched in the shadow of ongoing mass atrocities. Since March 18 — when Israel broke the ceasefire and resumed attacks on Gaza — at least 6,572 Palestinians have been killed and over 23,000 injured, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Among them, over 700 were gunned down as they waited for food at distribution points controlled by the U.S.- and Israel-backed “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) — a death trap masquerading as an aid scheme; a structure of control and cruelty serving Israel’s genocide.
The Handala is part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, a grassroots international network that has been sailing against the blockade since 2010. On board will be volunteer medics, lawyers, social justice activists, journalists, and community organizers. They are not governments, but people taking action where institutions have failed. [Democracy Now reports that Chris Smalls, founder of Amazon’s first U.S. labor union, plans to be among those on board.]
Handala, For the Children of Gaza
Handala figure on left, on side of the ship Handala. (Ann Wright)
Named after the Palestinian cartoon figure Handala — a barefoot refugee child who turned his back on injustice and vowed not to turn around until Palestine is free — this boat carries his spirit, and that of every child in Gaza who has been denied safety, dignity, and joy.
In 2023 and 2024, Handala sailed to ports across Europe and the U.K., breaking through the media blockade, engaging the public, and building solidarity through press events, art installations, and political education in every port it visited.
The Voyage of the Handala, a new documentary about the Israeli destruction of Gaza and the mission of the Handala is being shown during the launch events in Siracusa, Sicily, July 11 and 12.
The Handala mission is for the Children of Gaza — who make up over half of Gaza’s population — who have been living under a brutal blockade and siege for their entire lives.
Since October 2023, over 50,000 have been killed or injured, tens of thousands orphaned and nearly a million forcibly displaced and homeless. All now face famine, disease and trauma few of us can imagine.
Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a colonel. She was also a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the U.S. government in March 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq. She is on the steering committee of the Gaza flotilla coalition and is a member of Veterans For Peace, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, World Beyond War and many other peace organizations. She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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When Dinkirk was evacuated it was hundreds of civilian boats did the deed.
Of coarse that was pre Lame Stream Media, and gmo’s.
Godspeed Handala!
I salute and applaud this new crew of compassionate and courageous warriors.
The bestiality of inhuman depravity has no lowest point!
How many more such valiant, yet ineffective ‘actions’ is it going to take “to bring attention to the criminal actions of the State of Israel and its leadership” as well as others; when a majority of Americans’ wishes do not democratically even affect the decisions of their Congressional representatives to immediately cease and desist supplying criminal states with the funds and weaponry to commit genocides?
Why don’t they send 100 ships or 1,000? Overwhelm the Zionist navy.
They must know by now that one or three ships will be intercepted and the crew kidnapped and possibly killed.
The corporate, pro genocide media will ignore or wish violence upon these brave activists.
Just an idea, but why not name one of these freedom flotilla ships ‘Liberty’ !
That would be too easy to confuse in the future with the USS Liberty, a ship that “Israel” still needs to be held accountable for attacking.