human rights activist lawyer and co founder of the international solidarity movement also known as the i assume it is a palestinian led movement committed to resisting the israeli occupation in palestine using nonviolent methods and knave my parents made their way to the united states when my mother was about eight months pregnant with me and now i'm the oldest of five children they figured that they needed to get out they needed to find a place where they can raise a family where under full israeli military occupation so i was born and raised in the united states and i got my education here i think i got a pretty decent education and i know and i feel that i had opportunities that most of my people don't have to this day and so when i finished my undergraduate degree from the i said at the university of michigan i decided to go over to jerusalem at that time this was in the spring of two thousand we were still in this era of the oslo peace on it and i went to work for a conflict resolution organization it's a u s organization but it works in different regions of conflict and specializes really on israel and palestine five months after i got to jerusalem and was working for this organization the palestinian the intifada broke out i think most of you might know but on september twenty eighth two thousand audio showed on who was a general he was the leader was it is for all the jewish people we can go anywhere we want even if it is your holiest site and he went off on had a machete taking with him approximately a thousand soldiers police officers on guards and made this statement which of course enraged people so the next day demonstrations took to the streets and israeli forces came on armed demonstrators with lethal very optimistic but what happened in the seven years of nine hundred eighty three two thousand is that israel continued to build settlements which are colonies that sit on occupied palestinian land checkpoints increased and home demolitions continued so the syrians would complain about this during the seven years but they were always told to be patient because we're in a peace process combine that with the fact that israel became  accountable so this is why these demonstrations die down so most palestinians can't take part in an armed struggle it was a very small percentage of the population that did take part and of course the casualty rate continued to climb it was me at the time probably rather naive but thinking there's got to be something i can do about this and so myself and a few other people somehow us indians and the israeli friend of mine and some internationals we ended up founding what's called the international solidarity movement today the idea was maybe we can call people from all over the world and they'll come and stand with us and like my dream we can form this massive civilian army thousands of people linking arms and preventing the israeli military from invading palestinian villages and towns at the same time with this really work he would with anybody come with i know that my parents were calling from the states are still living in michigan my mother crying saying come home because of the images that she would see on t money using their own resources and energies we didn't know really but we decided that we have to try and so we sent out e mails and announce that we're going to have this two week campaign and we're going to work on  home and they told their friends and family about what they had done and then they started asking us when's your next campaign and so i said yeah let's organize another campaign and now to this day about nine years now we've had about seven thousand people from over thirty different countries in the beginning we were all able to send volunteers to gaza and gaza is physically separated from the west bank we because in a lot of places that came under israeli fire you had automated machine guns you had drones that were unmanned that would fire and so you know when we marched in the was mine you can see the soldiers somewhere in front of you maybe you can get close enough where you see the soldier face to face where you can look into his or her eyes in gaza know in the center of gaza yes you had soldiers controlling movement but where the fire came from so now always getting a little bit about right because they had mortally wounded or killed internationals that had names that had faces that had governments behind them i mean never mind the thousands of palestinians killed or injured by that point have to apply for special permission and you have to give a reason for wanting to go and israel had to approve of this reason and these reasons fell generally into two categories one you were a journalist for an agency that was recognized you register with their foreign press office or you work for an international organization that israel chose to recognize that un the i c r c or a host of other organizations these people would get permission to go and i and we couldn't get permission to gaza it's not that we don't get into the sea it's not about security it's about punishing the people there cutting them off from the rest of the world and we hope that that might shake the world to action that was the idea so we had to get a boat come spring of two thousand and eight we still don't have the money but again when this these reports in the specialist stunted growth came out we thought we can't wait any longer we have to go this summer we just dug into our own pockets our break accounts credit cards took out loans and we scrape together enough money to get two small fishing boats and forty four people from seventeen different countries gathered in cyprus in the summer of two thousand and eight it became clear and we told people you know what we can't guarantee your safety so if you're not prepared to possibly be injured or maybe even killed don't  but spirits were high people got really really sick but spirits were high then we get to this point i went out to look because now we're getting close to the shore at least you could see the gaza skyline and  to understand it it wasn't because we were carrying humanitarian aid with us our boats were small our boats barely carried us we had two hundred euro needs that were donated and we have balloons for kids that's military and government and say no we're not going to let you do this blockade once but maybe we can seriously break the siege we just have to leave the same way we came and come back again hopefully with more people and then leave and come back again and if we manage to do that we will have o then we will have an effect broken the siege and that's what we promised to do and so a few days later we left taking out with a we left internationals i think was about eight at the time we left them in gaza to restart the international solidarity movement there and in their place we took up palestinians without asking permission from israel and it was the first time that palestinians were able to leave their own homeland without having to go through this humiliating process of getting permission and going through checks in order to leave and we thought maybe now people would see that we can do this and organizations that have more resources than we do would come with sign i'm but none of small yacht because those wooden boats were not going to make it across the mediterranean again so we got this small yacht and we were able to make the voyage four more times back and forth to gaza so five times between august and december two thousand and eight we saile eight campaign that saw the death of over fourteen hundred palestinians on the second day was december twenty seventh on december twenty ninth when we launched an emergency mission in this town we were trying to carry as much aid as we could medical supplies really both at about three times of medical supplies and then we had four doctors were trying to take in doctors and journalists doctors to try to help the doctors in gaza and journalists because foreign journalists weren't being allowed into gaza and the middle of the night on december thirtieth do now one thing we knew is that we're not going to back down and we decided we're going to go again and we were able to muster enough resources to get another boat and sail two weeks later still during operation cast lead carrying more time had ended but as you had not opened the borders to gaza you know you would think after this a massive attack you'd at least open a little bit so people can rebuild their lives get in some of the supplies they needed to rebuild some of the experts in need to come in and help people recover nothing nothing so that by june two thousand and ninety people are still living on the rubble of their homes because thousands of homes and schools and mosques and hospitals were down mr destroyed so we decided we're to go again and we're going to take in construction supplies and school supplies in the intercept of that boat also arrested everyone and so we never made it but it same time we didn't want to give up because the violence perpetrated in the occupied territories is much more than we had experienced and we didn't want to give in to this notion that military might is stronger than the rights we were fighting for know how we were going to build the flotilla we didn't really know but that's what we were going to do and that's what we set out to do we were going to go to all these countries and all these people and ask for help and ask them to join us on a very grassroots level to send as challenge this blockade by traveling together we were three cargo ships and three passenger ships almost ten thousand tons of cargo mainly building supplies but also medical supplies and seven hundred people from thirty six different and on the evening of may thirtieth it was about eleven eleven thirty at night these really maybe radios us and again and again they repeated that we had to turn around and they'd be willing to use all necessary force to keep us out of kept sailing forward albeit at a slower pace and i just kept repeating that were unarmed civilians don't use force against us don't use force against us they disappeared off the radio for a few hours and then about four o'clock in the morning one of our colleagues that we had on watch yells down two was coming i was on a ship called the challenger it was a small american flag boat that was still in very gunfire gunfire and you know i spent most of my time i spend most of my time in the west bank and in demonstrations and so i know what gunfire sounds like whether this is a rubber coated steel bullet or this was a live ammunition but i couldn't tell what those bullets were and i remember thinking oh my gosh like me ok i'm used to it but these people must be terrified it was four o'clock in the morning we were still ten hours from gaza at the rate we were traveling you know they could've waited till daylight come upon the roads in a less aggressive a way that would have caused the chaos that it did i don't know why they attacked us the way they did but these soldiers coming up along the bow and firing and sound bombs and then the helicopter military helicopter up above it was a full on military small boat decided to take off and the idea was we had decided previously that we were all say they got it but we thought that maybe we could delay the boarding of our boats run them a little bit at least until we could get message out that we were under attack and indeed the captain the mahdi lot of mother told us radioed us and said try to get away try to tell the world that were under attack and so we sped off and fortunately we were not able to get through on our satellite phones and after about ten minutes of this chase these two zodiacs filled with soldiers over took our boat and one of the first things they went after is all of our recording equipment and we asked our countries to demand that israel turn over this recording equipment as this is evidence and this is tampering with evidence and we wanted an independent international investigation to come in and question all you want and to figure out what happened and these judges renowned international law practitioners and scholars a former judge of the international criminal court a former chief prosecutor of the special court for sierra leone a former member of the un committee on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women israel still didn't cooperate and so the judges couldn't talk to any israeli soldiers or any israeli commanders or anything like that but they did their investigation as best they could and they interviewed about one hundred ten witnesses and looked at all available  did not constitute an imminent threat to israel and was not part of any kind of war effort against israel and therefore intersecting our flotilla was unlawful especially in sail in about two and a half months to set sail even and hopefully representative government comes to power in egypt that maybe they'll open the border crossing and so people in gaza can get some breathing room set sail because this is not just about gaza yes we want to end the crisis there we want people to be able to meet somewhat of a normal life if not total until at least they can achieve liberation so this is all part of an unjust system that needs to be changed that needs to be changed for ever going to see peace if these talks between the children that i was working with are ever going to bear fruit then we have to change the political system th injustice what is the role that we play to create the world that we want to live in and that we want our children to live in and our children's children to live