Sumud Flotilla: Sailing Against Silence, Naming the Truth
They tried to burn the boats, but not the spirit. Every wave is resistance; every sail is a witness. The Sumud Flotilla is not just a sea voyage—it carries the weight of every cry from Gaza that the world has refused to hear.
Even as small, patched boats set sail with courage far greater than their sails, Western media hides behind the wrong word. They call genocide a “war.” But the UN has already confirmed what has been clear since 2023: Gaza is not a battlefield of two equal sides. It is genocide systematic destruction, mass murder, the erasure of a people. To call it war is to betray the truth. To call it genocide is to stand on the side of history and on the side of the victims.
When children, women, and civilians are slaughtered in their tens of thousands, when entire cities are leveled, when a people are displaced and deprived of everything, this is not war. This is massacre. This is GENOCIDE. And every journalist who hides behind the word “war” lays a linguistic veil over reality. Silence and misnaming become accomplices to murder.
The flotilla was attacked even before leaving Tunisia. Drones tried to scorch its decks; fires tried to consume its wood. But how do you burn determination? How do you sink an idea that has already taken root in millions of hearts? Sumud means steadfastness, and that is exactly what these vessels are floating testaments that Gaza has not been abandoned.
On board are not soldiers but teachers, doctors, elders, and youth. They carry no weapons except the unbearable truth of Gaza’s suffering. Their presence is proof that the world’s conscience still beats. Yet Norway’s media is silent. Western media is silent. Is this coincidence or the same deliberate concealment that has long kept Gaza’s destruction hidden from the world?
Are the people of Gaza paying the price for being Muslim? Is being Muslim now a crime? The silence of Western media and political leaders cannot be seen in isolation; it is part of a broader pattern of Islamophobia that shapes how conflicts are covered. Muslim civilians, suffering under systematic violence and bombardment, often receive minimal attention while similar crises elsewhere in the world are highlighted with bold headlines.
The time has come for Arab countries to unite and take action against Israel’s abuses. Should we only raise our voices when the same brutality reaches us? Norway’s media and political institutions remain silent a quiet testament to how Islamophobic attitudes help the world ignore the suffering and genocide in Gaza, allowing it to turn a blind eye to Muslim victims.
The mission of journalism is not to package the oppressor’s narrative, but to write reality with precision. To describe genocide as “war” is not neutrality, it is collaboration. The true journalists are those in Gaza who raised their pens and cameras even as bombs fell, who paid with their lives to tell the world the truth.
These ships may never reach Gaza’s shores, but their ripples already touch the world. Every mile forward defies the lie that Gaza is forgotten. They sail for every child buried under rubble, for every mother waiting in darkness, for every voice silenced by blockade. They sail to remind us that Gaza lives and so must our humanity.
Where are the politicians who once spoke Gaza’s name for votes? Why are they silent now? Why do they not speak of the flotilla? Why do they still call genocide a “war”?
We need to wake up, and I plead with you: do not let strangers carry the burden of your silence. Do not wait for history to shame us while Gaza bleeds. Rise before the world buries Palestine beneath indifference. Rise—because their steadfastness demands our courage. Rise! Because tomorrow may be too late.
Anam Hayat
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