Whispers from the sea: a flotilla of defiance in Gaza’s endless night

'KNIFE TO THE GUT'

- VANESSA GOVENDER

ISIT here, staring at the screen, the glow casting shadows that feel too much like the ones etched into my soul these past months.

It’s September 2025, and the world spins on, coffee sipped in cafes, deadlines met in board-tooms, while in Gaza, the earth itself weeps blood.

Satellite images don’t lie; they scream. Entire neighborhoods in Gaza City, once alive with the laughter of children chasing kites, now lie as rubble-strewn graves. Homes pulverised, hospitals hollowed out like the hearts of those who survived only to bury their kin. Over 64000 souls extinguished since October 2023, a number that is in all likelihood much higher, 163 503 more carrying wounds that fester in the silence of indifference.

And the children. God, the children. One hundred and thirty, starved to whispers by a famine Israel has engineered with surgical cruelty. I close my eyes, and I see them: tiny hands clutching empty bowls, eyes hollowed by a hunger that gnaws deeper than bombs. How did we get here? How did a people, resilient as the ancient cedars of Lebanon, become pawns in a theatre of endless atrocity?

Netanyahu’s voice echoes like a dirge: no Palestinian state, ever. Evacuation orders rain down on Gaza City, herding a million souls south to a strip of land already choked with the displaced, where “safe zones” dissolve into kill boxes. Famine confirmed, genocide whispered by UN experts who plead for the world to wake.

Yet here I am, an ocean away, fingers trembling over keys, wondering if my rage is enough. It’s not. It never has been.

Global Sumud Flotilla