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This Year, the Flotilla Will Be Live-Blogged

American ‘The Audacity of Hope’ to set sail Saturday

by
Marc Tracy
June 21, 2011
A rally last month in Gaza marking the one-year anniversary of the flotilla.(Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)
A rally last month in Gaza marking the one-year anniversary of the flotilla.(Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)

One of the ten boats in this year’s flotilla, which plans to sail from Athens Saturday and attempt to run Israel’s Gaza blockade, is called The Audacity of Hope (cheeky!), and will fly an American flag and carry 36 American citizens, approximately one-quarter of whom are Jewish. It will also carry four crewmembers and nine journalists, who surely kicked themselves last year for, er, missing the boat on the big news that happened.

Journalist Joseph Dana, a recent Tablet Magazine contributor, reports from Athens that The Audacity of Hope will be the largest of the 10 ships (especially since the famed Mavi Marmara will not unmoor, due to the Turkish group IHH’s decision not to participate again), and that among its passengers will be novelist Alice Walker, Holocaust survivor-cum-activist Heddy Epstein, and the founder of CODEPINK; the ship’s cargo is limited to 3000 letters written by Americans to Gaza Palestinians, he says. Additionally, one of those American Jews offers an apologia (“Operation Cast Lead and the Goldstone Report were the catalysts,” she writes).

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.