On Sunday, August 16th at 4 pm Eastern Time, Voices From the Holy Land (VFHL) will be presenting its fourth Online Film Salon. This Zoom film discussion will feature the film “Rock the Boat” — a film about the first boat that sought to break the Israeli military siege of Gaza from the sea. If you would like to see this film and receive a Zoom link to the film discussion, register HERE.
The moderators/speakers who will engage the audience in a question and answer session are the filmmaker Kathy Sheetz Greaves and the noted Palestinian-American activist Huwaida Arraf. Kathy Sheetz Greaves, the film’s Director and Producer, was on that initial boat and Huwaida Arraf is a noted Palestinian-American attorney and human rights activist who was on that boat as well as four additional boats to Gaza.
Huwaida is the former Chairperson of the Free Gaza Movement, and from August to December 2008, led 5 successful sea voyages to the Gaza Strip to confront and challenge Israel’s illegal blockade on the 2 million Palestinians living there. She was one of the primary organizers of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and was traveling with it when it was lethally attacked by Israeli forces on 31 May 2010. In 2011, she was one of the six Palestinian Freedom Riders, who, inspired by the U.S. Civil Rights Movement’s Freedom Rides of the 1960s, attempted to ride segregated Israeli settler public transport, for which they were harassed then violently arrested. Huwaida is co-editor of the book “Peace Under Fire: Israel, Palestine, and the International Solidarity Movement” and her writings have been published in books, magazines and journals around the world. She currently practices civil rights law in Detroit.
Over the past two decades Huwaida has been involved in a number of legal and grassroots initiatives for Palestinian rights. In 2001, she co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led non-violent resistance movement, which has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. From 2007-2008, Huwaida helped build the first accredited clinical legal education program in the Arab world, based at Al-Quds University. She was one of the initiators and organizers of the first delegation of lawyers to enter Gaza following Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), and co-authored the report on their findings, “Onslaught: Israel’s Attack on Gaza and the Rule of Law.”
