Palestine Pt. 15: The Gaza Freedom Flotilla w/ Chris Smalls & Huwaida Arraf

Upstream

Politics, Society & Culture, News

4.9 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2025

⏱️ 111 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, Part 15 of our ongoing Palestine series, we've invited on two guests for a wide-ranging conversation around the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and the movement it's part of: Chris Smalls and Huwaida Arraf.

Chris Smalls is a labor organizer, founder and former President of the Amazon Labor Union, and was a member of the most recent Freedom Flotilla voyage to Gaza. In this conversation, Chris shares about his experience on the Handala—the boat that sailed from Italy to the coast off of Gaza in an attempt to break Israel's illegal siege and blockade of food, medicine, and other lifesaving necessities in Palestine. We talk about the IOF's siege of the Handala in the waters of the Mediterranean just off the coast of Gaza and Chris's treatment after being kidnapped by Israel. We also explore the connection between working class politics in the United States and the struggle for liberation in Palestine, the complicity of the Western labor movement and the Democratic Party in the Palestinian genocide, the need for a labor party in the US, and what's next for the Freedom Flotilla missions.

Huwaida Arraf is a Palestinian-American human/civil rights attorney, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, and organizer with the Freedom Flotilla. In this conversation, Huwaida tells us about the history of the Freedom Flotilla and the various voyages to Gaza from 2008 to the present. We discuss the framework of international law, whether or not it still exists in a meaningful way, and how Israel and the US routinely violate it. Finally, we talk about a possible future where those responsible for the Palestinian siege and genocide, from Israeli leaders to IOF foot soldiers, are held accountable for their war crimes and crimes against humanity, and what the future holds for more freedom flotillas defying the brutal and illegal siege on Gaza.

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Related episodes:

Intermission music: A section of "Deepwater Horizon Dream" by Robert Raymond

Covert art: Palestine Poster Project, Abel El Hameed

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The tide is turning.
0:07.0	The tide is turning.
0:21.6	The tide is turning.
0:22.6	So anyone who is part of perpetrating this genocide should not feel safe traveling anywhere.
0:29.6	Their actions will come back to haunt them and history will record where they stood and what they did,
0:36.6	even if not in their lifetime, in their
0:38.9	offspring's lifetime, their children and their children's children will know what they did.
0:45.9	And that is the task before us now.
0:49.0	You're listening to Upstream.
0:51.2	Upstream.
0:52.2	Upstream.
0:53.1	Upstream.
0:53.6	A show about political economy and society that invites you to
0:57.7	unlearn everything you thought you knew about the world around you. I'm Deladunkin. And I'm Robert Raymond.
1:04.3	The movement for Palestinian liberation has been growing rapidly since October 7th. Even if most states and political leaders are still reluctant to make any material actions
1:15.6	to free Palestine from the death grip of the United States and its proxy Israel.
1:21.6	People, however, across the globe are taking action.
1:25.6	Regardless of the size or likelihood of success, these actions
1:30.3	are only growing, from organizations tracking and reporting IOWF foot soldiers on vacation,
1:37.3	to organizations like the Freedom Fotilla, which has been sailing across the Mediterranean,
1:43.3	ship after ship for almost 20 years now
1:45.6	in an attempt to deliver aid to the population of Gaza that has been under illegal siege for two decades.
	...

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