Liberation is the best medicine, and our solidarity is love in action.  Dear Friends of Canada Boat to Gaza,  This time two years ago, I was in Gaza working as a volunteer doctor in primary care clinics in central Rafah - clinics that no longer exist because they have since been destroyed by the Israeli military. When genocide is the objective, healthcare becomes a target. Because where there is healthcare, there is life. Hospitals were surrounded and targeted. Palestinian healthcare workers were unlawfully arrested (abducted). Patients who needed lifesaving care were forcibly abandoned. But even though I remember bearing witness to so much destruction, I also witnessed so much life. I watched Palestinian medical colleagues who refused to give up in the face of unimaginable suffering and trauma and instead found the perseverance to continue caring for their community. They offered hope and healing in unimaginable situations.  This is what the Canada Boat to Gaza team and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition has been offering as well. In a world that has allowed genocide to happen, the international solidarity movement for Palestine refuses to watch idly by. Instead, Canada Boat to Gaza commits to direct action work that materially challenges the illegal blockade on the Gaza Strip that has existed for almost 20 years now. People of conscience from all the world have sailed to bring food, aid, and medical supplies to the Palestinian people in Gaza for over almost two decades, when governments around the world have not only failed to do so, but have actively supported Israel in maintaining an unlawful blockade on Gaza as collective punishment. This is why we are once again sailing to Gaza - this time with our own boat, and this is why I am writing to you to appeal for support in this mission. Help us reach our $100k goal for a Canadian boat with a donation  With children in Rafah, Gaza at a primary care clinic. I had the immense privilege of meeting and befriending the ground crew and participants of the Handala boat that sailed in July 2025 from southern Italy to Gaza to attempt to break the siege. I spent a few days aboard the ship as it sailed from one port to another in southern Italy. The work of putting a boat and team together to sail across the Mediterranean Sea is no small feat. And what I witnessed was this work being an expression of love and solidarity made visible through the efforts of countless people who believe in a world where human rights for all are truly attainable and worth fighting for. And this world is attainable only because we all commit to putting in the work of making it so. When governments fail, we sail. Support us to sail again here On board the Handala boat. The Handala boat was special in many ways. It was an old Norwegian fishing boat repurposed by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to help educate people about the impacts of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian children. The Handala boat made over 30 port stops in multiple countries in the two years before it sailed to Gaza to offer opportunities for community members at these port cities to learn about the Palestinian struggle for liberation. They learned of the unique impacts of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian children who have been robbed of a peaceful childhood. Children who learned to differentiate the sounds of F-35 bomb explosions, drone strikes, or artillery and gunshot fire. When the Handala boat was at its final port in southern Italy before it sailed to Gaza, children and their parents would visit, and I remember meeting children who brought gifts like a stuffed teddy bear or their entire piggy bank savings, offering little of what they had as their most precious belongings and savings as a piece of solidarity and solace for a Palestinian child in Gaza. If only the entire world behaved this way, with the compassion and kindness of children, we would be living in an entirely different world. The Handala boat also carried with it specific items and aid for the Palestinian children in Gaza. Israel has denied essential items, including baby and infant formula, from entering the Gaza Strip. I remember bringing in some baby and infant formula in a few suitcases of aid when I entered Gaza through the Rafah border crossing two years ago. The Israeli military later destroyed the Palestinian side of the Palestinian-Egyptian Rafah border crossing and has occupied it since May 2024. Doctors and healthcare workers have been denied entry to Gaza by the Israeli military because they tried to bring in medication or baby and infant formula for the children they hoped to meet. Thus, the Handala boat carried with it medicines, baby and infant formula, children’s toys, and even prosthetic limbs for children, because Gaza has become the single place on earth with the highest number per capita of children with amputated limbs because of Israel’s genocidal onslaught. In July 2025, the Israeli military illegally intercepted the Handala boat and all that it carried, none of which has since reached Gaza. The Handala boat carried prosthetic limbs for the children. Later the same year, the Global Sumud Flotilla, the Thousand Madleens to Gaza, and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition launched renewed efforts to break the siege. This time, over 40 boats attempted to reach Gaza. In October 2025, the Israeli military again illegally intercepted these boats in international waters, confiscated the boats and unlawfully arrested the participants on board. While this was happening, the Israeli naval ships were occupied with capturing the solidarity activists, and therefore were unable to continue besieging Palestinian fishers who had a moment to breathe and fish in their own waters without fear of being killed by the Israeli military. In that brief moment, the Palestinian people fed themselves and their community. This demonstrates that Palestinians do not need our charity, because they can care for themselves with agency and self-determination if given the chance to. But they require our solidarity in lifting off the colonial boot that remains at their necks, suffocating their very survival and existence. In that brief moment, the grip of that colonial boot was lessened. It’s up to all of us to abolish it. Liberation is the best medicine, and our solidarity is love in action. I have witnessed people of all walks of life, with different backgrounds and expertise and skills, coming together to contribute what they can for a common mission and goal. At the centre of our collective memory and inspiration remains the Palestinian right to self-determination, existence, and return to their traditional homelands. It only feels impossible until it’s not. The Israeli siege has been broken before by the boats that sailed under the Free Gaza Movement in 2008, which later became the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, and it’s only a matter of time until the siege is broken again, and for good. Injustice is temporary, and solidarity is forever - because there are those people who choose to look directly at the system of oppression for what it is, and work to organize to challenge and ultimately break it. Liberation is the common horizon. This spring, the Canada Boat to Gaza team and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, together with Thousand Madleens to Gaza and the Global Sumud Flotilla, will attempt again to break Israel’s illegal siege and blockade on the Gaza Strip. Please join us, help and support, or donate. It takes all of us to make what feels like the impossible, possible. Because our collective liberation is connected to, and incomplete without, the liberation of Palestinians. Become a part of the movement with a donation here Please continue to help us spread the word about our campaigns here In solidarity,  Canada Boat to Gaza ­ ­ ­ This email was sent to erubielcamacho43@yahoo.com.mx You've received this email because you've subscribed to our newsletter. Unsubscribe