By Saadia Gani
The echoes of freedom songs for Gaza filled the seas, sounding the voices of non-violent resistance with the 50 ships of the Sumud Flotilla on the brink of reaching Gaza. Their hearts poured out songs like “Bella Ciao” and chants like “Gaza will be free from the river to the sea,” “The Little Flame,” and a specific song titled “Good People Sailing” to express their bonds of solidarity and sincere hopes to reach Gaza.
They represented the best of humanity: courage, compassion, and conscience — activists from 44 countries risking life and limb to carry humanitarian aid to Gaza.
But waiting for them were armed Israeli warships that intercepted most of the flotilla, arresting and detaining as many as 443 of the activists on board — including prominent activists among whom are our fellow South Africans. Their “crime” was to be the voice of humanity, daring to sail the shores of resistance and to bring relief to a besieged people.
Their arrests and detention embrace a universal truth: tyranny does not only fear resistance; it fears compassion itself. To blockade medicine and bread, to jail those who carry hope, represents the age-old logic of oppression.
Biblical, Judaic, and Islamic history offers a powerful parallel in the time of the Pharaoh of Egypt and the story of the oppressed Bani Israel. They stood trapped between the sea and Pharaoh’s armies, and in that desperate moment of truth, God opened the waters and created a path of freedom — drowning Pharaoh’s war machine and the ego that caused him to believe he could control the sea.
Today, Israel represents that very Pharaonic arrogance and tyranny that is bound to perish with time and within God’s greater master plan.
The Qur’an tells us:
“And We wanted to favor those who were oppressed in the land, to make them leaders and inheritors.”
(Qur’an 28:5)
Gaza today stands grounded in the test of faith — besieged, exhausted, but not broken.
And the flotilla has come to represent the force of truth behind which is God’s promise of a safe passage through the courage of ordinary people.
The Qur’an reminds us that even when truth may seem fragile, its victory is certain:
“We hurl the truth against falsehood, and it destroys it, until falsehood vanishes.”
(Qur’an 21:18)
The Qur’anic worldview teaches us that oppressors may rise high, but their fall is certain; the oppressed may suffer, but they are destined for vindication and victory.
We must also be consoled by the truth that while warships may intercept boats, and prisons may hold activists, they cannot imprison the human spirit. They cannot blockade hope, love, and the bonds of humanity.
Pharaohs rise in every age, but they are destined to fall and drown in the pages of human history.
The Sumud Flotilla to Gaza stands as a resounding declaration that the seas do not belong to oppressors, but to the conscience of humanity.
And just as in the story of Pharaoh, the tide of history will not spare those who wield power to crush the weak and oppressed.
South Africans understand this better than most. They were once told the lie that apartheid would last forever — yet it was defeated. And that is why their sons and daughters continue to resist arrest, and our President has raised the voice of condemnation — so that no people, anywhere, will be abandoned to these Pharaonic armies.
And so, hope continues to float — steady, luminous, and unsinkable.
Saadia Gani
is an attorney with her Master’s in English and Multi- disciplinary human rights