Francesca Amoruso | Freedom Flotilla Italy
Good morning everyone,
Freedom Flotilla Italy, after organizing 39 missions to Gaza since 2010 with the aim of breaking the illegitimate naval blockade imposed by the State of Israel, the latest of which I took part in last September as the only Italian woman aboard a sailing boat departing from Apulia, launched a new project in May 2026 called “100 Ports and 100 Cities.”
This is a nationwide tour of civic mobilization involving Palestinians living in Italy, activists, and anyone who stands in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Our vessel, “Ghassan Kanafani,” is sailing from port to port along the Italian coastline, while one of our camper vans travels through inland areas, bringing Italy together into one great corridor of solidarity, awareness, and collective commitment.
The boat is currently in Liguria, having departed from Apulia and already reached Calabria, Sicily, Sardinia, Campania, and Tuscany. In every region, we meet and engage with countless people, workers, and local communities, with the aim not only of keeping attention focused on what is still happening in Gaza, but also of addressing the specific social, labour, economic, environmental, and healthcare issues affecting each territory.
Because while it is true that through “100 Ports and 100 Cities” we seek to bring Palestine to all of Italy, it is equally true that the Palestinian cause and the injustices endured by the Palestinian people for more than seventy years represent the evidence of the erosion of rights and the distortions of imperialism and capitalism—distortions that have become globalized, intensified, and normalized, especially over the last five years.
As Freedom Flotilla Italy, we stand alongside those who resist on their own land, violated and plundered by those who profit from crises and often deliberately induced shocks.
As Freedom Flotilla Italy, we stand alongside those who resist in their workplaces.
Those who resist in the hardships of their daily lives.
Since October 2023, it has taken two years to fill Italy’s streets with unprecedented demonstrations. We all remember what happened on the 3rd and 4th of October last year. In Rome alone, approximately two million people took to the streets to demonstrate.
The Israeli bombardment of Gaza and the genocide in the Strip made it possible to weave together a network of many grassroots actors who rallied around the Palestinian cause.
The attack on the Flotilla was described by Professor Donatella Della Porta, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre on Social Movement Studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, as the “trigger that unleashed all at once the energies accumulated over two years of acts of resistance and civil disobedience.”
The mobilization grew gradually.
From the major cities, it spread through provincial towns and eventually reached tourist centres. It spread within hospitals, where the connection between resources invested in war and the shortage of personnel and equipment in public healthcare facilities became strikingly evident; among citizens who had never mobilized before; in workplaces; in universities, where student protests involving campus occupations and tent encampments intertwined with faculty protests against relations with Israeli institutions, eventually involving even technical and administrative staff; and in the ports.
Mobilization within the ports was particularly strong from the very beginning in the city of Genoa, with a huge number of people involved, in the presence of the mayor, with the blessing of the archbishop, and under the eyes of crowded media coverage.
It should be remembered that it is precisely in Genoa that CALP, the Autonomous Port Workers’ Collective, has been mobilizing against the arms trade since 2019, in a place where the neoliberal economy has worsened working conditions.
We are often led to believe that economic interests come before moral ones, but sometimes moral shock forcefully prevails.
“NOT IN MY NAME” is the cry of moral revolt that must unite us all, starting from broader and higher principles rather than confining ourselves to isolation and the individualism of fragmented demands.
It is with this cry that more than one million European citizens added their signatures to the petition calling for the suspension of the trade agreement between the European Union and Israel.
And it is with this cry that, in cities such as Bari and Florence, collectives, activists, and organizations supporting the Palestinian cause are firmly demanding that local administrations and regional governors close the respective Israeli honorary consulates, through permanent vigils, signature campaigns, and protest demonstrations.
Young people in Italy have demonstrated a growing engagement with politics and, in fact, represented the majority of those who voted NO in last March’s referendum on the justice reform proposed by the Meloni Government. Because our ANTIFASCIST AND DEMOCRATIC Constitution IS NOT TO BE TOUCHED!
This shows that we are living through a historical moment of intense ethical tension, much like 1968 or the years of the Vietnam War, when moral shock prompted reflections and proposals that had to come from reason rather than impulse.
Democracies are experiencing forms of degeneration and oscillation never seen before, and this is especially evident in the policies pursued by the United States (that until recently we considered the world’s leading economic and military power), and by the State of Israel, often described as the “Democratic Outpost of the West in the Middle East”.
This is not only about stopping the bombs, the genocide, the illegal occupation, and the exploitation of resources that should belong to all but instead benefit only a few.
It is about building a society governed by the right of every people to exist with dignity, to live in peace, and to determine its own future.
A society that is fairer and more equitable.