Ann Wright, who was aboard one of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla ships attacked by Israeli commandos, is safe and will be returning to Honolulu according to a report in the Honolulu Star Bulletin.
She discussed the attack in an interview on Democracy Now!:
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, we also have on the line also someone else who was on that boat. Ann Wright is a retired Army colonel, a former US diplomat. She spent twenty-nine years in the military and later served as a high-ranking diplomat in the State Department. In 2001, she helped oversee the reopening of the US mission in Afghanistan. In 2003, she resigned her State Department post to protest the war in Iraq. She was on the Freedom Flotilla and just deported to Turkey.
AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Wright, welcome to Democracy Now!
ANN WRIGHT: Hi, Amy, Juan.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what happened to you?
ANN WRIGHT: Well, I was also on the Challenger 1 with Huwaida. And let me just give a great compliment to Huwaida and all of the Free Gaza Movement. It’s a tremendous, tremendous thing that they have done in creating this movement of boats that had six large vessels that went toward Gaza. And let me tell you how thrilling it was to see all of those boats steaming, those civilians trying to challenge the governments of the world that say there must be a siege to strangle the 1.5 million people in Gaza, and yet the citizens of the world are challenging that with everything they’ve got.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Tell us what you saw and how you were treated by the Israeli soldiers.
ANN WRIGHT: Well, I saw the attack on the Marmara also of the helicopters coming over, the rappelling down of the soldiers, the sailors, the Zodiac boats coming up the side, the spraying of them. Then, with that, the captain of the Marmara told us to go ahead to try to get as far away as we could, because we had the fastest boat. We were—as Huwaida very accurately described, our boat was boarded. People were thrown on the deck. Windows were blown out. Flash bangs were used. One of our journalists was hit with something of an electric shock. I don’t know that it was a taser. She doesn’t know, either, yet. One of the women was hit in the face, in the nose, with one of the liquid-filled balls. They were very excessively rough, excessively forceful, on trying to slow down, stop—actually, we were already stopped. They weren’t stopping us at all. We were already dead in the water, and yet all of this force used on us.
AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Wright, I wanted to get your response to Vice President Biden. He was on the Charlie Rose show last night, and he was questioning what the big deal was getting this humanitarian aid directly to Gaza. This is the Vice President.
- VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: You can argue whether Israel should have dropped people onto that ship or not, but the truth of the matter is, Israel has a right to know—they’re at war with Hamas—has a right to know whether or not arms are being smuggled in. And up to now, Charlie, what’s happened? They’ve said, “Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship, if you divert slightly north, you can unload it, and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.” So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, “I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight—3,000 rockets on my people.”
AMY GOODMAN: That was Vice President Biden last night. Colonel Ann Wright, your response?
ANN WRIGHT: Well, I think our vice president needs to take another look at this thing. The ships were open to inspection beforehand, and I’m quite sure Mossad had their little agents that were all over that place. These groups are humanitarian groups that are bringing in goods that are needed for the people of Gaza. They’ve had plenty of inspections on them.
If you talk about violence, it’s not 3,000 rockets Hamas is putting on Gaza; it’s a twenty-two-day attack that the Israelis did that killed 1,400 people, wounded 5,000, left 50,000 homeless. And here we are a year and four months later, and the Israelis will not let any sort of reconstruction materials in. And then, when reconstruction materials start coming that way, instead of waiting until—if they have a zone that they are trying to protect, let ships come into it and stop them.
But I would say that there are ways that you can stop them without killing people. There are ways you can stop even passenger ship like that ferry boat, and certainly like our little thirty-foot craft. You don’t have to use commandos with—I mean, you can use commandos with excessive force, which they do, but there are other ways to do it, if you want to kind of preserve a sense of civility, humanity, and meeting the international law, quite honestly.
And going outside a boundary, going into international waters, I mean, what they are are pirates. They are pirates. They kidnap people, and they’re stealing stuff. They’ve probably stolen over a million dollars’ worth of cameras, computers, cell phones. I mean, I’m in Istanbul. We just got here early this morning. Some luggage is here. There’s not a thing in it. Everything has been taken. The Israeli military said, “Oh, yes, we have to count this. You know, we have to take it.” Well, what they’ve done, they’ve stolen it. And if we have any friends that are in Israel, I hope that they go down to the black market and see where our stuff is, because somebody is making a killing on this thing.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And Ann Wright, once you were in Israeli custody, how were you and the other prisoners treated?
ANN WRIGHT: Well, in the brand new Israeli prison—nobody had ever been in this particular prison in Barsheba that we were in—the treatment was reasonable. However, when we got out to the airport, I have never seen supposedly professional law enforcement people treat others with such disrespect. They were laughing, giggling, commenting on wounded and dead. It was a very pitiful, pitiful performance by law enforcement people. And I think what we saw as internationals coming in there is the tip of the iceberg compared to what Palestinians see every single day from those types of law enforcement officials.
AMY GOODMAN: Colonel Ann Wright, we want to thank you for being with us, speaking to us from Istanbul, where she was just deported to. She is a retired US Army colonel, former US diplomat, spent twenty-nine years in the military, later served as a high-ranking diplomat in the State Department. In 2001, she helped oversee the lead-up to—in 2001, she helped oversee the reopening of the US mission in Afghanistan, in 2003 resigned her State Department post to protest the war in Iraq. She was on the Freedom Flotilla, as was Huwaida Arraf.
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