The purpose of the GSF is simple and urgent: to break the Israeli siege of Gaza and open a humanitarian corridor to reach its starving people.

There is no one on this mission who is naive about the scale of humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the role that only governments can play in redressing it. But seven-hundred days into the war on Gaza, that international community has failed to deliver on its most basic obligations.

That is why delegations from forty-four countries across the world have come together in the GSF — not just professional activist delegates by some nongovernmental organization, but ordinary people motivated by a profound sense of moral urgency. Now we are in Tunisia — spread across dozens of sailing and fishing boats, small and large — preparing for the final leg of the journey: an unprecedented response from the peoples of the world in defense of international law, humanitarian workers, and the people of Palestine.

We cannot allow the genocidal farce of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to continue — an organization that has not only failed utterly to deliver on its core mission but has instead become yet another vehicle for mercenary warfare against the people of Gaza. For my part, I have felt so moved and inspired by the members of this flotilla — the mothers and the fathers, the schoolteachers and the nurses, many of whom have traveled from very far away and spent the last cents of their savings accounts to be here, to be part of this mission.

The GSF has now suffered not one but two consecutive drone attacks, both of which have taken place in the dead of night, between 11:30 PM and midnight. In both cases, crews were present on the boats themselves to witness drones approach and drop projectile explosive devices, which have lit up the boats in flames.

Luckily, the crews on these two boats, the two principal boats that have come from Barcelona — Alma and Family, respectively — have been able to evacuate the boats safely. But the response to this criminal violence has been shocking.

First, the Tunisian authorities tried to blame the boats and say it was some sort of cigarette butt that lit up the boat; second, a brigade of blue-checked bots [on Twitter] pushed the line that it was all some kind of false flag attack.

Luckily, the closed-circuit television footage from all these boats irrefutably shows what actually happened — you can see on the footage these explosive devices sent by drones onto the boats and lighting them on fire. As a result of these CCTV videos, the Tunisian authorities have since backtracked on their claim. Now they say it was all a “premeditated attack,” admitting to the accounts first put forward by eyewitnesses.

But I have been truly amazed by the resilience of the GSF — to see its delegates undeterred and unintimidated in the face of this flagrant attack on the sovereignty of Tunisia, but also on the safety of this mission.

As might be expected, we have received no full explanation of where these drones came from or what they projected onto the boats. That has put Tunisia in a very uncomfortable position.

On the one hand, they have offered safe passage to these boats when so many neighbor nations would not have done the same. On the other, it has become very clear that the Tunisian authorities are neither interested nor prepared to escalate a conflict with Israel as a result of the drone attacks, which took place just several hundred meters from the presidential palace in domestic waters.

Of course, this would not be the first time that Israel has attacked humanitarian workers — or even killed them, as it has repeatedly in Gaza over the past two years. It’s not even the first time Israel has attacked this very initiative. We can all remember what happened in 2010, when there was a lethal invasion of the Freedom Flotilla. Even more recently, there was an attack on the Conscience boat off the coast of Malta, which was again covered up by authorities who did not want to have to launch a full investigation and escalate a diplomatic conflict with Israel.

Such a sense of intimidation on the part of local authorities goes a long way to explaining this baseless accusation that the crews themselves were responsible for what is clearly an attack on the GSF.

Largely because of this extensive precedent of Israeli violence against humanitarian workers, there is a widespread sense among the participants of the GSF that this was indeed an attack orchestrated by Israel. But there is also a sense that we cannot and should not obsess about these attacks, or even wait around for the conclusions of an investigation into them.

Instead, there is a general sense of a burning urgency to mount a popular response to a genocide that has now raged for two years, costing tens of thousands of lives and threatening hundreds of thousands more. So here in Tunisia, we all feel some impatience to get back on the water and drive away these tactics of intimidation in the service of the core mission: a humanitarian corridor that calls on the respective states represented by the delegations here on the flotilla — from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the United States — to bring critical aid into Gaza immediately.

We have been astounded by the absence of a more robust diplomatic response to these twin attacks on the flotilla and on its delegates. Many have gone outright with disinformation. We can see, for example, that the response of the Portuguese government — which has many delegates here in the flotilla — has been to follow blue-checked bots to blame the GSF itself.

There are some exceptions to that rule: members of the Spanish cabinet have come out and condemned the attack. To take another example, we’ve received endless and inspiring support from Gustavo Petro’s government in Colombia, which has called the attack for what it is: an effort to terrorize the international solidarity movement and, above all, to distract from what is actually happening in Gaza.

There’s a pretty direct relationship between the violence that is incurred against the people of Palestine and Israel’s efforts to distract from that violence through tactics of misdirection — attacks on humanitarian workers abroad or slander against some celebrity. These things usually happen in concert, so our sense is it’s not a coincidence that the drone attacks have come at a moment when the Netanyahu government has announced a new campaign of ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories and the evacuation of Gaza City, which has a million residents who call the city their home.

In that sense, it’s reasonable to expect more attacks on the convoy, whether they come in the air or on the sea. Obviously, we are incredibly vulnerable out here on the waves as a peaceful mission carrying humanitarian aid, but you can feel the sense of conviction, of determination, from all the participants from all over the world in this unprecedented global action that Gaza can’t wait, and our fear pales in comparison to the nightmare lived day to day by the people of Palestine.