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global sumud flotilla
10 Good Things That Happened in 2025
I hope you can look back on 2025 as the year movements for peace and justice freed political prisoners, slowed the war machine, and helped turn the public against endless wars.
Dec 31, 2025
It’s true—2025 has been a hard year. It’s easy to focus on the disasters, and there have been many. But we also had real victories that moved us closer to a better world. Here are some of my highlights from 2025.
1. Israel Was Forced to Negotiate a Ceasefire
In October, a ceasefire agreement was reached in Gaza, though it would be a lie to call it an end to the genocide we’ve all been witnessing for over two years. Still, the pause matters because it reveals what Israel could not achieve. Israel failed to break the Palestinian people or erase them from their land. It was forced to negotiate. It also gave us one of the rare moments where we saw videos coming out of Gaza with Palestinians celebrating in the streets, and feeling a little bit of relief for the first time in a long time. Yes, the Israelis are violating the ceasefire every day, Palestinians continue to suffer, and the “Peace Plan” passed by the United Nations is a sham. But the fact that Israel was unable to accomplish its goal of defeating and expelling the Palestinians—and instead had to negotiate—is in itself a testament to the power of both the Palestinians and their supporters throughout the world.
2. Mahmoud Khalil Is Free
In June, after months in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention, Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was freed! We got to see him at the People’s Conference for Palestine, and he’s been in action ever since. From the moment he was first detained, the Palestine solidarity movement never stopped demanding his freedom. We knew that if we allowed this to happen to Mahmoud, it could happen to any one of us. His freedom is a testament to the power we all have when we stand together and have a clear demand. The same goes for Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk, Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri, Palestinian student Mohsen Mahdawi, and British Journalist Sami Hamdi—all were freed from ICE’s grip due to mounting public pressure.
3. Majority of Americans Are Against War
Polls came out all year in the US that proved that people inside the belly of the beast are becoming more and more anti-war! Whether the conflicts are in Ukraine, Gaza, or Venezuela, the people of the US are sick and tired of their country going to war. This, if people take action on their beliefs, this will have huge implications for the US war machine! The anti-war movement is growing, and we have the power of the people behind us!
4. People Came Together to Protest ICE Raids and Support Immigrants
From Washington, DC to Chicago to Los Angeles, people across the country have been rising up to reject the unjust and illegal ICE raids ripping through our communities. As ICE agents terrorized grocery stores, elementary schools, and neighborhoods, communities responded by forming rapid-response networks to document abuses, provide legal support, and protect those being targeted. This collective resistance has been an inspiring expression of humanity in action—proof that when President Donald Trump’s administration pushes fear, racism, and a fascist agenda, people come together in solidarity to defend one another and fight back.
5. Zohran Mamdani Will Be the Mayor of the Largest US City
Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the NYC mayoral race was fueled by the Palestine movement and the collective mobilization of hundreds of thousands who are unwilling to be swayed by centrist, big-money interests and are ready for a new system. His win has already inspired others to run for office on a similar platform, showing how campaigns that speak to people’s needs can break through. Mamdani now inherits a seat at the heart of the war economy—presiding over the largest police department in the country and a city with deep political and financial ties to Israel. That reality makes his victory not an endpoint, but an opening: a chance to push demands for divestment and a peace economy to the center of city politics, and to turn the energy of his campaign into sustained, collective action—in the streets, in organizing spaces, and at the ballot box.
6. Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza Makes History
For the first time in recent history, the Global Sumud Flotilla sailed into Gaza’s waters and came close to breaking the blockade! I was so inspired by the selfless activists, including my friend Adnaan Stumo and his brother Tor, who set sail to Gaza despite great personal risk. The Global Sumud Flotilla was the largest flotilla in history, and even though Israel arrested and detained dozens of brave humanitarians, their souls weren’t shaken. Another Gaza flotilla will soon set sail again, unintimidated by Israel’s threats!
7. AIPAC Is Losing Power
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s grip is starting to crack, with a growing number of candidates openly rejecting its money. Even more striking, some AIPAC-backed members of Congress defied the lobby this year—voting against its positions and infuriating a group long used to unquestioned loyalty. More and more people are waking up to AIPAC’s influence over our government, and are calling for a widespread rejection of it!
8. Mexico’s Woman President Shows What Principled Leadership Looks Like
Overseas, Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first woman president, has delivered bold progress at home—expanding public education, investing in clean energy, and strengthening labor rights and social programs that put working families first. When Trump tried to bully Mexico with tariff threats and demanded that Mexico play border cop, Sheinbaum defended Mexico’s sovereignty with competence, dignity, and a refreshing refusal to be intimidated. And when Trump blocked Venezuelan tankers from delivering oil to Cuba, Mexico stepped in to supply its own oil—a clear act of solidarity that showed what principled leadership looks like on the world stage.
9. Ecuador Rejects US Military Base
At a moment when the US is openly reviving the Monroe Doctrine in Latin America, Ecuador held a national referendum—and nearly 60% of voters said no to reopening a US military base on Ecuadorian soil. By rejecting a foreign base, Ecuadorians asserted their sovereignty and made clear they refuse to be a launchpad for US wars. Even amid a rightward political swing across the region, this vote shows that organized people can still block militarization and defend their self-determination.
10. US and Chinese Citizens Chose Connection Over Fear
This year offered a rare and hopeful reminder of how quickly walls can fall when people are allowed to meet one another as human beings. From the warmth and curiosity circulating on RedNote to iShowSpeed’s unfiltered encounters, a wave of everyday, people-to-people exchanges cut through political fear-mongering and brought Americans and Chinese together around shared humanity. In these small but powerful connections, the image of China as an “enemy” began to fade, replaced by curiosity and connection—and for the first time in five years, the number of Americans who consider China an enemy has dropped by nearly 10%.
I hope you can look back on 2025 as the year movements for peace and justice freed political prisoners, slowed the war machine, and helped turn the public against endless wars. Even in the hardest moments, that’s how I’ll choose to remember it. And I hope 2026 brings us closer to the world we all want to see.
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What It Was Like to Captain a Vessel in the Global Sumud Flotilla
The Global Sumud Flotilla was sailing to Gaza. If I joined, they could bring one more vessel. From the first, it felt inevitable.
Oct 16, 2025
I got the call while balanced on a ladder installing air conditioners for the new youth center in southern Palestine. There was going to be a new flotilla to Gaza—bigger than all the others combined—and they desperately needed sailing captains. I’d have to be on the ground in Barcelona within three weeks. My friends at the youth center didn’t want me to go, insisting there was so much that needed doing within Palestine; if I joined the flotilla, I might be banned from ever returning.
My mind was made up, though. The work in the West Bank and the Naqab was important, but meanwhile hundreds of people were dying every day in Gaza. I could always keep installing air conditioners, teaching self-defense classes, and doing protective presence work on farms—but my real skills lay elsewhere. I had a captain’s licence and a dozen years working on the ocean. The Global Sumud Flotilla was sailing to Gaza. If I joined, they could bring one more vessel. From the first, it felt inevitable.
I hit the ground in Barcelona at a run. Well, sort of. I spent the first afternoon upside down in a quarter berth fixing hydraulics, skinning my knuckles in the familiar poses of boat yoga. That night, a bunch of captains fanned out to other ports to sail more vessels to our central hub. The workload increased every day as more and more boats arrived, and folks showed up from every corner of the world to help. We quickly established teams, and a frenzied camaraderie emerged that will bind us together for life.
Then, we sailed.
“It was the Storm of the Century!” my seasick passenger was wailing at me. “I wanted to do this to have an adventure, to go to Gaza, not to take RISKS!” I stared at her. “Not to take risks?” She realized how ridiculous that sounded. “Well, I’m willing to take risks with the Occupation Forces, but not with the ocean,” she amended.
It took the Israel Occupation Forces 12 hours to capture us all, despite hammering us with water cannons, skunk water, and sending their special forces to board and arrest us.
It wasn’t the storm of the century, just a nasty little gale—but it did cause our untested flotilla an outsized number of problems. Hasty fixes done in port by volunteers don’t always hold up in bad weather at sea. Things broke at a rather alarming rate on all the vessels, and some were forced to turn back immediately. On the Mikeno, we had our share of small issues, and all our participants were down below vomiting. My two crew managed a heroic bucket brigade, and kept the fish food splashing over the side until dawn broke clear and beautiful over the Balearic Islands.
Luckily, that was the worst bit of wind Poseidon threw at us during the whole trip. We faced firebombs in Tunisia, drone attacks with explosives and mysterious chemicals off of Crete, and constant threats from the occupation government. By the time we finally got to the Eastern Mediterranean and had a clear course laid for Gaza’s shore, those of us who remained were hardened and determined. One last boat, the Johnny M, sank in calm weather on that stretch. I sailed over to them, picked up their crew, and we kept forging ahead.
When the interception forces began to hit us 75 miles from Gaza’s shores, we were well drilled in nonviolent resistance tactics. It took the Israel Occupation Forces 12 hours to capture us all, despite hammering us with water cannons, skunk water, and sending their special forces to board and arrest us.
In prison, we went on hunger strike, sang revolutionary songs all night, and refused to bow to their guns and dogs. Some of us were seriously beaten, many were deprived of critical medicines, and legal representation was almost nonexistent. But our comrades around the world stood up, blocked ports, shut down cities on many continents, and inundated the Zionist consulates with calls and emails.
Members of the Gaza Sumud Flotilla return from Israeli prison. (Photo by Bill Lee)
So here we are, free again and ready to escalate the struggle.
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What Does Terrorism Actually Mean? Maybe Orwell Can Help
International activists kidnapped and brought to Israel by force, people simply being alive in a place an Israeli minister doesn’t want them to be, anyone near a place Israel has decided might be a Hamas tunnel—how are all these people terrorists?
Oct 14, 2025
When activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla were being held in Ktziot prison, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir staged a photo op taunting them and saying, “I was proud that we are treating the ‘flotilla activists’ as terror supporters, whoever supports terrorism is a terrorist and deserves the conditions ofterrorists”…the conditions in Ktziot prison.
This requires a little unpacking. First, Ben Gvir’s claim that the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), and the Conscience and Thousand Madleens flotilla that followed a week later, support terrorism requires a bit of jiujitsu. When Israel drops 2,000-pound dumb bombs on hospitals and defenseless people, they always insist they are actually targeting the hidden Hamas fighters in tunnels beneath the visible injury and death of people on the surface. They make a distinction between the terrorist below ground and the “collateral damage” above. But when anyone tries to bring aid to the victims, Israel erases their own distinction between hidden fighters and visible victims and claim that the aid is for terrorists. They claim that the activists are supporting terrorists, and that the flotillas are “Hamas Flotillas.”
Next, Ben Gvir does a bit of leapfrog, claiming that the activists he just defined as terror supporters are themselves terrorists. And, as terrorists, they deserve to be held in a terrorist prison like Ktziot, because, apparently, all prisoners of Israel are terrorists.
Similar language was used by Defense Minister Israel Katz, saying that anyone still in Gaza City, for any reason at all, after the Israelis ordered them to move out were “terrorists or terror supporters.”
Political violence is a serious subject, and we need to be able to think about it and discuss it in a serious way. The word terrorism is too important to that discussion for such sloppy usage and deliberate misuse by politicians.
International activists kidnapped and brought to Israel by force, people simply being alive in a place Katz doesn’t want them to be, anyone near a place Israel has decided might be a Hamas tunnel—how are all these people terrorists? What actions have they taken to earn the accusation? Ben Gvir and Katz don’t say.
This is, at best, broad and imprecise language.
In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell warned against this. He said that our language is, “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”
Orwell also said that our words are often “meaningless, in the sense that they do not point to any discoverable object.” For a word to have meaning it has to refer to some thing: an object, an idea—something. Even the “yada, yada, yada” in the Seinfeld episode referred to the act of glossing over possibly important information.
How can the word terrorist used in this wildly imprecise way have any useful meaning? How can it lead to anything but imprecise and foolish thoughts? Can we actually think and talk about the important question of political violence with such a vague word? I don’t think so.
Fortunately, Orwell also said that sloppy thinking and use of meaningless words can be reversed, “if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.”
So, let’s take the trouble.
There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism, perhaps because governments, the main source of agreement on questions like this, don’t want a definition that covers their own behavior. The US law against terrorism specifically exempts “activities undertaken by military forces of a state in the exercise of their official duties." This nation state exemption is a problem, but it’s a problem for another day.
All the definitions of terrorism we do have share three basic components: 1) violence committed by civilians against civilians 2) with the intent to cause fear of violence in a group or the general population 3) and done with the intent to bring about political change.
Applying this three-part test can bring some of the clarity Orwell suggested.
When Hamas and other fighters, non-state actor—civilians—broke out of Gaza on October 7, 2023, in addition to attacking soldiers they did commit violence against civilians. They did intend to create wider fear, and to bring about political change. It was terrorism. No question.
For the past two years any action by Hamas and other fighters in Gaza has been against uniformed Israeli soldiers. Further, the fighting was not intended to create wider fear in the general population, or with any hope of political change. It fails on all three counts. It is armed resistance to be sure, but it is not terrorism.
Acts of violence committed by Israeli soldiers against the people of Gaza may well be crimes against humanity and genocide. But, because of the nation-state exemption, actions by the Israeli army are not terrorism. If we are going to resurrect the word terrorism we must apply it precisely.
Ben Gvir wanted to bring the Flotilla activists to Ktziot prison, for the activists to see where Israelis keep terrorists, and to experience the conditions of convicted terrorists, the implication being that any inmate of Ktziot is a terrorist.
But the over 10,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel are often in prison for minor infractions against uniformed Israeli soldiers that are not, by definition, terrorism. Or they are imprisoned for other offenses that fall far short of terrorism.
When those imprisoned Palestinians are convicted of acts that get them sent to places like Ktziot it’s by Israel’s military “courts” with a 99.74% conviction rate. Rubber stamps have a higher failure rate. Apparently the “judges” in these Israeli military “courts” never run out of ink.
And that’s when Palestinian prisoners actually have a trial. Many never see a charge, a lawyer, a judge, or trial before they are put in prison indefinitely. The notion that all the Palestinians imprisoned by Israel are terrorists strains the definition beyond the breaking point.
By contrast, every act of “settler” violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is violence by civilians against civilians intended to cause widespread fear among Palestinians, and intended to push Palestinians to leave their land—a political change. Avoiding those Orwellian “foolish thoughts,” and using clear language, with words that point to a “discoverable object,” leads us to this inescapable conclusion: West Bank “settler” violence is terrorism. Every murder, every punch, every burned car or olive tree or killed livestock is an act of terrorism.
Further, very often we hear countries like Iran accused of being a state sponsor of terrorism. The accusation is that they support non-state actors in the commission of terrorism. It’s a way of getting around the exclusion of nation states from the definition of terrorism.
Similarly, when West Bank “settler” violence is done with uniformed Israeli soldiers standing in the background, threatening deadly force against Palestinians who even think of defending themselves, those soldiers are backing up and supporting “settler” terrorism. This is the case in nearly every video you can find. Just look. Such “settler” violence is state sponsored terrorism.
Ben Gvir is no stranger to terrorism. The political party he started, Otzma Yehudit, or Jewish Power, is a “legal rendition” of the outlawed Kach Party of Meir Kahane, the convicted bomb maker who founded the Jewish Defense League, a group responsible for many bombings in the United States.
Another hero of Ben Gvir is Baruch Goldstein, a Kachist who, in 1994 gunned down 29 people while they prayed at the al-Ibrahimi Mosque and injured 150 more. Ten percent of Israelis still consider Baruch Goldstein a national hero. Ben Gvir had a picture of Goldstein in his living room for years. That is until he had to clean up his act when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maneuvered to get Ben Gvir into the Knesset and created the Minister of National Security job for him.
But though he knows what it is, Ben Gvir doesn’t use the word terrorism to communicate clearly or honestly. Neither do Katz or Netanyahu.
When you’re actually trying to communicate, not only do you need to use words that point to a discoverable object, that actually mean something, the speaker needs to chose words that they hope roughly point to a similar object in the mind of the hearer.
But Orwell warns that in politics ambitious words,“are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person that uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”
When Ben Gvir, Katz, and Netanyahu use the word terrorism to refer to any support for the people of Gaza, any action of resistance by Palestinians, or even Gazas’ bare existence in a place they have been ordered to leave, they know they are intentionally using a nearly meaningless word. They know this and rely upon the fact that most hearers think they are referring to something closer to that three-part definition. They intend to deceive and make serious thinking about these subjects more difficult and more, as Orwell said, “foolish."
Ben Gvir had the Jewish activists in the GSF flotilla, citizens of the United States, dragged by their ears to kneel before him and the Israeli flag. He screamed down at them that they were terrorists. Yes, the cabinet ministers of Israel actually behave this way. I have no idea what he meant by the word he was screaming. Neither does he.
In the 1946 essay Orwell said that “fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” These days we might, unfortunately, have some more concrete examples of fascism, and the word might now actually have some meaning.
But taking Orwell’s point, the word terrorist, most of the times it is used, as when Ben Gvir screamed it at Jewish activists he forced to their knees, simply means “bad guys I don’t like.” All too often that is how the word is used, and not just by Israelis. The word is wildly thrown around in American politics as well.
Political violence is a serious subject, and we need to be able to think about it and discuss it in a serious way. The word terrorism is too important to that discussion for such sloppy usage and deliberate misuse by politicians. This is especially true now, when the genocide in Gaza might be ending, or pausing, when the world might finally see what Israel has done to Gaza, and when the blame and denials escalate.
We need to be “willing to take the necessary trouble” to resurrect the word terrorism and try to move beyond these “foolish thoughts.”
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