Arne Birger Heli from Norway was the ship’s mechanic for one of the 2018 Freedom Flotilla boats – Al Awda (The Return) – across the Mediterranean headed for Gaza when it was overtaken by Israeli forces in international waters.
That trip was Arne’s first attempt to break the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza. He has a career as a ship’s mechanic and more recently as social worker. He has been on the board of the Palestine Committee in Norway for five years, and has been to Palestine several times.
He says:
“When I visited Palestine for the first time in 2013, I thought I knew a lot about the situation. But I had not imagined the evilness I saw. I saw pure evilness from an evil ideology.”