A St. Louis activist who was detained by Israel while trying to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza on a boat is now free.
The ship Handala departed Gallipoli, Italy, for Gaza on July 20. Among its roughly 20 passengers was Bob Suberi. He's a 77-year-old former restaurant owner and Affton resident who joined an activist group's attempt to bring aid to Gaza and "to challenge Israel's illegal and inhumane blockade of the Palestinian people."
On Saturday, Suberi's wife, Barbara, was watching a livestream from the ship as the Israeli navy intercepted the Freedom Flotilla Coalition's ship and arrested him and other pro-Palestinian activists.
"I just watched him with his hands up," she said Monday. "We knew it was going to happen. They knew it was going to happen."
Barbara Suberi said Bob had spent about 24 hours in Israeli custody before being released Sunday night. He is a dual citizen of Israel and the United States.
In a brief biography published on the Freedom Flotilla Coalition's website, Bob Suberi described growing up in a Jewish community and attending Zionist summer camps that emphasized Israel's role in his heritage. Using the Arabic word for "catastrophe" to refer to Israel's war of independence, he described himself as a "first-generation Jewish American born in Los Angeles in 1948 to parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Palestine in 1938/39, prior to the Nakba."
Barbara Suberi said that despite Handala's failure to break the blockade, her husband and the other activists had made a difference.
"Ultimately, the purpose of the trip is to bring an awareness of what's going on in Gaza," she said. "Because even though it is just so unbelievable, there are so many people here who don't know about it."
"There was also the remote possibility," she added, "that they might actually get through."
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