Why a Glenside veteran joined the global flotilla to get aid to Gaza

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A Glenside resident participated in the international flotilla to disrupt Israel’s maritime blockade on Gaza. As of Thursday, Israeli military forces have intercepted dozens of the roughly 50 vessels that make up the Global Sumud Flotilla, detaining many of the activists onboard, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

The flotilla’s goal is to deliver food and medicine and draw attention to the suffering of Gazans, said Ed Doogan, 61, who spoke with WHYY News on Tuesday when the aid mission was drawing closer to Gaza’s shore.

“The primary mission was to do everything we could to try to deliver supplies to Gaza,” he said. “Our secondary mission was to force governments into action, force governments into doing something, force governments into condemning what they hadn’t condemned for almost two years. And I think in our secondary mission, we’ve succeeded tremendously.”

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, Israel has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023, after Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 Israelis while taking more than 240 hostages. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the world’s leading authority on food crises, has declared that Palestinians in Gaza’s largest city are suffering from famine.

In September, a United Nations commission found that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Israel has denied the findings, calling them “distorted and false.” 

Doogan, who served in the United States Air Force as a technical sergeant for 20 years, was on a boat for U.S. military veterans called the Ohwayla. He sailed with them for two weeks, from Barcelona, Spain, to Tunis, Tunisia, where he left the flotilla on Sept. 8 after crew members expressed concerns for his health.

Since October 2023, activists have been organizing in the Greater Philadelphia region to call for a ceasefire and pressure elected officials to block U.S. military aid to Israel.

The flotilla’s journey towards Gaza and growing international support coincides with local congressional representatives’ legislative action on the issue.

In September, U.S. Reps. Mary Gay Scanlon, Madeleine Dean and Dwight Evans signed on to the Block the Bombs Act, which prohibits the transfer of specific military weapons to Israel without authorization from Congress and assurances from Israel that the use of those weapons is within international humanitarian law.

“I have long called for a ceasefire that includes the release of all hostages and an increase in humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,” Evans told WHYY News in a statement on Wednesday. “This legislation focuses on offensive weapons that could extend the war, which has already gone on too long, and would not affect defensive weapons such as Iron Dome.”

In an interview Thursday morning, Dean, who represents most of Montgomery County and is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told WHYY News she was aware that Doogan, her constituent, had left the flotilla and is not currently part of the mission. She commended the activists who are a part of the aid effort.

“I honor anybody who uses their voice or their person, their presence, to protest what they think is incredibly unjust,” she said. “And what is going on on the ground in Gaza, to my mind, has gone way too far. I have parted company with Mr. Netanyahu based on his failed strategy. I’m somebody who has supported Israel forever, and especially Israel’s right to defend itself as a member of Congress, as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, as a friend of Israel, had the chance to travel there multiple times. Israel has every right to defend itself. But what we have seen in Gaza over the course of now many months is Mr. Netanyahu and his coalition going too far.”

Dean, who first called for a ceasefire in Gaza in February 2024, said she signed on to the Block the Bombs Act because she’s “had it with the death,” and has been advocating for humanitarian aid to Gaza and a return of hostages held by Hamas “directly to” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for more than a year.

“I’ve used my voice consistently around the hostages, living and deceased, and around humanitarian aid, all the while saying they had a right to bring Hamas to justice,” she said. But the deaths of more than 65,000 civilians and children, what could be “an undercount,” Dean said, is comparable to the more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.

“That was a horror … to lose that many service men and women,” she said. “We’re talking in a space of under two years, much more than that number civilians, children.”

“Bunker-busting bombs” are among the weapons regulated by the act, Dean said.

“These are monstrous, big bombs that are designed to destroy deeply into the ground. It is one thing to use them to get at the tunnels in the caves,” she said. “It is quite another to use them on the population … And all this says is Israel has to say the use of these weapons and how they’re using them. And also, you’ve got to come to Congress about this, because we don’t want weapons marked U.S. property being used in what I think is a most unjust, inhumane way.”

Dean said she has visited with Palestinian children receiving medical care in Philadelphia who have lost limbs in the war and criticized the Trump administration’s decision to cut off visas to Palestinians.

“Think about it. 65,000 civilians dead, so much of the infrastructure destroyed, people effectively in a cage,” she said, noting that Israel has barred foreign media from entering Gaza to document what is happening. “It’s not like other wars where you could flee, where you could say, ‘All right, I’ve got to get over the line until peace comes back to my homeland.’ These are people stuck in a space, the proximity of it, the compact nature of it.”

Dean said she hopes the ceasefire deal introduced Monday by President Donald Trump and Netanyahu “is the beginning of a path forward toward peace for the region, for the people of Israel, for the Palestinians.”

“I hope that the negotiations with Hamas are going on and going better than they have in the past,” she said, noting that she has met with families of the hostages taken by Hamas and is calling for their return home.

Doogan said he has picketed in front of Dean’s office in Glenside throughout the duration of the war, reading the names of Palestinian children who have been killed. He said he thinks the flotilla and action back home on the part of members of local advocacy group CodePink has helped pressure representatives to limit military aid to Israel.

His focus now, he said, is to protect members of the flotilla, many of them Americans, if they are detained or otherwise targeted by Israeli forces.

“My main concern right now is that we have to stop Israel from designating these people as terrorists,” Doogan said. “They have done nothing illegal. They are not attacking Israel. They are not approaching Israel’s borders. They are at the invitation of the people of Gaza. They are going to port in Gaza, and any attempt to stop that would be an attack.”

Dean said she would advocate for the release of any Americans on the flotilla who are detained by Israel.

“This is about so much more than just the moment,” she said. “It is about valuing life, understanding our common humanity. The Palestinians share with us our common humanity. Hamas is a terror group. We know that they are brutal. It is unthinkable what they did, what they are capable of, what they would do again. But honest to God, this is about our common humanity. So please, God, I hope they [the activists on the Global Sumud Flotilla] do not get detained.”

Dean said she understands the activists’ actions.

“They’re doing what they can, and that’s why I say I am doing what I can with the privilege of being a member of Congress and the privilege of being able to speak out against the injustice and the inhumanity of the way this war has devolved,” she said.