Three Bay Area activists headed for Gaza

OAKLAND — Three Bay Area activists — a structural engineer, a former math teacher and a piano tuner — have left for the eastern Mediterranean to take part in the Freedom Flotilla, a multinational grass roots effort to deliver humanitarian relief aid to the Gaza Strip, the Free Palestine Movement announced Thursday.

The group is a California-based human rights organization that helped to purchase one of the eight ships in the convoy and is sending building materials, medical equipment and school supplies aboard it. Those traveling from the Bay Area are Gene St. Onge of Oakland, a civil and structural engineer who is working with Palestinian engineers to rebuild housing destroyed in Israel's 2009 invasion of Gaza; Janet Kobren of Oakland, a retired math teacher and co-founder of the FPM; and Paul Larudee of El Cerrito, a piano tuner and also an FPM co-founder. The flotilla is scheduled to arrive in Gaza around the end of May despite reports that Israel's navy has been training to stop and seize the vessels.

"This convoy is a major historical event," said Larudee just before his departure for the flotilla. "It shows that the civilians from all over the world are united in their determination to overcome the injustice of this blockade and the suffering that it is causing."

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