Something really inspiring happened in August. You may have missed it, because in most areas, the media decided you didn't need to know about it.

Two boats set sail from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Gaza, carrying 44 international activists from 17 countries.

They delivered hearing aids to children (deafened by the now-routine Israeli practice of breaking the sound barrier), but, more importantly, they carried a message to the 1.5 million Palestinians under siege: that they were not forgotten and they were not alone.

When the boats reached the Gaza shore, 40,000 Palestinians waded into the Mediterranean to escort the boats to the dock. The next day, the activists accompanied Gaza fisherman out to sea to fish, an activity that Israeli naval shelling had made too dangerous to attempt.

Since 2007, Gaza has been under a draconian, illegal, Israeli-imposed siege that prevents normal life as we know it. The results of the siege: food, fuel and medicine shortages; patients denied medical treatment; malnutrition; soaring unemployment; inability to travel to return to universities abroad, for vacation, to visit families.

They're living in a pressure cooker where they are vulnerable to Israeli air, sea and land attacks.

The situation in Gaza now is much worse than it was five years ago, when Olympia, Wash., peace activist Rachel Corrie was murdered by an Israeli bulldozer. She was run over as she stood in front of a Palestinian family's home to affirm their right to live in their own home.

What Corrie understood -- and what the international activists who set sail last month affirmed -- is that we are all linked in important ways, that we are not free when more than a million people are being deliberately impoverished elsewhere in the world (and by a U.S. client at that).

An Israeli official referred to the siege as "putting the Palestinians on a diet." This draconian, illegal measure can never be justified -- not by the election of Hamas and not by the few homemade missiles that are fired on Sderot.

To find out more about the siege, the Free Gaza movement that sponsored the boat trip and future trips, go to www.freegaza.org

Ida Audeh is a Palestinian who grew up in the West Bank and now works as an editor in Boulder.