Kenneth Nichols O’Keefe is an American-Irish-Palestinian citizen, a peace activist, and a former United States Marine and Gulf War veteran.  By his own admission, he was discharged from the U.S. Marines because he “spoke out openly about abuse of power by my ‘superiors,’ and as a consequence I paid a heavy price. I realized that honor and integrity were virtues which are often punished rather than rewarded and the Marines supplied me with my first serious taste of injustice.”

 

In 1996, O’Keefe created a marine conservation social enterprise “to protect and defend the marine environment” in Hawaii.  This enterprise conducted ghost net recoveries and rescues of endangered Green Sea Turtles entangled in fishing line. During this time O’Keefe became a pioneer in sea turtle rescues in Hawaii and led a campaign to create a marine sanctuary (Pupukea MLCD) on the North Shore of Oahu.

 

In 1998, he joined an anti-whaling campaign in which he was bloodied when attempting to retrieve a Sea Shepherd Conservation Society boat of which he was a crew member. He remained with Sea Shepherd for a time and was mentored by the great Paul Watson himself, eventually serving as the regional director for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in Hawaii.

 

In December of 2002, O’Keefe started the Human Shield to Iraq, a group that intended to “make it politically impossible to bomb” Iraq by placing western civilians as “shields” at non-military locations.  About 75 of these activists – including O’Keefe — traveled over land from London to Baghdad in two double-decker buses.  At the time O’Keefe correctly argued that the people of Iraq would suffer the most from a war, even while publicly acknowledging that Hussein was a “violent dictator”.  At its height about 300 human shields were in Baghdad, but due to challenges internally – including O’Keefe’s eventual deportation from Iraq, the numbers dwindled.

 

In June 2010, O’Keefe continued his humanitarian peacekeeping efforts by being among the passengers who clashed with the Israeli military during the Mavi Marmara Gaza flotilla raid,  In the course of the clash, O’Keefe was involved in providing initial first aid to a seriously wounded passenger, as well as disarming two Israeli commandos.  Afterwards, O’Keefe was among those arrested and detained in Israel … In October of that same year, O’Keefe joined the “Road to Hope”, a humanitarian aid convoy delivering vital supplies to the occupants of Gaza.

 

O’Keefe continues to speak out for justice and freedom – especially in the name of those still denied the same – to this very day.

Filed under: In LOVE with Humanity by Scaughdt