It was a slick publicity stunt from start to finish.
The week-long voyage of the Madleen ended abruptly and abjectly in the early hours of June 9 when Israeli soldiers boarded the vessel and towed it to the port of Ashdod.
The Madleen, a yacht with ten activists and two journalists aboard, set sail from Sicily on June 1 with the intention of breaking Israel’s “illegal” naval siege of the Gaza Strip, which has been under the thumb of Hamas for almost two decades.
The blockade was enforced by Israel to ensure that weapons and munitions would not be smuggled into Gaza by Hamas, which is dedicated to Israel’s destruction. It was only partially successful, but Israel had no alternative but to enforce it as rigorously as possible.
As the Madleen got closer to Israel, the Israeli Navy issued a warning that the maritime zone off the coast of Gaza is closed to shipping. This was clearly an allusion to Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which has been in effect since Hamas gained full control of Gaza in a violent coup in 2007. Despite these warnings, the Madleen resolutely refused to turn around.
Pro-Palestinian voices, such as Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, offered a full-throated endorsement of the activists. “The Madleen is not a threat,” said Michael Bueckert, its acting president. “It is a lifeline to a besieged people facing starvation and genocide. If Canada claims to support a rules-based international order, it must uphold the rights of civilian actors delivering aid and oppose any act of aggression against them.” In a reference to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Bueckert said, “Carney must acknowledge that blocking or attacking this flotilla would be a war crime, plain and simple.”
The Madleen started its ill-fated journey amid widespread international criticism of Israel’s handling of the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Inhabited by some two million Palestinians, Gaza has been a battlefield since Israel went to war with Hamas following its invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023. On that black day, Hamas terrorists killed roughly 1,200 people and abducted 251 Israelis and foreigners.
The ship was launched by the vociferously anti-Israel Freedom Flotilla Coalition, whose telling motto reads, “We sail until Palestine is free.” A self-styled “grassroots, people-to-people solidarity movement” from all parts of the world, it describes Israel as “occupied Palestine.” Judging by its hostile perception of Israel, the coalition fully agrees with Hamas’ objective of wiping Israel off the map.
It was therefore a foregone conclusion that Israel would not allow the Madleen to reach Gaza and score a propaganda victory.
According to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the Madleen was carrying a symbolic quantity of flour, rice, medical supplies, water desalination kits, baby formula, diapers, women’s sanitary products, crutches and children’s prosthetics.
The day before it was intercepted by Shayetet 13 commandos and Snapir harbor police, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz issued an order. He instructed the armed forces to prevent it from reaching Gaza, where the Israel-Hamas war still rages after more than 600 days of combat.
Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry warned the intruders that “unauthorized attempts to breach the blockade are dangerous, unlawful, and undermine ongoing humanitarian efforts.We call on all actors to act responsibly and to channel humanitarian aid through legitimate, coordinated mechanisms, not through provocation.”
Disregarding this advice, the Madleen pressed on, eager to embarrass Israel and win Palestinian hearts and minds. Its passengers, including the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, were bent on staging “a media provocation whose sole purpose was to gain publicity” for the Palestinian cause, the ministry said.
“There are ways to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip — they do not involve Instagram selfies,” the ministry added. “The tiny amount of aid that was on the yacht … will be transferred to Gaza through real humanitarian channels.”
The Madleen was carrying “less than a single truckload of aid,” the ministry noted, saying that “more than 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel within the past two weeks.
The ministry pointed out that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a non-governmental organization created by the Israeli government, has distributed close to eleven million meals directly to civilians in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered “basic aid” to enter Gaza last month amid growing concerns that Israel’s lengthy blockade of aid had caused starvation. But since his announcement, which was probably due to U.S. pressure, the distribution of aid in Gaza has faced a series of setbacks, notably deadly shootings at distribution sites.
The Madleen started its voyage shortly after one of the ships in the coalition’s fleet, the Conscience, was apparently hit by two drones outside of Malta’s territorial waters. The coalition accused Israel of being behind the attacks, an accusation to which Israel did not respond.
The coalition’s first mission, back in 2010, was a fiasco. A Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, was raided by Israeli commandos, resulting in the deaths of nine Turkish activists. This incident soured Israel’s bilateral relations with Turkey for years to come.
Since then, Israel has foiled more efforts by the coalition to break the naval blockade of Gaza.
Thunberg, an outspoken opponent of Israel’s blockade and its conduct of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, was aware of this history and the risks that the Madleen faced.
“We are doing this because, no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying,” she said a week before she boarded the Madleen. “Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity. And no matter how dangerous this mission is, it’s not even near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the live-streamed genocide.”
When the Madleen was about 80 kilometers from Israeli waters, Israel’s patience finally wore thin and Israeli commandos sprang into action. Before commandeering the boat, they gave it one last chance to change course, but were rebuffed.
Upon arrival in Ashdod, the activists were handed over to police for deportation. Among them are the French-Palestinian European Parliament member Rima Hassan and the Brazilian environmentalist Thiago Avila.
After their arrival in Israel, a special screening of Bearing Witness, a gut-wrenching 43-minute video of the atrocities Hamas perpetrated on October 7, was arranged for them. Produced by the Israel Defence Forces spokesperson’s office, it is composed of harrowing, uncensored footage of Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli and foreign civilians. Much of it was taken from the body cams of terrorists who participated in the attack, the worst one against Jews since the Holocaust.
As it happened, the detainees refused to watch the film, prompting Katz to lash out. “Greta and her flotilla companions were taken into a room for a screening of the horror film of the October 7 massacre, and when they saw what it was about, they refused to continue watching,” he said in a statement. “The antisemitic flotilla members are turning a blind eye to the truth and have proven once again that they prefer the murderers to the murdered and continue to ignore the atrocities committed by Hamas against Jewish and Israeli women, adults and children.”
Their refusal to watch the video, which has been seen by only a select few, mainly foreign diplomats and journalists, is surely a damning commentary on their rigid and unwavering ideological mindset.
By the same token, Israel will do whatever it takes to preserve its security and, if necessary, to maintain the blockade of Gaza. Until Hamas is militarily defeated and can no longer pose a threat to Israel, the siege will continue indefinitely.
Israel is well within its rights to enforce it.
This is something that Thunberg and her colleagues have yet to internalize and understand.