Compare the courage of Greta Thunberg’s Gaza aid mission with the inaction and complicity of western governments- The Madleen is no ‘selfie yacht’. It is a symbol of human compassion in a world that has decided to look away

Greta Thunberg aboard the Madleen when it sailed from Catania, Italy, on 31 May. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

by Owen Jones

Tue 10 Jun 2025 01.00 EDT

Imagine this: over the weekend, Britain – shocked by the scale of suffering in Gaza – decided to bypass international norms and institutions, and used its navy to deliver much-needed food, baby formula and medical supplies to the Gaza Strip’s ports.

This, of course, did not happen. Instead, it was left to activists on the Madleen, including Greta Thunberg, to make a symbolic attempt to break the blockade of aid and raise awareness of a looming “starvation crisis”. In the early hours of Monday morning, the ship was boarded by Israeli soldiers, allegedly in international waters, and the crew were taken to Israeli ports in anticipation of being repatriated. Lawyers for the activists have claimed that this is overreach by the Israeli armed forces, but the crew should consider their treatment light-touch. In 2010, the Israeli military stormed another aid flotilla and killed 10 activists in the process.

Since the news broke, Israel’s propaganda machine has gone into overdrive, dismissing the Madleen as a “selfie yacht”, a line echoed by western media outlets. “There are ways to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip – they do not involve Instagram selfies,” declared a shameless Israeli Foreign Ministry. Israel knows all about those ways, because it has systematically blocked them.

It’s worth noting that the Freedom Flotilla Coalition – the movement behind the Madleen – was launched in 2010, 13 years before 7 October. The blockade on the movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza has been in place for nearly two decades. As an adviser to the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert put it: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

In 2012, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a leaked official document in which government officials calculated the minimum number of calories required for a human not to starve. The point: to make life miserable for the people of Gaza without incurring global outrage through mass starvation. A year before 7 October, the World Food Programme warned of the “dire humanitarian situation there”, noting that around half of Gaza’s caged population was “severely food insecure”.

In the past 20 months, Israel has ratcheted up the blockade.... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/10/greta-thunberg-gaza-aid-mission-madleen

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies]