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]
