On June 9, a humanitarian aid boat headed for Gaza was intercepted by the Israeli military while in international waters. The entire crew, including climate activist Greta Thunberg and European Parliament Member Rima Hassan, was taken to Israel and detained.
This instance received widespread media coverage, grabbing headlines in CNN, ABC and The New York Times, with the primary focus being Thunberg’s presence on the vessel. The Madleen, a ship of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), contained supplies like baby formula, flour, diapers and children’s prosthetics.
Mainstream media outlets were quick to sensationalize this story involving famous activists. However, this sort of interference with humanitarian aid is an all too common part of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The fact that Madleen was unlawfully seized will come as no surprise to those familiar with Israel’s tactics in Gaza. We must not act like this is an anomaly. This is the playbook. The seizure of the Freedom Flotilla’s Madleen is just another addition to the long list of Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law.
Journalists must be courageous enough to consistently call the situation in Gaza what it is — a genocide.
The Madleen
The FFC aims to call attention to and break Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza. The blockade has severely limited land, sea and air access to Gaza since 2007. It escalated in March 2025, when Israel also began blocking all humanitarian aid from entering.
The Madleen was set to challenge the naval blockade, which the FFC calls illegal. The FFC is in good company in its conclusion. The international human rights organization Amnesty International also found Israel’s blockade to be illegal, as did Human Rights Watch.
Under international law, naval blockades are only legal if they meet five criteria: they must be formally declared, effectively enforced, applied impartially, not block neutral ports and allow humanitarian aid. Israel’s blockade violates the last criterion. Israel had no right to seize a ship in international waters in the first place. By doing so, Israel was directly interfering with humanitarian aid, which is flagrantly illegal.
The International Committee of the Red Cross found that after two months of aid blockage, the humanitarian response in Gaza is on the verge of total collapse. Conservative coverage of the Madleen has mocked the crew for supposedly only wanting attention, repeatedly highlighting the Israel Foreign Ministry’s use of the term ‘selfie yacht’ to describe the mission.
However, drawing attention can be beneficial if done properly. Global focus on an issue is the first step towards enacting social change. The crew of the Madleen was successful in getting the world’s eyes on the issue of Israel’s illegal blockade. What must happen now is for media coverage to seize this burst of attention and direct it toward details of Israel’s consistent pattern of violating international law.
Even war has rules
While the Trump administration has painted pro-Palestinian activists as a “radical revolution” to defeat, you do not need to be a radical to support Palestine. Acknowledging Israel’s war crimes is the reasonable position. There is a mountain of evidence that what is happening is not just ‘normal conflict’.
Gaza’s health ministry estimates nearly 55,500 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. At least 400 of those deaths were Palestinians attempting to reach food aid, with over 3,000 wounded seeking aid.
Investigations by a UN special committee concluded that starvation was being used as a weapon of war, which is a war crime. International humanitarian law requires parties of conflict to distinguish between civilians and combatants and to take safeguards to prevent civilian deaths.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights examined six attacks involving the suspected use of bombs ranging from 250 pounds to 2,000 pounds on residential buildings, a school, refugee camps and a market in Gaza. He said, “The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimize to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign.”
Calling this genocide by name is not fringe, alarmist sentiment. The UN Special Committee’s investigation found Israel’s warfare in Gaza to be consistent with the characteristics of genocide. The finding was based on systematic interference with humanitarian aid, mass civilian casualties and policies stripping Palestinians of food, water and fuel.
The crew of the Madleen knew they were going into hostile waters. Still, they dared to do so. We need more of that courage. Courage, especially from the media, to call the ongoing atrocities what they are. This moment should not be a short-term firestorm because a famous activist was detained. It should be used to tell the truth.
In the words of Thunberg, “We are doing this because, no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying. Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity.”
Richard | Jul 12, 2025 at 7:13 am
Thunberg is a racist who is even more ignorant than she is on the environment
The war crimes are being done by the so called Palestinians who get a lot of supports from racists like you
John Hedberg | Jul 7, 2025 at 12:53 pm
Genocide is a deliberately defamatory lie used by people who refuse to look at a dictionary in case the definition of words won’t support their manufactured false narratives.
Twenty percent of Israelis are Palestinian, with full civil & voting rights: if Israel is truly trying to wipe out the Palestinian people (that would be a genocide), they’re the most incompetent at it in history if they’re openly incorporating “the enemy” into their society with full rights & privileges. Strange form of genocide, indeed, eh?
The Jewish People spent 400+ years intermarrying with their African slave masters, who were evidently so prolific that the Pharaohs ordered every midwife to kill all male Jewish babies in an attempt to maintain mastery: this is more in line with the definition of attempted genocide, though even this is more in the form of mass murder simply to limit a population the Egyptians wanted to keep around because they were convenient & profitable. True genocide would have attempted to eliminate every slave from the earth entirely.
Moses, who should have been one of the murdered babies, ended up leading the Jewish People out of bondage back into the Levant, where they had originated before fleeing a famine into Egypt. Joshua led the Jewish invasion of their original homeland around 1400 BC.
The Jewish people have been inhabitants there since Old Testament times, despite being forced out and returning now & then by disasters natural & manmade.
October 7th was a massacre of unarmed innocents, in contradiction to all compassion and international law. Rape, torture, kidnap, murder, all of these are illegal against the unarmed even in war, but this sneak attack was a declaration of war by Hamas against innocent people.
No one wants the useless death, destruction, & suffering that come with war, which is one of the reasons people take such drastic steps to avoid starting wars. The consequences are horrific, the death is usually pointless, and the true criminals who started the war are usually the last to suffer if they pay for their crime at all. No one wants it, so honest people of compassion use other means to solve their dilemmas.
The “Palestinians” (most of whom came far later than the Jewish people to the region) elected Hamas explicitly to eliminate Israel after Israel withdrew all its forces from Gaza 20 years ago. Gaza already had self-rule, but they chose war. Ironically, the civilian casualties, as horrific as they are, have actually been far lower than in previous wars in other countries & other eras. Civilians usually suffer much more, and nobody wants this, which is why honest people of compassion avoid starting wars. It sort of makes sense, when you think about it.
🤔💛
Fred | Jul 11, 2025 at 7:20 pm
We agree with you John. You make sense. Israel is attacked and when she defends herself people say it it genocide. WHAT!