No clash, no splash. The pro-Palestinian activists’ boat aimed at breaking an international naval blockade on Gaza made ripples this week but failed to create the tsunami that would cause serious damage on Israeli shores.
The Foreign Ministry dubbed the boat the “Selfie yacht” and the “Celebrity ship” for good reason. The Madleen was no Love Boat. The 12-member motley crew – including climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, Game of Thrones actor Liam Cunningham, and French Member of the European Parliament Rima Hassan – were not seeking peace; they were looking for a fight. They wanted to film a showdown with Israel’s Navy and weaponize the footage against the Jewish state.
But on Monday, the IDF boarded without force and handed out sandwiches and bottled water to the surprised activists. Many social media wits noted that Greta’s face under a green pixie hat carried the first smile they’d seen in public.
Greta made headlines at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit at the age of 16, when she yelled at world leaders about the climate crisis, accusing them of stealing her childhood and destroying the world’s future. She is now 22, but it’s hard to say she’s grown up.
Since October 7, 2023 – when Iranian-funded, Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, murdering 1,200 and taking 251 hostages – Thunberg has metamorphosed from climate activist into Palestinian supporter, turning the heat on Israel and siding with the terrorists. The naval blockade, it should be recalled, was imposed to prevent Hamas – internationally recognized as a terrorist organization – from receiving weapons.
Freedom Flotilla Coalition was not kidnapped
Despite the grand name of the operators, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, this was never about freedom or delivering aid to Gaza, suffering a “humanitarian disaster” of Hamas’s own making.
While the Madleen made its way to this part of the Mediterranean, the newly established Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and Israel were making sure food and other supplies were crossing into the Gaza Strip.
According to COGAT (Coordination of Government Affairs in the Territories), some 350 trucks carrying humanitarian aid, including food and flour for bakeries, entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom Crossing last week while the GHF said it had distributed enough packages for 471,240 meals on June 6 alone, but acknowledged its work was being impeded by Hamas.
Drowning in self-righteousness, Greta proved just how tone-deaf she is to real human suffering, when she prerecorded a clip saying: “If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces or forces that support Israel.”
Social media was quickly flooded with images showing what being kidnapped really looks like: Shiri Bibas’s look of terror as she was snatched from her home, clutching her baby and toddler (they were murdered in captivity). Na’ama Levy’s blood-stained pants as she and other female soldiers were shoved into terrorists’ trucks (they were released in a deal after 477 days). Noa Argamani’s anguished face and outstretched arm as she was separated from her boyfriend and whisked into Gaza on the back of a motorbike (she returned a year ago in a daring Israeli rescue operation; her boyfriend remains in a Gaza terror tunnel.)
Being “kidnapped” is not being offered a drink and a sandwich before being towed to a safe harbor on the way home. Incidentally, Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered that the celebrity ship activists be shown the 45-minute footage of the October 7 mega-atrocity (compiled from the terrorists’ own cameras and social media posts, as well as CCTV footage) but they reportedly refused to watch. They didn’t want to be exposed to anything that might make them change their minds and narrative – Israelis, bad; Palestinians, good.
The human rights activists, ostensibly willing to risk their lives to reach Gaza, were not prepared to do anything for the hostages – Israelis and foreign; Jews and non-Jews; not even a simple request that they be allowed to meet with Red Cross officials. The hostages clearly fall into the category of people in Gaza suffering from a “humanitarian disaster” and “starvation,” but they apparently don’t count.
Last week, Israel retrieved the body of Thai agricultural worker Nattapong Pinta, abducted and murdered in Gaza, and of Judith Weinstein-Haggai and her husband Gadi, both in their 70s, who were murdered on October 7 and whose bodies were held by the Palestinian Mujahideen Brigades terrorist splinter group.
There are currently 53 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to still be alive. The hostages – alive or dead – are currency to the terrorists, who can trade them for prisoners serving sentences in Israeli prisons.
The escapade made me return to a column I wrote in June 2010, just after the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident, when 10 Turkish “activists” were killed after attacking Israeli forces who boarded their ship, seriously wounding several soldiers. At the time, kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit was the only Israeli held in Gaza.
I noted that masked gunmen had, in May 2010, torched the premises of a UN-run summer camp in Gaza and left behind three bullets and a note threatening to kill top UN aid officials unless they canceled activities for some 250,000 Gaza children. Hamas wanted no rivals to its own summer camps, which focused on antisemitic and anti-Israel indoctrination.
That was 15 years ago. Many of the children taught to hate then now have children of their own. Hamas’s takeover of UN facilities seems to be complete.
Numerous terror tunnels have been discovered under UN and other international hospitals and schools.
This week, Israel confirmed that the body of Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar, brother of Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, had been extracted from a tunnel under a European Union-funded hospital in southern Gaza.
In 2010, I noted that while the flotilla participants were struggling to get into Gaza, thousands of Gazans would do almost anything to get out. “It’s not because of the Israeli-Egyptian blockade,” I wrote. “It’s because Hamastan does not give a damn about human rights and is not a nice place to live.”
It is even more true now. Thousands of rockets have been launched on Israel in the intervening years, and hundreds of kilometers of terror tunnels have been constructed by Hamas. What a waste of an opportunity to build a Palestinian state instead of trying to destroy the Jewish one. Incidentally, among the greatest dangers facing Greta, et al, were the Houthi missiles still being launched at Israel.
Perhaps one reason the flotilla didn’t make the waves the participants hoped for is that international attention was directed elsewhere, including the riots that rocked the French capital after fanatic supporters of Qatari-owned Paris Saint-Germain Football Club celebrated its Champion League win, and the major clashes in Los Angeles between protesters and law enforcement officers over the crackdown on illegal immigration.
The whole voyage was an exercise in the ridiculous – no wonder there were Titanic-style memes of Greta after she posted pictures of herself wearing a (culturally appropriated) keffiyeh and skimpy shorts (which under Hamas-imposed Sharia law would have been removed or covered up, had she made it to Hamas-controlled territory.)
The steadily growing “red-green alliance” has led the far Left to jump into the same bed – or boat – as Islamist jihadists. The world needs to find and fix its moral compass to chart a safe course in these troubled waters.
As Spiked editor Brendan O’Neill put it: “It’s brilliant to see the fizzling out of this summer jaunt to the Med masquerading as a moral crusade. For nothing has ever captured the lazy theatrics and fake virtue of modern activism as much as Greta’s dumb boat did… The ship of fools was always more interested in raising awareness about itself and its moral brilliance than about the needs of Gaza’s civilians.”
But before we get carried away with Israel’s success at averting a PR disaster, a Global March to Gaza is taking place overland from Tunisia through Egypt. And, as O’Neill also pointed out: “We need to get real about what it tells us about our times. This flurry of keffiyehs in the sea, and the cheering of it by the media elites, confirms that your virtue is now measured by how much you hate Israel...
“You don’t need a PhD on 20th-century Europe to recognize how dangerous it is for the self-righteous of the West to define themselves in direct and furious opposition to the world’s only Jewish nation.”