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.”
s.reagan@dailyutahchronicle.com
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