The Freedom Flotilla Got Boarded by Israel. What did they expect?

The Madleen — the boat carrying Greta Thunberg and 11 others attempting to break the siege of Gaza — was surrounded and boarded by Israeli forces.

What did they expect?

Did the Western-led saviours believe that the citizens of Egypt and Jordan, neighbours of Palestine, had simply been sitting and watching as their brothers died? That they did nothing? That they have not tried to do what they did? Did they not know that, unlike Westerners protected by wall-to-wall Western media coverage, these citizens are met with bullets? Beatings? Torture? Imprisonment?

I do not doubt the good intentions of anyone on board, but we are past the stage of good intentions.

We need effective actions.

A single boat of 12 people was never going to do that. That is not a flotilla. A true flotilla would have been thousands of boats. They could indeed have had a huge flotilla of thousands of boats. But the movement gatekeeps horrifically, and only ‘celebs’ get dibs.

Did not one of them think that the media saturation around them meant the media could, again, ignore Palestinian suffering as their performative actions took centre-stage? That their loud announcement of, ‘We are coming!’ meant they would never get in? That an Instagram story isn’t the way to deliver aid? That while they smiled for the cameras and sent messages over social media about not fearing the Israeli forces, more mothers were killed on their way to get food; the starved queuing up in cages for morsels from callous Americans who make their money through this perverted feeding regime they’ve invented?

And what is this all about? A ‘humanitarian corridor’. What the hell is humanitarian about feeding people so they can go out into the same streets to be bombed, displaced and shot? What is the point of it? If you were in Gaza at this point, injured or sick, would you want aid or death? Would you want to get better, or to no longer exist? The children of Gaza want to die.

You know why?

Because this is not a ‘humanitarian crisis’ which can be solved with ‘humanitarian aid’.

It is a racist, supremacist, ethnic cleansing and brutal genocide of an entire people. It is extreme, relentless and unabated violence against the most innocent. It is an insidious depravity that has not only victimised the people of Gaza, but has sent its tentacles across the world and victimised many of us too. Greta and the people of the Madleen are the latest Western victims.

When we call for ‘humanitarian aid’ we legitimise our leaders’ vernacular of ‘humanitarian crisis’. They are lying. This is an evil so great the whole world is struggling to understand it. Never has such evil been coordinated and synchronised by multiple states against their own populations to allow a singular strip of land to be subjected to every single evil that ever existed, and far more than ever had. Evil is too weak a word for what Israel has done, is doing and will continue to do. The mind cannot encompass it, and language is feeble.

We are nearly two years into watching live-stream murders. We are nearly two years into watching child-murderers laugh, roam our European streets, beating our citizens and chanting for death to Arabs.

A humanitarian corridor is a plaster on a miles-long crack. What does it do? You give bandages, you give food. Then what? You send the same people out into the same streets full of drones, bombs and bullets. What is your humanitarian corridor until you speak the truth: that the IOF must be actively resisted until its campaign of brutal violence is brought to an end, because it is not stopping its genocide.

It seems only those prepared to attack Israel’s weapon factories and their suppliers are doing anything meaningful. It makes sense to destroy their weapon supply chain but unfortunately, it ultimately does not stop the ideology of the annihilation of others. It means the IOF will still keep coming to kill. They will - and have - gone into the West Bank to continue their death march. And they march to murder with no purpose except extreme racism and supremacist ideology.

But no one in the West says this. No one stands up and says: the IOF needs to be resisted until they stop. They pretend to be pacifists, against all violence. It is not pacifism to watch a person being shot and then come with a bandage as they bleed to death in your arms. It is the absolute equivalent to staying silent when witnessing genocide. By not defending those being slaughtered, you allow extreme violence against them: ergo, pacifism becomes the most violent of acts.

We’ve reached a stage where, if a person were standing next to a Palestinian child and an IOF soldier pointed a gun at her tiny head, they’d simply say ‘please don’t’ and wave a Palestinian flag as he pulled the trigger.

The narratives are carefully cultivated and promoted. Just like the British have convinced the world that the non-violence of Gandhi meant they finally saw the error of their ways and hopped back to England, both mainstream news and social media algorithms promote performative actions as ‘activism’. People sewing blankets of green, red and black. People lying on the floor of shopping malls covered in fake blood. People spray-painting murals of the dead on brick walls, as if everyone has already died.

The Freedom Flotilla is one of these. It is portrayed as the epitome of humanity. That pacifism is the most noble way.

It took over the whole news cycle, obscuring the real events in Gaza. That alone should have given everyone pause. The psychops are so deep and so sophisticated, and we really should know better by now. Mainstream Western media promoted the flotilla through news exposure because it made people feel like something was being done — when nothing was being done at all. It promoted the narrative of white saviourism. It was an action that was always in the complete control of Israel, who simply waited, stalking the Madleen with drones, until they saw Greta over the horizon and sent their boats to meet her.

It was always a silly, performative action which had no real aim of getting into Gaza. It knew from day one it would not. It was silly because it was unnecessarily dangerous. It was putting their lives at risk for an action they knew could not be completed.

Maybe they thought that should Greta be killed, the Western world would rise in horror and the governments of the world would finally stop supporting Israel. As if Israel’s murder of the World Central Kitchen Westerners had not happened. As if the torture and murder of UN staff by Israel had not happened. As if the Freedom Flotilla had not already been bombed themselves with no care from their governments. Why did these people think their deaths would matter and change the trajectory? What exceptionalism is this?

If it helps, we just rang the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) about Israel’s boarding of a British vessel in international waters. “It’s been noted!” The woman angrily said, before telling us to ask people to stop ringing.

The UK foreign office doesn’t give two sh*ts.

I ask again, if you are willing to give food to someone starving in Gaza, for them to go back to the streets of violence, but are not prepared to defend them against that violence, what humanity is that?

Two years into this non-stop slaughter, we must now have an honest conversation of what we want to achieve, what can be achieved, and what in the end, does little to stop genocide.

And the first thing we must say with absolute conviction is this:

The IOF must be stopped, and Palestinians must be defended — relentlessly, unapologetically, and without pause — until Israeli violence against them is brought to an end.

Because only when they are finally, completely and utterly stopped, will this “humanitarian crisis” end.