Crew of activists making symbolic attempt to deliver aid expected to be held in port until deportation hearings
A boat seized by Israel’s military as it tried to break the blockade on Gaza was towed into an Israeli port after sunset on Monday, with the crew of activists including Greta Thunberg expected to be held there in advance of deportation hearings.
The Madleen was attempting to bring a symbolic shipment of aid to Gaza, which faces a looming famine after more than 11 weeks of total siege and ongoing severe restrictions on food entering the territory.
Thunberg and the other 11 members of the Madleen crew, including the French MEP Rima Hassan and the Al Jazeera journalist Omar Faiad, have been out of contact since Israeli forces took control of the boat in the early hours of Monday morning.
The legal adviser to the Israeli navy told the rights group Adalah, which is representing the detainees: “To the best of our knowledge, none of them are injured or currently require medical treatment.”
British-flagged yacht operated by pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla Coalition was making symbolic attempt to deliver aid
Israel’s military took control of a boat trying to deliver food to Palestinians in Gaza in the early hours of Monday morning, and brought its crew of activists including Greta Thunberg to an Israeli port.
The Madleen was making a symbolic attempt to break to the blockade of Gaza and raise awareness of a looming “starvation crisis”.
It was never likely to get through Israel’s naval blockade of the territory, where UN-backed experts have warned of looming famine, and dozens of people have been killed by Israeli forces trying to reach food distribution centres.
Even attempting to reach Gaza by boat is risky. In May, another boat sailing as part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, the group that organised the Madleen’s voyage, caught fire off Malta and issued an SOS after what the group said was an attack by Israeli drones. Israel’s military declined to comment.
In 2010, nine activists were killed when Israeli commandos raided a small fleet of ships trying to take supplies including building materials to Gaza. Israel began blockading Gaza in 2007.
Among the last communications from the Madleen before it lost communications was a photo showing the 12-strong crew gathered in a circle, wearing lifejackets, with their hands in the air.
Climate activist Greta Thunberg stands near a Palestinian flag after boarding the Madleen boat and before setting sail for Gaza along with activists of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, departing from the Sicilian port of Catania, Italy, June 1, 2025
ISRAEL’S far-right defence minister vowed today to prevent an aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists from reaching the Gaza Strip.
The remarks by Israel Katz comes as the Israelis continue to carry out their attacks on Palestinians desperately seeking aid in Gaza.
Mr Katz said today that Israel wouldn’t allow anyone to break its naval blockade of the Palestinian territory, which he said was aimed at preventing Hamas from importing arms.
“To the anti-semitic Greta and her fellow Hamas propagandists — I will say this clearly: You should turn back, because you will not make it to Gaza,” he said in a statement.
Ms Thunberg, a climate campaigner, is among 12 activists aboard the Madleen, which is operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. The vessel departed Sicily last Sunday on a mission that aims to break the sea blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave.
The vessel was expected to reach Gaza’s territorial waters this evening.
After a three-month total blockade aimed at pressuring Hamas, Israel started allowing some basic aid into Gaza last month, but humanitarian workers have warned of famine unless the blockade [is lifted] and the war end[s].
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
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A view of devastation after Israeli strikes on various areas in Gaza on the second day of Eid al-Adha, June 7, 2025. [Khames Alrefi – Anadolu Agency]
Beginning early Saturday, Israeli air strikes and gunfire killed at least 65 Palestinians and injured around 100 more in the Gaza Strip, according to Palestinian sources, Anadolu reports.
Medical sources told Anadolu that on day two of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, at least 15 Palestinians, including six children, were killed and over 50 others injured when Israeli warplanes struck a residential home with two missiles in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City.
Rescue teams on the ground fear that the death toll will rise to more than 30, as many people are still missing and possibly trapped under the rubble.
Twelve people, including four members of a single family, were killed and over 40 others wounded in Israeli shelling that targeted tents sheltering displaced Palestinians west of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Seven more Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike that targeted a house sheltering displaced people west of Gaza City.
Two Palestinians were killed when Israeli artillery targeted a group of civilians in the Al-Saftawi neighborhood in northern Gaza.
Three others were killed in an air strike targeting a civilian gathering in the Abu Shrekh area, west of the Jabalia refugee camp.
Another three Palestinians, including a child, were killed in a separate strike on a house near the Al-Mujayda fuel station in the same area.
A medical official at Nasser Hospital reported that six people were killed when an Israeli drone struck the town of Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis.
Elsewhere in Khan Younis, a separate drone strike in the al-Amal neighborhood killed one person and wounded another.
Eight more Palestinians were killed when an Israeli strike targeted a group of civilians in the Jabalia al-Nazla area, medical sources told Anadolu.
Two more people were killed in another Israeli strike that hit the al-Faluja area of Jabalia, the same sources added.
Separately, six Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli forces near an aid distribution center west of Rafah. Several others were injured.
The total number of Palestinians killed by Israeli gunfire while trying to access humanitarian aid under a controversial new system since May 27 has risen to 115, with more than 580 wounded and nine still missing, according to a tally by Anadolu based on Palestinian sources.
On Friday alone, the first day of Eid al-Adha, 33 Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes and shelling across several areas of the Gaza Strip.
With two Eids (major Muslim holidays) per year under the Muslim calendar system, this is the fourth Eid for Gazans since October 2023, when Israel launched a genocidal war which has killed nearly 54,800 Palestinians, created famine conditions, and left the enclave all but uninhabitable.
Israeli tanks opened fire last Sunday on a crowd of thousands of starving Palestinians at an aid distribution center in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The victims had gathered in hopes of finding food for themselves and their families, following a nearly three-month total Israeli blockade of the territory. At least 31 people were killed; one Palestinian was also killed by Israeli fire the same day at another distribution site in central Gaza.
On Monday, June 2, three more Palestinians lost their lives to Israeli projectiles while trying to procure food, and on Tuesday there were 27 fatalities at the aid hub in Rafah. This brought the total number of Palestinian deaths at the newly implemented hubs to more than 100 in just a week.
‘Not possible to implement’
Al Jazeera‘s Hind Khoudary (6/3/25): ““The Israeli forces just opened fire randomly, shooting Palestinians…using quadcopters and live ammunition.”
Mass killing in the guise of food distribution is occurring under the supervision of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a sketchy-as-hell organization registered in Switzerland and Delaware. It boasts the participation of former US military and intelligence officers, as well as solid Israeli endorsement and armed US security contractors escorting food deliveries.
Jake Wood—the ex-US Marine sniper who had taken up the post of GHF executive director—recently resigned after reasoning that “it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence.”
Indeed, the GHF, which has temporarily suspended operations to conduct damage control, has managed to align its activities entirely with the genocidal vision of the state of Israel, whose military has killed more than 54,600 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. In May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu determined that “minimal” aid should be let into Gaza, lest mass starvation force the US to scale back its support for genocide (which is somehow less problematic than enforced famine).
By entrusting the delivery of this “minimal” aid to the brand-new GHF, rather than the United Nations and other groups that have decades of experience doing such things, the Israelis have in fact been able to call the shots in terms of strategic placement of the aid hubs. Only four are currently in place for a starving population of 2 million, requiring many Palestinians to walk long distances—those that are able to walk, that is—across Israeli military lines.
The hubs are mainly in southern Gaza, which is conveniently where Israel has schemed to concentrate the surviving Palestinian population, in order to then expel them in accordance with US President Donald Trump’s dream of a brand-new Palestinian-free “Riviera of the Middle East” in the Gaza Strip. Even as he authorized the resumption of aid, Netanyahu reiterated his vow to “take control” of all of Gaza. As UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has observed, “Aid distribution has become a death trap.”
Leading with denials
The Washington Post headline (6/2/25) puts Israel’s rebuttal ahead of the charge it’s responding to.
And yet despite all of this, Western corporate media have somehow found it difficult to report in straightforward fashion that the food-distribution massacres have left Palestinians with a rather bleak choice: either die of starvation or die trying to obtain food aid.
So it is that we end up with, for example, the Washington Post’s Tuesday dispatch (6/2/25) from Jerusalem, headlined “Israel Says It Fired ‘Warning Shots’ Near Aid Site; Health Officials Say 27 Dead,” which charitably gave Israel the privilege of refuting what the health officials have said before they even say it. The article quoted the Israeli army as claiming that its soldiers had fired at suspects “who advanced toward the troops in such a way that posed a threat.” It also quoted the following statement from the GHF:
While the aid distribution was conducted safely and without incident at our site today, we understand that [Israeli army] is investigating whether a number of civilians were injured after moving beyond the designated safe corridor and into a closed military zone.
Anyway, that’s what happens when you put your aid distribution site in the middle of an Israeli military zone.
Then there was the BBC report (5/31/25) on Sunday’s massacre, headlined “Israel Denies Firing at Civilians After Hamas-Run Ministry Says 31 Killed in Gaza Aid Center Attack,” which went on to underscore that the ministry in question was the “Hamas-run health ministry.” Given Hamas’s role as the governing authority in the Gaza Strip, this is sort of like specifying that the US Department of Health & Human Services is “run by the US government”—except that, in Gaza’s case, the “Hamas-run” qualifier is meant to cast doubt on the ministry’s claims. Never mind that said ministry’s death counts have over time consistently “held up to UN scrutiny, independent investigations and even Israel’s tallies,” as the Associated Press (11/6/23) has previously acknowledged.
The BBC headline (5/31/25) likewise presents Israel’s defense before revealing the charge made by the “Hamas-run ministry.”
On Tuesday, though, the AP (6/3/25) chimed in with its own headline, “Gaza Officials Say Israeli Forces Killed 27 Heading to Aid Site. Israel Says It Fired Near Suspects.” The text of the article details how Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is “led by medical professionals but reports to the Hamas-run government,” has calculated that the majority of the more than 54,000 Palestinian fatalities in Israel’s current war on Gaza are women and children, but hasn’t said “how many of the dead were civilians or combatants.”
Meanwhile, Reuters (6/1/25) reported that an Israeli attack near a GHF-run aid distribution point had “killed at least 30 people in Rafah, Palestinian news agency WAFA and Hamas-affiliated media said on Sunday.” In a separate article on Sunday’s massacre, the news wire (6/1/25) wrote that
the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry said 31 people were killed with a single gunshot wound to the head or chest from Israeli fire as they were gathered in the Al-Alam district aid distribution area in Rafah.
The latter dispatch was headlined “Gaza Ministry Says Israel Kills More Than 30 Aid Seekers, Israel Denies.”
‘No shortage’
Israel’s most absurd denials can turn into headlines (Le Monde, 4/8/25).
There is pretty much no end to the crafty sidelining by Western corporate media of truthful assertions by “Hamas-run” entities—and the simultaneous provision of ample space to the Israeli military to continue its established tradition of propagating outright lies. Recall that time not so long ago that Israeli officials insisted that there was “no shortage” of aid in the Gaza Strip, despite a full-blown blockade, and the glee directly expressed by various Israeli ministers about not letting an iota of food, or anything else necessary for survival, into the besieged enclave (FAIR.org, 4/25/25).
It is furthermore perplexing why there is even a perceived need to cast doubt on massacres of 31 or 27 or three individuals, in the context of a genocide that has killed more than 54,600 people in 20 months—a war in which Israel has exhibited no qualms in slaughtering starving people, as in the February 2024 incident when at least 112 Palestinians were massacred while queuing for flour southwest of Gaza City (FAIR.org, 3/22/24). Against a backdrop of such wanton slaughter, what are 100 more Palestinian deaths to Israel? Indiscriminate mass killing is, after all, the objective here.
Just as GHF is now engaged in micro-level damage control operations vis-à-vis their militarized distribution of food in Gaza, Israel, too, appears to be in a similar mode, since it’s a whole lot simpler—and helpfully distracting—to bicker over dozens of casualties rather than, you know, a whole genocide.
And the Western establishment media are, as ever, standing by to lend a helping hand. Perhaps we should start calling them the “Israel-affiliated media.”
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Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.
Climate activist Greta Thunberg stands near a Palestinian flag after boarding the Madleen boat and before setting sail for Gaza along with activists of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, departing from the Sicilian port of Catania, Italy, June 1, 2025
