IDF Seizes Greta Thunberg’s Boat, Detains All Aboard
“The Freedom Flotilla Coalition confirms that its civilian ship, Madleen, … has been attacked/forcibly intercepted by the Israeli military … The ship was unlawfully boarded, its unarmed civilian crew abducted, and its life-saving cargo—including baby formula, food and medical supplies—confiscated.”
How dare they?
Climate activist Greta Thunberg, along with 11 other members of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition—a self-described “global coalition highlighting the inhumanity of the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza”—set sail from Sicily on June 1. Unsurprisingly, one of their first acts was to raise a Palestinian flag aboard the vessel.
The group’s mission was to protest Israel’s blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, where the conflict has persisted for nearly two years.
Fox News reported that early Monday, Israeli forces seized the boat, named the Madleen, detained all its passengers (including Thunberg), and diverted the vessel to Ashdod, Israel. Passengers include “Game of Thrones” actor Liam Cunningham and Rima Hassa, a “French member of the European Parliament who is of Palestinian descent.”
In the video below, posted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, a naval officer is seen relaying a message to the vessel from a distance. She informs those on board that the maritime zone off the coast of Gaza is closed to all traffic and instructs them to “deliver aid through established channels.”
The Ministry has dubbed the Madleen the “selfie yacht.”
The Israeli Navy is currently communicating with the “selfie yacht”. Using an international civilian communication system, the Israeli Navy has instructed the “selfie yacht” to change its course due to its approach toward a restricted area. pic.twitter.com/KnSqWrsXU2
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) June 8, 2025
In the following clip, Israeli Navy personnel are seen aboard the Madleen, distributing sandwiches and water to the passengers. Thunberg does not appear in the footage.
The post is captioned, “All the passengers of the ‘selfie yacht’ are safe and unharmed. They were provided with sandwiches and water. The show is over.”
All the passengers of the ‘selfie yacht’ are safe and unharmed. They were provided with sandwiches and water. The show is over. pic.twitter.com/tLZZYcspJO
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) June 9, 2025
In a later post, the Ministry wrote, “(The vessel) is safely making its way to the shores of [Ashdod] Israel. The passengers are expected to return to their home countries.”
Israel intercepts Gaza-bound aid ship, detaining Greta Thunberg and other prominent activists
“(The vessel) is safely making its way to the shores of Israel. The passengers are expected to return to their home countries,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry pic.twitter.com/wjupvn9dDt
— Steve Gruber (@stevegrubershow) June 9, 2025
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition presented a very different version of the story. The group issued a statement titled, “Israeli Military Attacks Madleen in International Waters — Weeks After Bombing of Conscience.” The FFC claims that the activists were “kidnapped by Israeli forces” while trying to deliver desperately needed aid to the territory.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) confirms that its civilian ship, Madleen, carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, has been attacked/forcibly intercepted by the Israeli military at 3:02 am CET in international waters at 31.95236° N, 32.38880° E. The ship was unlawfully boarded, its unarmed civilian crew abducted, and its life-saving cargo—including baby formula, food and medical supplies—confiscated.
The statement contains a quote from human rights attorney (and FFC organizer) Huwaida Arraf:
Israel has no legal authority to detain international volunteers aboard the Madleen. This seizure blatantly violates international law and defies the ICJ’s binding orders requiring unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza. These volunteers are not subject to Israeli jurisdiction and cannot be criminalized for delivering aid or challenging an illegal blockade—their detention is arbitrary, unlawful, and must end immediately.
Finally, the group published a list of demands: an end to the illegal and deadly siege of Gaza, the immediate release of all abducted volunteers, the immediate delivery of humanitarian aid directly to Palestinians that is independent of the control of the occupying power, and full accountability for the military assaults on Madleen and Conscience.
Propaganda like this has hurt Israel’s standing in the eyes of the international community. What compounds the issue is that major legacy media outlets—such as CNN, the Associated Press, and others—are reporting the FFC’s version of events with little or no scrutiny, presenting their account as established fact. This agenda-driven reporting is why so much of the public has lost faith in the mainstream media over the past decade.
A spokesperson for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Fox News that the aid aboard the vessel constituted “less than a single truckload,” adding that “the tiny amount of aid that was on the yacht—and not consumed by the ‘celebrities’—will be transferred to Gaza through legitimate humanitarian channels.”
Once the activists arrive in Ashdod, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has instructed the IDF to show them footage of the atrocities committed by the Palestinians on October 7.
It still baffles me how a petulant, sour-faced 16-year-old high school dropout with a doomsday message managed to hijack the world’s attention. After sailing across the Atlantic on a zero-emission yacht—for maximum optics—she landed in New York City in August 2019 and was instantly crowned a moral authority by the American Left. Maybe it was her youth that made the scolding more digestible back then. But six years later, at 22, Thunberg’s perpetual scowl feels less like righteous conviction and more like a tired act—even she looks exhausted by the performance.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on LinkedIn or X.
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Comments
The Marxists know their Propaganda will get swallowed up and spread around the world.
And the SS Selfie knew exactly what would happen.
Israel should keep the boat and supplies, deport them to another country with nothing but a sheet.
Why not just give her a helicopter ride to Gaza? It would be entertaining to see the Hamas leadership pretend to care what she thinks.
I hear Greta the Annoying has already been deported. I hope the flight they chose had layovers in Capetown and Sydney…..for Carbon Footprint calculations
The “and supplies” in this case is about enough to fill up the back of a subcompact car, or somewhat on the order of 5% of a truck, of which hundreds travel to Gaza every day. They crammed so many Leftist demonstrators onto the boat I don’t think they had food to get back out even if Israel had let them sail away.
The Doom Pixie has already been put on a plane out of Israel.
“Unlawfully boarded.” What a bunch of retards. I understand they made them watch the October 7 video footage. Good.
RE: “Unlawfully boarded” — My thoughts exactly. They tried to run a military blockade of a contested and restricted area, after they were warned off. Said military has every right and authority to stop, board, and search the ship, and detain everyone on board.
The “demand” that everyone on board be released is meaningless; Israel never intended to keep them and stated that they’d be returned to their home countries … even though they have cause to keep them until the conflict is over.
Once again — as always — Israel is holding the moral high ground and acting as the responsible adults in the room. Unfortunately, the global media is — as always — pointedly refusing to acknowledge it.
Not only was the boarding lawful, according to this article it was required. https://www.jns.org/why-attempting-to-breach-a-maritime-blockade-is-dangerous/
Israel would have been justified in sinking them, or arresting and trying them, instead of just deporting them. According to an article today, 8 of the 12 have refused deportation & have been arrested.
The selfie crew refused to watch the video when they saw what it was about.
If there were ever a wish for a huge rogue wave to capsize a seagoing vessel, there is one now for sure!
she is an enemy combatant
They should have rammed them and then picked them up out of the water.
dear greta
notice the difference
yours was a plo flag that of course brought the attention you wanted and needed
BUT YOU ARE ALIVE AND NOT TREATED LIKE THE ISRAELIS on Oct 7 ( and for thousands of years) who have been murdered by your thinkins for just being different than them
The IDF said they were going to show Greta & friends the video of October 7 atrocities. But when they saw what it was about, they refused to watch.
They should have forced them to watch it. Spray them with water every time they closed their eyes. Kept them without food or water or bathroom access until they watched it.
I’m tired of all this performance art. Just attach a mine to the bottom of the sailboat time to explode when they are halfway to Turkey. Any sharks in the med by chance?
Turns out there are man eating sharks in the med.
There are endangered sharks near Israel, finally something these idiots
Make these pukes walk the plank, or, set them on fire, ISIS-style.
IDF missed an opportunity to get some torpedo practice in.
US Naval torpedos cost 4-5M a pop. Don’t know what Israel uses. Maybe a German one. Too expensive for the likes of these anarchists.
They could have crowd-funded it and probably paid for a couple of them, at least.
I’d contribute.
$4 million? Big Balls better investigate that
Cheaper to ram them.
Give their boat to Hamas.
Downvoter, show yourself and defend your position…if you have the fortitude.
These down are downvotes by one of Rag’s many aliases.
It’s a pro-Islamofascist/Muslim supremacist Dhimmi-crat/leftist.
Supporting genocidal, Arab Muslim belligerence and predations against a religious/ethnic minority that has lived in the middle east for millennia before the founding of the supremacist, totalitarian, belligerent, hate-filled and pathology-laden ideology of “Submission” is an indefensible and evil position, so, naturally this puke-reprobate-idiot childishly down-votes comments from the shadows of his/her dank cave.
It doesn’t. Challenged it the other day. Same lack of response. Total coward.
Site admin says they can’t tell who votes which way. That’s possible. Other sites will let commenters tell who votes which way so it is possible. After all the site knows whether you have already voted
It’s JR who’s doing it.
Israel should have redirected the boat to Egypt and told them to take their supplies to Gaza over land through the Egyptian border.
Sorry, not sorry, you don’t get to go give a bunch of free crap to Hamas.
The best way to bring this to an end this is to cut all aid.
I’d want it searched for weapons & dual purpose items, but apparently the actual food, medicine & similar aid was a tiny fraction of what Israel sends in every truck.
IDF should have let them them complete their mission. Perhaps Hamas would then have more hostages and world opinions of Hamas would undergo a sea change.
This afternoon, using the Brave Browser, I did a search on “Greta Thunberg autism.” Brave has their own LLM (Large Language Model) as their AI. The first sentence:
“Greta Thunberg, a renowned climate activist, was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, at the age of 12”. I was surprised and disappointed at the use of the word “renowned,” She’s a high school dropout and I strongly suspect has little or no scientific knowledge, or any skills at all. I think she’s being exploited. I don’t see why anyone would take her opinion on anything seriously. Now the anti-Israeli activists are exploiting her. Just when I think my opinion of world MSM couldn’t get any lower, something new comes along. Fortunately a large chunk of the American population has caught on and doesn’t trust the MSM either.
BTW I tried the search again a few minutes ago and found the word “renowned” changed to “prominent.” Did someone complain? I don’t trust AI either. I tried my own test of ChatGPT and it failed a math problem. On the other hand, Grok 3 gave an excellent, detailed and correct answer. I tried a few other tests, and was impressed. I also tried a technical question on global warming and ChatGPT gave a very political answer. Did not do Grok yet.
She’s truly a hard girl to understand. If I were her, I’d be putting a lot more of my effort into establishing that I was NOT retarded.
If the Israelis had let them through, maybe Hamas would have kept them or blown them up. Either is okay.
I have to say that giving them sandwiches is incredibly cruel. How dare they!
I’ve never had a pager sandwich, I’d be interested.
PREDICTION: Hawaii federal judge will order her immediate release
Israel doesn’t give a **** what some Hawaii judge says, but there was a far greater and more realistic possibility of an Israeli judge making the same order. The Israeli judiciary is out of control to an extent unimaginable in the USA, and has literally usurped power. Israel is not a democracy, because its elected government has no power; it’s subject to the dictates of the solicitor general (who is career DOJ) and the self-appointed supreme court, who are not bound by any written law or constitution but simply by their own sense of what the government ought to do.
Hey Greta,
Did your family benefit from the Swedish iron ore and ball bearings for Death Camp dental gold trade?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I was really hoping the boat would hit an exploding rock somewhere. Dang.
Show and make them watch every video showing atrocities of Arab Gazans – all practitioners of Islam, alledgelt. The rapes, the burning of babies, the tortured, the emaciated hostages – all of it
The plan was in fact to show it to them. They refused to watch. No word on whether they also stuck their fingers in their ears.
Post a link to https://thereligionofpeace.com/ whenever she posts anywhere.
My big question is when will Israel actually finish off Hamas and occupy Gaza?
Sorry but the longer this war happens the worst for Israel. If Israel doesn’t want to perform a temporary occupation the alternative is Hamas.
The war is weakening Israel in unimaginably meaningful ways.
The total list of pro-Israel countries
United States
India
Hungary
Czechia
Nigeria
Kenya
Anti-Israel
Everyone else.
For context RUSSIA is less isolated.
I do not know what Netanyahu is thinking but sitzkrieg with drones is not an effective strategy. War isn’t about what combatants you killed it is about objectives.
I am wondering which century Netanyahu intends on winning the war already.
Israel ought to seize the yacht and auction it off. Give the $$ to the IDF to help them fight against the genocidal racist muslim terrorists that Greta and her celebrity friends support.
Despite for attention. Should have stayed in your lane.
Maybe there’ll be an ‘unfortunate accident’. The Israeli’s are pretty good @ setting those up.
Contrast the IDF’s treatment of these “hostages” to the Hamas treatment of it”s hostages.
How about swapping the Madleen passengers for the remaining Israeli hostages? Then they could go into gaza and we’d get back the rest of our people. Everybody wins in that scenario.
I’m sure that hamas would go along with that offer.
Don’t allow anybody on ship disembark at israel port. Ship can re-fuel and do repairs, and send them away. Who put greta in charge of anything?
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