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.”
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.”
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.”
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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