For Greta Thunberg, it apparently wasn’t enough to be detained by the Israeli Defence Force and deported back to Sweden just the once. She decided to give illegally entering Gaza via boat another go. This week, the flotilla, consisting of about 40 boats, was intercepted by the Israeli military and its roughly 450 activist sailors were taken captive. One boat, the Marinette, managed to escape and continue its course for Gaza, but that too was caught by Israel yesterday.
The Global Sumud Flotilla, as it was called, was an attempt by foreign pro-Palestine activists to break through what they call Israel’s “siege” of Gaza and deliver aid. The aid in question was symbolic, consisting of a small amount of food and medical supplies. Needless to say, needy Gazans won’t have missed out on much.
The flotilla’s first attempt to reach Gaza in June ended in a similar way. Greta and her fellow do-gooders cried that the Israeli military was “kidnapping” them and committing war crimes by preventing the boat, the Madleen, from entering Palestine. The reality was very different—the activists were simply handed a couple of kosher sandwiches and returned to their home countries. This round is likely to be the same, once Yom Kippur ends and Israeli authorities are able to start processing the deportations. Although some Swedes are hoping that Israel might hang on to Thunberg for a little while longer.
Did Thunberg really think that things would go any differently this time around? At some point, you have to ask—is this something psychological? Is it some kind of fetish? Does Greta relish being manhandled by beefy, tanned IDF soldiers? We may never know. What we do know is that the flotilla, and the global response to it, was no less hysterical the second time. When the boats were captured, a pre-recorded video of Thunberg was released, in which she screeches about having been “abducted and taken against my will by Israeli forces.” On X, the flotilla’s official account complained that “several vessels” had been “illegally intercepted and boarded by Israeli occupation forces in international waters.” The Israeli Foreign Ministry explained, in a considerably less emotional tone, that the navy had requested the flotilla change course and had warned them that they were about to enter “an active combat zone.” When the fleet refused, Israel physically prevented it from going any further.
These seafaring showboaters are hardly peaceniks themselves, anyway. Despite their self-righteous calls for ‘peace’ in Palestine, the activists seemed happy enough to receive the protection of literal warships. Both Spain and Italy sent frigates to escort the flotilla on part of its journey, and Turkey later joined the party, too. The professed pacifists could hardly contain their excitement at the thought of gunboats menacing Israel. Despite being literally flanked by multiple frigates, the flotilla nonetheless complained of Israel’s use of “intimidation” tactics, like being surrounded by drones and being forced to listen to the music of ABBA.
When news of the flotilla’s failure reached the West, the reaction was every bit as insufferable as you’d expect. United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese took to X to lament “Israel’s illegal abduction” of the activists and to heap “Shame on Western governments first and foremost, and their complicit inaction.” British journalist Owen Jones described it as “piracy in plain sight.” The flotilla organisers, once again, claimed that Israel’s actions constituted a “war crime.”
Naturally, cities across Europe erupted into protests, identical to those we have been suffering through weekly for the past two years. In Italy, hundreds of thousands of protestors have taken to the streets today, as part of a general strike organised by trade unions in support of the flotilla. The Dublin Port Tunnel in Ireland was closed yesterday due to pro-Palestine activists blocking the traffic, causing significant supply-chain disruption. Shops and restaurants have been vandalised, and hundreds arrested in clashes with police. On the Isle of Skye in Scotland, a local branch of an Asda petrol station even closed for the day, pinning a sign to the door that told customers it was “closed in solidarity with the people of Palestine and those of the Global Sumud Flotilla who were abducted attempting to break an illegal siege of Gaza,” alongside a Palestinian flag. Israel is yet to respond to that particular display of forecourt foreign affairs.
In particularly bad taste were protests in the UK, where yesterday morning a man of Syrian descent launched a brutal attack on a Manchester synagogue. The man, identified as 35-year-old Jihad Al-Shamie, drove his car into a crowd of Jewish people standing outside the Heaton Park Synagogue. He then went on a stabbing rampage before being shot dead by police. Two men died as a result of the attack, and three people were seriously injured. Despite these horrific scenes, pro-Palestine protests went ahead across the country in response to the flotilla’s failure. In London, Leeds, and even Manchester, demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and chanted the usual slogans—like “from the river, to the sea” and “death to the IDF”—apparently unbothered by how insensitive this might appear to the Jewish community, which was still reeling from a fatal terror attack.
Like Thunberg’s flotilla, these protests focus on spectacle first and consequences later. The only meaningful impact these pro-Palestine demonstrations will have is to make Jewish communities throughout Europe feel even more unsafe than they already do. Similarly, the only lasting effect of the flotilla will be all the selfies and social-media posts it produced. While Israel hands out more than a million meals a day in Gaza, Thunberg’s second floating vanity project will have succeeded in pulling off nothing more than a mediocre PR stunt.
This kind of performative activism certainly doesn’t do anything to help Palestinians. That would be too much hard work for Western placard-wavers who get most of their news in the form of Instagram infographics. It’s much easier to treat Israel as a global villain and Palestine as a helpless victim than it is to recognise this situation is far more complex than most of us in the West could ever understand.
One question remains: will Greta go for a third attempt? Let’s hope not, for the sake of all our social-media feeds.
Greta’s Latest Flotilla Was Just As Cringe As The Last
Lluis GENE / AFP
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For Greta Thunberg, it apparently wasn’t enough to be detained by the Israeli Defence Force and deported back to Sweden just the once. She decided to give illegally entering Gaza via boat another go. This week, the flotilla, consisting of about 40 boats, was intercepted by the Israeli military and its roughly 450 activist sailors were taken captive. One boat, the Marinette, managed to escape and continue its course for Gaza, but that too was caught by Israel yesterday.
The Global Sumud Flotilla, as it was called, was an attempt by foreign pro-Palestine activists to break through what they call Israel’s “siege” of Gaza and deliver aid. The aid in question was symbolic, consisting of a small amount of food and medical supplies. Needless to say, needy Gazans won’t have missed out on much.
The flotilla’s first attempt to reach Gaza in June ended in a similar way. Greta and her fellow do-gooders cried that the Israeli military was “kidnapping” them and committing war crimes by preventing the boat, the Madleen, from entering Palestine. The reality was very different—the activists were simply handed a couple of kosher sandwiches and returned to their home countries. This round is likely to be the same, once Yom Kippur ends and Israeli authorities are able to start processing the deportations. Although some Swedes are hoping that Israel might hang on to Thunberg for a little while longer.
Did Thunberg really think that things would go any differently this time around? At some point, you have to ask—is this something psychological? Is it some kind of fetish? Does Greta relish being manhandled by beefy, tanned IDF soldiers? We may never know. What we do know is that the flotilla, and the global response to it, was no less hysterical the second time. When the boats were captured, a pre-recorded video of Thunberg was released, in which she screeches about having been “abducted and taken against my will by Israeli forces.” On X, the flotilla’s official account complained that “several vessels” had been “illegally intercepted and boarded by Israeli occupation forces in international waters.” The Israeli Foreign Ministry explained, in a considerably less emotional tone, that the navy had requested the flotilla change course and had warned them that they were about to enter “an active combat zone.” When the fleet refused, Israel physically prevented it from going any further.
These seafaring showboaters are hardly peaceniks themselves, anyway. Despite their self-righteous calls for ‘peace’ in Palestine, the activists seemed happy enough to receive the protection of literal warships. Both Spain and Italy sent frigates to escort the flotilla on part of its journey, and Turkey later joined the party, too. The professed pacifists could hardly contain their excitement at the thought of gunboats menacing Israel. Despite being literally flanked by multiple frigates, the flotilla nonetheless complained of Israel’s use of “intimidation” tactics, like being surrounded by drones and being forced to listen to the music of ABBA.
When news of the flotilla’s failure reached the West, the reaction was every bit as insufferable as you’d expect. United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese took to X to lament “Israel’s illegal abduction” of the activists and to heap “Shame on Western governments first and foremost, and their complicit inaction.” British journalist Owen Jones described it as “piracy in plain sight.” The flotilla organisers, once again, claimed that Israel’s actions constituted a “war crime.”
Naturally, cities across Europe erupted into protests, identical to those we have been suffering through weekly for the past two years. In Italy, hundreds of thousands of protestors have taken to the streets today, as part of a general strike organised by trade unions in support of the flotilla. The Dublin Port Tunnel in Ireland was closed yesterday due to pro-Palestine activists blocking the traffic, causing significant supply-chain disruption. Shops and restaurants have been vandalised, and hundreds arrested in clashes with police. On the Isle of Skye in Scotland, a local branch of an Asda petrol station even closed for the day, pinning a sign to the door that told customers it was “closed in solidarity with the people of Palestine and those of the Global Sumud Flotilla who were abducted attempting to break an illegal siege of Gaza,” alongside a Palestinian flag. Israel is yet to respond to that particular display of forecourt foreign affairs.
In particularly bad taste were protests in the UK, where yesterday morning a man of Syrian descent launched a brutal attack on a Manchester synagogue. The man, identified as 35-year-old Jihad Al-Shamie, drove his car into a crowd of Jewish people standing outside the Heaton Park Synagogue. He then went on a stabbing rampage before being shot dead by police. Two men died as a result of the attack, and three people were seriously injured. Despite these horrific scenes, pro-Palestine protests went ahead across the country in response to the flotilla’s failure. In London, Leeds, and even Manchester, demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and chanted the usual slogans—like “from the river, to the sea” and “death to the IDF”—apparently unbothered by how insensitive this might appear to the Jewish community, which was still reeling from a fatal terror attack.
Like Thunberg’s flotilla, these protests focus on spectacle first and consequences later. The only meaningful impact these pro-Palestine demonstrations will have is to make Jewish communities throughout Europe feel even more unsafe than they already do. Similarly, the only lasting effect of the flotilla will be all the selfies and social-media posts it produced. While Israel hands out more than a million meals a day in Gaza, Thunberg’s second floating vanity project will have succeeded in pulling off nothing more than a mediocre PR stunt.
This kind of performative activism certainly doesn’t do anything to help Palestinians. That would be too much hard work for Western placard-wavers who get most of their news in the form of Instagram infographics. It’s much easier to treat Israel as a global villain and Palestine as a helpless victim than it is to recognise this situation is far more complex than most of us in the West could ever understand.
One question remains: will Greta go for a third attempt? Let’s hope not, for the sake of all our social-media feeds.
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