Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and 11 others have embarked on a mission towards Gaza, aimed at “breaking Israel’s siege”.
On the evening of June 1, Thunberg and her fellow activists, including French MEP Rima Hassan, left on board the sailing ship Madleen travelling from Catania in Sicily towards the Gaza strip to bring supplies to the people of Gaza.
Their journey can be followed via an online tracker, showing the whereabouts of the boat.
“We are seeing a systematic starvation of two million people. The world cannot be silent bystanders, Every single one of us has a moral obligation to do everything we can to fight for a free Palestine,” Thunberg said.
The Madleen is a civil ship and part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), an international alliance of NGOs, activist groups and individuals. They organise sea‐based efforts to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and protest Israel’s maritime blockade.
In a statement on its website, the FFC said the ship was “now sailing toward Gaza carrying humanitarian aid and international human rights defenders in direct defiance of Israel’s illegal and genocidal blockade”.
“I am aboard Madleen because silence is not neutrality — it is complicity, the Palestinian people in Gaza are being starved and slaughtered and the world watches. This ship is not just carrying aid, it is carrying a demand: End the blockade. End the genocide,” Hassan said.
The boat was named after Gaza’s first and only fisherwoman and “symbolises the unyielding spirit of Palestinian resilience and the growing global resistance to Israel’s use of collective punishment and deliberate starvation policies”, acording to the FCC.
The activists said the ship was carrying “urgently needed supplies for the people of Gaza, including baby formula, flour, rice, diapers, women’s sanitary products, water desalination kits, medical supplies, crutches, and children’s prosthetics”.
It was the 36th vessel sent by the FFC to break the Israeli blockade and the organisation stressed that it was “a peaceful act of civil resistance”.
Since the Hamas terror attack of October 7, 2023 and Israel’s response, Thunberg has increasingly advocated the Palestinian cause and has been highly critical of Israel.
She condemned its actions in Gaza, characterising them as “genocide” and “war crimes”. In September 2024, she joined a Stockholm protest accusing Israel of “horrific genocide” and urging boycotts of Israeli companies.
Thunberg has also published op-eds in the media demanding an end to what she termed “inexcusable violence,” linking Swedish military co-operation with Israeli arms firms to complicity in occupation and mass killing.
She has not shied away from using controversial statements and imagery to target Israelis. At one time, she brandished an octopus soft toy during her protest and posted it online.
Anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists often used octopus imagery to claim Jews had global control over the media and international politics. Thunberg ended up deleting the post, saying she was unaware of the connotation and that the octopus instead was linked to her autism.
She was also at protests where the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was chanted, which some have seen as implicitly rejecting Israel’s right to exist.
Consequently, the slogan was regarded as an existential threat or even a coded incitement to ethnic cleansing.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has been filmed laughing and talking to a crowd, shouting at one point, “Fuck Germany! And fuck Israel!” at a pro-Palestinian rally in Germany. https://t.co/py2HQCpkws
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) December 9, 2024
