June 2025 Gaza Freedom Flotilla

 June 2025 Gaza Freedom Flotilla 

Date	1 June 2025 - 8 June 2025
Description	Another failed attempt to break the Israeli siege on Gaza

The June 2025 Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a maritime campaign organised by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip and deliver a small amount humanitarian aid.

Background

The flotilla, which was led by the UK-flagged vessel "Madleen", departed from Catania, Sicily on 1 June 2025, and was intercepted in international waters by the Israel Defence Force on 8 June, preventing it from reaching the Gaza Strip. According to a flotilla passenger, the cargo contained baby formula, 100 kg of flour, 250 kg of rice, diapers, medical kits, and children's prosthetics. Onboard were Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and French MEP Rima Hassan.

The flotilla followed an earlier attempt on 2 May 2025, when the vessel "Conscience" was struck with projectiles in international waters off Malta.

Deportation

On 10 June 2025, four Freedom Flotilla crew members, including Greta Thunberg, were deported after being held for more than twenty-four hours and appearing before an ‘Israeli Detention Review Tribunal’ or ‘kangaroo court’ with Israel falsely claiming they had signed papers admitting to illegally entering the country – a claim Greta Thunberg has denied. Upon Thunberg's arrival At Paris CDG airport, she spoke to France 24 and the assembled media.

Thunberg expertly handled the feeble, ‘both-sidesing’ questions of Sky News and other presenters as she was interviewed in the arrivals area of Paris CGD airport – but the interviewers, from other broadcasters as well as Sky, tried hard to obscure the fact that Israel acted as the rogue state that it did and unequivocally broke international law (yet again), and to keep pushing Israeli talking points about the sandwiches the crew were offered (‘I’m sure they took a lot of PR photos’), the supposed ‘illegal’ entry into Israel (‘We were kidnapped in international waters and brought there against our will’) and the small capacity of the "Madleen" vessel for carrying aid (‘We didn’t have a choice, they bombed our bigger boat’), why governments are ignoring what’s happening ‘Because of racism’.

Thunberg had to deal with media regurgitations of Israel’s dismissal of the "Madleen"’s voyage as “moral grandstanding” and even of the oafish and immature US president Donald Trump’s claim that she needs “anger management classes”.

And she made very sure to make clear the collusion of western governments in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and their refusal to fulfil their obligations under international law to stop that genocide:

Her contempt for the media’s tactics was clear enough, as is the rightness of the cause of the Palestinian people and those trying to help them against Israel’s “systematic starvation of over two million people and the full-blown live-streamed genocide”.

Solitary confinement

Eight other crew members refused to accept deportation because it involved signing a declaration that they had illegally entered Israel when they had been taken there by force from international waters. Hunger striker Thiago Ávila and MEP Rima Hassan were placed by Israeli authorities into solitary confinement in what their Palestinian human rights legal group Adalah lawyers described as “punitive and inhumane conditions”.

British-flagged vessel

Despite the "Madleen"’s status as a British-flagged vessel entitled to the protection of the British state and UK military, UK PM Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy have refused to condemn the criminal attack and taking of the crew as hostages. Lammy has ordered Foreign Office officials not to seek the usual legal advice on his or the department’s public statements, as he knows the department’s lawyers and naval maritime law experts will tell him that Israel acted unequivocally illegally.

Please, no legal advice

Former UK ambassador Craig Murray said:

Contrary to all Whitehall practice and culture, [an] edict has gone out from Lammy’s office that replies and statements re the "Madleen" are NOT to be cleared with Legal Advisers, Maritime Section or the Royal Navy.

A civil servant preparing a ministerial statement or reply, you have to clear the draft with all relevant departments throughout Whitehall and get a consensus text. That includes legal clearance. Lammy is seeking to bypass [them] because they will all say Israel acted illegally.

Asked by one commenter whether this meant that Lammy is going to say Israel “were defending themselves”, Murray responded:

Exactly.

Starvation blockade continues

Israel’s starvation blockade continues, with its token ‘aid’ stations used to ethnically cleanse and then murder Palestinians.

The Global March To Gaza, a separate land march on Gaza, begins on 12 June 2025 with the aim of breaking the blockade and releasing the tens of thousands of tonnes of aid blocked by Israel at the Gaza-Egypt border. More than ten thousand Palestinian civilians remain held hostage by Israel in indefinite ‘administrative detention’, including children. Rape, torture and murder of Palestinian hostages, both male and female, are common.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:CND Cymru delegates arrive in Egypt for Global March to Gaza	Article	12 June 2025	Stephen Price	A spokesperson for CND Cymru said: "We are proud to support this important march by sending a delegation. In the face of the genocide of the Palestinian people, western governments have been silent. In being part of this Global March to Gaza, we are telling the Palestinian people we bear witness. And we will not forgive those who have committed these acts of brutality."

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References

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 9 June 2025.
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