Moral Integrity on the High Seas

Since October 2023, Israel has prevented trucks laden with essential humanitarian supplies from entering the Gaza Strip. Beginning in March 2025, Israel imposed a total blockade of food, water, medicine, and electricity for over 100 days. This campaign of systematic starvation is a brazen violation of international humanitarian law and has shocked the conscience of even the most hardened Gaza observers. Finally, international outrage forced Israel to relent. However, instead of allowing the established, highly-effective network of humanitarian aid organizations within Gaza to swing into action and save lives, they insisted on setting up their own food distribution centers in Gaza operated by a shadowy organization called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.” This inexperienced Israeli-American start-up was woefully ill-equipped to provide aid in Gaza. It lacked any of the relationships with the population of Gaza that established international aid organizations such as the United Nations Relief Works Agency, UNICEF, the UN Food Programme, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and numerous other organizations have. Nevertheless, once food was offered, desperately hungry Palestinians walked for miles to try to bring home some food for their starving families. They filed into barbed-wire cages and waited in the blazing sun for some meager rations. Then Israeli Occupation Force soldiers opened fire on kettled crowds of weak, famine-stricken people. Over 100 Palestinians have been murdered by Israel since these massacres began. As journalist Jonathan Cook put it, “Israel is fully integrating its Gaza ‘food aid hubs’ into the genocide.” The grotesque reality is that the Israeli-American “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” was a death trap. It was an utter failure as a humanitarian aid organization, but it was never intended to bring relief. Undeniable documentary evidence indicates this was an evil scheme to slaughter more Palestinians.

The Free Gaza Movement is a coalition of human rights and Palestinian solidarity activists working to challenge the cruel Israeli-Egyptian siege and blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has been in place since 2007. The coalition has been active since 2008. Several flotillas of civilian ships laden with humanitarian aid supplies have embarked from various Mediterranean ports attempting to bring relief to the people of Gaza. On May 31, 2010, six civilian ships of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla were raided by Israeli commandos in international waters. Israeli commandos boarded the Mavi Marmara. Ten activists were killed in the raid. Autopsies revealed that most of the victims had been shot in the head at close range by the Israeli commandos. Dozens were wounded. Several probes into the incident revealed that Israel responded with “excessive force and brutality,” and there was widespread condemnation of Israel’s actions. Given Israel’s violent history surrounding flotillas, supporters of the Palestinian people held their breath when it was announced that a dozen activists, including climate crisis activist Greta Thunberg, were aboard The Madleen, a small vessel sailing from Sicily attempting to bring humanitarian supplies to Gaza. The cargo contained baby formula, 220 lbs. of flour, 550 lbs. of rice, diapers, medical kits, and crutches. On a practical level, barely a drop in the bucket of all that is needed, but symbolically a powerful reminder of the kinds of items being deliberately blocked. Their mission was to expose the utter cruelty and flagrant illegality of the Israeli siege and blockade, which has already been responsible for thousands of deaths.

U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) sneered that he hoped Greta and her friends “knew how to swim,” implying that he fully expected Israel to blow the small ship out of the water, leaving the activists to fend for themselves in open waters. Perhaps the only fitting response to such mockery is to remind the scoffers that Greta Thunberg and her activist friends were risking their lives to call attention to the gravest crime in international humanitarian law. Regarding Sen. Graham, it’s obvious to anyone familiar with his lickspittle political history that Greta and her friends possess more integrity and moral courage in any one of their fingernails than Lindsay Graham has ever exhibited in his entire life. Though they were kidnapped by Israel in international waters, itself a crime of piracy, thankfully they are all alive. They have succeeded in drawing new attention to the desperate circumstances the besieged, bombed, and blockaded Palestinian people are enduring in the Israeli-American genocide in Gaza.