Gaza

Under cover of darkness on 9 June 2025, the Madleen—a modest British-flagged aid ship carrying baby formula, rice, and medical supplies—found itself surrounded by Israeli naval forces some 100-160 km off Gaza’s coast. The activists onboard, including Greta Thunberg and French MEP Rima Hassan, had hoped to draw attention to Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Instead, they got an up-close demonstration of Israel’s naval blockade enforcement. Footage shows the group—calm but determined—raising their hands as Israeli commandos boarded, their life jackets serving as unintentional symbols of how perilous compassion has become in these waters. ...

The urgency of the mission In the pre-dawn stillness of June 1st, 2025, a modest vessel slipped out of Catania’s port in Sicily, its silhouette sharp against the Mediterranean blue. The Madleen, neither a warship nor a tanker, carried no tourists, no cargo of luxury—only defiance. Her destination: Gaza. Her mission: to challenge Israel’s suffocating blockade, now in its 18th year and increasingly lethal. This departure comes not as an isolated gesture, but as a direct riposte to last month’s drone attack on the humanitarian ship Conscience—a strike that occurred brazenly in international waters, just one more entry in Israel’s growing rap sheet of maritime belligerence. ...

In September 2023, the Israeli Ministry of Defence released a promotional video for its Iron Sting precision mortar system. The footage—taken from a drone—shows a building in Gaza being obliterated. It isn’t merely a military demonstration; it’s a sales pitch. The message? Our weapons work. And they work because we’ve used them—on real people, in real places, with very real consequences. At arms fairs like DSEI in London, the phrase “combat-proven” is more than sales patter; it’s a mark of credibility. The battlefield doubles as showroom. And the uncomfortable question is this: Is it morally, legally, or politically justifiable to turn war zones into testing grounds for profit? ...

As Israel’s slaughter in Gaza grinds on—now in its twentieth month, with over 45,000 dead, most of them women and children, and nearly every hospital, school, and home reduced to rubble—one might expect Europe, that self-proclaimed bastion of human rights, to muster more than a few limp statements of concern. Instead, the European Union has perfected the art of hand-wringing paralysis, offering little more than performative sympathy while continuing to arm, fund, and politically shield Israel. It is a masterclass in moral evasion, dressed up as diplomacy. ...