The small Madleen boat, with a crew and passengers of 12 international humanitarian activists launched by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was boarded and seized by Israeli forces in international waters on June 9. This illegal act occurred at 3:00 a.m. local time, about 100 nautical miles from Gaza. Madleen’s crew, which included Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and Rima Hassan, a member of the European Parliament from France, was taken to Israel.

Also among the passengers and crew were activists, a journalist, an attorney, a doctor and human rights defenders representing global civil society.

Israeli media reported that the Madleen and its crew members were taken to the port city of Ashdod. There they were put in solitary units and forced to screen an Israeli propaganda film purportedly made up of footage from the Hamas-led October 7 Al-Aqsa Flood. A number of those aboard the Madleen will reportedly be deported back to their home countries.

The ship was publicly carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza, who are starving because of the strict Zionist siege enacted on March 2. A very limited amount of food has been distributed in Gaza, involving private U.S. military contractors and with Israeli forces bypassing traditional United Nations agencies, creating chaotic situations.

Israeli soldiers and U.S. military contractors shot defenseless Palestinians waiting in lines — many in the head — killing hundreds. This “media distribution” has been labeled a “humanitarian camouflage.” No aid has reached the overwhelming majority of people in Gaza in over three months.

The imperialist governments of the European Union, such as Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the Scandinavian countries, have made bland statements of concern regarding the horrific starvation measures imposed by the state of Israel on the Palestinian population of Gaza.

The total support of U.S. imperialism for this forced starvation is confirmed, and not only by the military equipment and funding the U.S. has provided for over 75 years. It was reinforced in the June 4 U.S. veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution denouncing the blockade of food, water and medicine to Gaza.

Workers’ power blocks shipments to Israel

Can the other imperialist powers really do nothing else except vote for a resolution? They have been forced to make statements at the United Nations and wring their hands in the media, but only by extreme mass pressure and solidarity with the Palestinian resistance — including strikes, work stoppages, refusals to load shipments and massive marches.

Increasingly, organized workers’ movements are taking bold action. Unions of truckers and dock workers throughout Europe have acted to block military shipments, stating they will not allow their ports and transport networks to be used to aid genocide.

According to France’s General Confederation of Labor (CGT), French dock workers in the port of Fos-sur-Mer, outside Marseille, on June 5 refused to load crates of links from the French company Eurolinks used to assist the rapid fire of bullets.

On May 14 port workers in Genoa, Italy, refused to handle a ship filled with weapons and explosives bound for the Israeli port of Ashdod.

On Nov. 9 Spain denied entry to a Maersk container ship arriving at the port of Algeciras, carrying arms to Israel. Other arms shipments have also been blocked. The U.S. opened an investigation into this “infringement of trade.”

A month earlier the Greek dock workers’ union at the Piraeus Port blocked the loading of a container of 21 tons of ammunition destined for Israel.

Members of the Swedish Dockworkers Union voted to block shipments to Israel, with 68% in favor, while German workers and lawyers filed suits to do the same.

Beyond Europe, Moroccan workers blocked shipments on April 17, 2025. Unions called on port workers at the Casablanca port to boycott the Maersk cargo ship reportedly transporting F-35 fighter jet components.

These blockades at ports on the Mediterranean are especially effective because of arms shipments to Israel being routed around Africa and into the Mediterranean Sea. The re-routing has been due to the effective military blockade of shipments to Israel through the Red Sea and Suez Canal by Ansarsallah of Yemen, begun after the October 7, 2023, Al-Aqsa Flood opened this round of resistance to Zionist occupation.

The mass demand: ‘Stop the complicity’

On June 8 more than 300,000 flooded the streets of Rome in a demonstration demanding the government “Stop the massacre, stop complicity!”

The failure of the governments of a whole number of powerful imperialist countries in Europe to use any of their vast military resources to deliver aid or to halt arms shipments confirms their active and hostile complicity. Big corporations are profiting from this well-known and public crime of genocide against the entire population of Gaza.

A people’s effort called the Freedom Flotilla was determined to publicly force the issue and provide some modest supplies. Would any country send a fleet of ships to protect them? Would any planes or drones provide air cover? Would any country send desperately needed supplies using its navy or air force?

To pose the question is to answer it.

The Zionist state has violently shut down past Freedom Flotillas. This people-to-people aid to Gaza is confronting not only the Zionist/U.S. war crimes but challenging the European complicity in the genocide.

According to documents filed by the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation (PAL) Law Commission on War Crimes, Justice, Reparations and Return, “The EU has a legal obligation to take urgent steps to ensure safe passage of the Flotilla, including deploying EU naval escorts or observers.” 

As the Commission further states: “Despite universal recognition of the unfolding atrocity, states have failed to uphold their legal duties. Public condemnations of Israel’s conduct have not been matched with protective or preventive action. On the contrary, inaction — and in many cases material, political and diplomatic support — has served to enable these atrocities.

“The EU and its member states remain bound by their legal duties — not merely to refrain from complicity but to prevent genocide and protect unarmed humanitarian missions from unlawful obstruction.

“This mission (of the Freedom Flotilla) is not voluntary — it is compelled by state failure to act, as required by law. Accordingly, if EU member states fail to act to protect this humanitarian convoy and its passengers, they risk being complicit — legally and morally — in the continued starvation and extermination of the Palestinian population — and in any harm that comes to Flotilla passengers.

“Member states have a legal obligation and a moral imperative to stop starvation and genocide in Gaza.” (palwarcrimes.org)

The Freedom Flotilla statement declared: “Any interception, attack, sabotage or interference with the Madleen or its civilian passengers and crew will constitute a deliberate, knowing and unlawful attack on civilians and a violation of international law. Such actions would amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and potentially constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

Solidarity with the Freedom Flotilla! Release the crew and passengers! 

End U.S./EU complicity in genocide! Free Palestine!