(JNS) Israeli naval forces on Monday, June 9 intercepted the vessel carrying Swedish national Greta Thunberg and other activists to the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the 12 passengers had been given sandwiches and water and were being safely transported to the shores of the Jewish state and would be sent back to their home countries.
The ministry posted a picture of Thunberg being offered a sandwich, and stated she was “on her way to Israel, safe and in good spirits,” yet the keffiyeh-clad climate activist claimed in a video message that they were “kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces or forces that support Israel.”
Half of the passengers were French. One Spanish national was listed as a passenger. The other nationalities represented were one each from Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands and Turkey.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called the interception “a blatant act of international piracy and state terrorism.” Iran also condemned the intervention as “a form of piracy,” since it happened in international waters.
Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to show the activist group a 43-minute video of atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists during the Oct. 7 massacre, which sparked the war in Gaza.
“It’s appropriate that Greta the antisemite and her Hamas-supporting friends see exactly who the terror group Hamas is, what atrocious acts they carried out against women, the elderly and children, and who Israel is fighting to defend against,” said Katz.
The British-flagged yacht Madleen, operated by the pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), was attempting to deliver a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid to the Gaza population.
“While Greta and others attempted to stage a media provocation whose sole purpose was to gain publicity—and which included less than a single truckload of aid—more than 1,200 aid trucks have entered Gaza from Israel within the past two weeks. In addition, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distributed close to 11 million meals directly to civilians in Gaza,” said the Foreign Ministry. “There are ways to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip—they do not involve Instagram selfies. The tiny amount of aid that was on the yacht and not consumed by the ‘celebrities’ will be transferred to Gaza through real humanitarian channels.”
