Devil's advocate: How Western media whitewashed Israel’s attack on Gaza-bound aid ship

By Maryam Qarehgozlou

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) announced on Monday that its humanitarian aid ship, Madleen, en route to the blockaded Gaza Strip, was violently attacked and activists on board were abducted by the Israeli military in international waters.

Israeli forces, without any legal warrant, boarded the Madleen and detained its crew, which included high-profile activists such as Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, FFC, a grassroots solidarity movement working to end the nearly two-decade-old Israeli blockade of Gaza, said in a press release.

The ship carried humanitarian aid, including baby formula, food, and medical supplies for Gazans.

According to FFC, the life-saving cargo was confiscated, exacerbating the dire situation in the Palestinian territory, where people are struggling with starvation amid 14-week-long crippling siege.

The siege was partially lifted last month, but aid distribution has been disastrous, with Israeli soldiers killing hundreds of Palestinians waiting in line for limited rations at shadowy US-backed aid distribution points known as Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), with aid still not reaching ordinary people.

“Israel has no legal authority to detain international volunteers aboard the Madleen,” said Huwaida Arraf, human rights attorney and FFC organizer, emphasizing that the attack violates international law and defies the binding orders of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to provide unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza.

“These volunteers are not subject to Israeli jurisdiction and cannot be criminalized for delivering aid or challenging an illegal blockade—their detention is arbitrary, unlawful, and must end immediately.”

Hope afloat: Freedom Flotilla ship Madleen en route to Gaza to break siege, silence

The Freedom Flotilla ship Madleen, carrying humanitarian aid and activists, sets sail for Gaza to break Israel’s blockade and global silence, a month after a drone attack on another vessel.

FFC also criticized Israel’s “total impunity,” warning that the latest aggression against the FFC follows the unpunished Israeli drone attack on the flotilla’s previous vessel, Conscience, in May.

That attack injured four civilian volunteers and left the ship disabled and burning in European waters.

“The world’s governments remained silent when Conscience was bombed. Now Israel is testing that silence again,” said Tan Safi, another FFC organizer.

“Every hour without consequences emboldens Israel to escalate its attacks on civilians, aid workers, and the very foundations of international law.”

The attack on Madleen: A timeline of events

The Madleen departed from Sicily on June 1, carrying humanitarian aid for the blockaded Gaza Strip. As the vessel neared Gaza, speculation grew about Israel’s potential response, given their previous attacks on FFC’s Conscience.

Prior to the attack, Israeli drones surrounded the Madleen, after which the FFC lost contact with those on board. The drones proceeded to spray the vessel with an unidentified white, paint-like substance.

In a video livestreamed from the boat, activist Yasemin Acar showed the white substance on the deck, saying it had been dropped on the vessel. Acar was later heard saying it was affecting her eyes.

Surveillance footage captured aboard the Madleen in the early hours of Monday shows people in the cockpit wearing orange life vests, their hands raised apprehensively as the lights of another vessel approached.

Israeli forces then boarded the Madleen. They ordered the 12 people on board to throw their phones overboard.

In an apparent propaganda attempt, they filmed themselves handing crew members sandwiches and water bottles, captioning the footage as the “selfie yacht” being stopped.

Gaza flotilla: How Gaza-bound Madleen was attacked and activists on board abducted

The Gaza-bound flotilla Madleen was violently attacked by Israeli naval forces, and activists on board were abducted, sparking international condemnation of the incident.

The illegally seized aid boat was towed to Ashdod Port. The activists, represented by the Palestinian legal center Adalah, were expected to be held at a detention facility before deportation.

Arraf told media on Monday that there had been no contact with the activists since they had been detained in the early hours of the same day.

Adalah stated that Israel had “no legal authority” to seize the ship, which was in international waters en route to the “territorial waters of the State of Palestine,” not Israeli-occupied territories.

Moreover, the abduction of 12 “unarmed activists” amounted to “a serious breach of international law,” according to rights groups.

Mainstream media reactions 

The Israeli military forcefully intercepted Madleen approximately 200km from Gaza in international waters, after warning that they would not allow the aid ship to break the blockade. 

International law grants countries sovereign rights over their territorial waters, not international waters.

At the time of the seizure, the Madleen was sailing under a United Kingdom flag. Therefore, Israel attacked sovereign UK territory in international waters.

Rights groups see the seizure of the Madleen as part of a campaign by the Israeli regime throughout the war to weaponize aid against Gaza.

Despite FFC’s reports and video footage clearly showing the aid vessel being attacked by Israeli forces in an area where they have no sovereignty, mainstream media outlets followed their usual pro-Israeli bias, regurgitating the misleading narrative provided by Israeli occupation authorities.
 

The New York Times, already embroiled in controversy over its debunked investigative report on Hamas’ use of sexual violence in its October 7 operation and other prejudiced coverage since the war on Gaza began 20 months ago, failed to mention the attack or kidnapping of activists in its headline.

The outlet avoided mentioning the Israeli regime in the headline or summary, and despite recognizing the two-decade-old blockade of Gaza, it did not attribute the responsibility for the blockade to any particular entity, in this case, the Tel Aviv regime. 
 

In another report on the incident, the outlet again refrained from using the word “attack” in the headline or anywhere in the report. Also, it did not mention the kidnapping of activists in the headline.

The lead paragraph beneath the headline attempted to rationalize and whitewash the gruesome Israeli crime by claiming it occurred because the Madleen was “breaching a naval blockade.”

However, this justification disregards the fact that the incident took place in international waters where Israel has no sovereignty, and the “naval blockade” is a euphemism for the nearly 20-year-long blockade of Gaza, which has been tightened since the devastating Gaza genocidal war began, subjecting the territory’s 2.3 million inhabitants to starvation.
 

The American news agency Associated Press also failed to mention the attack on the aid boat and the detainment of activists in its headline.

Throughout the report, the author attempted to determine whether Israel has the right to intercept a ship in international waters and if Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza is lawful and “militarily justified.”

Despite international law and rights groups consistently answering this question with a resounding “no,” the author, in discussions with so-called "experts," arrived at an unsurprising conclusion: there are allegedly “exceptions” to the laws during times of war.

Additionally, the report said the legality of Israel’s blockade of Gaza remains a topic of debate among legal experts, supposedly due to Gaza’s “unique status,” which has “complicated” the issue, parroting the Israeli regime’s falsehoods, effectively undermining the position of international law.
 

In its headline, Reuters news agency also avoided explicitly mentioning or condemning the attack by Israeli regime forces on the ship and the abduction of activists on board.

The lead paragraph further attempted to legitimize the attack by stating that the ship was “boarded and seized” as a result of its attempt to “break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.”
 

British newspaper The Guardian’s headline also stated that Israeli occupation forces “took control” of the ship without mentioning the abduction of activists.

It only noted that the crew was “held in the port” pending deportation hearings.
 

In its coverage of the Madleen incident, British state broadcaster BBC reported that the aid boat “docked” in Israeli-occupied territories, refusing to mention the crucial fact that Israeli occupation forces had raided the ship and halted its journey to the Gaza Strip by abducting its crew.
 

In two separate headlines, Sky News likewise evaded the term “attack,” instead stating that the boat was “diverted” and “brought” to the occupied territories, downplaying the illegal nature of the incident.
 

A significant omission in most reports is that the aid was confiscated. Instead, these news outlets chose to emphasize the Israeli regime’s claim that the ship carried “less than a single truckload of aid.

In doing so, they attempted to downplay the flotilla’s humanitarian objective and the importance of its mission to challenge the illegal and inhumane Israeli blockade of Gaza.

In their reports, the majority of media outlets repeated the Israeli narrative to rationalize the raid.

Assal Rad, a US-based scholar in West Asian history and social media user, took to X to express her condemnation of the global silence and lack of media attention surrounding the Madleen incident.

The seizure of the ship aims to maintain Israel’s illegal blockade and exacerbate the suffering of civilians in Gaza, she stated.

“Israeli forces are illegally seizing a humanitarian ship in international waters, to protect their illegal blockade and starvation of civilians, to continue their crimes against humanity and genocide of Gaza. Where is the global outrage, condemnations and wall-to-wall media coverage?” she wrote.

Rad criticized the media for merely parroting the statements of Israel, asserting that such actions do not constitute journalism but rather demonstrate complicity.

“Parroting the statements of a genocidal state isn’t journalism, it’s complicity.”

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