A Face to Launch a Thousand Ships

My response to the IDF's scuppering of the Madleen and the abduction of the 12 activists on board

Screen shot from news article

Just when my rage and disgust at the world, and people in general, have rendered me heartsick and speechless, good ol’ Israel comes to my rescue.

At 3:02 this morning, valorous IDF commandos raided, attacked, seized, intercepted, unlawfully boarded—choose any word from various reports—the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s Madleen in international waters approximately 160 kilometers from Gaza’s shores, and abducted, kidnapped, arrested, detained, rescued—once again, choose any word—Greta Thunberg and the other 11 activists onboard. (Please note that the captives were hospitably provided with plastic-wrapped [bologna?] sandwiches and water!) Defense Minister Israel Katz promptly ordered for the benefit of his wayward guests a private screening of footage from October 7 to be shown upon their safe and sound arrival at Ashdod Port.

“Antisemitic Greta and her Hamas-supporting friends should see exactly what the Hamas terrorist organisation - which they came to support and act on behalf of - truly is,” Katz is reported as saying in a SkyNews article¹. “They should see the atrocities committed against women, the elderly, and children, and understand whom Israel is fighting to defend itself.”

I guess this is exactly what uppity celebrities like Greta Thunberg, Yasemin Acar, and Rima Hassan get when they dare to make “unauthorized attempts to breach the blockade” that are “dangerous, unlawful, and undermine ongoing humanitarian efforts.” If sitting through hours of Hamas’ atrocities on a big screen won’t teach these troublemakers a life-changing lesson about the true nature of justice, I don’t know what would, do you?

Apparently, the naughty kids will be returned (IsraeliSpeak for “deported”) to their home countries, according to Israel’s foreign ministry, and the humanitarian aid aboard the ship transferred to Gaza through “established channels”. Which means in hasbara terms that all food, medicine, baby formula, etc. will end up either in the hands of criminal gangs or dumped forthwith into the sea. As for the activists, I would’ve thought that Israel would spirit them off to Sde Teiman prison in order to pressure Hamas to release the last Israeli hostages. But then, you never know. Katz, Netanyahu, et al just might be having a rare twinge of concern about reactions from the international community. Wouldn’t that be a switch from having never given a flying fuck about the international community or international humanitarian law!

I can only hope that Greta and her accomplices have the audacity to ask Mr. Katz where in the October 7 footage are the marauding, murderous Palestinian babies, toddlers, young girls and boys, their mothers, sister and brothers, their grandparents and great grandparents? Where in this horror flick is Hamas dropping 2,000-pound bombs from fighter jets, employing drones, and firing shells from tanks? How many residential buildings, hospitals, medical centres, schools, universities, synagogues, bakeries, markets, farms, desalination and sewage plants is Hamas obliterating before their very eyes? How much of this footage has been cut, pasted, doctored and AI-generated? And how does a single, partial day’s footage compare to the voluminous live-streamed records of Israel’s 611-day genocidal attack on Gaza? Just who the hell does this man think he’s trying to hoodwink?

Then again, what can we expect from a country that is the world’s spoiled child and holy terror, from the most despicable and degenerate society on the planet, from an army of rabid attack dogs but outrage after outrage, crime after crime, atrocity after atrocity? What else can we expect from the Western media figures but feeble, knee-jerk accusations of antisemitism against activists who have more moral backbone in their baby toes than these Zionist propagandists have in their whole bodies? And what else can we expect from the international community but to stand there with their mouths open, their eyes blinking at the ground and their hands in their pockets?

Leave it to Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories to say the very best thing: “Madleen's journey may have ended, but the mission isn’t over. Every Mediterranean port must send boats with aid and solidarity to Gaza.”

Homer’s Illiad has it that the beauty of Helen of Troy launched a thousand ships. May Greta’s courage, and the bravery of her comrades, send convoys, armadas, and flotillas of aid Gaza’s way!

Bust of Helen of Troy

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1. FYI, I do not subscribe to SkyNews; I just happened to see this article first.