![People holding Palestinian flags and banners take part in a protest against Israel’s interception of the aid ship ‘Madleen’ in Toronto, Ontario on June 9, 2025. [Mert Alper Dervış - Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/AA-20250610-38234242-38234236-PROTEST_IN_TORONTO_TO_CONDEMN_ISRAELS_INTERCEPTION_OF_AID_SHIP_MADLEEN.jpg?fit=920%2C613&ssl=1)
“All the passengers of the ‘selfie yacht’ are safe and unharmed. They were provided with sandwiches and water. The show is over,” Israel’s Foreign Ministry posted on X. The images of Israeli commandos handing out packets of sandwiches and bottles of water to the 12 activists on board the Madleen was prominent on social media. But the activists were not starving, unlike the Palestinian people under siege and genocide in Gaza.
If Israel intended this purportedly humanitarian gesture to strike a chord, it did, albeit not in the way the settler-colonial entity expected. Israel’s accomplishment was to consolidate global attention on depriving Palestinians of humanitarian aid in Gaza.
The Madleen, Israel’s Foreign Ministry stated, had “less than a single truckload of aid”, while Israel allowed “more than 1,200 aid trucks” to pass into Gaza from Israel in the last two weeks, in addition to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. If Israel wants statistics, in January 2025 the World Health Organisation estimated that up to 600 trucks per day would be needed to start alleviating the humanitarian deprivation caused by Israel in Gaza.
Israel does not seem to understand protest or symbolism. Far from being unsuccessful, the voyage exposed the routine blockade which diplomats speak about in the most detached manner possible. On one hand, we see a measured response – one that is guaranteed no diplomatic backlash from the international community. But in the background, and one that is now ingrained in the world’s psyche, the genocide continues. Which means that Israel’s reaction to the Madleen only shifts attention back to Gaza, where the danger is Israel itself, not a boat containing trickle of aid that exposed various levels of state violence in Israeli diplomacy. Because there is violence in silence and that violence will speak back in the international community’s complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Sandwiches and water for activists who had their own provisions, starvation and mercenary humanitarian aid in Gaza. Israel is both a façade and a reality. This time, the façade exposed the reality. Because while the footage has generated more than enough ridicule, the anger at Israel’s genocide and starvation in Gaza has been refuelled. No one will forget that while Israel was lauding the GHF, the food distribution sites became sniper hubs. And of course, no one will forget how Israel determined to starve Palestinians since the start of the genocide.
The reactions to genocide are playing out on several levels. World leaders have done nothing to stop Israel, but everything in their power to allow the settler-colonial entity to succeed – speaking of humanitarian aid while supplying weapons. Civilian attention is largely focused on the Palestinians, further etching the dissonance between the people and world leaders. Palestinians are facing the weight of almost the entire world against their existence, because Israel does not operate in a vacuum.
Starvation is tangible, no matter how much Israel and the international community try to normalise it as happened with settlement expansion. Israel’s interception of the Madleen imprinted a major dissonance into the people brain – colonialism determines who is worthy of food. Even activists attempting to reach Gaza are worthy of food. Palestinians are not.
As a land convoy heads to Gaza in another symbolic mission to break the siege, it is clear that the people are stepping in where international governance will not.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.