Right, so the Madleen, the vessel of the Freedom Flotilla, is now a mere 48 hours give or take from reaching the shores of Gaza. Aboard are 12 humanitarian activists, including climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, their mission being to break Israel’s aid blockade on Gaza, deliver essential supplies—food, medical kits and the like—and bear witness to the dire humanitarian crisis afflicting more than 2 million people under siege, with no foreign eyes, no foreign journalists ever having been allowed in to document the reality of life in Gaza for the Palestinian people.
Yet as the Madleen closes in, Israel has escalated its opposition. They haven’t done this via standard military tactics, they haven’t bothered with diplomatic pressure, no, they’ve done something far more depraved than that. They have sent a flotilla of their own: a boat full of their own children, to hunt down the aid ship—saying they are coming for the Madleen and bearing a truly appalling message aimed specifically at Thunberg. These children have appeared in what seems to be a state-produced video message, condemning Thunberg for her involvement and declaring Israel to be the true victim here. It is a chilling development that Israel have now moved to weaponising their own children, using them to frame Palestinians and activists as existential threats—reveals a society that has become increasingly sick, desperate, and cruel, but when you consider what these kids are taught, it is no wonder we see generation after generation of Israelis taught to hate Palestinians as they do, because its literally in their curriculum.
Right, so having departed from Sicily a little over a week ago, the Madleen set sail with a mission to take take humanitarian aid to people being denied it, or risking their lives trying to access some from distribution centres that have been turned into kill zones, to break the siege in effect. The mission is framed not as political provocation, though Israel have certainly taken it that way, but as a response to an overwhelming humanitarian emergency, one where the World Food Programme has warned that nearly everyone in Gaza is acutely malnourished, with one in five on now the brink of starvation.
En route, the Madleen demonstrated practical solidarity by rescuing four Sudanese migrants who had jumped overboard to avoid Libyan authorities. These individuals were fleeing torture and abuse—only to be picked up by the flotilla before being transferred to a Frontex vessel for safety. This rescue shows the humanitarian ethic guiding the mission: a refusal to abandon the vulnerable, it was their stated mission and their deviation was done in that same belief.
Israel however has left no ambiguity: its aid blockade is absolute, and no vessel—regardless of its humanitarian credentials—will be allowed to dock. Defence Minister Israel Katz stated the Madleen is not just unwelcome—it must be forcibly stopped, saying:
‘I Instructed the DF to prevent the ‘Madleen’ flotilla from reaching Gaza’s shores. The State of Israel will not allow anyone to breach the naval blockade on Gaza….To the anti‑Semitic Greta and her Hamas propaganda‑speaking friends—I say clearly: ‘You better turn around because you won’t reach Gaza.”’
He really is rocking that comic book supervillain vibe isn’t he?
However, more shocking than military threats is Israel's decision to deploy its own children to serve as its immoral emissaries—and propagandists. In what is a blatantly orchestrated act, not least because they filmed it of course:
Israeli propagandists releasing a video showing smiling, articulate children aboard a boat, delivering all of the political messages that echo every soundbite of adult Israeli propaganda. They accused Greta Thunberg of supporting terrorism, they claim Hamas is stealing food meant for the Palestinian people of Gaza, and challenging Thunberg to come meet Israeli children to see how they suffer—the implication being that their suffering is greater of of more importance than that of Gaza. These kids even assert that, “children always speak the truth,” but what they call truth the rest of the world see for the pack of lies that sums up Israeli Hasbara, but more on that in a moment.
There’s no escaping the imagery of using children to deliver state-sanctioned talking points here though—about terrorism, victimhood, and prejudice—that I certainly find to be deeply disturbing.
How sick must a society be that it employs its own children in such emotional warfare? It’s far worse than just an exercise in PR, because this is weaponising innocence. Israeli propagandists now putting the words of state messaging in the mouths of minors, implying that their blank slates, their innocence, validates the racist ideology of the adults. Pushing claims like “Hamas steals the food” while evidence suggests otherwise is right now a particularly desperate act of trying to keep on manipulating the narrative: Israel has now admitted that it is behind Daesh-aligned gangs responsible for looting aid intended for Gaza—a confession made amid public accusations from opposition leader Avigdor Lieberman aimed at Netanyahu himself. An excerpt from France 24’s coverage of this story reads:
‘Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel is supporting an armed group in Gaza that opposes the militant group Hamas, following comments by a former minister that Israel had transferred weapons to it.
Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the group Israel has been working with is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab.
The European Council on Foreign Relations (EFCR) think tank describes Abu Shabab as the leader of a "criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks".’
It’s a known fact now therefore that Israel is behind the aid thefts in Gaza.
Even more heart-wrenching is the video’s taunt to Thunberg: “Will you bring food to the hostages held in Gaza?”
Well, if you cut off aid for three months, so that everyone in Gaza are literally starving—victims of Israel’s blockade and siege, that will surely include the hostages too? How is Israel’s blockade helping to get them back therefore?
These propagandised child performers echo all the usual reinforced messaging: Hamas steals the food, Palestine coddles terrorists, Israel’s victims have it worse and deserve global solidarity. If you aren’t on Israel’s side you’re on the wrong side of history. When children chant such lines, they lose their innocence—and become vessels of propaganda. The state's choice to cultivate such messaging in children reflects a systematic entrenchment of hate, not tribute to innocence.
This spectacle is not an isolated novelty either. Dissenting Israeli scholars have long documented how the education system systematically indoctrinates fear and hatred of Palestinians. In 2019, British investigative reporter Asa Winstanley reported on widespread negative stereotypes in Israeli textbooks—depicting Arabs as violent, underdeveloped, and irrational. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, an Israeli scholar, notably argues that Israeli schoolbooks portray Palestinians as subhuman: a foundation for later violence during military service.
In her influential book ‘Palestine in Israeli Schoolbooks’, Peled-Elhanan highlights how Palestinian figures are associated—not with complex humanity—but with crime, violence, or fanaticism. The message, repeated daily in schools is therefore: Palestinians threaten Jewish existence.
When these children—products of that style of education—board boats or address global audiences, they speak well-rehearsed lines. They don’t speak truths—they speak regurgitated propaganda.
Israel has institutionalised propaganda. High school students are required to pass an online government propaganda course before being permitted to travel abroad—in effect reinforcing a Zionist, anti-Palestinian worldview. Not just imposed on Jews either, Palestinian citizens have to learn and pass this course as well.
By the age of 18, Israeli youths will have been shaped into a worldview that equates Palestinian existence with existential threat. They mobilise not just mentally, but physically, into IDF conscription—therefore building on a military brand built on hate, fear, and dominance that repeats generation after generation.
Israel's official narrative centres on the Holocaust—a historical trauma that demands global empathy, absolutely rightly so too, but even this is weaponised in Israeli propaganda. As the historian Yehuda Bauer has warned, an unwavering Holocaust identity can be weaponised. With no modern Nazis to target, Zionist discourse has redirected Jewish fear toward Palestinians—framed them as the new Nazis, framing them as wanting the eradication of Jewish people and therefore teaching that they are engaged in wanting genocide against Jewish people.
From a young age propaganda is percolated into school memory, textbooks, and civic education. Instead of acknowledging Palestinian suffering, the Nakba, illegal Jewish occupation, Israel emphasises Jewish victimhood—teahes that the Nakba is a lie, as we’ve seen Zionists often repeat, not least here in the UK, it having been uttered by the Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, but this then validates any violent or even nondemocratic behaviour against Palestinians as acts of necessity, as being what they deserve, as Jewish self-defence. Children learn one story: Jews suffered. Therefore any action—blockade, occupation, collective punishment—becomes justified.
The Madleen must be seen not just as a humanitarian voyage, but as a deliberate political challenge to Israel's enforced siege. Israel responded militarily to previous flotillas—damaging the Conscience with drones last month as a for instance. Now, with the Madleen, it has crafted a new response: emotional, moral, from the mouths of babes, feigned innocence, because the Madleen is too high profile perhaps to target directly. The state hopes these children will undercut public sympathy by presenting a veneer of innocence: “Look, even our children are suffering,” But they aren’t suffering like the children of Gaza are and we’ve seen the images that don’t lie, unlike the regurgitated propaganda Israeli kids are coming out with.
Yet the Madleen remains steadfast: unarmed, transparent, and law-abiding. Greta and the crew pledge to document and expose any interception or aggression. They refuse to let Israeli state narratives—broadcast even by children—define their operation.
Nurit Peled-Elhanan and other dissident Israelis have concluded that Israel’s settler-colonialism can’t meaningfully reform itself. Its education, media, civic institutions, and identity are interwoven with supremacist narratives. True democratisation—let alone equality with Palestinians—will only come via external pressure: boycotts, sanctions, and international solidarity. Israel is incapable of fixing itself without external intervention and coming from their own people, that’s damning, but far more believable than the messaging coming from these children on their boat.
Peled-Elhanan warns that Israel’s future depends on whether its privileged Jewish population will willingly relinquish dominance. She draws historical parallels to white South Africa: apartheid collapsed not because the oppressor reformed but because the world refused to finance and legitimise it. Many Israelis supported what was seen in apartheid South Africa because they identified with it, because they are the same.
The Madleen offers a potential pressure point. Its journey is slow, but visible, it’s high profile and transparent. It shines a spotlight on the siege as much as on Israeli brutality. It demands moral accountability from governments and global citizens alike: Who will speak for Gaza’s starving children?
Well even now Israel are trying to silence them. The latest news on the Madleen is that Israel has successfully hacked the Madleen’s tracker, which many of us have been using to track the vessel’s position, and extended the red line showing the vessel’s movements to show the Madleen as being in the Jordanian capital of Amman. Having checked the tracker myself again at time of writing, it appears this may have been resolved, the Madleen being just off the Egyptian coast, almost south of Cyprus and RAF Akrotiri, the Madleen being British flagged could do with some UK support, but Keir Starmer and UK foreign secretary David Lammy haven’t mentioned the Madleen once, but any attack on it by Israel, will be a governmental failure on their part.
The Madleen’s voyage is more than an aid mission—it’s a moral vessel, exposing an apartheid strategy built on siege, brainwashing, and propaganda. Israel’s response—particularly the use of children to deliver what is basically state messaging—reveals an unprecedented desperation: a state so ideologically strapped that it’ll use its own children to defend its crimes.
If we care about justice, human dignity, and truth, we must recognise these children not as innocent voices of suffering but as witnesses to a system that uses indoctrination as a weapon. They are victims, but not in the way they are taught to be. We must support the Madleen, now as they approach Gaza most of all, not just for its challenge to Israel, but for its hope—a hope that resilience, compassion, and solidarity can pierce through this fog of war and fear and propaganda.
BDS worked to deal with apartheid South Africa, it is needed for Israel too, and to prove it does work, Israel have been dealt a heavy blow that might will hopefully now ground some of its air military operations and its something ordinary working class people here in the UK have managed to bring about. Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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