You – have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words, and yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering, people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?
– Greta Thunberg, UN Climage Action Speech, September 23, 2019
The first sailing ship to Gaza recently, ‘Conscience’, was bombed by Israel. It could not thereby sail with food and aid. In 2010, Israeli commandos killed 10 people on a Turkish ship, the ‘Mavi Marmara’; it was leading a small flotilla towards Gaza.
So where are they, 12 of them, bravehearts, Greta and her comrades?
Madleen, the Freedom Flotila, has been kidnapped by the killing machine of Israel. A picture shows an armed soldier with bread and water, with a defiant Greta, half-smiling, facing him.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said via a spokesperson that footage of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks will be screened for the Madleen crew after they reach 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,” he said. “They should see the atrocities committed against women, the elderly, and children, and understand whom Israel is fighting to defend itself.”
Born in Stockholm, she was first sensitized about global warming when she was just about eight. Reports say that she had bouts of depression when she was 11. Her father, Svante Thunberg, an actor, said: “She stopped talking… she stopped going to school.” (BBC, May 9, 2024).
She was soon after diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism. Her mother, Malena Ernman, an opera singer, said she became “much happier” once she decided to engage with the issue. She said that she became a kind of “superpower” once she was diagnosed with autism. Being ‘different’ became a ‘gift’.
In August 2018, when she was 15, Greta skipped school and began a solitary protest outside the Swedish Parliament. She held a placard which said, ‘Skolstrejk för klimatet’ (School Strike for Climate).
Her solo protest sparked a spontaneous movement — a global campaign on climate change — ‘Fridays for Future’. And who were her first supporters?
Enlightened students, including from schools, from across the world. Many of them decided to skip school on Fridays, in solidarity with the campaign.
In April 2019, she told the European Parliament, “Our house is falling apart and our leaders need to start acting accordingly, because at the moment they are not.”
A few months later, she went on a two-week trip across the Atlantic Ocean, campaigning for her cause. Time magazine reported that she was given a warm welcome when she arrived in New York. There were high school students with hand-made signs. “The students broke into chants as the sailboat slowly pulled into the marina in Lower Manhattan: ‘Sea levels are rising and so are we!‘There is no Planet B!’”
ALSO READ: God! Don’t Break Our Hearts
“It is insane that a 16-year-old would have to cross the Atlantic Ocean to make a stand,” Greta said in a press conference.
At the UN Climate Action Meet, she said: “I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet, you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”
“World leaders have held 26 COPs. They have had decades of blah, blah, blah — and where has that got us?” This was again Greta speaking in Glasgow, in a youth protest, in 2021.
Nominated every year for the Noble Peace Prize from 2019 to 2023, clearly, the young had found an inspirational icon, an indefatigable, dogged and visionary role model.
Then she was 16. Now she is 22. Small, stoic, frail, gutsy, resilient, determined, with a ready smile. Her strength of character is transparent. She smiles easily, even as she risks her life. Her comrades in Madleen, from different countries, also smile easily. They are not afraid. No, not at all.
She stands on the edge of the deck, holding the sail, inhaling the sea wind. Her images, her quotes, her dogged resistance, her clarity of vision, her compassion for the people of Gaza, her anger and angst at the non-stop mass killings, and systematic starvation of the people, bombed and shot dead while standing in queue for food, her disgust at the world leaders, especially in the West, for being complicit in this genocide — Greta has spoken her heart out, and the world has listened — in rapt attention.
Madleen, sailing towards Gaza via the great ancient city of Alexandria, became a floating platform of resistance and hope. A symbol of defiance and justice.
Now, in a pre-recorded message, she has said that they have been abducted by the notorious Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Reports indicate that before the ‘abduction’ a chemical substance was thrown on the ship – which created itchiness in the eyes.
The Israeli foreign ministry has tried sarcasm: “The ‘selfie yacht’ of the ‘celebrities’ is safely making its way to the shores of Israel. The passengers are expected to return to their home countries. They were provided with sandwiches and water. The show is over.”
The show, indeed, is not over. It has just begun.
Rima Hassan, member of the European Parliament, on board Madleen, had a message, and it is all over social media: “If our boat is intercepted and stopped, I don’t want to hear excuses, everyone to the streets! We will not turn back! We are continuing on our path.”
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was on the phone with the crew during their detention. “Madleen must be released immediately,” she said in a post on X. “Breaking the siege is a legal duty for states, and a moral imperative for all of us… Every Mediterranean port should send boats with aid, solidarity, and humanity to Gaza. They shall sail together—united, they will be unstoppable.”
All over the world (barring India, of course) mass protests have erupted, including in Tel Aviv. Hundreds have marched in Tel Aviv, Al Jazeera reported, holding candles, with pictures of the dead children of Gaza.
Stockholm, London, Holland and elsewhere, people are on the streets. In thousands. In Geneva, they have made a huge water fountain with the colours of the Palestinian flag. Inside football stadiums, Palestinian flags are fluttering with chants of ‘Stop the starvation, stop the genocide’.
On campus after campus in the US, students are denouncing the Israeli regime at their graduation ceremonies. Those who are arrested, are refusing to succumb — many more are joining in protest, unafraid of the notorious ICE, the latest Repressive State Apparatus of Donald Trump.
Spain, Columbia, Ireland, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, nation after nation is asking for a total boycott of Israel (not India, surely). As many as 14 nations in the UN Security Council have sought a ceasefire, with a lone America vetoing it. France, Germany, UK — their governments there are under intense pressure.
Dock workers in the West have refused to load deadly weapons bound for Israel. Jews across the world, including Orthodox Jews in Israel, are standing up against the relentless killings. Hollywood actors have signed statements in support (Bollywood etc, well…).
Doctors in the US have protested inside the hospital, despite warnings by the police that they will be arrested. One female doctor shouted, “If you starve children, they just die.” Doctors are risking their lives and reaching Gaza, despite most hospitals having been bombed, especially targeting pregnant women, mothers, and just-born children.
Greta and her comrades have resurrected infinite optimism. And the will to fight back! Their message has reached the nooks and corners of the world. This grotesque dance of death and enforced starvation must end. Now!
Many more Madleens must now sail for the Mediterranean shores of Gaza. And many more Gretas will now be holding placards, in angst and anger, asking: How Dare You?
