Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily oas it's Wednesday, the eleventh of June. I'm Emma Gillespie.
I'm beliefit.
Simon's an AID ship sailing to Gaza was intercepted by Israel this week and its passengers, including Greta Tunberg, claimed they had been kidnapped. Israel said it was providing consular assistance to facilitate the deportation of the crew of what it called a selfie yacht to return to their home countries. In today's deep Dive, we are going to explain what's going on with this story and take you through the
latest developments. It's dominated headlines, especially over a long weekend for the rest of us here at home, so we want to take you through it today.
And like you said, this has dominated global headlines over the long weekend. It was absolutely everywhere on Monday when the crew members claimed that they had been kidnapped. It is a complex one. Let's start with the ship at the center of it all. What do we need to know about that?
Yes, so we're talking about a ship called the Madeleine, which departed southern Italy on the first of June. It was carrying medical supplies and food bound for Gaza. Now, the ship is led by an organization called the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. It's an activist group that says it's campaigning for freedom of movement for all Palestinians and quote to end Israel's Gaza blockade, which it calls illegal.
So they were carrying AID, right, Yeah, exactly, and that is in light of this blockade that you mentioned. What do we need to know about the blockade?
Yes, So this all stems back to the ceasefire deal that you might remember was agreed between Hamas and Israel back in January. Now, that ceasefire was meant to have three phases, and the first phase end on the first of March. Now, negotiations for the remaining phases have been ongoing for months, but in the meantime, Israel had blocked AID from reaching Gaza. Now, this was in a move
that's been condemned by UN agencies. International governments, including Australia and Israel, said the blockade was to pressure Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages who are still being held in Gaza. On the note of a delivery to Gaza. It defended the amount of aid flowing into Gaza in
recent days. It's claimed that more than twelve hundred AID trucks have entered the strip from Israel within the past two weeks, and in addition to those deliveries, it said that close to eleven million meals have been issued directly to civilians through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation the GHF. Now that is a US and Israeli backed NGO.
Okay, So this blockade started in March when the ceasefire ended. What has happened since then?
So since then we've seen this global criticism of the blockade itself. The World Health Organization says the entire population of Gaza, two point one million people, is now facing prolonged food shortages, with nearly half a million people in what the WHO call a quote catastrophic situation of hunger,
acute maltrition, starvation, illness, and death. It says three quarters of Gaza's population are in emergency or catastrophic food deprivation, and the UN has labeled Israel's decision to block aid as a quote cruel collective punishment of Palestinians, and it says that AID should never be a bargaining.
Chip okay, and what about the Freedom Flotilla Coalition the FFC, when did they get involved.
So as this kind of at tension within the global community ramped up, as I mentioned, this flotilla announced it was preparing a vessel to sail to Gaza with AID on board, and the FFC said its ship, the Madeline, which was aimed in twenty fifteen after quote Gaza's only fisher woman at the time, a symbol of resistance and resilience. It's not the first vessel that's been sent by the FFC, or has been attempted to be sent by the FFC
to Gaza. The group actually sent an AID ship called the Conscience in early May, which it said was attacked by Israeli drones in international waters off the coast of Malta. So the FFC called the bombing quote a deliberate act of aggression and intimidation. Four crew members were injured. It says the ship was set ablaze, communications were severed and
the vessel was left adrift and taking on water. The group said the attack occurred in European waters, which was in violation of international law where the ship remains stranded.
So this is another ship called Conscience that is completely separate to the one we're talking about today that has Credit Tumberg on it.
Yep, but same organization, so same activist group, same sort of attempt to s ship aid into.
Gaza, right, but that was also blocked.
Yes, that was blocked and essentially destroyed.
Got it, Okay? So then let's talk about the latest AID ship that it sent. The Madleene is what it's called. What do we know about its journey and who was on board? We know that Greta Tunberg was on board.
Right exactly. So the next attempt by this group, since the Conscience ship was attacked, it says by Israeli drones, was this Madeleine journey to deliver aid to Gaza. It actually started making headlines well before it began its journey, and that's largely because of some of its high profile passengers. As you've mentioned, Billy all Up, there were twelve volunteers
from multiple countries on the Madeleine. It set sail from Sicily on the first of June, so that included with climate justice activist Greta Tunberg, but there was also a high profile politician, a French Palestinian woman named Rema Hassan. She's actually a member of the European Parliament. So when Tunberg announced that she was going to be one of the twelve passengers sailing to Gaza on this ship, she said she felt compelled to join out of moral obligation
to fight for a free Palestine. She added, quote, we are seeing a systematic starvation of two million people. The world cannot be silent bystanders, and so Greta Tunberg a very high profile voice in the climate activism space. Once she was on board, then the headlines kind of followed and people really started paying attention to this particular journey.
I was going to say, maybe we should have explained this earlier, but for those I'm sure many people are familiar with Greta Tunberg. She rose to fame at a very early age for her activism, particularly in the environmental space, and now into adulthood, she has also continued that activism into other areas, including human rights. Exactly when we say that the ship was carrying aid cargo, what exactly does that mean?
Yes, so the FFC said, specifically, the ship is carrying what it's called urgently needed supplies for the people in Gaza, and that includes a whole range of items from baby formula to flower rice, nappy's, women's sanitary products, water desalination kits, and a range of medical supplies ranging from crutches to prosthetics. I do think it is important to flag here that we're not talking about a huge cargo ship. If you've seen images of the boat, it's a pretty small sail ship.
The amount of aid it was carrying, though, has been described as symbolic by the group, So it's not suggesting that the supplies it has on board will be sufficient to reach those in needing Gaza. But it's about, they say, drawing attention to this humanitarian crisis in Gaza, protesting the Israeli blockade. So the ship is as much of a protest as it is an aid delivery, I suppose.
And we're going to keep talking about this, but first here is a quick message from ours consor. We know that it never reached its destination. Though what happened It was on Monday Australia time.
Yes, so on Sunday local time we heard from Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz. He said that he had instructed the Israeli Defense Forces the IDF to quote take whatever measures are necessary to stop what he called a hate flotilla from reaching Gaza, then the flotilla itself. So those on board the passengers shared a series of posts to
social media. They said that drones were spotted flying over the Madeleine as it approached Gaza, and footage shared from the ship shows a white substance being sprayed on its windows. There's videos of the passengers on board the ship throwing their phones overboard, and we can see the IDF boarding the vessel, and the FFC has since posted a series
of pre recorded videos from its passengers. Now there's a range of these videos, but they call on viewers to pressure their governments to pressure foreign ministries in countries like Spain, France, Brazil home countries to some of these passengers to keep those on board safe. Had also among those videos a statement from Greta Tunberg. She posted a video urging the Swedish government she is Swedish, to call for her release. Here's a little bit of what was said in that video.
If you see this video, we have been intercepted and kidnapped in international waters by the Israeli occupational forces or forces that support Israel, and so her account posted that. But we know that she herself didn't post that. It would have been someone with access to her social media.
Yes, so these were pre recorded statements, I suppose, you know, knowing the danger of what they were getting involved in, the crew kind of preempted a need to have some kind of a statement ready to go. But the organization the flotilla itself said that the ship was quote attacked slash forcibly intercepted by the Israeli military in international waters. It said the ship was unlawfully boarded and its unarmed civilian crew was abducted, while the life saving cargo was confiscated.
Israel immediately put out photos and videos of what had happened on this ship. How did they respond to these claims that they had kidnapped these crew members.
Yes, so we have heard a lot from both sides involved in this incident. It was Monday morning for us here in Australia when we got this statement from Israel's Foreign Ministry. When that came through, it said, quote the selfie yacht of the celebrities was safely making its way to the shores of Israel. It said the passengers were expected to return to their home countries. This was a really strongly worded statement kind of condemning the action of
the crew and its goal. It called the videos an attempted publicity stunt over less than a single truckload of aid and said there are ways to deliver aid to the Gaza strip they do not involve Instagram selfies. And Israel also posted a video showing the passengers on a small boat being given sandwiches and water, and there was a photo of Tunberg in that kind of release of comments.
Can you just really quickly explain so earlier we mentioned that there was this blockade, but Israel is saying that there has been some aid that has been delivered to Gaza.
Yes, So this has been kind of a huge point of contention in the global community, and we talked about it on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. So, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that I mentioned, they are backed by Israel, backed by US, and the idea is that they should be from Israel's perspective, responsible for the distribution of aid in Gaza, a centralized organization to be responsible
for handing out aid from for kind of centralized aid agencies. Now, the criticism has been that those aid centers are not necessarily conveniently located for the two million people of Gaza, that there is a lot of starvation, that there are people who are nursing serious injuries without medical care, and that they will not physically be able to get to those aid centers. There are concerns about the fact that these centers are manned by a military presence, that there's
facial recognition technology. That's some of the allegations, that there are privacy concerns. So that's its own kind of set of issues and seat of kind of conversation mounting on the other side of this. But Israel and the United States, it's closest to ally have defended that organization as distributing adequate aid in the region.
At the moment, what do we know about these twelve crew members. Since the IDF intercepted the ship.
So late on Monday night local time, Israeli authorities said that the boat it continued to call it the selfie yacht, had docked at Ashdod Port. Now, that's a main cargo port near the city of Tel Aviv, about forty kilometers south of Tel Aviv, and Israel said the passengers were undergoing medical exams to ensure they were in good health. So that was that update, and then about six hours later we got another update confirming that the passengers had
all been taken to the International airport in Tel Aviv. There, Israel's Foreign Ministry says they were met by diplomatic representatives each from their home countries, and the Foreign Ministry said that some passengers were pretty much expected to leave within hours. However, it noted that anyone who refused to sign deportation documents, so anyone who refused to leave Israel voluntarily, would be brought before a judicial authority in accordance with Israeli law
to authorize their deportation. So essentially they would launch legal proceedings to forcibly remove these people from Israel. Now, the Defense Minister of Israel, Israel Katz, congratulated the IDF for what he called quote the quick and safe takeover of the Madeleine flotilla to prevent them from breaking the blockade
and reaching the shores of Gaza. He also wrote in a post to x that it was important to show Greta Tunberg and the other passengers quote exactly who the Hamas terrorist organization they came to support, is, saying he had instructed the IDF to show the flotilla passengers quote the video of the horrors of the October seven massacre when they arrived at the port of Ashdod.
And have we heard from anyone on the flotilla about these updates?
So we haven't heard from the passengers themselves yet at the time of recording, but we have received kind of rolling updates from the FFC as they have kind of emerged. So when we get responses from Israel, we've typically also heard from the FFC. They've both been pretty active in their communication about this incident and the movement of the passengers.
The FFC said the passengers are expected to be moved to a detention facility unless they agree to leave immediately, so that lines up with what we heard from the Foreign Ministry in Israel. FFC lawyers said, though, quote, we're talking about people who were sailing in international orders and then Israel basically captured them and abducted them into Israel. We continue to demand the immediate release of all volunteers and the return of the stole and aid their detention
is unlawful and a violation of international law. So the group is continuing claims that the actions of the IDF and of the Israeli government are unlawful, and I'm sure we will hear more on that in the coming weeks.
As wev said, this is an international story, particularly because many of the crew members are from all sorts of different countries. What has the response from the international community, bin.
Yes, so there are a range of countries involved. As you mentioned, Billy, half of the crew though are French citizens, and that includes the eu MP who we mentioned earlier in the episode, and authorities in France say that they did warn the passengers on board the flotilla of the risks that they were exposing themselves to The French Foreign Minister has also said since this incident that he's been assured by Israel that the crew would receive consular assistance
when they arrived in Tel Aviv. Sweden, where Greta Tunberg is from, said it's monitoring the situation closely. In terms of response from the United Nations. Before the trip, the UN actually said that it was seriously concerned for the
passenger's safety. It said as the Freedom Flotilla coalition's ship approaches its destination, Israel must adhere to international law and comply with orders from the International Court of Justice to ensure unimpeded access for humanitarian aid, so making its position on the plight of the flotilla pretty clear there. Now, since the ship was intercepted, we have heard from Francesca Albanesi. She works for UNRA, which is the UN agency that
works with Palestine and Palestinian refugees. She has urged other boats to challenge Israel's Gaza blockade, so she's essentially calling on more boats to do what the Madeleine was attempting to do. In a post to X, she said Madeleine's journey may have ended, but the mission isn't over. Every Mediterranean port must send boats with aid and solidarity to Gaza. Now, at the time of recording, we are awaiting news on the movements of all twelve passengers, but we do know
that Greta Tunberg has departed Israel. Photos emerged on Tuesday evening posted by Israel's Foreign Ministry on X saying that she had just departed Israel on a flight to Sweden via France. Reports say she was placed on the flights after signing deportation papers and was traveling on her own without an escort. But we will continue to bring you updates as this story on folds.
Yes, we'll definitely be keeping an eye and like you said, we will bring any updates to the podcast in our headlines podcasts in the afternoons. M thank you so much for walking us through that. Thank you, and thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Daily Oz. We'll be back again this afternoon with your evening headlines, but until then, have a great day. My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calcottin woman
from Gadigal Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and torrest Rate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.