This morning, Israeli authorities captured the aid boat Madleen, halting its mission to Gaza. Just hours before it was intercepted we spoke to Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament who was aboard the vessel.
Via Freedom Flotilla Coalition, June 9, 2025, 11:25am ET:
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Early this morning, activists aboard the Madleen announced that their aid boat had been intercepted by Israeli forces and the passengers “kidnapped.” While the British-flagged vessel, operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FCC), seeks to draw attention to Gazans’ suffering, Israeli authorities have repeatedly sought to delegitimize the activists’ intentions and referred to the boat as a “selfie yacht” carrying “celebrities.”
They now claim that the passengers will be sent back to their home countries, but not before, as hard-line defense minister Israel Katz announced, forcing them to watch footage of the October 7 attacks. For now, attempts to contact the passengers have proven futile.
The Madleen set sail from Italy on June 1 with a clear mission: to break Israel’s blockade and deliver aid to starving civilians in Gaza. On board were twelve activists from across Europe who chose direct action in order to draw more attention to the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Palestine, which their governments have failed to address in any meaningful way. One of those passengers is French Palestinian member of European Parliament Rima Hassan, elected in June 2024 as a representative of the left-wing movement La France Insoumise.
Just hours before the Israelis intercepted the Madleen and arrested Hassan, she spoke with journalist Hanno Hauenstein about her motivations for joining the mission, the political backlash in France, and how she deals with the personal risks her Palestine advocacy entails.
Hanno Hauenstein
You’ve been outspoken about Palestine. What motivated you to board this ship?
Rima Hassan
It’s been a year since I was elected to the European Parliament, and I’ve been very engaged on the Palestinian question. But we see that things aren’t moving fast enough. It’s been more than fourteen months since United Nations actors denounced the genocide in Gaza, and we still haven’t seen sanctions or similar measures to stop it. For me, joining this action is about coherence with what I stand for. Also, this action is very powerful. It mobilizes lots of citizens and carries very strong symbolism.
Hanno Hauenstein
A previous aid boat was bombed in May. Others have been killed trying to break the Gaza blockade. How do you deal with this risk to your life?
Rima Hassan
We are all very aware of the risks. Our main concern is precisely that kind of attack we saw on May 2 in Malta. The last ship was larger, and thankfully no one was killed or injured. Our boat is much smaller. A single drone strike could make the boat sink. But we’re prepared. We had several days of training before departure, and we continue to train daily on board. There were several nights when drones were nearby, so we enacted a full-on emergency protocol: putting on life jackets, preparing to jump into the sea.
Hanno Hauenstein
Was it a conscious decision to make this mission so public?
Rima Hassan
The last crew chose discretion, hoping it would help them. But they were attacked anyway. So, we did the opposite: we informed the media, we tried to mobilize public opinion, and maintained visibility to pressure Israel not to attack us.
Hanno Hauenstein
Your ship rescued migrants at sea. What exactly happened?
Rima Hassan
It was a very intense moment. We received a distress call relayed by Frontex, telling us our ship was the closest one to a migrant boat in need. So, we changed course and sailed for two hours toward Libya. Under maritime law, it’s an obligation to rescue people at sea in distress.
When we arrived, we found the migrants on a boat whose engine hadn’t worked for two days. When the coast guards arrived to take the migrants back, four people jumped into the sea. We couldn’t let them drown. They stayed a few hours with us on board. They were fed and examined by a doctor from our team. Eventually, Frontex picked them up and brought them to Greece.
Hanno Hauenstein
Critics say your mission is purely symbolic and won’t deliver any real aid into Gaza. How do you respond to this?
Rima Hassan
We’re aware, as are our critics, that our contribution is symbolic in relation to the immense humanitarian needs. The UN said that around 500 aid trucks per day are necessary for Gaza. We obviously don’t have 500 trucks on board. We have a small load.
Hanno Hauenstein
What are the things you are carrying on the boat?
Rima Hassan
Over 250 kilograms of rice, 100 kilos of flour, 600 units of infant milk, hygiene products for women, medicine, crutches. We do what we can. The mission is deeply political. The goal is to make Gaza accessible for aid. Especially now, as famine is being orchestrated by the Israeli regime, we see it as our responsibility to act. It’s not a journey for fun or adventure. We do this to fill a political vacuum left by the inaction of states. We’re denouncing the complicity of those states.
Hanno Hauenstein
What’s the atmosphere like on board day to day?
Rima Hassan
We want to humanize this mission. We try to stay in good spirits — we cook together, clean together, maintain the ship. It helps us stay focused. We want people following our journey to see who we are and how we live on this ship. We’re also constantly monitoring the news, especially from Israeli and international authorities. Ten UN special rapporteurs recently called on states to assist us in reaching Gaza, citing international law. We’re not the ones violating the law.
Hanno Hauenstein
Israel has accused the mission of supporting terrorism. How do you respond to that?
Rima Hassan
Israel isn’t a reliable interlocutor. For more than a year and a half — and before — Israeli representatives have labeled anyone who criticizes its policies as a terrorist or an antisemite. They accused the UN of antisemitism. They accused the Pope of antisemitism. Even Emmanuel Macron. It’s a war of propaganda.
The accusations against us are part of a broader disinformation campaign. Our response is to speak the language of international law. International law says the blockade is illegal, that ethnic cleansing and genocide are taking place, and that we have a right to deliver humanitarian aid.
Hanno Hauenstein
How do you assess the role of European countries like France and Germany?
Rima Hassan
European states are complicit — or at best passive. This isn’t something new. We can trace it back to the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the colonial partitioning of the region. Under the British Mandate, some of my own family members were imprisoned and killed. Macron may speak of recognizing Palestine, but France continues military cooperation with Israel. [Benjamin] Netanyahu was even allowed to fly over French airspace, despite the active International Criminal Court arrest warrant.
Hanno Hauenstein
Do you see a double standard in how international law is applied?
Rima Hassan
Of course. There shouldn’t be any immunity for the crimes Netanyahu is wanted for — just like there isn’t any immunity for [Vladimir] Putin. I want to stress: this complicity isn’t one that is enacted in the name of the people. Polls show that three out of four French people support sanctions against Israel. In Germany, a recent poll has shown that 80 percent of German citizens oppose the Gaza offensive. There’s a clear disconnect between governments’ actions and public opinion.
Hanno Hauenstein
Have you personally faced political pressure or threats for joining this mission?
Rima Hassan
We did consult the French Foreign Ministry, and they said they don’t advise us to go — because of the risks. Of course, in some media outlets, there has been condescension. They portray us as naive or hateful activists. Fortunately, others have treated this as a serious political act. What we are doing is putting pressure on decision-makers to intervene. Because Israel has warned that they’ll arrest us once we approach the territorial waters of Palestine, which are illegally controlled by Israel.
Hanno Hauenstein
What moment has stayed with you the most so far?
Rima Hassan
The hardest and most emotional moment for me personally was the rescue of the migrants at sea. It was a very difficult thing to see. We did not expect to see them jump into the sea. For a few minutes, we were a little panicked since they were far away. We were scared that they might drown — and die. And what would we have done with the bodies? We really went through all the scenarios. I think this was the moment when everyone broke down a little. I myself cried because it was such a hard moment.
The other moment that was very difficult was when we were woken up in the middle of the night by the alarm for drones. We panicked because we wondered if it was a drone attack or if it was just surveillance. It lasted just a few minutes, but it happened in the middle of the night, so it was a complicated atmosphere, we were just waking up, and it was stressful. When the alarm rings at night, it’s difficult to manage. These were the two moments that were the most emotionally intense.
Rima Hassan is a French Palestinian jurist and member of the European Parliament for La France Insoumise.
Catching Israel Out: Gaza and the Madleen
“Selfie” Protest
The latest incident with the Madleen vessel, pictured as a relief measure by celebrity activists and sundry accompaniments to supply civilians with a modest assortment of humanitarian aid, is merely one of multiple previous efforts to break the Gaza blockade. It is easy to forget that, prior to Israel’s current program to kill, starve, and empty the enclave of its Palestinian citizens after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, Gaza had already become, arguably, the world’s largest open-air prison. It was a prison which converted all citizens into inmates trapped in a state of continual privation, placed under constant surveillance, at the mercy of the dispensations and graces of a power occupying in all but name. At any moment, officials could be extrajudicially assassinated, or families obliterated by executive fiat.
In 2008, the Free Gaza Movement successfully managed to reach Gaza with two vessels. For the next eight years, five out of 31 boats successfully journeyed to the Strip. Others met no such luck. In 2010, Israeli commandos revealed their petticoats of violence in killing 10 activists and injuring dozens of others on the Mavi Marmara, a vessel carrying 10,000 tonnes of supplies, including school supplies, building materials, and two large electricity generators. It was also operated by the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, a Turkish NGO, being one of six ships that formed a flotilla. Scandal followed, and the wounds on that issue have yet to heal.
With the Israeli Defense Forces and its evangelical warriors preaching the destruction of Palestinians along with any hope of a viable, functioning state, an impotent collective of nations, either allied to Israel or adversarial in nature, have been unable to minimize or restrain the viciousness of the Gaza campaign. Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen have made largely fruitless military efforts to ease the program of gradual liquidation taking place in the Strip. Given such an absence of resolve and effectualness, tragedy can lend itself to symbolic theatre and farce.
The Madleen enterprise, operated by the Freedom Flotilla, departed from Sicily on June 1 with baby formula, food, medical items, and water desalination kits. It ended with its interception by the Israeli forces in international waters roughly 185 km (100 nautical miles) from Gaza. With a top-billing activist such as Greta Thunberg, a French-Palestinian Member of the European Parliament, Rima Hassan, and journalists in the crew, including Al Jazeera’s Omar Faiad, this was not your standard run-of-the-mill effort.
Celebrities, when they throw themselves at ethical and moral problems, often risk trivializing the cause before the bright lights, gilding, if not obscuring the lily in the process. Thunberg, for all her principles, has become a professional activist, a superstar of the protest circuit. Largely associated with shaming climate change deniers and the officials’ laziness in addressing dense carbon footprints, her presence on the Madleen crew is a reminder that calculated activism has become a media spectacle. It is a model, an IKEA flatpack version, to be assembled on sight, an exportable product, ready for the journey.
This is not to be flippant about Thunberg or the broader purpose involved here. Her presence and those engaged in the enterprise are dangerous reminders to the Israeli project in Gaza. Had they been wise, the bureaucrats would have let the affair play out in stoic silence, rendering it a media event, one filed in the library of forget-me articles that have become the stock and trade of an overly crowded infosphere. But the criminal instinct, or at least one guiltily prone towards one, is garrulous. The chatter can never stop, because the justifications for such behaviour never end.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry, for instance, thought it wise to dismiss the entire effort of what it called the “celebrities yacht” as a “media gimmick for publicity (which includes less than a single truckload of aid) – a ‘selfie yacht’.” Perfectly capturing Israel’s own abominable record in supplying humanitarian aid in dribs and drabs to the residents of Gaza, when it bothered to, the ministry goes on to fabulize about 1,200 aid trucks and 11 million meals supposedly sent to those in the Strip, never mentioning the killing of those seeking the aid by IDF personnel, the enlistment of rogue Palestinian clans, and the sketchy background of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
Defence Minister Israel Katz also issued a statement declaring that Israel would “not allow anyone to violate the naval blockade on Gaza, the primary purpose of which is to prevent the transfer of weapons to Hamas, a murderous terror organisation that holds our hostages and commits war crimes.”
In responding to the vessel, the Israelis did not disappoint. They added to the scene with accustomed violence, but the publicity wonks were aware that killing Thunberg and treating the rest of the crew like any other member of displaced persons at Khan Younis did not seem kosher. The infliction of suffering had to be magisterially restrained, a gold-class privilege delved out by the superior ones. No missiles or armed drones were used on this occasion.
Instead, the twelve-member crew was taken to the port city of Ashdod, 30km north of Gaza, where prison authorities had been instructed by Israel’s dogmatic National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to hold them in solitary confinement. A number, including Thunberg, have been deported. Others are still being held, purportedly for refusing to sign paperwork authorising their deportation.
As the formalities are being chewed over, the broader designation of the effort by the Madleen and her crew as those of a “selfie yacht” offer the pool’s reflection to Israeli authorities: how the IDF took selfies of their atrocities, filming with haughty and avenging pride the destruction of Palestinian civilian infrastructure and the moonscape of their creation; how Israeli officials, such as the former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant felt comfortable claiming the Jewish state was “fighting against human animals”. This was one occasion where a celebrity venture, as small as it was, proved worthy.
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