The Greta Thunberg flotilla Siezed early Monday by the IDF has docked in the Israeli Ashdod Port.
The 12 activists who boarded the Gaza Freedom Flotilla have arrived at the port in Ashdod alongside Shayetet 13, the IDF’s elite navy seals unit, on Monday night.
According to Ynet, the passengers were given the option to view footage from Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, but will not be forced to watch it.
The IDF intercepted the Madleen early Monday morning at about 3 a.m., boarding the ship and detaining the passengers after the activists ignored repeated warnings to turn back from breaching Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s position, since Hamas carried out a coup against the Palestinian Authority and took over Gaza in 2007, has been that a naval blockade of Gaza is legal since Hamas is a terror group in a state of war with Israel.
Jerusalem also argues that it is necessary to block Iran from smuggling in high-quality missiles, such as those the Yemeni Houthis and other Iranian proxies possess.
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The activists, including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, French-Palestinian European Parliament Member Rima Hassan, and Game of Thrones actor Liam Cunningham, were trying to raise awareness of their opposition to Israel’s invasion of Gaza, its blocking of certain international groups from directly distributing food aid in Gaza, and the naval blockade in general.
According to a Foreign Ministry post on X/Twitter, “All the passengers of the ‘selfie yacht’ are safe and unharmed. They were provided with sandwiches and water. The show is over.”
Sources disclosed that the 12 activists would be sent back to their home countries as quickly as possible in order to wrap up the episode.
At press time, multiple home countries of the activists were demanding consular access to their citizens while in Israeli custody.
While the media has been covering the flotilla’s sailing progress toward Israel for some time, at 1:17 a.m. on Monday, the activists started to signal that the Israeli Navy was bearing down on them. The flotilla’s Telegram account reported that alarms sounded on the ship, and life jackets were being prepared.
One of the flotilla participants Yasmine Najer uploaded a video to her Instagram account and explained why the alarm in the flotilla was activated: “We are very close to Gaza. The reason we activated the alarm is that four ships surrounded us and two approached to a distance of about 200 meters – this has not happened before. So that is why we sounded the alarm.”
Around that time, the Israeli Navy used an international civilian communication system to communicate with the Madleen, ordering it to change its course due to its approach toward a restricted area.
