One of the definitions of genocide, according to the 1948 UN convention, is “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. This is an accurate description of what Israel has been doing in Gaza. It has killed 452 aid workers, systematically killed police officers charged with protecting aid, destroyed infrastructure needed to carry humanitarian aid, blocked fuel and water needed to cook food. More than 95% of agricultural land has been rendered unusable by Israeli attacks, 81% of cropland has been damaged and 83% of plant life has been destroyed. Almost all of its cattle and poultry are dead; milk production is nearly halted.

Israel has criminalised Unrwa, Gaza’s main humanitarian agency, and three months ago imposed a total blockade. It then replaced the existing humanitarian structures with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Its purpose, as Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich declared, was to allow the entry of the “minimum necessary” so that “the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes”. Stop what? Well, Smotrich openly declares that Israel will expel all surviving Palestinians from Gaza. Not only does the GHF provide far too little and often unusable aid, but it also set up aid points in the south to deliberately empty Gaza’s north. Israeli troops then repeatedly massacred starving Palestinians, replacing the existing humanitarian structures with what Tory MP Kit Malthouse called “a shooting gallery, an abattoir”.

The Madleen did not make it to Gaza’s shores. Yet its crew exposed an obscenity that has repulsed western citizens, who will one day force their governments to cease their complicity – which is why, in the end, Israel will lose.

Read more at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/10/greta-thunberg-gaza-aid-mission-madleen

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