Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
IDF troops have raided the Madleen, a sailboat that was carrying aid intended to break the Israeli siege on Gaza. Everyone onboard has reportedly been abducted by Israeli forces, including climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Ahead of the abduction, a senior Israeli official told Israel’s Channel 12 News that the decision had been made to stop the ship from reaching Gaza because if it was allowed through, a “wave of flotillas” would come to challenge the blockade.
This is a developing news story as of this writing with a lot more information yet to emerge. But one thing I’d like to quickly flag here is that shortly before the IDF raided the Madleen, Sky News host Jonathan Samuels strongly implied that the ship deserved to be attacked because it is full of antisemites and Hamas supporters.
During a contentious interview with Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, who voiced support for the Madleen, Samuels objected that Thunberg has been accused of antisemitism and her fellow passengers have been accused of being Hamas sympathizers, and are therefore not innocent.
“Are you sure, Jonathan, that Israel has the moral right to prevent Gaza from such a mission?” asked Levy. “I mean, from where do we take this chutzpah, as we say in Hebrew, to put this closure on Gaza even from innocent people like Greta Thunberg and her friends?”
“Yeah, perhaps the criticism is that she’s not as innocent as all that,” Samuels countered. “She’s been accused of being antisemitic hasn’t she? And there are others on board accused of being Hamas sympathizers. Therefore it could potentially be a very dangerous situation and they’re quite naive to get into it, aren’t they?”
By the way, the accusation of “being antisemitic” which Samuels appears to be referring to here is the single dumbest antisemitism smear that I have ever seen in my entire life.
Back in October 2023, Thunberg appeared in a photo holding a “Stand with Gaza” sign, causing furious backlash from the pro-Israel crowd. Eventually someone found an excuse to spin this as an anti-Jewish hate crime by pointing out that there was a small octopus plushie in the photo, claiming that the octopus is a some kind of antisemitic trope.
Thunberg, who has autism, then deleted the photo, saying, “It has come to my knowledge that the stuffed animal shown in my earlier post can be interpreted as a symbol for antisemitism, which I was completely unaware of. The toy in the picture is a tool often used by autistic people as a way to communicate feelings. We are of course against any type of discrimination, and condemn antisemitism in all forms and shapes. This is non-negotiable. That is why I deleted the last post.”
And it was THIS insanely absurd accusation that was the basis for Jonathan Samuels smearing Greta Thunberg to justify the Israeli military attacking the ship she was on.
To be clear, this demented Israel apologia was spouted before Israel took action against the aid ship. We didn’t know if Israel would raid the ship, bomb it right out of the water, or shoot everyone on board. Samuels was preemptively justifying whatever it was Israel was about to do, including mass murder on yet another Gaza aid ship.
Literally everyone who has ever publicly criticized Israel in the western world has been accused of antisemitism and being a Hamas sympathizer. If you have any kind of audience and criticize Israel’s mass atrocities in Gaza to any extent, it is absolutely inevitable that you will receive those accusations. The fact that a Sky News anchor would cite such accusations as justification for Israel attacking and potentially killing someone means that, at least in the eyes of Jonathan Samuels, anyone who criticizes Israel deserves to be murdered.
Israel apologists were already advocating an attack on the Madleen, and mass media spinmeisters were already smearing its passengers as deserving of an attack. And now that the attack has happened, the information ecosystem is being bombarded by Israel supporters trying to argue that it is actually good and normal to kidnap activists who are trying to bring aid to a starving and besieged civilian population.
This shows you that there is nothing Israel could do that these freaks would not defend. It shows you who these people are. It shows you that every argument you’ve ever heard in support of Israel is not based on facts or morality or logic, but solely on the desire to promote the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state. It tells you everything you need to know about Israel apologia in general.
Support for Israel has no basis in truth. It has no basis in ethics or rationality. It’s just a bunch of horrible people murdering, tyrannizing and stealing with the aim of conquest and domination, and then using words to justify those actions. Israel and its apologists will say whatever words they need to say in order to advance their goals of ethnic cleansing and expansionism, with no regard for what is right and what is true.
It’s just a bunch of noise. You could mentally translate every word of every Israel apologist into shrieking gibberish without missing anything meaningful, because there’s no actual content in it. It’s just people doing evil things and then making a bunch of mouth noises to stop anyone from opposing their actions.
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Feature image is a screen shot from Sky News (Fair Use).
Lmao. Everything is antisemitism to these clowns. The word doesn't mean anything anymore
Israel and Zionists give the world yet another platter of reasons to revile and despise them.