Photo courtesy of Common Dreams
“I’m sorry I’m not around with you these days, my love. But Daddy is trying to bring food to children just as beautiful as you – children who are being starved by people who have forgotten that every single human being deserves the right to live free.”
These words, written by Thiago Ávila to his wife and daughter, carry the weight of heartbreak, courage and fierce love. They are more than a father’s apology; they are a testament to the quiet, aching bravery of those who choose to act when silence would be safer. His letter speaks not just for himself but for the 12 souls aboard the Madleen, a boat that set sail on June 1 from Catania, Sicily as part of the Freedom Flotilla movement.
Their mission was simple yet radical: to defy a brutal siege by bringing baby formula, food and medicine to over two million Palestinians being systematically starved and indiscriminately bombed in Gaza, humanitarian aid that the Israeli military deemed a threat.
This was an act of resistance against the full blown live stream genocide that Israel is committing against the State of Palestine. The Madleen’s mission was grounded in compassion and deep human solidarity. It represented ordinary humans taking extraordinary action for the sake of millions silenced and trapped.
The Madleen is just the most recent attempt of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition to break Israel’s siege on Gaza. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition has sent boats to Gaza since 2008, challenging a blockade that has confined over two million Palestinians in a sealed off enclave. Most missions are violently intercepted like the Mavi Marmara in 2010 when Israeli forces killed 10 activists in international waters. Still, these efforts persist, not out of naivety but from moral clarity; condemning war crimes in words is not enough. We must act.
The Madleen followed the failed voyage of The Conscience, which was struck by Israeli drones and nearly sank just weeks earlier. Its journey also aligned with the Global March to Gaza set to begin days later, part of a coordinated, conscience-driven movement involving thousands united in resistance.
Madleen was ultimately – and perhaps inevitably – rammed, sprayed with an unknown chemical and boarded at 3 am local time on the June 9 in international waters 100 nautical miles (185km) from Gaza and all its crew detained in Israel.
In the words of Greta Thunberg, “We were on international waters, we were illegally attacked and kidnapped by Israel and taken against our will to Israel where we were detained, some of us deported, some of us still there.”
This was of course illegal, breaching the sovereignty of the UK by boarding a UK flagged ship in international waters and kidnapping a crew of humanitarians. Some of whom are highly profiled and others who have become internationally known for their bravery and outspokenness for Palestine.
The 12 on board included Greta Thunberg Swedish climate activist, Rima Hassan French-Palestinian member of the European Parliament, Yasemin Acar from Germany, Thiago Ávila from Brazil, Omar Faiad Al Jazeera correspondent, Baptiste Andre, Pascal Maurieras, Yanis Mhamdi and Reva Viard from France, Şuayb Ordu from Türkiye, Sergio Toribio from Spain and Marco van Rennes from The Netherlands.
At the point of writing nine of the 12 activists have been released. Thiago Ávila has emerged with visible injuries on his body and,according to Palestinian Rights Group Adalah, Rima Hassan and others were “subjected to mistreatment, punitive measures and aggressive treatment and two were held in solitary confinement”. Currently Pascal Maurieras, Yanis Mhamdi and the ship’s captain Marco Van Rennes are still to be set free. They face an additional one month in Israeli detention due to Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran and Iran’s retaliation.
The Madleen is named after Madleen Kullab, Gaza’s only fisherwoman, whose defiance of gender norms through her work became an act of resistance and a source of inspiration as she taught other women to fish too.
Naming the boat Madleen was an act of remembrance and defiance. It honoured not only a single woman but also a broader truth that Palestinians are not passive victims but active narrators of their own lives. That their stories deserve to be told in full, not edited out of the frame.
The Madleen did not break the blockade. And still it mattered.
In a time when Gaza is being bombed into silence, its power and internet cut off, every attempt to bear witness, to reach the people, to say we see you and we have not forgotten is a form of resistance. The Madleen was never just a boat; it was a refusal to let the narrative be controlled by power, a refusal to let civilians die unseen and a refusal to become numb.
In Sri Lanka, we know what it means to live through war. We know what it means for civilians to be trapped between militarism and political failure. We know what it means when journalists go missing, when stories are buried, and when grief is politicised. And we know what it means to carry memory forward when the world moves on.
This makes Israel’s growing footprint in Sri Lanka all the more alarming from the promotion of Zionist ideology and heightened protections for Israeli tourists to incidents of harassment toward locals and other visitors, which threatens a tourism sector that makes up 2.5% of our GDP. There are also reports of Israelis unlawfully purchasing land and setting up businesses that extract wealth from the country. Articles, including some from The Jerusalem Post, hint at attempts to frame Sri Lanka as having “historic” Jewish ties, raising concern about long term intentions.
What happened to the Madleen should be front page news but most of the world didn’t hear about it. That’s why we must tell the story ourselves.
Gradually the global population has begun a process of desensitisation and distraction. What Greta labels as “deadly passivity” is becoming more and more prevalent with people seeing injustices right in front of their eyes and not lifting a finger, perhaps out of fear, out of apathy or simply because it is easier to look in another direction. It does not end here though; sooner or later it will directly affect everyone unless we take action before it is too late.
The Madleen reminds us that solidarity is not a feeling, it’s a practice. It means paying attention even when it’s inconvenient. It means recognising our shared stake in freedom and rejecting the idea that some lives are disposable. It means using our voices, our platforms and our presence to interrupt erasure.