Pope Leo, the Sumud Flotilla Desperately Needs You

As this appeal to Pope Leo XIV was being prepared for publication Monday, an incendiary bomb was dropped, apparently by Israel, on one of the lead vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla, Family Boat, as it was moored in a Tunisian harbor awaiting the resumption of the flotilla’s voyage to the shores of Gaza.

A video, provided by Al Jazeera, shows the moment of the attack when a drone, seen and heard by crew members on Family Boat, dropped a flaming fireball onto the deck of the vessel.

The video contradicts a claim by the Tunisian interior ministry, reported by Reuters, that there was no drone attack and that the fire on Family Boat was ignited by something on the boat itself.

A flotilla spokesperson, Saif Abukeshek, said in a video posted on the flotilla’s Instagram page, “There is no other authority that would do such an attack, such a crime, except the Israeli authorities.”

The attack is reminiscent of the May 2025 anonymous drone bombing that disabled the vessel Conscience while it was anchored off Malta, thwarting its Freedom Flotilla mission to bring relief supplies to Gaza. Israel was held responsible by the flotilla, and an Israeli C-130 aircraft capable of launching drones was tracked in the area at the time of the attack.

None of the crew of The Family Boat were injured in yesterday’s attack, and the vessel seems to have suffered relatively minor damage. It will likely be in the flotilla when it resumes sailing for the Gaza Strip in a race against time to get food and medicine, however little, to starving, desperately ill Palestinians, all the time generating moral and political pressure to halt the relentless, increasing Israeli-US slaughter of Palestinians.

Greta Thunberg, the famous organizer against climate disaster, who was expected to sail on Family Boat, explained the need for the flotilla last week on TikTok:

The story here is how the world can be silent, and how those in power, those who are supposed to represent us, are in every possible way betraying and failing Palestinians, and all oppressed peoples of the world.

What we are witnessing in the flotilla is an historic citizen-led, nonviolent intervention to confront two of the world’s major military powers, and their allies. The flotilla enterprise is unprecedented in its size and in the numbers of civilians who are voluntarily putting themselves at risk to stop mass killing.

The flotilla, whose title in Arabic means steadfastness or resilience, is comprised of at least 50 vessels, crewed by citizens of at least 44 nations. They will be carrying an estimated 300 tons of food and relief supplies. The World Food Program estimates that 62,000 tons of food alone, per month, are needed to feed Gaza’s 2.1 million souls.

Weather permitting, the flotilla is expected to arrive of Gaza’s shores in mid-September.

There have been many civilian attempts to break the Israeli siege of Gaza by sea since Israel established a naval blockade there in 2007.

“In 2008,” Al Jazeera reports, “two boats from the Free Gaza Movement successfully reached Gaza, marking the first break of Israel’s naval blockade. The movement, founded in 2006 by activists during Israel’s war on Lebanon, went on to launch 31 boats between 2008 and 2016, five of which reached Gaza despite heavy Israeli restrictions.”

All flotilla attempts have been intercepted by Israel since 2010 when Israeli commandoes boarded the Mavi Marmara in international waters, killed 10 volunteers, and injured dozens more. Flotilla missions were launched in 2011, 2015, and 2018.

The need for the Pope’s physical presence on the flotilla is made even more clear by the bombing of Family Boat.

The first flotilla mission in 2025 was thwarted when the vessel Conscience was disabled by a drone attack. The second 2025 attempt by The Madleen ended with boarding by Israeli commandos and detention of the 12-person crew, including Greta Thunberg; they were released at varying times, with the last two being freed after four days in captivity.

Thousands of ordinary people have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the current flotilla and have organized for months to support hundreds of flotilla “sailors.”

In Tunisa alone, Al Jazeera reports, flotilla organizers collected donations in six cities.

“The special thing about this campaign,” Tunisian flotilla organizer Ghassan Boughdiri told Al Jazeera, “is the number of people who showed up to give donations. We’ve had people bringing five and 10 dinars ($1.70 to $3.40). If your day’s pay is 20 dinars ($6.80), those five dinars are so precious for us. It shows we’ve managed to act collectively to help our people in Gaza.”

The flotilla crews are, in turn, supported by much of Mediterranean civil society, including Genoa, Italy dockworkers who announced that if any of the flotilla ships are stopped, they will shut down European ports servicing ships bound for Israel.

“13,000 to 14,000 containers leave this region every year for Israel,” said Riccardo Rudina, a spokesperson for a collective of Italian unions, as reported by Novaramedia. “Should the flotilla be prevented from reaching Gaza, not a single nail will leave anymore.” And, he said:

“Our young women and men must come back without a scratch, and all of this cargo, which belongs to the people and is going to the people, must reach its destination, down to the very last box.”

This is something the world has not seen before.

The big question is: Is this enough? Can the flotilla stop the extermination of Palestinians that is brazenly and defiantly flaunted before the world by the US and Israel as if to say: “Get used to the new world order”?

Meanwhile, Palestinian Nongovernmental Organizations (PNGO), a coalition of 140 Palestinian civil society organizations, and their international allies, including Friends of the Hague Group, are desperately working against long odds to win an early vote by the 193 nations of the United Nations General Assembly on a “Uniting for Peace” resolution that would send a multinational “protection” force into Gaza to stop the killing and ensure food and aid are safely distributed and that medical and other essential services are restored. This is opposed by the US and Israel.

The supporters of “Uniting for Peace” are calling upon the General Assembly to override the UN Security Council’s control of over measures to end the occupation and genocide because it has failed to fulfill its mandate and take action to achieve peace, primarily due to the veto power of the US.

Craig Mokhiber, who resigned from his post as UN director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner in October 2023 in protest over the UN’s failing in its duty to stop the genocide against the Palestinian people, explained “Uniting for Peace” in a September 3, 2025 interview with “Between the Lines”:

…the call now is for the General Assembly to take up its responsibilities and to deploy a UN protection force for Gaza, ultimately to expand to the West Bank. But immediately to Gaza to enter by land, sea, air, either through the Sinai and the Rafah entry or using navies to enter at the Gaza Beach or to parachute in—whatever it takes to break the siege, to bring in mandated forces, and to deliver humanitarian aid, to protect civilians, to preserve evidence of Israeli war crimes, and to begin the process of recovery and reconstruction.

On September 5, 2025, 27 special rapporteurs and experts selected to advise the UN called on the General Assembly to “convene an emergency meeting” to act under “Unity for Peace.” Addressing Israel, the group said:

A State responsible for creating genocidal conditions aimed at destroying Palestinians in Gaza as a group by also starving them cannot and shall not be entrusted to control access, distribution, or supervision of humanitarian aid.

A global strike is being organized for September 18, 2025 to mark the UN General Assembly’s deadline for Israel to fully withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem and also to support the passage of “Uniting for Peace.”

Meanwhile, France and Saudi Arabia are pushing for quick UN Security Council approval of the “New York Declaration” of July 4, 2025, a so-called “two-state” plan. This is a bogus, unworkable scheme that promises side-by side Israeli and Palestinian states, except Palestinians would not have economic or defensive equality.

The French-Saudi plan includes a “stabilization” force to end the current fighting. But there are concerns that those in control of this force would continue violent subjugation of Palestinians and facilitate their eventual removal to other nations. This plan, if anointed by the UN, would likely be imposed on Lebanon, Syria, and possibly elsewhere in the Middle East.

The rugged path for “Uniting for Peace” forces us to look back to the Sumud Flotilla as possibly the very best hope for saving Palestinian lives and for, in the process, undercutting the French-Saudi plan.

As the headline of this article notes, what is desperately needed now is for Pope Leo XIV to venture out onto the Mediterranean to join the Sumud flotilla, unleashing the power of his moral authority to stop the extermination of the Palestinian people in illegally occupied Palestine. The need for the Pope’s physical presence on the flotilla is made even more clear by the bombing of Family Boat.

In this naval sojourn, he would be walking in footsteps of his dad, Louis Marius Prevost, who commanded an infantry landing craft on D-Day in World War II and again in southern France in 1944 in an action called Operation Dragoon, intended to open another front against the German occupiers.

An infantry landing craft like the kind Louis Marius Prevost would have commanded is shown. (Photo by US Army)

The Sumud flotilla offers Pope Leo an opportunity to nonviolently fight for lives and to also tread the courageous path of his predecessor, Pope Francis, who, the Catholic News Agency reported, “called Israel’s actions in Gaza ‘terrorism’ and on two occasions said what was happening there might qualify as genocide.”

“Pope Leo,” the agency reported, “has taken a more restrained approach, calling for ceasefires and the release of hostages and emphasizing the need for dignified humanitarian aid and respect for law.”

Ideally other world religious leaders would join Pope Leo in their own boats. And, there are extremely wealthy celebrities who have yachts on the Mediterranean who can join the flotilla.

And, finally, there are well-known global politicians who can hire boats and join the flotilla, who can show the world that they cannot be bought and will not be complicit with the 21st century’s most famous, in-your-face, everyday, genocide.

These closing words from a book titled A Small Town Near Auschwitz seem appropriate here:

…the Holocaust was made possible by the actions of so many, yet actually intended by so few… some people could later claim that they had “always been against it” with varying degrees of honesty, while their behavior at the time had in fact propelled the dynamism of Nazism on to the murderous conclusion that was Auschwitz and all that it stands for.

At some point, of course, there will be a reckoning, just as there was after World War II. Those who participated in the Sumud Flotilla will be honored. By their boats ye shall know them.