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lindsey graham
Freedom Flotilla Sets Sail for Gaza Carrying Aid and Demands: 'End the Blockade. End the Genocide'
"No matter how dangerous this mission is, it's nowhere near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the live-streamed genocide," said climate activist Greta Thunberg, who is aboard the Madleen.
Jun 02, 2025
A dozen Palestine defenders including climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and a French lawmaker set sail from Sicily on Sunday aboard a boat carrying humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza, many of whom are starving amid Israel's ongoing U.S.-backed genocidal assault and siege and decadeslong naval blockade of the coastal enclave.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said it launched the sailboat Madleen—named after Gaza's first and only known fisherwoman—from Catania, Italy at 4:00 pm local time Sunday "in direct defiance of Israel's illegal and genocidal blockade."
"Madleen symbolizes the unyielding spirit of Palestinian resilience and the growing global resistance to Israel's use of collective punishment and deliberate starvation policies," FFC said in a statement Sunday. "The ship is carrying urgently needed supplies for the people of Gaza, including baby formula, flour, rice, diapers, women's sanitary products, water desalination kits, medical supplies, crutches, and children's prosthetics."
The international volunteers aboard Madleen include Thunberg, French Member of European Parliament Rima Hassan, German refugee advocate and FFC steering committee member Yasemin Acar, Brazilian FFC steering committee member Thiago Ávila, Al Jazeera reporter Omar Fayad, French doctor Baptiste Andre, French journalist Yanis M'Hamdi, Turkish engineer Şuayb Ordu, and crew members Mark Van Rennes, Reva Seifert Viard, Pascal Maurieras, and Sergio Toribio.
"I am aboard
Madleen because silence is not neutrality—it is complicity," said Hassan, who is banned from entering Israel due to her outspoken support for Palestinian rights. "The Palestinian people in Gaza are being starved and slaughtered, and the world watches. This ship is not just carrying aid, it is carrying a demand: End the blockade. End the genocide."
Thunberg said that "we are seeing a systematic starvation of 2 million people. The world cannot be silent bystanders, Every single one of us has a moral obligation to do everything we can to fight for a free Palestine."
The Madleen's launch came a month after the Conscience, another FCC aid vessel traveling in international waters off Malta, was attacked twice, presumably by Israeli forces. No one was harmed in what FFC said was a drone strike on the ship. However, the activists were forced to abort their humanitarian mission. Israel has not commented on the incident.
Madleen also set sail nearly 15 years to the day after Israeli forces raided a Gaza Freedom Flotilla convoy carrying humanitarian aid to the besieged people of Gaza. The attack—which also came in international waters—left nine people including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan dead.
FFC said Sunday that the "unarmed and nonviolent" mission "poses no threat" and "sails in full accordance with international law. Any attack or interference will be a deliberate, unlawful assault on civilians."
Those aboard the Madleen said they were aware of the dangers they faced. Israel has killed numerous Western activists and journalists who document its human rights violations over the years, and just last month Israeli troops opened fire on a group of international diplomats visiting the illegally occupied West Bank two days after three involved countries issued an ultimatum to stop annihilating Gaza.
"We are doing this because, no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying," a tearful Thunberg said during a Sunday press conference. "Because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity."
"And no matter how dangerous this mission is, it's nowhere near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the live-streamed genocide," she added.
Activist Greta Thunberg says silence is more dangerous than sailing to Gaza, as she boarded a vessel that will try to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
The Gaza Freedom Flotilla had to abandon its last attempt on May 2 when it was bombed. pic.twitter.com/ieecZ8ps0E
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) June 1, 2025
Some Israelis and their supporters took to social media to wish harm upon the activists. In the United States, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) alluded to past Israeli attacks on Gaza aid flotillas in a social media post saying, "Hope Greta and her friends can swim!"
Israel strongly refutes allegations that it is committing genocide in Gaza. South Africa has filed, and dozens of nations support, a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The International Criminal Court, also located in the Dutch city, has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination and starvation as a weapon of war, in Gaza.
Officials in Gaza say that more than 192,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured since Israel launched its assault and siege following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, a figure that includes at least 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble and hundreds of mostly children who have died from acute malnutrition and lack of medical care.
Around 2 million Gazans have also been forcibly displaced, often multiple times, amid Israel's campaign to starve, conquer, indefinitely occupy, ethnically cleanse, and possibly recolonize the coastal strip.
Each side accuses the other of thwarting cease-fire efforts. On Saturday, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff rejected what he called Hamas' "totally unacceptable" proposal for a truce in which 10 living and 18 dead Israeli hostages would be exchanged for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy told Democracy Now! on Monday that a cease-fire proposal mediated by Witkoff is "a bad deal for the Palestinians that will allow Israel to continue its ethnic cleansing of Gaza" and "walks back the commitment for a permanent cease-fire, Israeli withdrawal, and allowing in of humanitarian aid."
Critics accuse Netanyahu of prolonging the war in order to delay his own criminal corruption trial.
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Can the Voices of A-Bomb Victims Drown out the Military-Industrial Complex?
Let us listen to those who have suffered the most. Let us hear the cry of their throbbing souls and begin to understand that the time has come for us to create a world beyond dominance and war.
Mar 16, 2025
When the powerful speak, mushroom clouds emerge—oh so easily. Power is about conquest; winning the war, getting what you want no matter the cost.
For instance, Israel should nuke Gaza. “Do whatever you have to do.” Thus declared Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) last year in a “Meet the Press” interview, comparing the current genocide in Palestine to the U.S. decision to end World War II by A-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “That was the right decision,” he said, spewing out the historical abstraction that still rules the world.
Nothing is more sacred than self-defense! And nothing is more necessary for that than nuclear weapons, at least for the countries that possess them. To think beyond this abstraction—to cry out against the pain of the victims and declare their use is potential human suicide—violates the political norm of the powerful and is easily categorized by the media, often sarcastically, as naïve.
“I realized my pain was not only my pain but other people’s pain.”
And thus we’re stuck in a MAD world, apparently: a world under unending threat of mutually assured destruction. If you have a problem with that, you’re probably a weakling singing “Kumbaya.”
Or so the global war machine wants us to believe, reducing humanity’s anti-nuke—antiwar—sanity to a hollow hope.
It is in this context that I heard Sim Jintae and Han Jeong-Soon speak at a small event the other day in suburban Chicago, sponsored by an organization called—brace yourself—The International People’s Tribunal to hold the U.S. accountable for dropping A-bombs. The two speakers (via translator) are Korean victims of the bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima nearly eight decades ago. Sim Jintae is a first-generation survivor: He was two-years-old when the bomb was dropped. Han Jeong-Soon is a second-generation survivor—the child of survivors of the inferno, who has suffered throughout her life from the aftereffects of the bombing. Their message: Nuclear war lasts forever!
Well, that’s part of their message. Note: The movement they represent is Korean. A little known fact about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that thousands of Koreans were what you might call doubly victimized by the horror. This was during an era when Japan had colonial control over Korea, and some 100,000 Koreans had been forcibly moved to Japan to do wartime labor. Many of them, including Sim Jintae’s parents, had been working in a munitions factory in Hiroshima.
About 40,000 Koreans died in the bombings. Those who survived suffered the aftereffects in silence... until they reclaimed one another and found a collective voice. This is the voice I heard last week at the event I attended, and it resonated as loud as—perhaps louder than—the pro-nuke media and their supplicants. Their collective voice emerges from reality, not abstraction. My God, I hope it’s louder than that of Lindsey Graham, and so many other politicians.
Here is the voice of Han Jeong-Soon. Born in Korea 14 years after the destruction of Hiroshima—her parents had also been forced laborers there, living a few kilometers from the epicenter of the bomb blast—she suffered all her life from birth defects: heart problems, chest pain, lung issues. She had multiple surgeries. She suffered on her own... until she saw a film about the bombing in 2004. Then:
“I realized my pain was not only my pain but other people’s pain,” she told us. She began organizing other second-generation survivors, and began telling the world: “My war has not ended. No war should be allowed or tolerated. No to all war.”
Is this the voice that will drown out the military-industrial complex? The People’s Tribunal is demanding, as the starting point of the human journey beyond war, for the United States to apologize for dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was an action that instantly expanded the scope of hell the human race could inflict on itself.
When I heard that word, “apologize,” in the context of first- and second-generation Korean A-bomb victims—victims who were denied necessary healthcare, by both Japan and the United States—what I heard was a soul scream: a demand that the perpetrator grasp and acknowledge the full extent of the harm it caused, and in so grasping, vow never to use such a monstrous weapon again... and, indeed, vow to transcend war itself.
The International People’s Tribunal put it this way:
The A-Bomb Tribunal aims to establish the illegality of the U.S. atomic bombings in 1945 to secure the basis for condemning all nuclear threats and use as illegal today. The fact that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illegal under the international laws in 1945 means that the use and threat of nuclear weapons today are also illegal.
The A-Bomb Tribunal aims to overcome the nuclear deterrence theory that justifies the use and threat of nuclear weapons by nuclear-weapon states, and contribute to the realization of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a nuclear-free world.
Let us listen to those who have suffered the most. Let us hear the cry of their throbbing souls and begin to understand that the time has come for us to create a world beyond dominance and war. Indeed, let us begin listening to one another and, in so doing, learn that we all matter. This is the true nature of power.
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ICC President Warns Attacks on Court Threaten 'Future of Humanity'
The judge pointed to Russian arrest warrants for court leadership and U.S. threats of "draconian economic sanctions."
Dec 02, 2024
Less than two weeks after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, the ICC president on Monday warned that the tribunal faces "existential" threats—taking aim at Russia and the United States without naming either.
Judge Tomoko Akane's comments came at the start of the 23rd session of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, set to run through Saturday in The Hague, the Netherlands. Established in 2002, the treaty-based ICC prosecutes individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.
"We are at a turning point in history. Regretfully, this is not rhetorical," the ICC president said. "International law and international justice are under threat. So is the future of humanity. The International Criminal Court will continue to carry out its lawful mandate, independently and impartially, without giving in to any outside interference."
"The court has been subjected to attacks seeking to undermine its legitimacy and ability to administer justice and realize international law and fundamental rights; coercive measures, threats, pressure, and acts of sabotage."
Akane shared examples of what the ICC has faced while pursuing justice "as atrocities continue to plague the world," detailing how "the court has been subjected to attacks seeking to undermine its legitimacy and ability to administer justice and realize international law and fundamental rights; coercive measures, threats, pressure, and acts of sabotage."
Rather than naming Russia or the U.S., she called them out as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
"Several elected officials are being severely threatened and are subjected to arrest warrants from a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, merely for having faithfully and diligently carried out their judicial mandate per the statutory framework and international law," she said, referring to Russia, which launched a full-blown invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
As Human Rights Watch (HRW) summarized Monday: "Arrest warrants issued by Russia against the ICC prosecutor and six of the court's current and former judges in retaliation to the court's March 2023 warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin, remain pending, and a law criminalizing cooperation with the ICC remains in force in the country. In September 2023, the court was the target of a serious cyberattack."
In addition to Putin, the ICC last year issued a warrant for Russian Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for allegedly abducting Ukrainian children and transporting them to Russia. At the time, neither Russia nor Ukraine was a party to the Rome Statute, but as Akane noted, Ukraine has since ratified the treaty that established the court and will be a state party beginning next year.
Highlighting U.S. attacks on the ICC, Akane said that "the court is being threatened with draconian economic sanctions from institutions of another permanent member of the Security Council as if it was a terrorist organization. These measures would rapidly undermine the court's operations in all situations and cases and jeopardize its very existence."
The ICC issued warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri last month despite pressure from the United States. Neither the U.S. nor Israel is a party to the ICC, but Palestine is.
As Palestine Chronicle editor Ramzy Baroud noted in a Monday opinion piece for Common Dreams, the November decision was significant in part because "historically, the vast majority of arrest warrants, and actual detention of accused war criminals seemed to target the Global South, and Africa, in particular."
The outgoing Biden administration and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's pick for national security adviser have criticized the warrants for the leaders from Israel, which also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its assault on the people of Gaza.
Responding to the warrants on Fox News last month, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)—a key ally of Trump in the upper chamber that will soon be controlled by Republicans—said: "So to any ally, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, if you try to help the ICC, we're gonna sanction you... We should crush your economy, because we're next."
While Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last week that "we will abide by all the regulations and rulings of the international court" as a party to the Rome Statute, France has flip-flopped on warrant enforcement. Just a day after French Prime Minister Michel Barnier told Parliament that the government would fulfill its obligations, the Foreign Ministry announced it would not detain Netanyahu and Gallant, claiming they have "immunities" because Israel is not a party to the treaty.
The Associated Press explained Monday that "Graham's threat isn't seen as just empty words," considering that as president, Trump "sanctioned the court's previous prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, with a travel ban and asset freeze for investigating American troops and intelligence officials in Afghanistan."
Graham isn't alone in making threats. U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) targeted the court's current prosecutor in response to the warrants, writing on social media: "The ICC is a kangaroo court and Karim Khan is a deranged fanatic. Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a friendly reminder: The American law on the ICC is known as the Hague Invasion Act for a reason. Think about it."
Officially titled the American Service Members' Protection Act, the 2002 law enables the president to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court."
Akane said Monday that "we firmly reject any attempt to influence the independence and the impartiality of the court. We resolutely dismiss efforts to politicize our function. We have and always will comply only with the law, under all circumstances."
"There isn't such a thing as selective sanctions or coercive measures. If the court collapses, this will inevitably imply the collapse of all situations and cases," she stressed. "The fall of the court would imply the fall of the rule of law in the international community and a final defeat of the fight against impunity."
Still, the judge concluded that "the court can continue to provide what for humanity is the most essential sentiment: hope," a sentiment echoed by Khan, who spoke after her at the opening of the conference.
The prosecutor said that "history will judge whether or not the promise of the Rome Statute is vindicated in practice in the maelstrom that we see around us, not only the storm we face but winds that are perhaps to come. But despite that, really the focus of my remarks today is that we don't have the luxury, nor do we need to give in to despondency and despair."
As the conference got underway, Human Rights Watch released a 24-page report with recommendations to ensure the court has everything it needs to advance cases and called on state parties to support the ICC in the face of global attacks.
"ICC warrants, whether against Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu, send a critical message that no one is above the law," said Liz Evenson, HRW's international justice director. "ICC member countries should make a commitment during their annual meeting to take all necessary steps to ensure that the ICC's crucial work for justice can continue without obstruction."
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