Media Storm - Piracy & propaganda: Israel ILLEGALLY intercepts the Global Sumud Flotilla

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

We recorded this episode in the knowledge that Israel's planned illegal interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla was imminent. Overnight, the abduction of its passengers begun, and at time of upload, it is still ongoing. Israeli military vessels attacked the humanitarian boats with water canons, before boarding vessels and capturing passengers. Captives are expected to be taken to Ketziot prison in the Negev desert. This was a forcible prevention of the flotilla's lawful aim to carry aid to Gaza as it endures a manmade famine and genocide. Under maritime law, it was an act of piracy. It was also enabled by international news media. Here's how. The episode is hosted by Mathilda Mallinson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@mathildamall⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and Helena Wadia (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@helenawadia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)  The music is by⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @soundofsamfire⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Bluesky⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok ⁠⁠⁠ Support us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Don't miss out. Free access ends August 24th. Visit Ancestry.ca for more details. Terms apply. Hello, Media Stormers. Welcome to your Thursday episode with both Helena and Matilda. Hi, Matilda. Hi.

There's no boat engine in the back of this recording. We are both recording from our respective homes in London. So, I mean, a welcome home. I'm so happy that you're here for listeners who were listening before. They knew that you were on the global Sumid Flotet. sailing towards Gaza. You were reporting from that flotilla. Just tell everybody why you're now back in London.

Yeah, my boat was destroyed in what we believe was probably sabotage. But if not, sabotage was the result of this being a very grassroots and amateur operation that was constantly laden with technical difficulties and boats that were nowhere near up to the standard of the kind of vessels and the kind of operation that should be getting aid into Gaza and that should be combating Israel's unlawful siege of Gaza. So here I am, home at the 11th hour.

You know, you were reporting from a important humanitarian mission. However, when there are no longer facilities that you were able to do, your job from you have to as a journalist step outside of what you want personally and that was the end of your ability to report so it wasn't a choice necessarily that you made it was a choice that was made for you for what your role could allow yeah that that is true so when the family boat went down there were reallocations people were moved on to different boats but the only reallocation that was found for me was on a vessel that was unsuitable to report on, didn't have the

infrastructure. And so the news outlet that I was reporting for, Middle East I, thought I would be able to do a better job from the land. And therefore, I couldn't spend the whole week crying in bed missing my friends. I have a job to do. That is really coming to a fore as we speak. We will get more into it this episode. So I've just got to pull myself together and do my job. Right. And it's actually very fitting for this episode because we are going to talk about Western mainstream coverage or lack of coverage of the global Sumid Flotilla and the reasons why the global Sumid Flotilla is sailing. And I guess what we're demonstrating by doing this Media Storm episode is that it is possible to report on what is happening on the Flotilla not being at the

flotilla. And yet, where was the media? Because I have come home and have done the autopsy of the mainstream media coverage of the flotilla over the past few weeks. And I am fuming. I'm fuming because right now they are sailing into the arms of an army that has been by many, many metrics committing genocide. And it is so important that the world is watching. The world is watching. But that is not because of the mainstream, legacy, established, that is in spite of it. And that is what we're going to be talking about today. Let's get into it.

What's going on? Why is Matilda here? And what mischief has the media been up to? The campaigners on board the group of boats say they were attacked by a series of drones and explosions overnight. Because Israel has communicated that it's ready to kill. The flotilla has been warned multiple times by the Israeli Navy to change its course. We expect to be intercepted either tomorrow night or Wednesday night. Well, Wednesday I am. By and accepted, I mean, kidnapped in this national waters.

Welcome to Media Storm's News Watch, helping you get your head around the headlines. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helena Wadia. This week's Media Storm. Red Zone. Flatilla enters Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza. Helena, while I was away this past month, be honest. How much coverage of the flotilla did you see in legacy media? Honestly, not a lot. What I found actually really telling was not so much the lack of coverage of the Flotilla in legacy media, perhaps I was expecting that, but more the lateness, the fact that something

would happen to the Flotilla or on the Flotilla and it would only maybe be two or three days later that an article about what had happened would appear in, say, the BBC or Channel 4 news. This is my first point of media criticism. And believe me, we will get into the specifics. But just to start with, like, where was the media coverage? The flotilla has been all over social media. And it's also been all over new and non-Western outlets like Dropsite News or Navarra or Middle East Eye for whom I was reporting. Al Jazeera, you know, these were all on board. Yet it's almost nowhere in the legacy media. This is not only stupid on their fronts. because I can tell you that the engagements we had on an average post far outstrips the engagement, these news outlets get on an average article. But it is appallingly out of touch. Like this is by any accounts, a monumental story. 43 boats, it was 52 at one point, carrying 530 people from 44 different countries on six continents, think what it must take for people to unite across so many languages, religions, economic backgrounds,

political creeds and collectively put their livelihoods and their bodies on the line because they're simply so sick of governments and leaders doing nothing in the face of a live-streamed genocide. Think what it must take. Think how many warning signs have been ignored and still ignored judging by the media. If the media did tell the story at all, they didn't tell the right one either, right? What I saw focused centrally on the celebrity presences on board. That is not the story. But surely the celebrity presence and the media's attention on it bought some attention to the flotilla

and was that not also part of the point of having big-name celebrities on board? Yeah, no, that is definitely a good point. The celebrity presence was recruited in large part to draw attention to the flotilla and also to draw protection to the flotilla because if you just have a bunch of unknown global south civilians sailing into an Israeli naval blockade, then the vulnerability of those people is far higher than if the world is watching. But doesn't it say so much about the state of our media that they are not an inroad to the story,

they are in the eyes of our media the story and not the, as I just mentioned, 500 plus people who have quit their jobs or spent all of their sales. trying to make this mission possible. Yes, exactly. So do you have any of those other voices that you can bring us here on Media Storm that were not heard in the legacy media? Yes, I am going to play one on-aird interview that I did with Paddy and Duggy.

They were two hilarious Irish men on my boat who ate all of my chocolate and never stopped complaining that there was no meat on board the boat. And what is it? that brought you on this boat? Well, me, looking at genocide happening live-streamed by people like yourself coming through my fucking goggle box or whatever.

It's, I can't believe that the world hasn't acted, so we can, so we will. The exact same. Given the difficulties, given the risks, was it an easy decision for you to make? Was it an easy decision for you to tell your families about? Well, I didn't tell my families, I just went. You know, and I didn't want to be pushing anything on them either.

Like, you know what I mean? I'd like them to just have a nice peaceful life, But like, you know, I have to sacrifice some of, you know, my life just to give that little bit extra to the people in Gaza to let them know that they have support in the outside world, you know? It was an easy thing to make in so far as, you know, in time to come, I'll be seen as being on the right side of history, as with everybody on the flotilla, heard in so far as, well, I lied to my grandchildren and told them, I feed the homeless a home, so I told them I was going somewhere else to feed homeless and hungry people. So double-edged. You're right. Establishment media has been out of touch when it comes to the flotilla. But this is exactly in keeping with how out of touch it has been

on the entire subject of Gaza and Palestine. We have repeatedly called out the legacy media's coverage or lack of coverage on Gaza on our weekly segment on News Watch called Eyes on Palestine. More recently, two examples that just pop into my head. The only reason that I know that doctors without borders have had to stop work in Gaza is because I saw it on social media. Their clinics were encircled by Israeli forces and it became impossible for them to carry on working. But there was barely a whisper from the Western mainstream media on this. Same with another recent story that pops into my head.

A nurse called Dr. Marwan Abedin, who was. was shot reportedly by Israeli forces while on duty at NASA Hospital in Khan Yunus in southern Gaza. That was two days ago. There is video evidence of this and I searched just now and there is not a shred of Western mainstream press on this killing. Yeah. And that is why it's so ironic that this massive global civilian action, the flotilla, would be treated as irrelevant. by establishment media when this action is happening because established media

and established governments have rendered themselves so irrelevant when it comes to what's happening in Gaza. People are so sick of the inaction and the insipidity of institutions that have the power to do something about genocide

and do nothing. And so the people are doing something themselves. That is what this story is. And just to give us a sense of the story these media are missing, It's not just the mass grassroots action itself. It's also many objectively newsworthy incidents that have occurred along the way. There have been three occasions on which the flotilla was violently attacked with explosives, chemical substances,

and there were structural damages to these ships at sea. These are ships carrying unarmed civilians under mostly European flags, and they have been attacked in both Tunisian sovereign waters and international waters. As a result, European governments have literally sent naval vessels to the flotilla for the first time to enforce Israeli accountability in international waters with a NATO military present because of the flotilla. This is objectively newsworthy. Yeah, and the news is sort of refusal to, report on it. It fits into this wider pattern where Israeli state violence against unarmed civilians

is just sort of turned away from. And that's where I want to go into my first sort of more specific criticism of the media coverage of the flotilla. These attacks you talk about, these drone attacks, even where they've been covered, the media have done something really sinister and really lazy on a journalistic front, which is that they have so doubt into and present it as unverifiable, perfectly verifiable occurrences. Take this New York Times headline, right, from September the 23rd. It goes, aid flotilla headed for Gaza says it's under drone attack. The correct headline is aid flotilla headed for Gaza is under drone attack.

How do I know? I was on board doing my job as a journalist and being present on the front line to verify an attack that everyone knew was highly, likely. Many other media were nowhere in sight and they continued to keep their distance as subsequent attacks occurred again and again and they continued to describe the attacks as unverifiable. But they're not unverifiable. If these news outlets had journalists present, they could have spoken to eyewitnesses, touched the drone debris, they could have photographed the damage done to the vessels themselves or cross-referenced CCTV from the many boats that were moored in the harbor that

night. I did all those things. They could have also remained present on the flotilla for the subsequent attacks that came, as I did, standing on deck, watching and hearing and flinching at the 11 explosions that struck the flotilla while all of us on board were stranded in the high seas, in the middle of the night, and they too could have understood the fear that these are designed to instill. And it wasn't just the few progressive news outlets present who did manage to verify these attacks. The Italian government did. By the time this New York Times article went out, the Italian government had spoken out in condemnation of the attacks. Was that not enough to state that these attacks happened as fact? The New York Times even disclaimed in the article,

Global Summit Flotilla, did not specify where the vessels were at the time of the attack. as a reason that they could not verify it. The location of every boat is publicly online thanks to 24-7 trackers. It's mind-blowing. It is absolutely mind-blowing because even if they didn't want to say who attacked the vessels with drones, they can at least say that the vessel was attacked with drones.

There is enough physical evidence to say at least that. And honestly, I'm afraid to say that the BBC did. the same thing. Here's a recent article. Earlier this month, the flotilla organizers reported that two vessels came under attack by suspected drones outside the Tunisian port of Sidi-Bu-Said. Tunisian authorities disputed their claims. I mean, that wasn't even accurate because after the second attack, the Tunisian government acknowledged the attack happened on their territory and it said the attack appeared premeditated and that it was investigating it. So that's that's not even accurate. While we're on the BBC, something else I've repeatedly seen them get

wrong here is false balance when it comes to black and white breaches of international law. Now we've talked on Media Storm about the notion of balance and how it actually equates to false balance quite a lot. The BBC's marker is impartiality. However, there are a word there that people often forget and that is due impartiality. Impartiality that is due to the subject in the situation. They define impartiality as presenting a for and and against. However, there are some things that have come to be accepted that do not need 50-50 for and against. For example, climate change. When you talk about a story about climate change, you do not need somebody to come on your program to deny climate change because there is a scientific consensus.

that climate change exists. However, even though there have been multiple groups that have said that Israel is carrying out genocidal actions, not least a UN commission that concluded that genocide is happening in Gaza, there still seems to be this notion of false balance on the BBC. Yeah, it's constant. And what it does is it normalises breaches of international law.

And we've seen that in the reporting of the flotilla, right? the subject of Israel's interceptions of humanitarian missions, which is due to happen to the flotilla. Any second now, we'll go into that in more detail shortly. The BBC has presented these interceptions as a two-sided dilemma when international maritime law and international human rights law makes very clear that the forcible interception of a peaceful vessel with a national flag in international waters is piracy. Yet the BBC wrote this about Israel's

interception of the Madeleine humanitarian ship in June. Tunberg accused Israel of illegally kidnapping her and the other activists while they were in international waters. Israel said it had prevented a breach of the maritime blockade around Gaza. Well, yeah, Israel says this, but Israel's maritime blockade of Gaza is illegal. Maybe point that out. A small detail, just a small detail there, just a little detail. Yeah. Or at least explain the highly contestable basis on which Israel argues that its naval blockade is acceptable. Israel cites a United Nations report in 2011 that said it was a legitimate security measure to prevent weapons from reaching Gaza, weapons, right? Not aid. This is 2025.

is now ruled not only to be illegal, but to literally be serving a genocide and creating a man-made famine. A few weeks ago, as you mentioned Helena, UN inquiry found it absolutely the case that Israel is clearly executing a genocide in Gaza. And as early as over a year ago, the International Court of Justice ruled that all member states have a duty to prevent what looks like probable genocide in Gaza. It's precisely this duty and the fact that governments aren't fulfilling it, why civilian volunteers are now sailing with aid to do so. Also, the cherry on the top is that the UK now recognises Palestinian statehood. Stama finally recognised it last week. Only 108 years after the Balfour Declaration in which Colonial Britain promised ultimately to do so.

Right. So these are no longer just illegally occupied waters. They are, according to our Prime Minister Kirstama, Palestinian national waters. Now, speaking of Palestinian waters, as we record this, the flotilla is rapidly approaching. We are recording on Wednesday. day. As of now, the flotilla is in the so-called interception zone. This is the area in which historically Israel has been willing to intercept these flotillas. Israel has clearly said that it will not allow the flotilla to reach Gaza. The flotilla has clearly said that it does not intend to reroute that Gaza is the destination for the aid it carries. And so tonight, Wednesday night,

between recording and airing, we expect interception to happen. As mentioned, this is illegal. It is also very dangerous. This is because the size of the flotilla means like an uneventful interception is quite a big ask. Also, there have been multiple previous attacks on the flotilla, so there is clearly a willingness to enact violence against it. And finally, Israeli propaganda, Israeli messaging on the flotilla tells us a lot about their intention. as well. And so I have to be totally honest with you. I am totally freaking out over here.

Yeah. I think everybody should be freaking out, irregardless of whether they know people on the boats or not. And this is where we come on to the next Media Storm discussion. We need to talk about how Israeli propaganda about the flotilla has infiltrated our news media. We talk about this a lot on Media Storm when it comes to events in Gaza, how press statements issued by the Israeli military or Israeli officials that seek to explain away apparent war crimes are regurgitated as headlines, sometimes without even quotation marks to attribute them, thereby giving propaganda the false legitimacy of news. Now, perhaps the most notable example of this,

and we've spoken about this on a previous media storm episode, was when 15 Palestinian paramedics were killed in cold blood in Rafa, in southern Gaza, in March. At first, all we knew was that they had simply disappeared, and Israel said they had no idea of their whereabouts. Then after a mass grave was discovered, with bodies shot in the back of their heads, Israel said the medics had approached in suspicious vehicles with no sirens on. And then after that, video footage from one of the murdered medics shows that their ambulances had in fact been flashing sirens when Israeli soldiers open fired on them. Western media, Sky News as one flagrant example, still printed and reprinted fresh Israeli propaganda as headlines.

Now, the same thing, it's been happening a lot, but the same thing is happening right now to the flotilla. So Matilda, talk us through the Israeli propaganda about the flotilla and if or how it has been legitimised by Western news media. So there are two key propaganda lines that Israel has historically used to delegitimize peaceful, civilian, humanitarian attempts like this to get aid to Gaza through its unlawful and colonial blockade of the strip. Either Israel calls them vanity stunts, right, by influencer activists. Selfie yachts. Or Israel calls them terrorist operations. So, background context, there have actually been many, many such humanitarian missions to Gaza.

By sea, over 30 since Israel's naval crackdown on Gaza really took hold in 2007. This one, the Global Summit Fletilla, as mentioned, is the biggest. And this year alone, there have been at least four you need to know about. The conscience ship in May, which you probably didn't really read about in our media, it got no coverage. The Madeleine, which she probably did read about because Greta Thunberg was on board, and the Handler ship that followed it. Those were in June and July, and then in September, we had the Global Summit Flutter there. The Madeline and the Handler ships, they faced what we've called light interceptions.

These are relatively non-violent, at least in the physical sense of the word. In Israeli soldiers, rather than sort of forcibly boarding the vessels and physically handling the passengers just diverted and escorted these ships away from their desired destination. So these boats, Israeli propaganda, took the first line. They called the Madeline the selfie yacht. This is the term, I'm sure you saw printed verbatim in many outlets like the Telegraph. There was one article which I dissected in our media storm column in byline times. You would have heard it quoted many times by Piers Morgan, probably most among the pundits. The conscience ship in May, which you probably didn't read about, this one had to end its journey because it was bombed off the coast of Malta.

Now the passengers on this ship were almost all Turkish. So were nine of the ten passengers on the Mavi Marmara aid ship in 2010 who were killed when Israel intercepted the vessel as it was approaching Gaza. These missions, Israel didn't call selfie yachts, they called terrorist operations. And we knew that the flotilla would be the same. Why? It's not all Europeans. Half of the participants are from the global south. It's also too big to really discredit as a selfie yacht

when most of the people on board have not even got social media platforms. So when we trained for the flotilla as participants in non-violent resistance and de-escalation, we didn't prepare for a light interception. We prepared for a vicious one. I mean, we had like a simulation in the training, right? I was shoved to the floor in a pitch dark room. I was pushed out of the room. I had my hands tied up and was like shut in the closet. Retrospectively, it was actually quite funny because this was all being done by like local Tunisian teenagers who were having a lot of fun and they were really adorable afterwards. But the practice was necessary to help us know how to stay calm in what we anticipated would be a terrifying situation. My friends on board,

as we record, they are drilling for that today, as we did every day that we could on the boats. We would cover everything from what order to sit down in to make sure like anyone with Palestinian heritage or women were protected. We would talk about how to display our hands to clearly show that we were unarmed. And yet, in the last few weeks, Israel's messaging about the flotilla has confirmed our fears. So we know that Israel moved from selfie yacht to terrorism. Let's look at how this came through in our media, because I have actually seen a few publicity stunt slash selfie yacht pieces. As an example, Laura Coonsberg asked Greta Thunberg on her Sunday BBC show to respond to accusations the Flotilla was a publicity stunt. Greta Thunberg said,

I don't think anyone would risk their life for a publicity stunt. As a result, the BBC went with the headline, Tundberg denies claims Gaza Flotilla is a publicity stunt. Not, you know, 500 global citizens set sale to deliver aid to Gaza, which is plain and boring and factual. But just like you said, Matilda, they centralise focus disproportionately on the celebrity presence instead of the grassroots mobilisation while leading with Israeli propaganda claims instead of independent and impartial descriptions. It's incredibly leading. Yeah. Outlets like the BBC have played more into the sort of selfie, York publicity stamp propaganda. I think, and we'll get onto this, the whole Hamas flotilla terrorist line

is a bit far even for them. But yeah, I saw another example actually of the selfie yacht narrative in the telegraph, which kind of made me laugh because they're starting to sound like a bit of a broken record and haven't they caught up with the fact that Israel's trying to go down a different route. but they ran an op-ed, very similar to the op-ed on the Madeleine, which we tore apart back then. And it was headlined, Greta's Gaza flotilla is nothing but a ship of fools. Again, it's not Greta's. It's also not a ship. It's a fleet, the biggest civilian humanitarian aid fleet in history.

This guy dismisses them as a load of hapless virtue signalers. And I just saw that headline. I thought, if you can confidently describe 530 people you don't know from 45 countries, you probably can't name as hapless fools, then you are so arrogant in your opinion that you will only ever be ignorant of the world. This is not insightful opinion. It's not even informed opinion. This is blindness of a massive global movement to the point of denialism. It's blindness to the population of the world that is so out of touch with elite establishments like the Telegraph that they are sailing into the arms of a genocidal army. Before the weeks that I was

on board, I was in Tunis for 10 days training with hundreds of internationals, more people than ever made it onto the boats, all of who were hoping to participate in what they see as a historic mission. There were people who quit their jobs or who lost their jobs or who spent all of their savings to do this. And all of these people also have families back home who are worried, terrified, many supportive nonetheless. Just like think about that. For every passenger and would-be passenger on this fleet, there are countless more family members prepared to fear for their loved ones' lives because they know that what they're doing, as dangerous as it is, is less dangerous than doing nothing in the face of genocide. Okay. Yeah.

I don't have to imagine, Matilda. I lived it. You were on the boat. Also, I've been on a signal group with your family for weeks now. Yeah, I'm so sorry to my family. And to your podcast co-host. To my podcast wife. The reason why I'm kind of like laughing about it is also because it was incredibly anxiety-inducing,

but also because every time I was worried for your safety, I would also remind myself of why you were doing it. Now, of course, you were there to report, but it was also a good reminder of why so many people, as you said, gave up so much in their life because it's really nothing compared to what is happening for the people who are in Palestine right now. Yeah, it actually makes me feel less scared about the world

to know that people will take action. Yeah. And yeah, this telegraph, I'm just going to name this telegraph op-ed writer. Do it. Jake Wallace, Simons. Of course he has three names. Of course. Thinks he knows so much better than all of those people

and that he can dismiss the force of that will with anti-woke whining. The thing is Jake Wallace Simons and Laura Kinsberg as well. They are out of date with the Israeli propaganda lines. They're parroting because publicity stun or virtue signalling or selfie yort may have been rebuttals for the Madeleine and the handler, but this time for the global summit flotilla, Israel has decided that doesn't quite cut it. This time, they've gone with the Hamas flotilla. The flotilla for which, by the way, I was on the lead ship almost the entire journey.

And so I can personally testify that the lead ship carried humanitarian aid and not a single weapon. This is a mission for which hundreds of parents and teachers and laborers and medics and journalists trained in non-violetian. It is somehow being desperately defined by Israel as a terrorist operation. In just one of many tweets to have come out in the past week, this one from Tuesday, Israel's foreign ministry wrote, exposed, official Hamas documents found in the Gaza Strip, now revealed for the first time, prove Hamas's direct involvement in the funding and execution of the Sumud flotilla to Gaza. As various commentators on Twitter helpfully point out, this is a smear tactic, not evidence. It weaves together unverified claims, guilt by association, and self-serving terrorist

designations to reframe a non-violent act of solidarity as a military operation. To put it simply, to prove that the flotilla is a military threat, Israel just needs to prove that the ships are carrying weapons or military cargo. There isn't any evidence for this, nor is there any evidence that individuals involved in the flotilla, who Israel describes as Hamas operatives in this post, no evidence that they are, in fact, Hamas operatives. Already, like, I've spent too much time legitimising this baseless propaganda by trying to falsify it. And yet these baseless claims have been legitimised by our news media. Yeah. Not all our media. I notice like many have stayed away from headlines like this, Hamas Votilla,

these headlines have saturated Israeli news media, but still some of our media, and that is too much of our media, have printed it. And for the news outlets that have printed this, if anyone is hurt tonight, they have blood on their hands. Some examples, LBC, Greta Freedom Flotilla, partially funded in inverted commas, partially funded by Hamas,

comma, Israel claims. How easy it is to use single quotation marks and XYZ claims to elevate baseless propaganda to the status of household news. The telegraph includes this Israeli propaganda in the body of articles saying

the Israeli government has repeatedly said the flotilla is a Hamas operation. But even the telegraph typically extremely right-wing paper in this country, even they feel forced to add the caveat without evidence. But look, when Israel first began putting out this propaganda, Matilda, you interviewed your fellow passengers on the family boat for their responses. Really, that is also a collection of evidence. And I think we can leave it to the people who make up this mission to respond.

Israeli propaganda is typically predictive of Israeli conduct. They can ridicule you and they'll say, it's a selfie on. The other thing they can do is say you're terrorists and that typically is a way of laying the foundations for violence. Any act of solidarity, any gesture of humanitarian aid is somehow in the minds of the state of Israel a terrorist or linked with terrorists or harboring terrorism. Israel is trying to dehumanize us in order to have an excuse to attack us.

But the truth is we are boats full of common people from actresses to professors, teachers, accountants, fishermen, normal people carrying humanitarian aid to a population in need. More perks, more points, more flights, more of all the things you want in a travel rewards card, and then some. Get your ticket to more with the new BMO ViPorter Mastercard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash ViPorter to learn more. Welcome back to MediaStorm. Now, Matilda, when Israel began putting out propaganda that the global Sumid Flotilla was a terrorist mission,

you also put out another more personal video. And it was at a really scary time. And to be honest, this video made me cry a little bit. Let's play that. This is an urgent call for help from the Freedom for TILA. We are pretty scared for our safety by now because Israel has been putting out persistent messaging calling this humanitarian aid mission the Hamas Flitilla. We know what it means when Israel starts calling people terrorists.

We know what happens. So we need your help, but I don't want to die. I love my life. And I miss my family when I'm not going anywhere. None of us are because it's scarier to imagine a world in which people are bullied into total apathy. And because I'm staying and we are gonna stay and we are not gonna reroute,

we are gonna sail to Gaza, we need your help. What made you put that video out? So, yeah, I put that video out, not as a journalist, but I posted it as an individual. This is because every morning on the boat, in our morning meeting, we would do risk assessments, where we would assess how high the risk of violence against us was. This will change based on factors like, what is the Israeli media saying? And this day, it got bad. it was when the Hamas-Fatilla propaganda began and we were genuinely scared that we could be killed and I remain scared now that my friends could be killed and that their murders would be whitewashed by a shameful media that parrots propaganda framing humanitarians as terrorist in what is clearly premeditated justification for potential violence right as soon as we saw this

propaganda, we could see that Israel was laying the groundwork to justify potential violence against us. And you know what? The night after I filmed this video, like clockwork, the fatilla was attacked. What happened? We faced 14 attacks in the middle of the night. 11 explosives dropped by drones designed specifically to fatally damaged sailing vessels. ship was destroyed and had to end the mission. There were three attacks in which chemical substances that burned passengers were dropped on deck. There were two instances in which the explosive devices weren't detonated and the next day had to be very carefully deactivated, which was thankfully manageable because we have a ship of US Army veterans for peace with us. Yeah, we were

scared. But none of us. backed out. All of us on board remained committed because there are things that are scarier than dying and among them is living in a world in which governments do nothing about genocide. There's no accountability for genocide. And do you know what happened the next day? Governments finally did something. First Italy where there had been massive strikes and then Spain and and then Greece and Turkey for NATO states dispatched Navy vessels to accompany the flotilla safely through international water. Immediately, our risk assessment went down, but it took the risk for coming so hard. It took white bodies being on the line for governments to finally do the absolute bare minimum

and enforce international law in international waters in the face of Israeli state violence and impunity. We had to reach that. You know, that is what it takes. And we saw that. Like, we have proof now that that is what it takes to get these governments to do their job. Yeah, we have seen for the last two years.

And actually, no, not just for the last few years, for millennia, how people with brown skin in the media are routinely dehumanized. They're not really thought of as intelligent people who have lives that are worth living or saving. Nowhere has this been more stark than in the genocide of the Palestinian people. We have seen it. We have seen our media uphold the devaluation of. brown lives, it's really, I mean, it's really stark when you lay it out in the context of the

flotilla like that, what it takes for media attention, for government intervention, for people to put themselves in the shoes of those in Palestine. One thing that I do think is really helpful and something that I have seen is that the people who are on the flotilla, those of them who are in a position of privilege have been repeatedly pulling the message back to Gaza, back to the genocide. And that is not only important, you know, an important stance to take from a position of privilege, but it is also a really important thing to do, to guide our media to do the right thing to report on what is actually happening, not report on these white faces who happen to have joined the flotilla. And it's an example of how we can influence Western media in the

same way that they're parroting Israeli propaganda. This is a way to get them to start parroting what's really happening. Yeah, because for all of the risks that anyone on the flotilla faces, these are absolutely infinitesimal compared to the risks that every single Palestinian and above all Palestinians in Gaza right now are facing. And I also want to emphasise that while I said the Navy vessels diminished the risk assessment, that was before the boats reached the naval blockade. Now they are not protected and the risk becomes high again. And so I would like to end this episode with messages from my fellow passengers who are

by the time this episode goes out, almost certainly being transported to or already incarcerated in an Israeli prison. I have some interviews, but first I want to read the words of maybe my closest friend on the boat. He's an American guy called David Adler, Jewish American,

and he would definitely roll his eyes at me for pointing that out, but I feel like it's relevant to an extent. He wrote these words this morning after the first night of military terrorisation in the interception zone. Regrettably a stage for which I'm not around, so here's what he wrote. Dear friends, I fear this will be the final letter that I write to you from the global summit fatilla. When Israeli authorities forcibly board our vessels in the coming hours,

please know that they will be committing an act of piracy. Let them try to justify it. Let them explain to the international community why, our humble effort to feed the starving people of Gaza represents some threat to their national security. No one will believe them. The Hasbara, which is Israeli propaganda, simply doesn't hit anymore. From here, I can say that we are not afraid of interception, interrogation or incarceration. What we fear is a world where such abductions become routine, where Humanitarians are treated as criminals where bringing food to hungry children is called terrorism. I'm going to stop there.

There is more. But this is media storm. And that is the message that the media needs. Perhaps more than any. I also just want to pick out a line from that letter, though, regarding Israel's attempts to smear the flotilla. David Adler, your friend, he wrote, No one will believe them. The Hasbara simply doesn't hit anymore.

the Hasbrook, as he said, Israeli propaganda. I think that is an important line because I think it is mostly true. I think it is true. And not just for the kinds of people who listen to Media Storm, but also for legacy media and their readers too. Increasingly, in the last weeks and days,

I have felt there has been a change in tone. As European governments have been forced to take notice, so to have many news outlets, sensing that the popular tide is truly turning against them. Media outlets that have long been unblinkingly aligned with Israel, like the Times here in the UK, or even the Wall Street Journal in the US, they have published important and respectable pieces about the flotilla

that lay clear the dangers and cut through propaganda in ways that feel truly novel for these outlets. Yeah, you're right. and thank you for pointing that out. We are winning the media war on Gaza, slowly but surely. Nevertheless, legacy media was not on board the flotilla, and that means that they can't bring you the voices of the people who are living this story. That is why you listen to MediaStorm.

So here are some messages from people currently being held as political prisoners, but unable to be silenced. My name is Kira Andrew and I'm from the United Kingdom. I don't regret anything. It's important that we did this. It's important that other people do it as well. If enough people stand up to Israel, however small, eventually Israel will stop being able to get away with

what it's getting away with and everything will be different. My name is Tommy Marcus. I'm a citizen of the United States of America and my message from Israeli custody is that I'm happy I went on this mission and as you're listening to this, Israel is more than likely continuing their genocide of Palestinian people with the goal of erasing all who lived there and for that reason I knew what I signed up for, have been willing to take the punishment and will continue to. Thank you and free Palestine.

Hello, my name is Louis. I am Spanish citizen with Palestinian and Syrian origins. Don't stop the pressure to end up this madness that is facing the Palestinian people. Please just look at your eyes, look with your eyes what's happening. This is not normal. This is something that has to end and Palestinian people need to be free. Thank you for listening. Next week, we'll be back with a News Watch, helping you get your head around the headlines. If you want to support MediaStorm, you can do so on...

Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout out to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone. Word of Mal is still the best way to grow a podcast, so please do tell your friends and obviously leave us a five-star rating and a review. You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helena Waddea and follow the show via at MediaStorm pod. Media Storm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Malinton. The music is by and fire.