Photograph Source: Global Sumud Flotilla
This has been yet another week of raw Israeli extremism, broadcast live to the world. On May 18th and 19th, 2026, Israeli commandos carried out an act of state piracy in international waters near Cyprus — more than 250 nautical miles from Gaza. They stormed vessels of the international flotillas, brutally detained unarmed humanitarian activists, destroyed equipment, and held dozens hostage. The Squid Game like images of civilians forced to kneel, zip-tied and humiliated, have shocked global conscience.
Wanted International war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu emerged from a military command bunker to triumphantly praise the raid, bragging that Israeli commandos had successfully stopped the unarmed humanitarian flotilla activists from “supporting Hamas.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — himself the subject of an active International Criminal Court arrest warrant — arrogantly dismissed international law, declaring that Israel would continue to act as it pleased regardless of “so-called” legal constraints. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir turned the assault into a sadistic public spectacle. On May 20, he paraded detainees, forcing many to lie face-down on the ground with their hands tightly chained or tied behind their backs, mocking them for the cameras in a grotesque display of fascist cruelty and arrogance. Ben-Gvir, a convicted racist who has long advocated executing Palestinian prisoners by hanging, has repeatedly celebrated such imagery, including wearing a noose pin and posting videos fantasizing about mass executions. His behaviour this week was not an aberration — it was the logical expression of a regime that views Palestinians as subhuman and international law as an inconvenience.
Some have aptly called the Mediterranean Israel’s own or God’s chosen swimming pool — a lawless expanse where the self-proclaimed chosen people believe divine right grants them total impunity to rampage across international waters, throwing basic humanity to the wind in service of their messianic delusions. So far, they have done exactly that, and with complete impunity.
The mission of the flotillas is both immediate and strategic: to break Israel’s illegal naval blockade of Gaza, deliver desperately needed aid, and shine an unrelenting spotlight on the ongoing genocide. Imposed in 2007 as collective punishment, the blockade has long been calibrated through the infamous “Red Lines” policy — allowing just enough food to keep 2.3 million Palestinians on the edge of starvation. Since October 2023, it has helped enable a live-streamed extermination: hospitals systematically destroyed, children dying of malnutrition, entire families erased. With total impunity, backed by Washington and its European allies, Israel has turned Gaza into the most documented slaughter in modern history.
Art by Vauro Senesi
Three coordinated efforts — the Global Sumud Flotilla, the Thousand Madleens to Gaza, and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition — represent the largest civilian maritime challenge to this siege in history. Their deeper goal is to forge a durable, global network of solidarity, connecting ports, unions, cities, and movements in an unbreakable chain alongside the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberation.
In Italy, Freedom Flotilla Italia is playing a vital role. Its “100 Ports, 100 Cities” campaign, which departed from Taranto on May 2, combines the sailboat Ghassan Kanafani — named after the legendary Palestinian writer and revolutionary assassinated by Mossad in 1972 — with a mobile caravan that travels from port to inland towns. As the organizers state, the mission is “to build a solid and lasting network to stand alongside the Palestinian people and put the liberation of Palestine at the forefront of the struggle against imperialism and the world powers that enrich themselves through war and unrestrained capitalism at the expense of all of us.” It is also raising essential funds for the besieged Al Awda Hospital, one of the last functioning medical facilities in Gaza.
The latest act of piracy has triggered widespread outrage. Saif Abu Keshek, recently released after his previous abduction, was in Rome this week joining protests against this new assault. The courage of the Flotilla activists has only fueled the movement. The story has dominated front pages in Italy and made international headlines, with global leaders, human rights organizations, and ordinary citizens denouncing Israel’s behaviour as a flagrant violation of international law. Yet, as always, condemnation has not translated into concrete action.
This week’s events lay bare Zionism’s essence: a European settler-colonial project, an ethno-supremacist enclave built on stolen land and sustained by relentless violence. Palestinians are the indigenous Semitic people of the region. The European colonizers are not. “Make Israel Palestine Again” is not revenge — it is justice and decolonization.
The moral bankruptcy of the West stands fully exposed. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas offers empty rhetoric about supporting Palestine while the bloc continues weapons supplies and uninterrupted economic cooperation with Israel. Italy under Meloni — whose government carries the living DNA of Italian fascism — and Germany — a country with Nazism still in its blood, now expressed through brutal repression of Palestinian solidarity activists and blind support for Zionism — were instrumental in blocking any serious EU sanctions on the Zionist entity. Their complicity is criminal.
Meanwhile, Trump’s grotesque “Board of Peace” — a cabal of Zionist speculators and evangelical extremists — fantasizes about turning Gaza’s ruins into a luxury Riviera while Palestinians still die under bombs and blockade. This is gangster capitalism at its most depraved.
Despite Israel’s hundreds of millions poured into hasbara propaganda, the mask has fallen. The sadistic reality of Zionism — apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide — is now visible to millions all around the world. The more Israel lashes out in arrogance and brutality, the faster the global awakening spreads. People across the world are connecting the dots: this is not self-defense, but the death throes of a colonial project that can no longer hide its true nature.
The flotillas sail on, in body or in spirit. The resistance at sea continues. The resistance on land must intensify.
Break the siege. End the genocide. Make Israel Palestine Again. Free Palestine!
