Greta Thunberg onboard the freedom flotilla dubbed The Madleen. SCREENSHOT/ INSTAGRAM @GRETATHUNBERG

Greta Thunberg and crew threatened to commit the unthinkable – deliver food, first aid, clean water, and child prosthetics to the people of Gaza. Their symbolism and message, however, were the real threat. On June 8, 2025, the Madleen, a humanitarian aid boat heading to Gaza named after Gaza fisherwoman and rescue swimmer Madelyn Culab, was illegally intercepted in international waters by Israelis. An earlier attempt, made on May 2 was subjected to drone attack. Of the 12 passengers were the prominent activist Thunberg, actor Liam Cunningham, Yanis Mhamdi, and French MEP Rima Hassan. Organized by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), the mission intended to disrupt Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, set in place since 2007, and aimed to deliver urgently required supplies. The Israeli military stated however, that the flotilla was illegal. They captured the boat while kidnapping its passengers, sending them back to Israel to be deported.

The event echoed across international media, and prompted a debate around humanitarian law, state sovereignty, and moral resistance. The incident recalls an ancient parable reiterated by Noam Chomsky in his book, Pirates and Emperors. The book starts with a reference to St. Augustine’s The City of God, about a pirate who once confronted Alexander the Great’s hard power with a simple but penetrating truth – power associations, not the offense, is what separates criminality from conquering. This primary source reminds us of how legitimacy and the use of force are defined in the study of power and Global Politics. Israel’s motivation to stop the flotilla was guided by a need to show dominance while also distorting the intentions of the activists – as though they were interested in aiding and abetting the true purveyors of structural violence – Hamas (a non-state actor with disproportionate capability and nothing to do with Thunberg).

Chomsky and State Violence

As International Terrorism in the Real World opens with the vignette from St. Augustine to challenge the predominant ideas of legitimacy and violence, Chomsky also reinforces the significance of the dialogue between the powerful and the powerless.[1] When Alexander asks how the pirate dare molest the sea, the pirate quickly retorts, “How do you molest the world? Because I do it with a small boat, you do it with a great navy!”[2] Chomsky uses this tale to expose the moral double standards of Global Politics but also the essence of the exchange and use of language in the modern State design. State actions that use both soft and hard power with invasions, embargoes, or military blockades are typically seen as lawful, while smaller-scale, non-state actors’ efforts to resist or disrupt those systems, especially ones motivated by conscience (in Thunberg’s case) are branded as forms of antisemitism, terrorism, or unnecessary provocations, and........

© CounterPunch