The latest incident with the Madleen vessel, pictured as a relief measure by celebrity activists and sundry accompaniments to supply civilians with a modest assortment of humanitarian aid, is merely one of multiple previous efforts to break the Gaza blockade.  It is easy to forget that, prior to Israel’s current program to kill, starve and empty the enclave of its Palestinian citizens after the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, Gaza had already become, arguably, the world’s largest open-air prison. It was a prison which converted all citizens into inmates trapped in a state of continual privation, placed under constant surveillance, at the mercy of the dispensations and graces of a power occupying in all but name.  At any moment, officials could be extrajudicially assassinated, or families obliterated by executive fiat.

In 2008, the Free Gaza Movement successfully managed to reach Gaza with two vessels.  For the next eight years, five out of 31 boats successfully journeyed to the Strip.  Others met no such luck.  In 2010, Israeli commandos revealed their petticoats of violence in killing 10 activists and injuring dozens of others on the Mavi Marmara, a vessel carrying 10,000 tonnes of supplies, including school supplies, building materials and two large electricity generators.  It was also operated by the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, a Turkish NGO, being one of six ships that formed a flotilla.  Scandal followed, and the wounds on that issue have yet to heal.

With the Israeli Defence Forces and its evangelical warriors preaching the destruction of Palestinians along with any hope of a viable, functioning state, an impotent collective of nations, either allied to Israel or adversarial in nature, have been unable to minimise or restrain the viciousness of the Gaza campaign.  Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen, have made largely fruitless military efforts to ease the program of gradual liquidation taking place in the Strip.  Given such an absence of resolve and effectualness, tragedy can lend itself to symbolic theatre and farce.

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