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Gaza ‘Freedom Flotilla’ Sets Sail from Italy with Greta Thunberg, Susan Sarandon Onboard

The Cradle News Desk

June 1, 2025: Renowned climate activist Greta Thunberg and actors Guy Pearce, Susan Sarandon, and Liam Cunningham have joined the multinational Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) of activists who boarded the Madleen ship to set sail for Gaza on 1 June, in a direct challenge to the blockade on the strip.

The initiative aims to bring attention to the siege of Gaza and pressure governments to act as the humanitarian crisis in the enclave worsens.

The Madleen civilian ship departed from Catania, Sicily, on Sunday and is crewed by international activists, medics, and other volunteers dedicated to restoring the flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.

The small vessel is expected to reach Gaza by 8 June, where activists will attempt to breach the Israeli-enforced blockade on the besieged enclave, carrying a meager but ‘symbolic’ amount of humanitarian aid.

According to organizers, the mission serves both as a protest and a humanitarian effort, described as a last-ditch attempt to urge world governments to take immediate action and restore safe channels for delivering essential aid and medical supplies.

“We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying, because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity,” said Thunberg at a news conference before departing from Catania, where the mission’s final launch event took place.

“No matter how dangerous this mission is, it is nowhere near as dangerous as the silence of the entire world in the face of the lives being genocided,” Thunberg added.

The latest FFC mission was met with mockery by some Israeli and US figures, with US Senator Lindsey Graham posting on X, “Hope Greta and her friends can swim!”

This humanitarian undertaking comes one month after Israel attacked the first FFC aid vessel that was en route to Gaza with two drone strikes while in international waters off Malta after launching from Tunisia, resulting in dangerous breaches to the hull of the vessel, threatening to sink it.

(Courtesy: The Cradle, an online news magazine covering the geopolitics of West Asia from within the region.)

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Massive Nakba Day Protests Show the Movement for Palestine Remains Strong

Juan Andrés Gallardo

May 19, 2025: More than half a million people flooded the streets of central London on Saturday to demand an end to the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, as part of the commemoration of the 77th anniversary of the Nakba and to condemn Israel’s new military offensive.

The march, organized by a broad coalition of pro-Palestinian groups, departed at noon from the Embankment, crossed iconic bridges such as Westminster and Waterloo, and concluded in front of Downing Street (the Prime Minister’s official residence) with speeches by the organizers. Slogans such as “Stop the genocide in Gaza” and “Free Palestine” were present throughout the mobilization.

Simultaneously, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of cities like Stockholm, Paris, Berlin, and Athens, among others, in a wave of global solidarity with the Palestinian people that commemorated the forced displacement of 700,000 Palestinians and the murders and ethnic cleansing carried out against the Arab population during the artificial founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Demonstrators denounced what they see as a new Nakba that seeks to advance an open genocide in the Gaza Strip and the expulsion of the Palestinian population from their lands once again.

Chronicle of the Mobilisation in London

Hundreds of buses arrived in London early Saturday, carrying activists from dozens of towns and cities across the United Kingdom. Early in the morning, a cloudy sky accompanied the arrival of protesters at the Embankment Tube station, where rows of Palestinian banners and flags awaited the start of the march

At noon, the column began to move, with protesters wearing keffiyehs waving in the breeze and carrying photographs of victims of Gaza. Young and old activists, workers, and entire families filled the streets in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The march advanced across Westminster Bridge, parallel to Parliament, continued over Waterloo Bridge, and ended in Whitehall, in front of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s residence. Along the way, slogans such as “Stop the genocide in Gaza,” “Free Palestine,” and “Israel is a terror state” were chanted, while thousands of participants demanded an end to British complicity with Israel and a halt to arms supplies to the country.

During the event, Fares Amer, spokesperson for the Palestinian Forum in Britain, warned: “The goal of the genocide in Gaza is to continue the work they began 77 years ago, but they will fail.”

For her part, Lindsey German of the Stop the War Coalition demanded that Keir Starmer and Donald Trump stop arming Israel, and denounced the disgusting hypocrisy of supporting the bombing while simultaneously denying humanitarian aid.

More Action Needed in Response to the New Israeli Offensive

In early May 2025, the Israeli army announced a full-scale offensive in Gaza, with plans to completely occupy the Strip and to force hundreds of thousands of Gazans southward from their homes, while threatening to expel them to Egypt or Jordan. Meanwhile, the displaced would be held in “concentration camps” under armed guard by the Israeli army and mercenary U.S. contracting companies. As part of this plan, over the past week, Israel has stepped up its bombing raids, killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians, increasing international outrage and urgency for protests.

Marchers in Toronto with Palestinian flags and a that reads” save humanity with revolution.”

While half a million voices were raised in London, thousands gathered in Stockholm at Odenplan Square, waving flags and banners with slogans like “Stop the Zionist regime’s genocide in Palestine.” In Paris, tens of thousands demanded an end to the attacks on Gaza; in Berlin, protesters gathered at Potsdamer Platz under the slogan “Your silence is complicity”; and in Athens, the column marched past both the U.S. and Israeli embassies wearing keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags. Significant demonstrations also took place in Madrid, Geneva, Toronto, San Francisco, São Paulo, Amsterdam, Milan, Dublin, Hamburg, and Melbourne, all linking the commemoration of the Nakba with the denunciation of the current humanitarian crisis and Israel’s new offensive.

The May 17 protests not only symbolized Palestinian resistance, but also a new level of global solidarity that has been ignited by images of extreme famine and Israel’s new plans to permanently occupy Gaza and expel Palestiniains. The scale of the mobilization in London and major world capitals reflects a powerful message: the Nakba of 1948 and the suffering of Gaza in 2025 are intrinsically linked. Just as protests began to renew at universities in both the United States and the United Kingdom, which last year questioned their governments and university administrations’ dealings with the State of Israel, the mobilizations of recent days once again demonstrate the need and urgency of building a massive international movement in solidarity with the Palestinian cause and against the open-air genocide of the State of Israel and the complicity of the major imperialist powers.

(Juan is a journalist from Buenos Aires and the editor of the international section of Left Voice’s Argentinian sister site La Izquierda Diario. Courtesy: Left Voice, a US socialist news site and magazine dedicated to fostering a sustained and strategic struggle against every form of capitalist exploitation and oppression.)

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Why are Veterans and Allies Fasting for Gaza?

Gerry Condon

May 29, 2025: Last Thursday, May 22, a coalition named Veterans and Allies Fast for Gaza kicked off a 40-day fast outside the United Nations in Manhattan in protest against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. Military veterans and allies pledged to fast for 40 days on only 250 calories per day, the amount recently reported as what the residents of Gaza are enduring.

The fasters are demanding:

1) Full humanitarian aid to Gaza under UN authority, and

2) No more U.S. weapons to Israel.

Seven people are fasting from May 22 to June 30 outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where they are present from 9:30 am to 3 pm, Mondays to Fridays. Many others are fasting around the U.S. and beyond for as many days as they can. The fast is organized by Veterans For Peace along with over 40 co-sponsoring organizations.

Remarkably, over 600 people have registered to join the fast. Friends of Sabeel, NA is maintaining the list of fasters.

Who will stop the genocide in Palestine, if not us? That is the question that the fasters and many others are asking. The U.S. government is shamelessly complicit in Israel’s genocide, and to a lesser extent the same is true for the European governments. The silence and inaction of most Middle Eastern countries is resounding. Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, the only countries to come to Palestine’s aid, have been bombed by Israel and the U.S., with the threat of more to come. Syria, another country that stood with Palestine, has been “regime changed” and handed over to former al-Qaeda / ISIS extremists.

On the positive side, some governments are making their voices heard. South Africa and Nicaragua have taken Israel and Germany, respectively, to the International Court of Justice – Israel for its genocide, Germany for providing weapons to Israel. And millions of regular people around the globe have protested loudly and continue to do so.

Here in the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace has provided crucial leadership, pushing back against the phony charges of “anti-semitism” that are thrown at the student protesters whose courageous resistance has spoken for so many. University administrators have been all too quick to crack down on the students, violating their right to freedom of speech, but even these universities have come under attack from the repressive, anti-democratic Trump administration.

Peace-loving people are frustrated and angry. Some are worried they will be detained or deported. And many of us are suffering from Moral Injury, concerned about our own complicity. How are we supposed to act as we watch U.S. bombs obliterate Gaza’s hospitals, mosques, churches and universities? What are we supposed to do when we see Palestinian children being starving to death, systematically and live-streamed.

Because our movement is nonviolent, we do not want to follow the example of the young man who shot and killed two employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. But we understand his frustration and how he was driven to take forceful action. We take courage from the supreme sacrifice of U.S. Airman Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy, asking “what would you do.”

Student protesters at several universities around the country have initiated “hunger strikes,” often considered a protest of last resort. Now they have been joined by military veterans.

“Watching hundreds of people maimed, burned, and killed every day just tears at my insides,” said Mike Ferner, former Executive Director of Veterans For Peace and one of the fasters. “Too much like when I nursed hundreds of wounded from our war in Viet Nam,” said the former Navy corpsman. “This madness will only stop when enough Americans demand it stops.”

Rev. Addie Domske, National Field Organizer for Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), said,

“This month I celebrated my third Mother’s Day with a renewed commitment to parent my kid toward a free Palestine. As a mother, I am responsible for feeding my child. I also believe, as a mother, I must be responsive when other children are starving.

Kathy Kelly, board president of World BEYOND War, also in NY for the fast, said,

“Irish Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire, at age 81, recently fasted for forty days, saying ‘As the children of Gaza are hungry and injured with bombs by official Israeli policy, I have decided that I, too, must go hungry with them, as I in good conscience can do no other.’ Now, Israel intensifies its efforts to eradicate Gaza through bombing, forcible displacement, and siege. We must follow Mairead’s lead, hungering acutely for an end to all weapon shipments to Israel. We must ask, ‘who are the criminals?’ as war crimes multiply and political leaders fail to stop them.”

Another faster is Joy Metzler: 23, Cocoa FL., a 2023 graduate of the Air Force Academy who became a Conscientious Objector and left the Air Force, citing US aggression in the Middle East and the continued ethnic cleansing in all of Palestine. Joy is a now a member of Veterans For Peace and a co-founder of Servicemembers For Ceasefire.

“I am watching as our government unconditionally supports the very violations of international law that the Air Force trained me to recognize,” said Joy Metzler. “I was trained to uphold the values of justice, and that is why I am speaking out and condemning our government’s complicity in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

I spoke with VFP leader Mike Ferner on Day 7 of his Fast. The NYPD had just told him and the other fasters that they could no longer sit down in front of the US Mission to the UN on the little stools they had brought. But Mike Ferner was not complaining. He said:

“We go home every night to a safe bed and we can drink clean water. We are not watching our children starve to death before us. Our sacrifice is a small one. We are taking a stand for humanity and we encourage others to do what they can. Demand full humanitarian relief in Gaza under UN authority, and an end to U.S. weapons shipments to Israel. This is how we can stop the genocide.”

[Gerry Condon refused Army orders to deploy to Vietnam in 1968. He was court-martialed and sentenced to ten years in prison, but escaped to Sweden, where he worked with the American Deserters Committee, and then to Canada, where he worked with the AMEX-Canada war resister collective. He currently serves on the Board of Veterans For Peace. Courtesy: CounterPunch, an online magazine based in the United States that covers politics in a manner its editors describe as “muckraking with a radical attitude”. It is edited by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank.]

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The Gaza Solidarity Movement Outlives the Government’s Support for Israel

David Jamieson

May 29, 2025: Something immense but not sufficiently recognised has taken place in the last few days. The Gaza solidarity movement has outlived the British Government’s policy of defence for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Just before this volte-face, the Gaza solidarity movement achieved its second largest demonstration to date. It has, therefore, scored another partial but real victory.

The movement’s survival to now was by no means guaranteed. It had to be won from a state and establishment that has denounced, smeared, banned, gagged, sacked, arrested and jailed. This movement did not yield to attacks by police or far right thugs encouraged onto the street by the government. It did not fall into demoralisation after 19 months of consistent action. This had to be fought for, organised, encouraged and achieved. It took enormous dedication and sacrifice, not least from the people who have been, and continue to be, persecuted in ways both draconian and life changing, and also petty but vindictive and constant.

This is a movement which has involved both gigantic street processions and direct action, an outpouring of literature and cultural production, consumer boycotts, campus encampments and dissident electoral candidates. A bewildering array of tactics has been unleashed in the name of stopping the killing in Gaza. It has scored victories along the way; unseating pro-war MPs; facing-down protest-bans and censorship, and even forcing the resignation of a Home Secretary. It has helped to transform the attitude of millions toward British and western foreign policy toward Israel, Palestine and the wider region.

There are three qualifications that could be made to what I have said above; two we should take seriously, and one we should not.

First and foremost, this is a victory—not the victory. Gaza is in the grip of starvation. The threat of a radicalised Israeli state hangs over the shattered territory. Our own government is as devious as ever. Though foreign secretary David Lammy’s condemnations mark a real shift in policy, the most significant since the onslaught began, they are still more words than deeds. The U.S. and western allies are angling for a controlled resolution that leaves justice undone, the movement without vindication and the Palestinians without self-determination. No one in this movement, having come so far, will be in any mood for complacency.

Second, no one would claim that the movement’s achievements come in a vacuum. Much is changing in the world, not least the calculations at the apex of the world system, and the balance of power in the region. Clearly, British foreign policy is part of a wider shift with more than one cause. Yet this is always the case. Social movements fight against the backdrop of the permanent revolution of the world capitalist system. They must always adapt, respond and exploit moments of historical change to be of use.

But a third argument, we should have no more patience with. I refer to the dismissal of ‘A to B marches’ as an effective tactic for the anti-war movement.

By now, this idea—which persists in pockets of the activist left, rather than in the wider movement or public opinion—is inexcusable in face of the evidence. As noted above, the tactical repertoire of the movement has been enormous. It is difficult to recall a movement in recent times more diverse, creative and effective in the range of initiatives it has undertaken. This sweeping has emerged organically from the wide, plural movement. But it has also often been centrally driven. Look, for instance, at the workplace days of action—a conscious attempt to bridge the traditional weaknesses of workplace organisation and anti-war strike activity.

This is not achievable without the huge national and local protest movement. The London marches, several of which have now broken the half a million mark, are the flagship of the whole movement. They are a central rallying point for all those who want to voice their anger, far beyond activist circles. They keep the movement visible despite a largely hostile media environment. They help establish the movement as an unavoidable feature of national political life, no matter how much the government and career politicians would wish it simply went away. The movement has used this mass body as a launch pad for the tactical array discussed above, and as a scaffolding to establish more infrastructure, from trade unions to campuses and cultural organisations.

Just consider what a disaster it would have been for the movement to cease the mass marching. It would have scattered a strong movement, leaving many of its local and national leaders to the full weight of persecution. All those who have gone out on a limb—whether through direct action, or speaking out in institutions or workplaces, would suddenly be more isolated. Any idea of a move away from mass demonstrations is absurd and dangerous.

The mass movement has outgrown the gripe about ‘A to B marches’. It has synthesised broad, mass participation with radical action. For those left behind by these developments, it’s time to graduate from a comforting fantasy about wonder-tactics that will somehow deliver a total and final victory. That’s not how any movement works. We are in this for a slog yet, and there will be more serious debates and challenges to overcome.

(David Jamieson is editor of Scottish anti-capitalist website Conter Cross. Courtesy: Stop the War Coalition. The Stop the War Coalition (StWC) was founded in the UK in September 2001 in the weeks following 9/11, when George W. Bush announced the “war on terror”. It has since been dedicated to campaigning against and ending the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and elsewhere. Since October 2023, it has been part of the national Palestine coalition of six pro-Palestinian organisations organising regular national marches in London and local actions in towns and cities around the country, in demand of an end of the genocide in Gaza, and end to UK arms sales to Israel and a free Palestine.)