Israel Is Attacking Aid Ships To Gaza With Impunity

What does it say about the state of Israel and its backers that it can get away with repeated attacks on aid shipments to Palestinian civilians?

By Seraj Assi, Jacobin

On Friday, shortly after midnight, Israeli forces bombed with armed drones a humanitarian aid ship carrying food and medicine to the besieged Gaza Strip. The civilian vessel, which belongs to the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), was carrying thirty international solidarity activists from twenty-one countries. Before sailing to Gaza, the ship was scheduled to stop in Malta and pick up about forty more people, including climate change and human rights activist Greta Thunberg and retired US Army colonel Mary Ann Wright.

The ship was attacked near Malta while in international waters, more than 1,600 nautical miles from Gaza. It instantly caught fire and started to capsize, having suffered a substantial breach in the hull.

“There is a hole in the vessel right now and the ship is sinking,” Yasemin Acar, the coalition’s press officer, told CNN by phone from Malta. “Attacking international human rights activists in international waters is a war crime,” Acar later asserted.

The coalition added in a statement: “The drone strike appears to have deliberately targeted the ship’s generator, leaving the crew without power and placing the vessel at great risk of sinking.”

Footage posted by the FFC on social media shows a fire burning on the ship, with passengers aboard walking through smoke that appears to have engulfed the vessel, while the sound of two loud explosions can also be heard in a separate video clip. Photos taken onboard the ship also show large holes in the structure, which appears largely charred and covered in soot. (Trevor Ball, a former US Army senior explosive ordnance disposal team member, told CNN that the photos are consistent with two smaller blast munitions being used.)