What The Hell America!

On Thursday, 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.)

While the Maltese government said on Friday that the vessel and its crew were secured in the early hours of the morning after a nearby tug assisted with firefighting operations, the flotilla organizers have insisted the ship “was still in danger,” as Reuters reported.

The drone attack was a deliberate assault on civilians.

Speaking from Malta, Mary Ann Wright told CNN: “Anyone could have been on the boat. . . . We didn’t even think that this would happen. It’s the craziest thing in the world. The ship was in an anchor there, waiting for us to come. Who would send drones to bomb a ship that is anchoring off Malta? This should be a warning to all European countries.”

The attack is part of Israel’s brutal campaign to starve to death Palestinians in Gaza, which has been under total blockade and relentless bombing for two months, with over two million people on the brink of mass starvation. On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) released a report warning that the humanitarian response in Gaza is “on the verge of total collapse.” The World Food Programme (WFP) reported this week that “its warehouses are now empty; soup kitchens that are still running are severely rationing their last stocks; and what little food remains in Gaza’s markets is being sold for exorbitant prices that most cannot afford.”

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition is an international network of anti-genocide activists working to end Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza and deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged enclave by taking nonviolent and symbolic action. “On board are international human rights activists on a nonviolent humanitarian mission to challenge Israel’s illegal and deadly siege of Gaza, and to deliver desperately needed, life-saving aid,” the group has said in a statement.

Speaking to Reuters from Malta, Thunberg said the aid ship was “one of many attempts to open up a humanitarian corridor and to do our part to keep trying to break Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza,” where “for two months now, not a single bottle of water has entered Gaza, and it’s a systematic starvation of two million people.” Undeterred, Thunberg vowed: “What is certain is that we human rights activists will continue to do everything in our power to do our part.”

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said on social media that she “received a distressed call from the people of the Freedom Flotilla that is carrying essential food and medicine to the starving Gaza population.”

Following the assault, the coalition has called for an investigation into possible war crimes, saying in a statement: “Israeli ambassadors must be summoned and answer to violations of international law, including the ongoing blockade and the bombing of our civilian vessel in international waters.”

All evidence points to Israel. Citing flight-tracking website ADS-B Exchange, CNN reported on Friday that an Israeli Air Force C-130 Hercules was picked up leaving Israel early Thursday afternoon and flying to Malta. “The Hercules did not land at Malta’s international airport, the data shows, but the cargo aircraft did fly at a relatively low altitude — below 5,000 feet — over eastern Malta for an extended period of time. The Hercules flew over several hours before the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said their vessel came under attack. The plane returned to Israel about seven hours later, flight-tracking data shows.”

Huwaida Arraf, an organizer with the FFC, wrote in an email to the Washington Post that “Israel has threatened us and attacked us many times before, in 2010, killing 10 of our volunteers. It is also the primary entity interested in keeping us and any aid out of Gaza.”

Global condemnation was swift and unequivocal. “A crime, within a crime, within a crime,” Luigi Daniel, an expert in international humanitarian law, described it. Itamar Mann, an associate professor at the University of Haifa, said the attack “signals a clear violation of the right to life, as well as a war crime.” Shahd Hammouri, a Palestinian expert on international law, said, “Israel is willing to bomb humanitarian ships to maintain its policy of starving the Palestinian people as a method of warfare.”

On Friday, Amnesty International renewed its call on Israel to lift its suffocating humanitarian blockade and devastating siege of Gaza, which is both “inhumane and cruel,” calling it “further evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza,” and warning the Israeli government’s “policy of deliberately imposing conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza calculated to bring about their physical destruction amounts to an act of genocide.”

Meanwhile, a State Department lawyer told the International Court of Justice this week that Israel “has no duty” to allow UN aid into Gaza, and that the United States fully backs Israel’s United Nations Relief and Works Agency ban.

Following Friday’s attack, a sense of tragic déjà vu has hit Palestinians in Gaza, who have been under siege for nearly two decades, and who recall with horror that Israel’s onslaughts on aid ships are as old as the siege itself.

Israel has a long history of attacking aid ships bound for besieged Gaza. In May 2010, three years into the siege, Israel attacked six civilian ships of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, killing ten passengers, and wounding thirty others. The ships were carrying humanitarian supplies for Gaza and boarded with civilians acting in solidarity with besieged Palestinians.

A United Nations Human Rights Council report deemed the blockade illegal and stated that Israel’s attack on the ship “betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality,” with evidence of “willful killing.” Despite the global outrage sparked by the attack, then vice president Joe Biden then took the lead in defending Israel’s attack on the humanitarian aid convoy, describing the deadly raid as “legitimate,” applauding Israel’s right to besiege Palestinians in Gaza, and shifting the blame to the victims. “So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza?” Biden said.

According to international law, forced starvation is a war crime, a crime against humanity, and an act of genocide. Yet US complicity and unconditional support over the years have ensured that Israel can attack and kill civilians with impunity.