UK-flagged vessel Madleen enter the Ashdod port, after the Israeli army took control on the vessel overnight, in Ashdod, June 9, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Throughout the day on Monday, journalists, solidarity activists, and right-wing demonstrators gathered at Givat Yona, a hill overlooking the Ashdod port in southern Israel, in anticipation of the arrival of the Madleen. The ship, which carried 11 activists, a journalist, and a shipment of humanitarian aid, had been stopped by the Israeli navy on its way to Gaza.

Israeli officers had boarded and took control of the ship — illegally, while it was still in international waters — around 3 a.m., and it arrived at the port, escorted by navy vessels, only about 20 hours later. By sunset, the ship was visible from the shore, but it seems the navy decided to wait until nightfall to bring it into the port, likely in order to prevent the media outlets waiting on the beach from documenting and covering the event.

Since contact with the ship was cut off in the early morning, apart from a few videos filmed by the activists before their arrest and a brief video released by the military, there was little left for the Israeli media to cover. Therefore, they decided to focus on the “PR operation,” as described by the highly popular outlet Ynet.

For example, public relations figure Eylon Levy (who was dismissed last March from his position as a government spokesperson) described the photo of the masked female soldier facing Greta Thunberg as “the best picture of the war.” Other headlines declared that Israel “won the battle for public opinion.”

One such “victory” could be found on Channel 12, where news presenter Oded Ben-Ami told a Hasbara activist: “The environmental activist [Thunberg] was honored by one of Israel’s Shayetet 13 commandos with water in a plastic bottle and a sandwich. And they made sure it was a pastrami sandwich — even though she’s famously vegan.”

An Israeli soldier hands activist Greta Thunberg a sandwich and water bottle after intercepting the Gaza-bound Madleen flotilla, June 9, 2025. (Israeli Foreign Ministry)

According to the Israeli media, then, handing a non-vegan sandwich wrapped in “non-biodegradable” plastic to a vegan environmental activist is considered a PR coup. One can only imagine the response in Israel if mainstream media in Europe or the U.S. gloated about a religious Jewish detainee being handed a ham sandwich.

Not satisfied by his sandwich-related jibes, Ben-Ami later mockingly remarked that Thunberg would be forced to take polluting flights during her deportation from Israel, something she generally avoids. Even the Foreign Ministry jumped on the opportunity and published a photo of Thunberg on an El Al plane, which the popular Israeli television program “Hazinor” then posted with the caption: “Greta is taking part in environmental destruction with a polluting plane on her way home. Shall we wish her a pleasant flight?”

 Mockery as strategy

Based on reactions like the aforementioned, it soon becomes clear that Israel’s handling of the Madleen affair says more about the state of the country in general, and of its public diplomacy (or hasbara, the state-sponsored propaganda effort) in particular, than it does about the symbolic flotilla itself.

UK-flagged vessel Madleen enter the Ashdod port, after the Israeli army took control on the vessel overnight, in Ashdod, June 9, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90)

The entire “PR operation” — from denying the ship access to Gaza, through its seizure in international waters, to the various humiliation rituals targeting the activists — unfolds against the backdrop of Israeli media’s consistent avoidance of reporting on what Israel is doing to Gaza and its residents. Even now, instead of addressing the flotilla organizers’ demands to lift the siege and allow the unimpeded entry of aid into the enclave, local media chooses to mock the mission with derisive labels like “the selfie yacht” or “the celebrity flotilla.”

All this is happening while around the world, and increasingly within Israel, more people are calling to end Israel’s starvation of Gazans, as well as the bombings, the systematic destruction, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians. It’s no surprise, then, that the official Israeli line resorts solely to trolling, gimmicks, and attempts to ridicule the small group of non-violent activists.

This approach trickled down from the government and the media to right–wing agitators who came to the Ashdod port to celebrate the “achievement” by dancing with Israeli flags and disrupting Arabic-speaking news broadcasts. It also inspired a trend of social media pages from various Israeli cities mocking the photo of Greta by replacing the sandwich handed to her by an Israeli commando with pictures of their own city’s signature dish.

A post by the official Ramat Gan municipality Facebook account mocking Greta Thunberg being handed a sandwich by an Israeli soldier. (Screenshot)

Such knee-jerk teasing and casual mockery only highlights the widening gap between the reality seen daily around the world, and what’s broadcast to the Israeli public: Everything’s fine, there’s no genocide, we gave Greta a sandwich.

 ‘Closing their eyes to the truth’

The psychosis didn’t end there. Before the Madleen arrived in Israel, Defense Minister Israel Katz said he had ordered that the activists be shown “the horror film,” an Israeli-produced propaganda video showing atrocities committed by Hamas militants on October 7. According to a report in Haaretz, Katz wanted to install cameras in the room to record the activists watching the film, but the Foreign Ministry opposed it. The matter reached the Prime Minister’s Office for a decision, and it was ultimately decided not to place cameras in the room.

In the end, the activists were not forced to watch the film. And yet, Katz later wrote: “Greta and her fellow flotilla members were brought into a room upon arrival to view the horror film of the October 7 massacre, and when they saw what it was, they refused to continue watching,” adding, without a hint of self-awareness, that they were “closing their eyes to the truth.”

As +972’s Orly Noy noted in a Facebook post, the attempt to force the activists to watch the film marks “the strange shift of this film from being a propaganda tool to a punishment device.” The video, which was shown to diplomats, journalists, and foreign academics, has never been screened for the Israeli public, partly due to concerns about potential psychological harm. Turning its screening into a “punishment” is a natural development of the Israeli approach, which has treated October 7 primarily as a tool to silence, marginalize, and suppress criticism of the atrocities Israel carries out in Gaza and demands to end the war, even when such criticism comes from the families of victims or hostages.

A right-wing activist confronts demonstrators gathered at Ashdod port in support of the activists of the Madleen flotilla who were arrested by Israeli forces earlier in the morning, June 9, 2025. (Oren Ziv)

Such conduct isn’t an anomaly, nor is it a one-time outburst by an unhinged Defense Minister — this is what is considered normal, official conduct in Israel these days. In being forced — or at least threatened — to watch the film, the flotilla activists were subjected to the same treatment as Palestinian prisoners who have been forced to watch scenes of destruction in Gaza, or detainees who have been filmed against their will in degrading ways.

Many Israeli journalists were outraged by a video Thunberg filmed before her arrest and published after the military seized the ship, in which she said that she and her companions had been “kidnapped” by the army. Legally speaking, since the group was arrested in international waters, this is indeed an “illegal detention,”as attorney Hadil Abu Salah from Adalah, who was part of the legal team representing the detainees, explained. Again, we see the logic of the occupation “leaking out” — Just as with Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are held under administrative detention without trial, Israel finds it hard to grasp that it can’t abduct people wherever it likes.

Beyond the short-term PR victory celebrated by Oded Ben-Ami and his ilk, the hasbara activist he interviewed, Maya Bentwich, found another reason for Israelis to feel relief. “We’re a bit lucky, there are a lot of events happening in the world,” she said, implying they might divert attention from the Gaza flotilla. She failed to mention the one thing that would stop the international community from pestering Israel about the horrors it perpetrates in Gaza; the one thing which, despite polls and protests in the streets, the media still cannot conceive of: ending the war.

Oren Ziv