loading . . . The Gaza Sumud Flotilla Is in Serious Danger ### Participants in the Global Sumud Flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza in defiance of Israel’s blockade knew they were in danger of Israeli attacks — and that was before yesterday’s drone attack. We spoke to one participant from the ship.
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Last night’s drone attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla was an attack on the citizens of dozens of different countries across half a dozen continents. (Muhammed Semiz / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Last night, the Global Sumud (“Steadfastness”) Flotilla — the fleet of dozens of boats manned by participants from more than forty countries that aims to defy the Israeli siege of Gaza and get humanitarian aid to the starving Palestinians — came under attack.
It was the second time the flotilla has been attacked since starting its journey in late August, after two drones dropped projectile explosives on the boats while they were docked in Tunis a fortnight ago. This time, a swarm of drones attacked the flotilla, jamming their communications (with ABBA songs, seemingly a mocking nod to Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, one of the flotilla’s participants), and leaving one of the boats destroyed.
There is little doubt about who is behind the attacks. Donald Trump’s special envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, had earlier this week casually admitted that Israel was responsible for the drones in Tunis, telling an interviewer that “Israel is attacking everybody,” listing Tunisia alongside Syria and Lebanon. This latest attack comes after days of the Israeli government accusing the fleet of being a “jihadist” and “Hamas flotilla” that had been “organized” by the terrorist organization, and threatening to “take the necessary measures to prevent its entry into the combat zone.” It was an ominous sign that Israel was gearing up for another attack.
That attack came two hours after I spoke over the phone with David Adler, co–general coordinator of the Progressive International and one of the flotilla’s participants. He sent this message after it was over:
> In the middle of the night, our fleet was attacked with a swarm of lethal drones: the largest and most terrifying attack yet, hitting thirteen boats with loud explosions, incendiary devices, chemicals weapons, and direct attacks to damage the bows of the sailing boats.
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> While we expect these attacks to escalate each day that we approach Gaza, we cannot normalize the criminal violence committed against this peaceful convoy of humanitarian workers and the critical aid that we carry with us.
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> From the _Family_ boat, I can report that we are all exhausted from the long hours spent in emergency mode, stuffed up with life vests and preparing for a potential deployment onto life rafts.
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> But this midnight incident is just a reminder of the brutal violence deployed against the people of Palestine, hour by hour and day by day. If the State of Israel can attack us here — with the eyes of the world watching — then they can do so in Gaza a million-fold, with even greater impunity.
As another member of the flotilla crew said, this was not just an attack on vessels sailing peacefully in international waters. It was an attack on the citizens of dozens of different countries across half a dozen continents, on vessels flying the flags of countries like Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and Poland — “essentially a declaration of war against those countries.”
The following is a transcript of the phone interview Adler gave to _Jacobin_ mere hours before the fleet was overrun by military drones. It has been edited for length and clarity.
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Branko Marcetic
To begin with, a simple question: How are you doing?
David Adler
It is a fairly schizophrenic emotional experience. Right now, I’m gazing at beautiful stars and a soft black Mediterranean sea with huge US surveillance drones circling over our heads, as they do every night. On the horizon, I can see twenty-six boats from our fleet that are trailing the lead vessel I’m on now. Sometimes it’s beautiful, and then we get the latest news of menacing threats from the state of Israel, and it’s time to hit the drills.
Branko Marcetic
Have you had any more drone attacks or any other attempts to harass you since leaving Tunisia nearly two weeks ago?
David Adler
Since we’ve departed from Tunisia, we’ve reunited as a fleet, bringing together the boats from Barcelona, Tunisia, and now Italy. There is now a forty-strong fleet of vessels sailing to Gaza, picking up the final group here in Greece, where I’m speaking to you now.
In the course of that journey, we’ve received daily harassment, intimidation, and threats from the skies. In some instances, it’s been in the form of smaller attack drones that have come very close to the boats themselves — not deploying explosive devices, as we saw in Tunis, but harassing, intimidating, and trying to deter these boats. In all instances, we are seeing the deployment of high-flying, large-scale surveillance drones.
The more experienced sailors refer to this as “drone fatigue”: to keep us on high alert and keep our night watches exhausting, so we’re constantly toggling between active and imminent danger and the exhaustion that comes from maintaining that alert stance twenty-four hours a day. There’s a certain sense where the tactic in this leg of the journey is to wear us down, test our mettle, and see if there isn’t a way to solve this problem before it becomes serious for the state of Israel — in other words, before we enter the red zone 150 nautical miles from Gaza.
Branko Marcetic
How many drones are typically following you?
David Adler
The drones come at night. Daytime is usually spent dealing with a whole range of other challenging logistical and bureaucratic issues that pertain to the management of a fleet of unprecedented size and scale. But at night, we alternate watches among the crews of our boats.
On any given two- or three-hour watch, you can see two or three large planes spying overhead and multiple objects in the distance that are these drones that are tracking and tracing and keeping up with the flotilla as it progresses toward Gaza. The point is to suspend the operation in a permanently tense and anxious emotional state.
Branko Marcetic
The Israeli government seems to be escalating its threats against the flotilla. They are now outright calling you “the Hamas flotilla” and claiming that you “serve Hamas.” How do you interpret this?
David Adler
We always knew, looking back across the past fifteen years of the Freedom Flotilla initiative, that there coexisted in constant tension these twin but incompatible narratives about flotillas. On one side, you have the claim that these were vessels harboring terror, that they were linked to networks of organized terror, that they were hiding beneath this veneer of humanitarianism with some hidden agenda that was a threat to the national security of Israel.
On the other side, you had a more nascent narrative emerging just this year, with the deployment of the _Madleen_ and later the _Handala_ boats: that these boats were nothing but an indulgence for celebrity activists. We always knew that this was going to be a choice that the state of Israel would have to make between one of these two narratives.
"The claim that something is ‘Hamas’ is so exhausted that people are now starting to push past that propaganda to interrogate these questions for themselves."
Now you have the unprecedented scale of this operation, bringing together so many delegations from different parts of the world, many of them deemed — precisely because of their long-standing solidarity with Palestine — hostile to Israel, like the participants from Algeria, Tunisia, and Turkey. It became clear that this would cleave away from the “these are just little sailboats enjoying their sunshine” narrative, and the narrative would become that these are somehow a menace to the state of Israel.
The deployment of that narrative, trying to smear the really courageous and ordinary people on this flotilla with this absurd claim of a “violent course of action,” has induced in the participants a double, polarized reaction. On one side, it’s so absurd and so tired as a narrative, that it’s clear it’s not landing among the target populations that Israel wants to reach in the way that it may have landed five years ago.
The claim that something is “Hamas” is so exhausted that people are now starting to push past that propaganda to interrogate these questions for themselves. When you look at the composition of these boats and you look at the state of these secondhand vessels, these beat-up motor cruisers and fishing boats that are accompanying us, it doesn’t correspond at all with this accusation.
On the other hand, we’re very afraid for our lives. We know their propaganda is indicative of their behavior and policy. If they are setting up that we are somehow a menace to their security, we can see very clearly, as they have done time and again with humanitarian workers, with United Nations workers, with journalists, that they’re setting the stage for a truly violent interception of this flotilla. It would not be the first time that Israel has deployed violent force against this initiative.
Branko Marcetic
If the aim is to make you stop and turn back, will it work?
David Adler
There is not a single person aboard these vessels who is deterred, intimidated, or otherwise persuaded by Israeli propaganda to leave the mission. I’ve been extremely inspired and held together by the courage and steadfastness by the other participants as we sail onward to Gaza.
Of course, we’re exploring different scenarios and doing drills in preparation. In one, we reach the shores of Gaza. There’s another scenario where there’s a violent interception. We practice that every day.
"Israel is setting the stage for a truly violent interception of this flotilla."
The third possibility is some kind of blockade. Israel wants to stop this flotilla long before it has the chance to reach the shores of Gaza. The newest line is that we should simply redirect our mission and hand over our aid to Israeli boats, and they will do the rest. It is not an option we take seriously, based on the long record of the state of Israel in blocking humanitarian aid to the starving people in Gaza.
Because we’re so determined to complete this mission, protected as it is under international law, we now think there’s the potential for some kind of standoff, where Israel tries to physically stop the advance of this flotilla by force or some other high-tech method. That could be very dangerous for us, given the absence of ports in the neighborhood and the dwindling amount of supplies and goods on board.
Branko Marcetic
Has there been any communication or show of support from the governments of the various countries your delegations are nationals of?
David Adler
We were surprised and delighted but unsatisfied by the statement that came out last week signed by sixteen states around the world, including Spain, Slovenia, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa. They not only recognized this mission as a humanitarian mission — which is a really important step amidst Israel’s escalating defamatory rhetoric — but also declared that there will be accountability for any violation of our individual rights or of international law if our mission of establishing a humanitarian corridor is stopped.
There were some very notable absences from that: not just my country of origin, the United States, but also France, which has many nationals on board. But I think our sense of dissatisfaction stems less from the missing names than the emphasis put on the flotilla itself. The flotilla is not the story; Gaza is the story.
"We want large vessels that can actually carry aid that corresponds to the severity and scale of the humanitarian crisis to drive that aid directly to the shores of Gaza."
What we’re really hoping to see is not that we’re granted some diplomatic protection. What we want is for these states to join us, especially these countries on the Mediterranean Sea: Spain or Portugal or Italy or Greece. When that corridor is established, we want large vessels that can actually carry aid that corresponds to the severity and scale of the humanitarian crisis to pass through it and drive that aid directly to the shores of Gaza.
We must resist the normalization of Israel’s claim that this siege is somehow legal. What we are doing is completely legal. We are simply sailing as civilian vessels carrying humanitarian aid to shores that should have the sovereignty to welcome us there and drop this critical aid off. It is the _siege_ that is illegal.
We are showing these cowardly states that refuse to engage in a confrontation with that illegal siege that it is possible to establish this corridor and to respond to the urgent needs of people being genocided in Gaza. We want to give those states the opportunity to show up and sail alongside us.
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In the wake of the attack, the European Union put out a statement declaring that “any use of force against the flotilla is not acceptable,” while Italy has sent a naval frigate “to the area for possible rescue operations.” https://jacobin.com/2025/09/gaza-sumud-flotilla-israel-attacks/
