As Gaza Flotilla Launches in Spain, People Power Confronts State Complicity
The Global Sumud Flotilla prepares to leave Barcelona on August 31, 2025. (Photo: Aniol, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
A Weave News article about international solidarity with Palestinians once contained the following sentence: "A new flotilla of boats is now on the way to Gaza, and of course the world is wondering how the Netanyahu government will respond."
That article was published not in 2025, but in 2010.
Fifteen years later, Netanyahu remains in power, Israeli violence has escalated to apocalyptic levels, and international solidarity activists continue to take to the seas in an effort to break the blockade of Gaza. In Spain, where one group of boats participating in the new Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) embarked on Sunday, the groundswell of support from civil society signaled not only widening support for Palestinians facing famine and genocide, but also growing anger at the complicity of Europe’s political class.
Initial launch from Barcelona
The Global Sumud Flotilla is a coordinated effort bringing together delegations from 44 countries, with sailing vessels heading toward Gaza from several locations. An initial convoy of boats leaving from Barcelona is expected to be joined by others from Tunisia as well as an Asian Flotilla bringing activists from Malaysia and other countries.
Organizers describe themselves as “a coalition of everyday people—organizers, humanitarians, doctors, artists, clergy, lawyers, and seafarers—who believe in human dignity and the power of nonviolent action.” The boats are loaded with food, medicine, and other humanitarian supplies that are desperately needed in Gaza, where relief agencies warn that a “massive famine” caused by the Israeli blockade and military assault is already underway.
At a press conference held at the Barcelona launch, members of the GSF Steering Committee framed the current effort, which builds on the work of previous flotillas, as part of a “global uprising” that represents the determined effort of civil society to heed the urgent call from Palestinians facing Israeli violence. Yasemin Acar (Germany/Turkey) emphasized that everyone in the world has an interest in raising their voice against genocide. “If we don’t stand up for Palestine,” she asked, “then what is happening to humanity?”
Members of the Global Sumud Flotilla steering committee speak at the port in Barcelona on August 31, 2025.
Saif Abukeshek, a Barcelona-based Palestinian activist, argued that the starvation in Gaza is an “intentional” part of Israel’s strategy of ethnic cleansing. “The first action that they took [22 months ago] was to block water, medicine, electricity, and food [from getting to Gaza],” he said. “They are united in their oppression, they are united in their crimes, and we are united in our solidarity.”
As of this writing, flotilla members were dealing with a weather delay as high Mediterranean winds had made a safe launch inadvisable. Organizers estimate that the journey to Gaza will take 7-8 days.
A history of solidarity
Weave News began covering grassroots efforts to break the Israeli siege of Gaza in 2007-2008, when the human rights group Free Gaza began sending boats to “alert the world to the prison-like conditions of Gaza.” A small number of boats managed to make it to Gaza, while others were attacked by the Israeli military or, in another case, prevented by Greek authorities from leaving port in Greece.
Since that time, other flotilla efforts have faced similar obstacles, including the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Most recently, Israel intercepted the Handala Flotilla (named after the famous child refugee character created by Palestinian artist Naji al-Ali) in international waters on July 26, 2025, detaining the activists on board before they could reach Gaza. The activists pre-recorded video statements in anticipation of being detained.
Calling out complicity
At the Barcelona launch, organizers stressed that efforts like the GSF represent a determined response from ordinary citizens to governments that have allowed Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza to continue. For Greta Thunberg, the well-known Swedish climate activist and member of the flotilla, calls from Palestinians to intervene and stop the slaughter are also calls to “step up and end our complicity.” Thunberg continued:
The story here is how the world can be silent and how those in power, those who are supposed to represent us, are in every possible way betraying and failing Palestinians and all oppressed peoples of the world. They are failing to uphold international law. They are failing to do their most basic legal duties to act to prevent a genocide, to stop their complicity and support for an apartheid state and the occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.
Anti-genocide activists have been especially scathing in their critiques of the European Union (EU) and EU member states, pointing out that most of these states maintain active diplomatic, military, and trade relations with Israel. In a report presented in Geneva in early July, UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory Francesca Albanese called out state and private sector actors for their active participation in what she called the “economy of genocide” that profits from and facilitates Israeli state violence against Palestinians.
Speaking in Barcelona, Yasemin Acar noted that as a German citizen, she was especially ashamed at her country’s role as “the second largest weapons supplier to this genocide” but insisted that “many more countries are complicit.” In the face of such realities, she said, “we have to stand against settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide together. We can only do this together if we unify.”
The decision to launch the latest flotilla from Barcelona spoke to the high level of Palestine solidarity activity in Spain, but also to the Spanish government’s contradictory position. Spain, much like Ireland, has often been singled out for taking a somewhat less supportive approach to Israel’s actions. At the same time, critics such as journalist Olga Rodriguez point out that despite numerous promises and other public statements, many commercial and military ties remain in place behind the scenes.
In a similar vein, Irish writer Naoise Dolan, who is sailing to Gaza as part of the GSF, called out her government’s “hypocrisy” in an op-ed for The Guardian coinciding with the flotilla launch. Arguing that the Irish government “aids and abets the perpetrators [of genocide]” via the Irish central bank’s approval of the sale of Israeli war bonds throughout the EU, Dolan argues that even the more “progressive” EU countries “lag years behind public opinion” when it comes to opposing Israel’s actions with concrete measures.
An “ethical rift”?
Meanwhile, independent media outlets in Spain have responded to the historic launch of the GSF with a coordinated effort of their own. Today, as part of an effort organized by Reporters Without Borders, a number of Spanish outlets filled their landing pages with messages denouncing Israel’s ongoing assassination of Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
In an August 28 article for the Spanish outlet CTXT, one of the participating outlets, former Barcelona deputy mayor Jaume Asens described the flotilla as a symbol of a new wave of “international civil disobedience” grounded in the belief that governments are refusing to do the right thing. “The genocide in Gaza has, in fact, opened an ethical rift between Western governments and the conscience of their people,” Asens wrote. “This is not a passing misunderstanding: it's a divorce. While the former choose complicity with the genocide in Israel, organized citizens become their ethical counterweight.”
Greta Thunberg echoed this sentiment as she prepared to board the flotilla in Barcelona. “For every politician that is fueling the genocide and further climate destruction and further colonization and fascism,” said Thunberg, “there will be people escalating the resistance against that. And that is what we are trying to do.”
