Gaza Flotilla Boats Get Their Resilience from Palestinians
Gaza flotilla boats have become like Palestinians. They—like Palestinians—have been attacked, beaten, partially destroyed, and thrown to the four winds by a brutal, violent Israeli government.
Some of the 2026 Gaza flotilla boats were purposefully damaged so severely by Israeli military forces that they sank, like Palestinians who are under the genocidal rubble of endless criminal Israeli bombings.
After two brutal interceptions in international waters in April and May 2026, many resilient Gaza flotilla boats have been found floating in a variety of places around the Mediterranean, just as Palestinians as refugees are found all over the world.
Flotilla boats have been found adrift off the Turkish coast, some have been found off Crete, two have been found off Lebanon, one in Egypt and several have been found near Cyprus.
Palestinians Welcome a Flotilla Boat to Gaza
In an allegory to Palestinian history with Palestinian homes bombed into pieces by Israeli government violence, one flotilla boat, the KASR—Sadabad, found its way home to Gaza where it washed ashore at the beach Mawasi Khan Yunis… in pieces, where Palestinians lovingly welcomed the boat and pulled large pieces ashore.
For the first time since 2008, an international boat, although in pieces, reached the shores of Gaza.
Jerusalem Study Points to Deliberate Israeli Starvation Policy in Gaza
A study published by the Forum for Regional Thinking at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute confirmed that starvation in Gaza resulted from a premeditated policy, despite sustained public denial by the Israeli government and much of the media.
The author of the study, Shmuel Lederman, an Israeli scholar specializing in genocide studies, told Middle East Eye that he was motivated by what he described as widespread denial within Israel over starvation in Gaza during the genocide that began in October 2023. “There is a thirst for denial,” Lederman said, with many in Israel seeking to portray the army’s conduct in Gaza and elsewhere as entirely justified or unproblematic.
Titled Data for Denial: The Smokescreen Behind the Starvation of Gaza, Lederman’s study documents how restrictions on aid, fuel and cooking gas, alongside the destruction of key infrastructure such as bakeries, and disruption of humanitarian operations, severely limited Palestinians’ access to food. It concludes that the starvation in Gaza resulted from “deliberate planning, experimentation, and maneuvering around the humanitarian ‘red line.’”
According to Lederman, a key underlying purpose behind the starvation policy has been to pressure Palestinians to move southward, and ultimately toward third countries, in line with a “voluntary emigration” or ethnic cleansing plan promoted by the Israeli government and Trump administration.
The Israelis ultimately want to drive the Gazans out and take charge over Gaza as part of Israel’s messianic Greater Israel vision that includes expanding Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights in Syria and expanding Israeli territory up to the Litani River in Lebanon.
Since the foundation of the State of Israel, Israeli leaders have viewed expansionism as necessary to safeguard Israeli access to adequate water resources and land for an expanding settler population, and to ensure national security against Israel’s Arab enemies which tried to sabotage the creation of the Israeli state from its inception.
Although there were some moderate and humanist elements in the original Zionist movement, like Ahad Ha’am and Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett (1954-1955), who promoted respect for and accommodation with Palestinians, hard-line fanatics have taken control of Israeli politics and moved forward on Theodore Herzl and founding father David Ben-Gurion’s expansionist visions.
Since the early 1960s, the U.S. government has supported the Greater Israel project because it views Israel as a proxy it can use to help control the Middle East and its vast oil treasures.
Lederman suggests that “over the past two and a half years, Gaza has served to a large extent as a testing laboratory not only for methods of warfare, but also for the architecture of starvation and the management of a population through deprivation.”
The U.S. under both the Biden and Trump administrations have enabled Israel’s crimes against humanity, according to Lederman, and share responsibility for the unfolding humanitarian crisis.
“All of this will not remain confined to Gaza,” Lederman told Middle East Eye, warning that Israel’s actions “will spread to other places around the world,” as other states or actors may adopt similar methods of warfare.
The U.S. has long used starvation as a weapon of war, going back to its cruel subjugation of the Native Americans, and seen more recently in the sanctions adopted against countries it destroyed through warfare, like Iraq and Syria, and others that resisted U.S. geo-hegemonic designs, such as Venezuela, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Cuba and Nicaragua.
Israeli Use of White Phosphorus
Besides trying to induce mass starvation, the Israelis have been using white phosphorus over populated areas in Lebanon in the vicinity of Tyre as well as near Qlaya, Khiam and Yohmor, according to a June 7 report in The New York Times.
Confirmation of the use of white phosphorus derives from analysis of videos from the Israeli bombing, which shows distinctive smoke trails.
Written by Sanjana Varghese, the June 7 Times article notes that white phosphorus is not illegal in itself but deploying it deliberately against civilians or in an area populated by civilians violates the international laws of war.
The white phosphorus used by the IDF in Lebanon was projected from American made 155 millimeter M825AI artillery projectiles, which dispense the phosphorus from mid-air.
The projectiles are made at U.S. army facilities like the Pine Bluff arsenal in Jefferson County, Arkansas, with many of the shell body components made by private defense contractors like General Dynamics Ordinance and Tactical Systems.
During the Vietnam War, the use of white phosphorus earned the condemnation of human rights groups and antiwar activists. At the Winter Soldiers hearing on war crimes in Detroit in 1971, Fred Nienke of the 1st U.S. Marines Division testified that white phosphorus was nicknamed “Willie Peter” in the army and known for causing severe burns.
Nienke stated that seeing a person “burned by Willie Peter” was “probably one of the worst sights I’ve ever seen…because it doesn’t stop. It just burns all completely through your body. The only way you can end this burning is to cut off the air.”
Bonnie Docherty, a senior adviser at Human Rights Watch, is quoted in the June 7 New York Times article stating that “the harm that white phosphorus causes is horrific. It inflicts burns that can penetrate to the bone. The dense smoke it produces also causes severe respiratory damage and organ failure. Wounds can reignite when bandages are removed and remnants of that substance are exposed to oxygen.”
The Times article went on to note that white phosphorus can set homes, cars, buildings, fields and other objects on fire. An Amnesty International report from 2023 found that residents of Dhayra, a town in South Lebanon, fled after repeated release of white phosphorus and that cars and homes were still burning when they returned days later.
Traces of white phosphorus can exist in water and soil long after its use and forested areas and farmland can be significantly damaged, with farmers requiring special clearance operations after if they want to farm their land again.
Israel’s deployment of white phosphorus has brought scrutiny before; a 2024 Human Rights Watch report documented its widespread use in Lebanon, and other reports have identified its use in Gaza.
The Lebanon government has filed four letters since October 2023 raising concerns about Israel’s use of white phosphorus to the UN. One of the letters emphasized that more than 600 fires had broken out as a result of its use.
- Jeremy Kuzmarov wrote the second part of the article.
CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptions, orders and donations from readers like you.
Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism
Click the whistle and donate
When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.
CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.
Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.
CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.
We sincerely thank you for your support.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.
Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.
Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.
Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.
By using this site, you agree to these terms above.
About the Author
Ann Wright is a retired United States Army colonel and retired U.S. State Department official.
She was one of three State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.
Since that time Colonel Wright has been a dedicated peace activist.
Ann can be reached at annw1946@gmail.com.
