Toot link; transcript:
Greta Thunberg could have, by now, carved out a very comfortable life for herself as a liberal grifter-celebrity offering platitudes about personal responsibility at Davos. Instead she connected the dots between ecocide, capital, and empire, aiming squarely at the heart of the beast. And now fresh out of captivity she downplays her own suffering to recenter the urgency of aid to the Palestinian people. No wonder she's hated by the fascist+lib coalition that rules this world.
Author: JP (@jpbreton@mastodon.social)
"Fresh out of captivity"?
What did I miss?
She got arrested and beaten by Israelis when trying to deliver supplies to Gaza via boat .
She got arrested for a second time. She's probably going to be arrested a third time too.
Under maritime law, she was a victim of kidnapping and piracy, and was never arrested as it happened outside Israel's territorial waters, where it has no authority to have a blockade.
This response is based on the San Remo Manual of International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.
If Israel is conducting a lawful blockade, then they can intercept neutrals who have expressed intent to run the blockade. It doesn't matter whether the events happen in Israel's territorial waters, international waters, or the territorial waters of Israel's enemy.
A blockade is an act of war, and war doesn't respect territories, and it's not always respectful to neutrals.
Now, there is a decent argument that this particular blockade is unlawful for a different reason: it is a collective punishment of Gazan civilians. Collective punishment of civilian populations as a whole was made illegal after WWII.
Secondly, the blockade is unlawful if its only purpose is to starve the enemy population of food (102). Israel must be getting some proportionate military advantage out of this blockade besides the starvation for it to be lawful.
And finally, regardless of whether the blockade is legal, Israel has to let the humanitarian supplies pass through (103-104). And I'm not sure they did that. They will say that they let these things through on the (heavily regulated) land route, but the book here doesn't say that land route is a substitute. Also, they are not using an impartial Protective Power to distribute the aid. This is why they offered to reroute the flotilla's supplies on to the land channel.
Note: the rule is they have to let the supplies through, not the people or vessels. If they're running a legitimate blockade, they can capture neutral vessels that are running it, and they can capture the neutrals on board and subject them to legal process, or maybe even intern them for the duration of conflict
Since hamas lacks a Navy, it's an easy case
Israel presumably says that the purpose of the blockade is to prevent supplies that can be used in war from reaching hamas and that food is taken in.
We know this is not true but it illustrates the challenge of a legal approach.
It's sad to me that you need to consult the "big book of made-up rules" to argue against Greta being kidnapped by a genocidal colonial state
The latest aid flotilla to Palestine that she was taking part in was abducted by Israeli forces in international waters. I've seen various comments on her treatment by those Israeli forces but none of them were humane, spanning from forcing her and other victims to sleep in pest-infested conditions to actual physical assault.