Selma Dabbagh

Israel has assassinated a record number of Palestinian journalists, refused to allow international reporters to enter Gaza, imposed internet blackouts during its most bloody assaults, asked Meta to take down more than thirty million social media posts, and allocated $150 million for its 2025 hasbara (propaganda) budget, a twenty-fold increase on previous years. And yet, despite all these efforts, global public opinion is turning against it.

The Hio, which Carlo Pérez Osorio was sailing on with seven other passengers, was intercepted in international waters by Israeli armed forces in the early hours of this morning. The last contact with the boat was at 03:23. According to the Global Sumud flotilla tracker, all but two other vessels have either definitely been intercepted, or are assumed to have been, by Israeli forces. The boats are said to have been sprayed with skunk water, rammed, attacked by drones and boarded by armed soldiers. The fate of many passengers is still unclear. Demonstrations in Belgium, Greece, Italy, Spain and the UK began last night to protest against the interception of the boats, and against the interception of the transfer of humanitarian aid, an act prohibited under the ICJ ruling of January 2024 in South Africa v. Israel.

Democratically elected governments in the UK, the US and the EU are enabling a genocide by supplying weapons (and other forms of support) to the perpetrators. This could stop tomorrow. More and more people globally are recognising that, and doing something about it.

‘I am no longer able to process what is about to happen.’ The message from my friend Ghassan Abu Sita gets stuck in my head, going round and round, hanging between me and the sunny London streets, making me wonder again what I could be doing that I am not doing to try to stop this. What is happening has been clearly announced by the Israeli government: the eradication of Gaza City, of the north of Gaza. The displacement once again of a population that has been expelled multiple times with nowhere to go, with crippled access to food, water, shelter, the internet. More journalists and civil defence workers killed. More hospitals bombed. More young men killed by sniper fire as they try to reach aid or return with it to their families.

Trauma centres in Gaza are recording the questions that children are asking: when it rains will we drown in the tent? When they bomb the tent, will we burn? Why do they always bomb us? I don’t want to die in pieces. Will the dogs that ate the dead bodies of the martyrs turn into humans? Do children who have their legs amputated grow new legs? Do the Israeli pilots who bomb children have children?