Greta Thunberg onboard the freedom flotilla dubbed The Madleen. SCREENSHOT/ INSTAGRAM @GRETATHUNBERG
Greta Thunberg and crew threatened to commit the unthinkable – deliver food, first aid, clean water, and child prosthetics to the people of Gaza. Their symbolism and message, however, were the real threat. On June 8, 2025, the Madleen, a humanitarian aid boat heading to Gaza named after Gaza fisherwoman and rescue swimmer Madelyn Culab, was illegally intercepted in international waters by Israelis. An earlier attempt, made on May 2 was subjected to drone attack. Of the 12 passengers were the prominent activist Thunberg, actor Liam Cunningham, Yanis Mhamdi, and French MEP Rima Hassan. Organized by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), the mission intended to disrupt Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, set in place since 2007, and aimed to deliver urgently required supplies. The Israeli military stated however, that the flotilla was illegal. They captured the boat while kidnapping its passengers, sending them back to Israel to be deported.
The event echoed across international media, and prompted a debate around humanitarian law, state sovereignty, and moral resistance. The incident recalls an ancient parable reiterated by Noam Chomsky in his book, Pirates and Emperors. The book starts with a reference to St. Augustine’s The City of God, about a pirate who once confronted Alexander the Great’s hard power with a simple but penetrating truth – power associations, not the offense, is what separates criminality from conquering. This primary source reminds us of how legitimacy and the use of force are defined in the study of power and Global Politics. Israel’s motivation to stop the flotilla was guided by a need to show dominance while also distorting the intentions of the activists – as though they were interested in aiding and abetting the true purveyors of structural violence – Hamas (a non-state actor with disproportionate capability and nothing to do with Thunberg).
Chomsky and State Violence
As International Terrorism in the Real World opens with the vignette from St. Augustine to challenge the predominant ideas of legitimacy and violence, Chomsky also reinforces the significance of the dialogue between the powerful and the powerless.[1] When Alexander asks how the pirate dare molest the sea, the pirate quickly retorts, “How do you molest the world? Because I do it with a small boat, you do it with a great navy!”[2] Chomsky uses this tale to expose the moral double standards of Global Politics but also the essence of the exchange and use of language in the modern State design. State actions that use both soft and hard power with invasions, embargoes, or military blockades are typically seen as lawful, while smaller-scale, non-state actors’ efforts to resist or disrupt those systems, especially ones motivated by conscience (in Thunberg’s case) are branded as forms of antisemitism, terrorism, or unnecessary provocations, and even illegality. This classical moral problem is what makes the parable so enduring. If a State commits something on a large enough scale, Chomsky often points out, it becomes exceptionally good. The difference between legitimate and illegitimate power is not about ethics or human suffering; it is about who holds power and how well they can justify it within the frameworks of sovereignty and international norms, Chomsky might assert.
In Augustine’s story, Alexander is basically stunned by the pirate’s own logic. The pirate’s defiance comes from navigating hegemony and survival. They are both using power, he says, only the pirate does it in a soft way as opposed to a grand imperial strategy. For a moment, Alexander sees the truth, that the line separating criminality from sovereignty is drawn not by justice, but through exercising power. Alexander concedes the pirate’s point, but his response is telling. He pardons the pirate, offering him to change his ways, while admitting that his own transformation is tragically impossible. To paraphrase another interpretation, he states, ‘In your case, since you are an individual, it will be infinitely easier for you to change…. I fear it will prove too difficult for me.’ Augustine explains “how like kingdoms, without justice, are to bands of robbers.”[3] The story is not only about redemption and exposing hypocrisy, but about resignation. It is excessively obvious that Alexander cannot change. That recognition reinforces the bleak truth at the heart of Chomsky’s work – State power operates without morality, because it is required to, and its challenges to legitimacy are remarkably unwelcomed.
Modern Empire
Thunberg boarded the craft to deliver aid to Gaza and to protest the blockade widely criticized by humanitarian organizations. The Israeli government intercepted the vessel, declared it an illegal mission, and diverted the flotilla to Israel. The passengers are expected to return to their home countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated, offering zero acknowledgement of the activists’ purpose. The FFC and members aboard responded that they had been kidnapped by Israeli forces. Media statements, as well as the Israeli Foreign Ministry, further dismissed the mission as some sort of hollow provocation. They sarcastically accused Thunberg and her comrades of pleasure cruising on an Instagram “selfie yacht” rather than delivering on genuine mutual aid work and acts of resistance.
Thunberg’s activism is not new, nor is it shallow, and nor is Israel vowing to stop the likes of it. Thunberg is authentic and empathetic to the humanitarian cause. She and others aboard the boat, like human rights lawyer Huwaida Arraf, were engaging in civil disobedience with full awareness of the substantial risks. As Thunberg said before setting sail, doing nothing “is not an option.” Their intent was not to disrespect diplomacy, but rather to highlight what many cite as the collapse of international action in the face of severe human rights violations. The flotilla challenged the moral authority, and political legitimacy, of State practices that prioritize security narratives over human welfare and human freedom and development. The Madleen voyage exposed contradictions and a gap between legal frameworks and moral imperatives much like Alexander’s foe. The activists were unarmed, their weapon was aid as they confronted a power structure’s legitimacy or lack thereof. Just as Chomsky continually cites, hard power will consistently fight humanitarianism under the guise of security For Reasons of State. No one believes these young people are a threat to Israel, only their narrative of contesting state violence.
Of course, this form of direct, peaceful resistance has historical roots. In 1961, during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the Freedom Rides challenged segregation laws by deliberately riding interstate buses into the segregated southern states, thereby confronting unjust laws upheld by State power. Conceptually similar freedom flotillas and rides, later in 2010 and again in 2011, (the Palestinian Freedom Riders) challenged West Bank apartheid. Like Madleen, Freedom Riders collectively knew the risk of arrest and violence when exposing harsh and unequal legal structures that privilege political repression. Both instances reveal how civil disobedience can operate as a form of power to question the legitimacy of authority, while forcing society to confront what’s uncomfortable. The courage of the Freedom Riders is seen in today’s youth activists, who also elect nonviolent confrontation to demand justice when legal/political systems fail.
Young Voices of Resistance
Thunberg’s mission, which violated the 2007 naval blockade, was part of a larger, global youth movement that sees climate justice and human rights as one, and superseding from arbitrary and capricious extensions of international law. Vanessa Nakate from Uganda brought attention to the unequal effects of climate change on African communities and founded the Rise Up Movement to amplify African agency. Autumn Peltier, an indigenous water protector from Canada, has addressed the UN on Indigenous Rights. In Uganda, Leah Namugerwa leads tree-planting campaigns and educational strikes. In Mexico and the U.S., Xiye Bastida co-founded the Re-Earth Initiative to bring seventh generational thinking into the climate discourse. In India, Licypriya Kangujam, a prodigy, began campaigning for stronger environmental laws at just 6 years old, she is now 13.
These uniquely amazing youth leaders are united in a belief that justice, whether environmental, humanitarian, or geopolitical, requires global thinking and direct action. Power and governments often resist this mindset. Movements like Fridays for Future and The Sunrise Movement reflect a growing awareness that silence is complicity, and legality does not equal justice. Thunberg’s mission to Gaza fits within this framework – a peaceful challenge to entrenched power on behalf of those who cannot speak freely or receive a fair chance at development, particularly in contexts where people are vulnerable.[4]
Legitimacy vs. Morality
Comparing Alexander’s empire and modern State power is not simply poetry, it is also highly instructive. Both wield violence and law to maintain order, but both are vulnerable when moral questions are raised in their respective faces. In the eyes of the Israeli state, the Madleen was illegal because it bypassed “legitimate channels.” Yet critics argue that these so-called channels have become mechanisms of delay, control, and dehumanization. They essentially serve as “hunger games.” It is widely known that the blockade has strangled Gaza’s economy and has devastated its healthcare system. Quite simply, delivering aid through “approved” means also means delivering it too late or not at all and undermines basic human rights.
Conclusion
When activists attempt to resist outside these boundaries, especially with transparency and nonviolence, to challenge State led starvation, the (Holy) State’s reaction often reveals its priorities. In the past and the present, the non-state actor poses a unique threat, not because they are powerful in material terms, but because they reveal the contradictions in the sovereign power’s claims to moral authority. In that sense, Thunberg’s boat, like the pirate’s ship, is the mirror held up to expose the empire since it exposes the fragility of legitimacy that is based on the kind of might that flouts international law.
The tales of the pirate and the emperor and the activists and the empires, will sadly live on – not only within the history of ancient warfare, but in contested spaces and waters of the Mediterranean. Greta Thunberg and fellow activists do not carry weapons, yet they confront some of the world’s most entrenched powers with one of the most disruptive tools one can possess, moral clarity. State power, old and new, seeks to maintain control by defining legitimacy on its own terms. But as Chomsky, Augustine, and today’s youth demonstrate to us all, illegitimate authority can always be challenged. When the powerless speak truth, they reveal that the emperor’s authority is not absolute, it can be contested and transformed in the name of human rights, justice, and equality.
[1] St. Augustine, The City of God, 148.
[2] Noam Chomsky, Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World, Black Rose Books, 1991.
[3] St. Augustine, The City of God, 147.
[4] Israel’s GDP per capita stands at approximately $52,000 to $54,000 USD, while Palestine’s GDP per capita ranges between $2,700 and $3,500 USD. When adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP), the gap remains significant, with Israel at roughly $43,000 to $48,000 and Palestine at around $5,500. (IMF and World Bank).
