Nicholas Kristof<\/a> turned viral.<\/p>\nAustralian recidivist activist Neve O\u2019Connor claimed to have been \u201ckidnapped\u201d for the second time, deliberately distorting the meaning of the word. Unlike many of the flotilla participants, none of the Israeli hostages who managed to survive up to two years of Hamas captivity in Gaza following the October 7, 2023, invasion and mega-atrocity, would consider going back to risk the experience of being kidnapped again.<\/p>\n
Nearly 430 people from more than 40 countries participated in this latest flotilla of some 50 ships. It\u2019s safe to assume that many of them weren\u2019t taking vacation days from their regular work. Being activists is their full-time job.<\/p>\n
Ben-Gvir, deliberately rocking the boat, was clearly playing to his far-right electoral base. But perhaps he also thought that making the detainees\u2019 brief stay in Israel unpleasant would deter some from returning for another try.<\/p>\n
As the condemnations of Ben-Gvir continued to make waves, I thought how great it must be to live in a country that has never had a minister or elected official who was an embarrassment. Among the countries that protested Ben-Gvir\u2019s behavior \u2013 some declaring him a persona non grata, some calling in the Israeli ambassador to officially protest \u2013 were Spain, Ireland, Poland, France, Greece, Italy, and the European Union itself.<\/p>\n
Giving a whole new meaning to the word \u201cchutzpah,\u201d Iran also complained about Ben-Gvir. That\u2019s the Islamic Republic of Iran, which earlier this year slaughtered at least 30,000 protesters within days, has sponsored terrorist proxies around the world, and has launched hundreds of missiles and killer drones on targets across the Middle East.<\/p>\n
Spain, Ireland, and the Netherlands, which all complained about Ben-Gvir, were among the five countries that refused to take part in this year\u2019s Eurovision Song Contest earlier this month because Israel was allowed to compete.<\/p>\n
After the Ben-Gvir footage, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez posted on X: \u201cWe will not tolerate anyone mistreating our citizens.\u201d After the Bilbao incident, he did not have the decency to change that to: \u201cWe will not tolerate anyone else mistreating our citizens.\u201d Sanchez seems to be using the Palestinian cause to deflect attention from his serious domestic political woes.<\/p>\n
Margaret Connolly, the sister of Irish President Catherine Connolly, was one of the detained flotilla participants. Arriving back in Ireland, still wearing the de rigueur keffiyeh, she reportedly likened the conditions of her detention to a \u201cconcentration camp.\u201d I can\u2019t even begin to describe the sickening distortion and perverted inversion that turns the Jewish state into modern Nazis. History has been hijacked and rewritten as a Palestinian narrative.<\/p>\n
No country is flawless, but only Israel is singled out and portrayed as responsible for all the evil in the world. Pointing this out is not \u201cwhataboutism\u201d; it\u2019s an attempt to show the double standards for what they are.<\/p>\n
A look at the news in Ireland last week showed the country was having what has been called its \u201cGeorge Floyd moment\u201d after a Congolese migrant collapsed and died as police used tough tactics to arrest him for suspected shoplifting.<\/p>\n
In Poland, there were stories of how the police had shot at a vehicle apparently driven by a Belarusian. The details remain disputed but add to the tension between the two neighboring but very different countries.<\/p>\n
I wondered how the UK, Italy, and other countries struggling to deal with boatloads of illegal immigrants would have handled the flotilla of provocateurs sponsored by terrorist-affiliated organizations.<\/p>\n
Indeed, how would these democratic countries have responded to the assault Israel had to deal with on October 7, when thousands of well-armed Islamist terrorists breached the border to carry out their mega-atrocity that left 1,200 dead, thousands wounded, and tens of thousands displaced? Europe is not even able to handle the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including occasional drone attacks.<\/p>\n
No clash, no splash: The flotilla strategy<\/p>\n
Israel has come a long way since the Mavi Marmara flotilla affair in May 2010, when Israeli commandos boarded the Turkish ship and were met with violent resistance from the terrorists on deck. The affair ultimately ended with 10 dead Turkish participants and nine Israeli commandos who were wounded, some of them seriously.<\/p>\n
The negative publicity for Israel was its own reward \u2013 so rewarding, in fact, that there are \u201csea-soned\u201d activists, returning in waves time and again. This was never about freedom or delivering aid to Gaza, which is suffering a \u201chumanitarian disaster\u201d of Hamas\u2019s own making.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth remembering why there is a naval blockade on Gaza in the first place. It was imposed to prevent Hamas \u2013 internationally recognized as a terrorist organization \u2013 from receiving weapons and rockets, which it hasn\u2019t been shy of using.<\/p>\n
The flotilla activists could have accepted Israel\u2019s offer to deliver the \u201chumanitarian aid\u201d to Gaza, after the requisite security checks, through the regular channels; some 600 trucks enter the Strip from Israel every day. But the boats that make up these flotillas aren\u2019t carrying aid at all. The flotilla participants aim to capture an image of them clashing with Israeli security forces.<\/p>\n
All the \u201cpeace flotillas\u201d in the world will not turn the beautiful Gazan beaches into tourist resorts and an economic success story as long as jihadist terrorism is allowed to thrive. Peace attempts are doomed as long as there\u2019s a safe harbor for terrorists and their sympathizers willing to set sail on the same ship.<\/p>\n
The flotilla participants and their supporters have not set their moral and physical compass toward the very real tragedies and atrocities being perpetrated in places like Sudan and elsewhere in Africa.<\/p>\n
There is no flotilla against the ayatollahs in Tehran. As long as Iran\u2019s religious leaders<\/a> continue to declare their desire to see the end of the Jewish state, they get a free pass among the progressives and radicals, and are literally able to get away with the murder of women who flout the modesty laws, homosexuals, minorities, and all those who are brave enough to oppose them.<\/p>\nWe are seeing, once again, the \u201cNo Jews, no news\u201d phenomenon at play. The flotilla participants are also aware of the \u201cNo clash, no splash\u201d maxim.<\/p>\n
Ben-Gvir delivered what they hoped for; Bilbao gave them what they hadn\u2019t expected \u2013 a foreign police force that wasn\u2019t willing to coddle and accept the anarchists and their sympathizers. It\u2019s doubtful, however, that that\u2019s enough to take the wind out of their sails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The footage showed brutal images. Baton-wielding police were seen hitting pro-Palestinian supporters of the Gaza flotilla even as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[957,2729,8319,85,46,837,156448,47,43,3800,19053,2727],"class_list":["post-465874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-ben-gvir","tag-flotilla","tag-global-sumud-flotilla","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-itamar-ben-gvir","tag-mavi-marmara","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-pedro-sanchez","tag-pro-palestinian-protests","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Boats,](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/682831.jpeg\"\/)
Boats, part of the Global Sumud Flotilla aiming to reach Gaza and break Israel’s naval blockade, sail off Koufonisi islet, Greece, September 26, 2025. (credit: REUTERS\/STEFANOS RAPANIS)<\/p>\n