Analysis
Assault on the Global Sumud Flotilla: Violence and impunity without limits
It was a mass abduction: over 400 people rendered completely unreachable. The use of rubber bullets is obviously unnecessary to disperse anyone within the confined space of a sailboat.
Everyone in Palestine knows the dreaded rubber bullets. The name is misleading: the rubber only coats a metal core, and the shot can kill. During protests, they rain down in clusters. They are one of the most frequently used methods for dispersing crowds. But calling it “dispersing” is just as deceptive.
On Tuesday, the Israeli navy’s prolonged assault on the Global Sumud Flotilla ended with rubber bullets fired at activists aboard the final intercepted boats. This is what the last messages reported – the messages that the crews of the ten vessels managed to convey after pushing their engines to the absolute limit. Rather than trying to escape capture, they raced to get as close to Gaza as possible. And perhaps, in those moments, they thought for a second that the impossible landing with their cargo of aid might not just be a utopian scenario.
It did not happen. Israel finished the job it started 16 years ago with the deadly shots fired on the Mavi Marmara. The activists were all captured and taken to the prison ship.
It was a mass abduction: over 400 people rendered completely unreachable. The use of rubber bullets is obviously unnecessary to disperse anyone within the confined space of a sailboat, especially when the crew is sitting in an orderly fashion with their hands raised. It is a form of violence that serves only to terrorize and punish. Israel has been applying it for decades. This time, however, it was used against different targets than the usual ones.
There was a time when a passport made all the difference. Certain brutal methods and certain forms of torture were reserved strictly for Palestinians. This is why, over time, countless nonviolent intervention initiatives emerged in the Occupied Territories, with Israeli and international activists literally placing themselves between the Palestinians and the army, or between the Palestinians and the settlers. A red line existed, and a passport acted as a shield.
In Palestine, those red lines vanished a long time ago. Israelis and internationals are beaten, arrested and silenced. In parallel, the treatment meted out to Palestinians – designed to terrorize, punish and subjugate them – has crossed every boundary of basic human decency. The prisons are systematic torture centers, and the streets have become firing ranges. A difference still exists, but it has grown far more extreme.
Why have even those minimal red lines – the ones that protected non-Palestinians – disappeared? That is the question the Italian government and its allied foreign ministries have no intention of asking. Because if you never intervene in the face of brutality, it continues to grow. Feeding on impunity, it becomes uncontrollable and spreads like wildfire. It is already striking NGOs, journalists and activists carrying the “right” passports.
The Italian Foreign Ministry is now “threatening” to investigate the use of rubber bullets against Italian citizens, when for three years it has not once questioned the use of tools designed to annihilate an entire people: carpet bombing, aid blockades, mass detentions and torture. Perhaps it can remember all of that too now that it has discovered that rubber bullets exist.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/violenza-e-impunita-senza-confini on 2026-05-20