Thunberg greeted by cheering crowd in Athens after Israel expels flotilla activists

Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg arrives in Greece to a cheering pro-Palestinian crowd after she and hundreds of other activists captured by Israel on the high seas were deported following an attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

Israel said it expelled 171 activists on Monday, including Thunberg, bringing the total deported over so far to 341, out of 479 people it detained when it captured the flotilla attempting to break its naval blockade of Gaza.

“Let me be very clear. There is a genocide going on,” Thumberg tells the crowd at the Athens airport, referring to Israeli military action in Gaza.

“Our international systems are betraying Palestinians. They are not even able to prevent the worst war crimes from happening,” she says. “What we aimed to do with the Global Sumud Flotilla was to step up when our governments failed to do their legal obligation.”

The activists attempted to reach Gaza in scores of vessels to bring aid supplies and draw attention to the plight of Gaza, where most of the 2.2 million residents have been driven from their homes and the United Nations says hunger is rampant.

Israel, which rejects accusations that it is carrying out genocide in Gaza and says reports of hunger there are exaggerated, has dismissed the flotilla as a publicity stunt benefiting Hamas. It had previously detained Thunberg at sea in a similar attempt to breach the blockade in June.

Earlier, Swiss and Spanish activists from the flotilla said they were subjected to inhumane conditions during their detention by Israeli forces.

Israel’s foreign ministry issued a statement, accompanied by photos of Thunberg at the airport, saying all participants’ legal rights had been upheld and the only violence involved an activist who bit a female medic at Israel’s Ketziot prison.