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For Immediate Release
March, 19 2009, 08:38am EDT
Contact:
Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK co-founder, 415-235-6517
Blaine Clarke, CODEPINK DC, 757-870-0691
On War anniversary TODAY, CODEPINK Calls for Shoe-Thrower's Release, Demand Arrest of True War Criminal: George W. Bush
WASHINGTON
On the sixth anniversary of the disastrous Iraq War, members of the
women's peace group CODEPINK and other activists will gather TODAY outside
the Iraqi embassy here and call for the release of Muthader al-Zaidi,
the Iraqi journalist sentenced to three years in prison last week for
throwing his shoes at Pres. Bush, and the arrest of Bush.
WHAT: CODEPINK to call for al-Zaidi's release and arrest of true war criminal, Pres. Bush, on war anniversary
WHEN: 10 a.m. TODAY - March 19
WHERE: Outside Iraqi Embassy, 1801 P Street, NW
With creative posters and banners, the women will highlight the
irony of the sentence so close to the war anniversary: al-Zaidi was
jailed for "insulting" Bush at a Baghdad press conference, while Bush,
who lied to the world six years ago to launch an economy-draining,
illegal war of "shock and awe" that has killed 4,000 Americans and more
than 1 million innocent Iraqis, walks free.
"It's outrageous that al-Zaidi could get two years in prison for
insulting George Bush, when Bush is directly responsible for the death
and displacement of millions," said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of
CODEPINK. "The one who should be in jail is George Bush, and he should
be charged with war crimes."
CODEPINK is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.
(818) 275-7232LATEST NEWS
16 Nations Warn Israel Against Attacking Gaza-Bound Global Sumud Flotilla
The countries' foreign ministers urged Israel to "refrain from any unlawful or violent act against the flotilla" and "to respect international law."
Sep 16, 2025
The foreign ministers of 16 nations on Tuesday implored Israel to not attack the Global Sumud Flotilla, a fleet of around 40 boats attempting to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to the embattled Gaza Strip, where Palestinians are suffering 22 months of US-backed genocidal war and forced famine.
"The Global Sumud Flotilla has informed about its objective of delivering humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and raising awareness about the urgent humanitarian needs of the Palestinian people and the need to stop the war in Gaza," the foreign ministers of Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Ireland, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Pakistan, Qatar, Oman, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, and Türkiye said in a joint statement.
Many of those nations are supporting South Africa's genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice.
"We therefore call on everyone to refrain from any unlawful or violent act against the flotilla" and "to respect international law and international humanitarian law," the ministers continued. "We recall that any violation of international law and human rights of the participants in the flotilla, including attacks against the vessels in international waters or illegal detention, will lead to accountability."
Hundreds of activists from dozens of nations participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla—"sumud" means perseverance in Arabic—have set sail toward Gaza from ports around the world since August. More than two dozen vessels arrived in Sicily on Tuesday after departing the Tunisian port of Bizerte following an 11-day delay caused in part by multiple drone attacks on flotilla boats.
Israel—which has attacked past flotillas, including in a 2010 raid that killed nine volunteers aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, among them Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan—has not claimed responsibility for the drone attacks.
“Pulling off the largest grassroots maritime mission to break Israel’s siege has posed many challenges, but through it all we remained determined, steadfast, and united,” Global Sumud Flotilla said Tuesday on Instagram.
Prominent flotilla participants include Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, American actress Susan Sarandon, Irish actor Liam Cunningham, leftist Portuguese parliamentarian Mariana Mortágua, former Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, and Mandla Mandela, the grandson of former South African President Nelson Mandela.
“We’re carrying a lot of humanitarian aid, but we’re also carrying a message of support from the peoples of the world that we are with the Palestinian people,” flotilla spokesperson Bruno Gilga told Middle East Eye.
Earlier this year, Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessels Conscience, Madleen, and Handala each separately tried to break Israel's blockade of Gaza but were thwarted by Israeli forces in international waters, an apparent violation of maritime law. Flotilla activists were beaten, kidnapped, jailed, interrogated, and deported by Israel.
Global Sumud Flotilla's attempt to break Israel's siege comes as Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City as they execute Operation Gideon's Chariots 2, a campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse the strip. At least 64,964 Palestinians—mostly civilian men, women, and children—have been killed by Israeli forces over the past 711 days, although experts say the actual toll is likely far higher.
On Tuesday, a commission of independent United Nations experts became the latest in a growing number of individuals and groups to accuse Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
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Nearly 100 (and Counting) Dead as Israel Launches Large-Scale Ground Invasion of Gaza City
"The only way to halt this devastation," said one advocate, "is to end the flow of weapons that Israel relies on to fuel its genocide."
Sep 16, 2025
The Jewish-led rights group IfNotNow was among those condemning Israel's ground invasion of Gaza City on Tuesday, warning that the Israel Defense Forces have left more than 1 million people in the northern city and its surrounding towns with an "impossible choice": "flee once more without anywhere safe to go or face indiscriminate bombs and bullets from Israeli forces."
At least 91 people in Gaza City were killed by the latter on Tuesday as two divisions of the IDF launch ground attacks across the city, with a third expected to join them in the coming days.
Israeli forces have ordered people in the city to leave for the so-called "humanitarian zone" of al-Mawasi in the south, but the area has also been bombarded repeatedly—including an attack two weeks ago, when eight children as young as 3 years old were killed while lining up for water, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The Israeli government last month approved the takeover of Gaza City, with the aim of taking control of all of Gaza and ethnically cleansing the entire exclave, and since then about 150,000 people have been forced to flee south while the IDF has stepped up aerial and artillery attacks, destroying whole neighborhoods.
At Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Tareq Abu Azzoum described "relentless bombardment from military operations that are leaving the landscape completely uninhabitable" in Gaza City.
"The Israeli military has deployed different military tactics to force people to leave Gaza City to the south—most notably excessive firepower, seen in the deliberate destruction of high-rise buildings," said Abu Azzoum.
“It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children battered and traumatized by over 700 days of unrelenting conflict to flee one hellscape to end up in another."
Israeli human rights groups including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Physicians for Human Rights called on officials to lift the mass evacuation order and said it constitutes ethnic cleansing and forced displacement.
Tess Ingram, a spokesperson for UNICEF, said the mass displacement of families is a "deadly threat for the most vulnerable."
“It is inhumane to expect nearly half a million children battered and traumatized by over 700 days of unrelenting conflict to flee one hellscape to end up in another,” she said, adding that the IDF's escalation in Gaza City forced nutrition centers in the city to shut down this week, "cutting off children from a third of the remaining treatment sites that can save their lives."
Abu Azzoum described "tragically consistent" scenes of Palestinians—almost 70,000 in the past few days—loading whatever belongings they have left into vehicles and donkey carts to flee their homes:
Many people said in the initial days of the ground operation that they would not leave Gaza City. But, right now, Israel is burning the ground. They’re destroying every kind of civilian infrastructure and have cut off aid deliveries to the city, all for one clear purpose—to relocate them into the southern part of Gaza.
Some people are unable to afford the cost of transportation. We see exhausted faces, mothers carrying their babies, elderly people on foot.
What is so devastating to see is the vulnerability of children who have lost their parents and found themselves on the move again. They’re struggling to find any patch of land where they can stay in the absence of their parents and are completely reliant on strangers to survive.
At IfNotNow, executive director Morriah Kaplan called the ground assault on Gaza City "a chillul hashem, a desecration of God's name."
"With just days until Rosh Hashanah, we watch in horror as the Israeli military bombs and invades Gaza City, putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in mortal danger," said Kaplan, adding that the invasion "spells almost certain death for the remaining hostages" who were kidnapped by Hamas from Israel on October 7, 2023.
"The Israeli government’s willingness to sacrifice their own citizens to continue its campaign of destruction is devastatingly clear," said Kaplan. "It is critical that we say loudly and unequivocally: This invasion won’t make a single Jew anywhere in the world safer."
She called on international funders of the Israeli military—including the largest, the United States—to take immediate action to stop Israel's assault on Gaza, which a United Nations commission said Tuesday is a genocide.
"The only way to halt this devastation," said Kaplan, "is to end the flow of weapons that Israel relies on to fuel its genocide."
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Ilhan Omar Slams Latest Trump Attack on Venezuelan Boat as 'Egregious Violation'
"There is NO legal justification," the progressive congresswoman said. "It risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes."
Sep 16, 2025
US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Tuesday condemned the Trump administration's attack the previous day on a second boat allegedly transporting drugs off the coast of Venezuela as blatantly illegal, highlighting her introduction last week of a war powers resolution in a bid to stop the aggression.
President Donald Trump announced Monday that the US destroyed what he said was a boat used by Venezuelan drug gangs, killing three people in what one Amnesty International campaigner called "an extrajudicial execution."
The strike followed a September 2 US attack on another alleged drug-running boat that killed 11 people, which Omar (D-Minn.) called a "lawless and reckless" action.
Responding to Monday's attack, Omar said on the social media site X that the Trump administration "is once again using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law."
"There is NO legal justification," she said of the attack. "It risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes. I have a war powers resolution to fight back."
Introduced last Thursday, the measure aims to stop the US attacks, which coincide with Trump's deployment of a small armada of warships off the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, a country that has endured to more than a century of US meddling in its affairs.
"All of us should agree that the separation of powers is crucial to our democracy, and that only Congress has the power to declare war," Omar said at the time.
The War Powers Act of 1973—enacted during the Nixon administration at the tail end of the US war on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos—empowers Congress to check the president’s war-making authority. The law requires the president to report any military action to Congress within 48 hours and mandates that lawmakers must approve troop deployments after 60 days.
Also last week, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) led a letter signed by two dozen Democratic colleagues and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asserting that the Trump administration offered “no legitimate justification” for the first boat strike.
Omar's condemnation of the US attacks followed Monday's announcement by US Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) of separate resolutions to strip Omar of her committee assignments and, in the case of Mace's measure, censure the congresswoman after she reportedly shared a video highlighting assassinated far-right firebrand Charlie Kirk's prolific bigotry.
Trump also attacked Omar on Monday, calling her a "disgraceful person," a "loser," and "disgusting."
Omar is no stranger to censure efforts, which critics say are largely fueled by Islamophobia—and haven't just come from Republicans. In 2019, she was falsely accused of antisemitism by leaders of her own party and was the subject of an anti-hate speech resolution passed by House lawmakers after she remarked about the indisputable financial ties the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and members of Congress.
In February 2023, Omar was ousted from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for years-old comments that allegedly referenced antisemitic tropes.
Last year, Congressman Don Bacon (R-Neb.) introduced a censure resolution after Omar said of Jewish students at Columbia University, "We should not have to tolerate antisemitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they're pro-genocide or anti-genocide."
The measure failed to pass, as did another put forth earlier last year by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) after she mistranslated remarks Omar made in Somali.
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