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For Immediate Release
June, 30 2009, 10:38am EDT
Tuesday June, 30 2009, 10:38am EDT
Contact:
Greta Berlin (English)
tel: +357 99 081 767 /
friends@freegaza.org
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Caoimhe Butterly (Arabic/English/Spanish):
tel: +357 99 077 820 /
sahara78@hotmail.co.uk
www.FreeGaza.org
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Israel Attack Justice Boat; Kidnaps Human Rights Worksers; Confiscates Medicine, Toys and Olive Trees
ISR CONFISCATES MEDICINE, TOYS AND OLIVE TREES
23 miles off the coast of Gaza
23 miles off the coast of Gaza - Today Israeli Occupation Forces attacked and boarded the Free Gaza
Movement boat, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, abducting 21 human rights
workers from 11 countries, including Noble laureate Mairead Maguire and
former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (see below for a complete
list of passengers). The passengers and crew are being forcibly dragged
toward Israel.
"This is an outrageous violation of international law against us.
Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights
mission to the Gaza Strip," said Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S.
Congresswoman and presidential candidate. "President Obama just told
Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that's
exactly what we tried to do. We're asking the international community
to demand our release so we can resume our journey."
According to an International Committee of the Red Cross report
released yesterday, the Palestinians living in Gaza are "trapped in
despair." Thousands of Gazans whose homes were destroyed earlier during
Israel's December/January massacre are still without shelter despite
pledges of almost $4.5 billion in aid, because Israel refuses to allow
cement and other building material into the Gaza Strip. The report also
notes that hospitals are struggling to meet the needs of their patients
due to Israel's disruption of medical supplies.
"The aid we were carrying is a symbol of hope for the people of
Gaza, hope that the sea route would open for them, and they would be
able to transport their own materials to begin to reconstruct the
schools, hospitals and thousands of homes destroyed during the
onslaught of "Cast Lead". Our mission is a gesture to the people of
Gaza that we stand by them and that they are not alone" said fellow
passenger Mairead Maguire, winner of a Noble Peace Prize for her work
in Northern Ireland.
Just before being kidnapped by Israel, Huwaida Arraf, Free Gaza
Movement chairperson and delegation co-coordinator on this voyage,
stated that: "No one could possibly believe that our small boat
constitutes any sort of threat to Israel. We carry medical and
reconstruction supplies, and children's toys. Our passengers include a
Nobel peace prize laureate and a former U.S. congressperson. Our boat
was searched and received a security clearance by Cypriot Port
Authorities before we departed, and at no time did we ever approach
Israeli waters."
Arraf continued, "Israel's deliberate and premeditated attack on our
unarmed boat is a clear violation of international law and we demand
our immediate and unconditional release."
Free Gaza is a human rights group founded in 2006. Our mission is to break the Israel's illegal siege on Gaza's 1.8 million civilians, since it inflicts collective punishment on the Palestinians who live there and has destroyed its economy. Free Gaza believes in direct action in confronting Israel's abuse of Palestinians using non-violent means and has found these voyages to be one of the most effective ways to alert the world to the prison-like conditions of Gaza. Ultimately, there is no better example of direct action than Free Gaza's sustained attempts to break the siege on Gaza which Israel claims it no longer occupies
LATEST NEWS
Women, Children, and Journalists Among Nearly 100 Killed in Gaza Wednesday
"You haven't bombed any fighters or any weapons," said a restaurant owner in a neighborhood that was struck, addressing Israel. "You've only hit civilians."
May 07, 2025
"Death follows families in Gaza wherever they go," said the commissioner-general of a United Nations agency that has long provided aid and services to Palestinians in the enclave on Wednesday, as it was reported that nearly 100 people had been killed in numerous Israeli strikes across Gaza over the past day.
News outlets cataloged the latest deaths in attacks on restaurants, markets, and schools, with women, children, and two journalists who had covered Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza among those killed.
At least 33 people were killed in Gaza City when an Israeli reconnaissance drone fired two missiles—one inside a restaurant that had served as a gathering place for residents recently and one at a busy intersection.
Freelance journalist Yahya Sobeih was among those killed—shortly after he had posted on Instagram about the birth of his new baby.
The owner of Palmyra restaurant on al-Wehda Street, Abu Saleh Abdu, told the BBC that many children and elderly people had been killed in the blasts. He was seen in a video angrily addressing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
"What do [you] want to achieve?" he said. "You haven't bombed any fighters or any weapons. You've only hit civilians."
Israel and its allies including its top international military funder, the U.S., have persistently claimed the IDF is targeting Hamas and has inadvertently killed children, women, aid workers, and healthcare providers—but remarks from Israeli officials have pointed to an overall goal of targeting all Palestinians regardless of whether they are Hamas members or not.
"There is no reason to believe that doubling down on military strategies, which, for a year and eight months, have not led to a durable resolution, including the release of all hostages, will now succeed."
Other attacks over the past day include a strike at al-Karama school in the Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City, which killed at least 13 people; a strike on a home in Jabalia in which three people were killed; a bombing of a home in Khan Younis, which killed eight people including a father and his children; and a strike on a tent shelter in Deir el-Balah, which killed three people including a child.
At Al Jazeera, Hani Mahmoud reported that Palestinians—who are also facing increasing levels of acute malnutrition two months into a total humanitarian aid blockade—have been "scrambling for cover" across Gaza.
"We have confirmed that a farmer was killed in the eastern part of Khan Younis, in Abasan, as he was trying to harvest what he managed to plant in the past couple of months, making up for the lack of food," Mahmoud said. "This is one of the elements that we have been seeing quite visibly. Not only are they suffering on a daily basis because of the enforced starvation and dehydration, they [also] try to plant their own food, but they are deprived, and their abilities to do so are [thwarted] by the ongoing attacks."
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said that 19 months into Israel's bombardment of Gaza, "no place is safe. No one is spared."
"In Gaza, day after day, inaction and indifference are normalizing dehumanization and overlooking crimes livestreamed under our eyes: families bombed, children burned alive, children starved," said Lazzarini. "Enough. Humanity must prevail before losing all moral compass."
The bloodshed on Wednesday followed an attack on a school-turned-shelter in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza on Tuesday. The Palestinian Civil Defense released an updated death toll in that attack Tuesday night, saying at least 30 people had been killed and dozens had been wounded.
Israel is ramping up its attacks as officials have approved a plan to seize Gaza, forcibly displace Palestinians to the southern part of the enclave, and enlist private U.S. security companies to help it take control of aid distribution.
On Wednesday, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the plan fuels concerns that Israel's true intention is to make life for Palestinians "increasingly incompatible with their continued existence in Gaza."
"There is no reason to believe that doubling down on military strategies, which, for a year and eight months, have not led to a durable resolution, including the release of all hostages, will now succeed," said Türk.
Expanding Israel's attacks on Gaza "will almost certainly cause further mass displacement, more deaths and injuries of innocent civilians, and the destruction of Gaza's little remaining infrastructure," he said.
Independent human rights experts appointed by the U.N. said countries including the U.S. face a "defining choice... to end the violence or bear witness to the annihilation of the Palestinian population in Gaza—an outcome with irreversible consequences for our shared humanity and multilateral order."
"The world is watching. Will member states live up to their obligations and intervene to stop the slaughter, hunger, and disease, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity that are perpetrated daily in complete impunity?" asked the experts. "International norms were established precisely to prevent such horrors. Yet, as millions protest globally for justice and humanity, their cries are muted. This situation conveys a deadly message: Palestinian lives are dispensable, and international law, if unenforced, is meaningless."
"States must act swiftly to end the unfolding genocide," they said, "dismantle apartheid, and secure a future in which Palestinians and Israelis coexist in freedom and dignity."
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Jewish Voices for Palestine and Free Speech Slam House GOP 'Kangaroo Hearing' on Antisemitism
"What we are seeing has nothing to do with keeping Jews safe and everything to do with crushing dissent," said one Barnard College student.
May 07, 2025
Jewish students and academics for Palestinian rights and free speech on Wednesday condemned a congressional hearing in which House Republicans repeatedly conflated opposition to Zionism and Israeli crimes against Palestine with antisemitism, while Democratic lawmakers warned against the weaponization of civil rights to suppress dissent.
The House Education and Workforce Committee held the hearing—titled "Beyond the Ivy League: Stopping the Spread of Antisemitism on American Campuses"—which followed last year's panel on antisemitism, both real and contrived, at Columbia University.
This time, the presidents of Haverford College, DePaul University, and California Polytechnic State University were grilled by lawmakers including committee Chair Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), who said that Israel should deal with Gaza "m like Nagasaki and Hiroshima" and was a manager at the Moody Bible Institute, which according to a memo from a group of mostly Jewish Haverford professors, "trains students to convert Jewish people to Christianity."
The memo notes that committee member Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) once said Jews and Muslims will never know "peace in their soul" until they renounce their religions and accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. Another committee member, Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), said that Nazi leader Adolf oHitler was "right" about political movements' need to capture youth support, before later apologizing.
Yet these and other Republican lawmakers on the panel pressured the three university presidents to crack down on constitutionally protected speech, while conflating support for Palestine and criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
"Haverford employs faculty members who engage in blatant antisemitism with no apparent consequences," said Walberg. "For example, one professor declared online that Zionism is Nazism."
Asked by Walberg if the phrase "long live the intifada"—an affirmation of Palestinians' legal right to armed resistance against Israeli oppression—is "protected speech at Haverford's campus," college president Wendy Raymond incorrectly said, "That is an antisemitic form of speech."
Walberg also falsely called the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel "unprovoked" and singled out students and faculty who praised Palestinians who resist Israel—which is facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice and whose prime minister and former defense minister are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, where they are wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination and forced starvation, in Gaza.
DePaul University president Robert Manuel said he was "deeply sorry" for "mistakes" made at the Chicago school, where two Jewish students were brutally attacked last November in what prosecutors have charged as a hate crime, while touting the banning of pro-Palestine groups including Students for Justice in Palestine from campus.
While noting that the Constitution "doesn't protect antisemitic violence, true threats of violence, or certain kinds of speech that may properly be labeled 'harassment,'" Georgetown University Law Center professor and former ACLU national legal director David Cole told the committee that the First Amendment "protects speech many of us find wrongheaded or deeply offensive, including anti-Israel advocacy and even antisemitic advocacy."
Cole accused the committee of making "broad-based charges of antisemitism without any factual predicate."
"To be honest, and with all due respect, the hearings this committee held on this same subject last year are reminiscent not of a fair trial of any sort, but of the kind of hearings the House Committee on Un-American Activities used to hold," Cole contended. "And I think we can all agree that the HUAC hearings were both a big mistake and a major intrusion on the First Amendment rights of Americans."
Cole also took aim at U.S. President Donald Trump's weaponization of antisemitism to threaten and defund colleges and universities that don't crack down on Palestine defenders, stressing that "the government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing such viewpoints."
Dozens of Jewish Haverford students signed an open letter to members of the House Education Committee ahead of Wednesday's hearing stating that "we are all deeply concerned by how you are weaponizing our pain and anguish for your own purposes."
Letter to the Editor: Jewish Haverford Students Reject Congress’ Weaponization of Antisemitism haverfordclerk.com/letter-to-th...
[image or embed]
— Karen Masters ( @karenlmasters.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 12:15 PM
"It is clear to us that these hearings will not, and have no desire to, protect us or combat antisemitism," the letter says. "Instead, this congressional hearing weaponizes antisemitism to target freedom of speech on college campuses, silences political dissidents, and attacks students who speak out in solidarity with Palestine. It is a blatant assault on our Black, brown, transgender, queer, noncitizen, and Palestinian peers."
A day before the hearing, the group Jewish Voice for Peace Action (JVPA)—which called the panel a "kangaroo hearing"— brought nine Columbia University and affiliated students to Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress and "speak about their experiences as Jewish students who have been steadfastly committed to advocating for the safety and freedom of the Palestinian people."
Columbia junior Shay Orentlicher said that "I'm here asking my representatives to call for the release of my friend Mahmoud Khalil and to put real pressure on the Trump regime," referring to the permanent U.S. resident facing deportation after helping to lead pro-Palestine protests at the New York City university.
"I cannot stand to see the Trump administration smear Mahmoud as an antisemite when it could not be further than the truth," Orentlicher added.
Tali Beckwith-Cohen, a Jewish senior at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College, argued: "The Trump regime is using false allegations of antisemitism to disappear our friends, punish student protestors, and dismantle higher education. What we are seeing has nothing to do with keeping Jews safe, and everything to do with crushing dissent."
"Thousands of Jews on campuses across the country have spoken out in solidarity with the people of Gaza and we will not be silent," Beckwith-Cohen vowed.
JVPA political director Beth Miller contended that "the far-right does not care about Jewish safety."
"Trump and his allies in Congress are platforming neo-Nazis and Christian nationalists, all while pretending to care about antisemitism in order to take a hatchet to our communities and most basic freedoms," Miller added. "This is intended to silence the Palestinian rights movement, sow chaos, and sharpen authoritarian tools that will then be used to dismantle civil liberties and democracy itself."
Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the ranking member of the House Education Committee, pushed back on Republicans' assertions during Wednesday's hearing, noting that "my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have not held any hearings on other forms of discrimination and hate, such as racism, Title IX gender violations, Islamophobia, homophobia, or the challenges of meeting the needs of students with disabilities."
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) noted that Trump praised attendees of the deadly 2017 "United the Right" white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia as "very fine people," and that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "spread an antisemitic conspiracy theory that Covid was engineered to target white and Black people but spare Jewish people."
Casar asked committee Republicans to condemn these and other antisemitic incidents by raising their hands. None did.
Antisemitism is an assault on all of our values. So why would Republicans cut funding to address hate crimes or protect synagogues? Republicans are not trying to keep Jewish students safe. They're trying to keep the Israeli government safe from any form of criticism.
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— Congressman Greg Casar ( @repcasar.bsky.social) May 7, 2025 at 10:24 AM
"Not a single Republican today has been willing to condemn any of this antisemitism," Casar lamented. "Unfortunately, the party of 'very fine people on both sides' or ' Jewish space lasers' does not give a damn about stopping antisemitism. If my Republican colleagues want to stop the spread of antisemitism, maybe they should stop apologizing for and promoting antisemites."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) argued that "it is abundantly clear that the cynical work of the majority party on this committee is now being expanded and weaponized by the [Trump] administration seeking to squash dissent."
"Political protest, anti-war protest, pro-Palestinian protest—this is all protected speech under the First Amendment, regardless of citizenship status," Omar said after listing a number of Palestine defenders, including green-card holders, targeted for deportation by the Trump administration.
"Using immigration authorities to target, abduct, and detain noncitizens for their activism is a clear violation of their rights and a hallmark of an authoritarian government," she added.
Asserting that "throughout history, college campuses have been the places where worldviews, politics, cultures meet," Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said thato "some of the most transformative movements for justice in this country were ignited by students on college campuses."
"We cannot allow them to use efforts to divide our marginalized communities against each other."
"Now, that tradition of protest, academic freedom, and the core principle of free speech is under attack," Lee noted. "Not genuinely in the name of safety and student well-being, but under the guise of control used to suppress the voices of marginalized groups."
Lee said that it's clear that committee Republicans don't care about tackling antisemitism and other forms of bigotry "because they've dismantled and closed regional offices for civil rights... tasked with investigating antisemitism, that they have not spoken out against the Nazi salutes of Elon Musk or the Great Replacement Theory that led to the largest antisemitic massacre in my district."
"They have done nothing about anti-Blackness—I won't hold my breath for a hearing on that," she continued.
"We haven't acknowledged that our safety and our liberation are tied together," Lee added. "We cannot allow them to use efforts to divide our marginalized communities against each other... We are the closest we have ever been—ever been—to losing our civil liberties. We have to fight against it."
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In Latest Legal Loss for Trump, Federal Court Orders Rümeysa Öztürk's Return to Vermont
The ruling in Rümeysa Öztürk's case came less than 24 hours after courts ruled that Badar Khan Suri's case must be heard in Virginia and that Mahmoud Khalil's case must remain in New Jersey.
May 07, 2025
On Wednesday, Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk was the third detained international scholar in 24 hours to secure a victory in a case against the Trump administration when a federal appeals panel ordered the government to return Öztürk to Vermont from the crowded Louisiana detention center to which she was sent hours after plainclothes immigration agents arrested her in March.
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its ruling weeks after U.S. District Judge William K. Sessions III in Vermont ordered the administration to return Öztürk to the New England state, where she had been located when her attorneys filed a habeas corpus petition on her behalf.
Sessions' ruling had demanded that Öztürk be returned to Vermont for a hearing by May 1, but she remained in Louisiana—where the Trump administration has sent numerous foreign students marked for deportation to ensure their cases would be handled by conservative judges—as the White House appealed the case to the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
That court said Wednesday that Öztürk must be sent back to Vermont by May 14, where a federal judge will hold a hearing on her habeas corpus petition on May 22. A bail hearing for Öztürk's release will also be held on May 9.
Öztürk's lawyers argue that the government is unconstitutionally retaliating against her for co-writing an op-ed in her school newspaper last year in which she called on Tufts to divest from companies tied to Israel and its bombardment of Gaza. She was detained in March by plainclothes immigration agents—some of whom wore masks—near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts.
"No one should be arrested and locked up for their political views," said Esha Bhandari, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, which is helping to represent Öztürk. "Every day that Rümeysa Öztürk remains in detention is a day too long. We're grateful the court refused the government’s attempt to keep her isolated from her community and her legal counsel as she pursues her case for release."
Lawyers recently submitted new filings in Öztürk's case in Vermont, describing her living conditions for nearly two months in Louisiana.
In a cramped room with 23 other women, Öztürk has suffered progressively more severe asthma attacks and has been exposed to triggers for her asthma, including insect and rodent droppings and a lack of fresh air.
"Rümeysa has suffered six weeks in crowded confinement without adequate access to medical care and in conditions that doctors say risk exacerbating her asthma attacks. Her detention—over an op-ed she co-authored in her student newspaper—is as cruel as it is unconstitutional," said Jessie Rossman, legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts. "Today, we moved one step closer to returning Rümeysa to her community and studies in Massachusetts."
With Öztürk expected to return to Vermont within days, the ACLU this week was also celebrating another "huge blow for the Trump administration" in the case of Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri, who was also arrested in March by masked immigration agents before being secretly transported first to Louisiana and then to Texas.
A federal court ruled Suri's habeas corpus case should be heard in a court in Virginia, where he was living with his wife and young children when he was detained.
The Department of Homeland Security said Suri was "rendered deportable" under the Immigration and Nationality Act because he was found "spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media"—claims for which DHS offered no evidence.
His lawyers have argued he was being detained for constitutionally protected speech in support of Palestinian rights.
A federal court in Virginia is now set to hear Suri's case regarding his demand to be returned to Virginia and released on bond on May 14.
Eden Heilman, legal director for the ACLU of Virginia, said the court rejected the Trump administration's effort to "find a court it believed would be friendlier to its unlawful detention of people advocating for Palestinian rights."
"We are pleased the court saw through the Trump administration's attempts to manipulate the law, and we won't stop fighting until Dr. Khan Suri is reunited with his family," said Heilman.
Meanwhile, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration's effort to appeal the issue of where former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil's habeas corpus case should be heard, ensuring that a federal court in New Jersey—where Khalil was detained when the petition was filed—will remain the venue for the case.
The administration has been pushing for Khalil's case to be heard in Louisiana, where he has also been in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention since March, when ICE agents accosted him and his pregnant wife and took him away in an unmarked vehicle—eventually sending him 1,400 miles away from his wife and his legal counsel, where he remained last month during the birth of his first child.
Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, expressed hope that Tuesday's ruling "sends a strong message to other courts around the country facing government attempts to shop for favorable jurisdictions by moving people detained on unconstitutional immigration charges around."
"It is the fundamental job of the judiciary," said Kaufman, "to stand up to this kind of government manipulation of our basic rights."
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