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Greta Berlin, Free Gaza movement +33 607 374 512
Over the past weekend, the two dozen initiatives who are working on sending boats met to discuss their strategy for sailing into Gaza. Of utmost importance to everyone were Israel's ongoing threats to attack the flotilla, a civil society attempt to do what governments refuse to do...hold Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity. Countries that are included continue to grow as they either buy boats or raise the money to partner with others. At the last count, more than 25 countries are now involved. Yet Israel continues to saber rattle, saying that it is we who have no right to sail to Gaza. It is Israel that has no right to illegally blockade Gaza. Instead of asking the world bodies to stop us, they should be lifting the siege on the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in this small enclave.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Athens, April 11 2011
FREEDOM FLOTILLA 2 Press Release
Athens - The Freedom Flotilla 2 Steering Committee met in Athens 9 and 10 April to continue preparations for the upcoming flotilla. Since our last meeting in Amsterdam, Israel has launched an international campaign of incitement against the Flotilla and its coalition members who are participating in this next voyage and come from around the world.
The Greek Ship to Gaza hosted this international meeting and emphasized that the Greek government has failed until now to pressure Israel to release the two Greek boats hijacked from international waters and held in Israel since 31st May 2010. The Greek Ship to Gaza has complied with all of the roadblocks put into place by Israel in order to bring back its ships, but our efforts have been to no avail. The Greek government should have pressured Israel to release immediately the ships, as Israel did for the Turkish ships in August, 2010.
Now, on the eve of the second Freedom Flotilla 2 voyage, the Israeli government is threatening to attack us again. As occurred last year before the first Freedom Flotilla, Israeli leaders are busy developing an atmosphere of hostility that should leave no doubt as to their intentions if and when they illegally attack this civilian flotilla.
Therefore, we are calling on all our governments, the international community and the United Nations not to succumb to Israel's intimidation. Governments need to fulfill their 'responsibility to protect' their own citizens. The threats against the Flotilla are not just at sea, but also in our home countries, as Israeli agencies are targeting individual groups and personalities. Flotilla partners insist that their governments take preemptive action to assure that Israel will not use force to interfere with this peaceful international effort to secure Palestinian human rights, human dignity and humanitarian assistance. It is Israel that is acting illegally and not us.
On May 10, Freedom Flotilla 2 partners will go to the European Parliament for meetings with MEPs as well as the United Nations and other international bodies, and to present Freedom Flotilla 2 and its goals. In addition to the partner organizations, there will also be participants from more than 50 countries on board the ships. This past week the European Jews for a Just Peace announced that they will join the Flotilla as a delegation and in sending humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
We are putting Israel on notice...
We are coming
We are unarmed
We are civilians
You have no right to threaten us
We expect to reach Gaza without any Interference.
Contact: Dimitris Pilonis, Greek Ship to Gaza +30 6977664737
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
Rep. Don Beyer blamed the surge in gas prices on President Donald Trump's decision to wage "an illegal war against Iran with no plan or strategy."
As President Donald Trump continues threatening to commit war crimes in Iran by bombing power plants, Iran is signaling that it could put a further squeeze on global oil prices by shutting down yet another strait used for transporting petroleum outside the Middle East.
Ali Akbar Velayati, a former Iranian foreign minister and a top adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, threatened in a Sunday social media post to close down the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb, a waterway adjacent to the coast of Yemen that is under control of Iran-backed Houthi militants.
“If the White House dares to repeat its foolish mistakes," Velayati cautioned, "it will soon realize that the flow of global energy and trade can be disrupted with a single move."
As Al Jazeera noted in a Monday report, the Houthis already shut down the strait during Israel's war on Gaza, and doing so again at the same time Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz could send global energy prices to unprecedented highs.
"The strait is a vital route through which Saudi Arabia sends its oil to Asia," Al Jazeera reported. "If Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz were both shut, that would block 25%... of the world’s oil and gas supply."
Oil prices have shot up since Trump launched his illegal war with Iran more than a month ago, and on Monday the price of Brent crude oil futures was trading at $110 per barrel, while the average price for gas in the US rose to $4.12 per gallon, according to data from AAA.
Democratic members of the US Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) last week released a study estimating that, thanks to Trump's war, Americans are paying 35% more to fill up their cars than they were paying a month earlier.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a member of the JEC, pointed to the report in a Monday social media post and said Americans were getting hit with major price shocks because "President Trump decided to wage an illegal war against Iran with no plan or strategy."
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Ranking Member of the JEC, told WMUR that Trump's Iran war took an already bad situation for American families and made it worse.
"Families are already being pushed to the brink," Hassan said. "That was true before the war started, by the cost of everything from groceries to rent to healthcare insurance premiums and prescriptions and even more. But now they're being forced to pay more at the pump."
"The 25th Amendment exists for a reason," US Rep. Yassamin Ansari said in response to the US president's threat to bomb Iran's power plants and bridges.
US President Donald Trump on Monday defended his threat to commit grave war crimes in Iran, telling reporters at the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House—with children in the background—that bombing the country's bridges and power plants would be justified despite warnings of "catastrophic harm" to tens of millions of civilians.
Asked how it wouldn't be a war crime for the US military to launch a large-scale assault on Iran's civilian infrastructure, Trump pointed to Iranian security forces' recent killing of protesters and called Iranian leaders "animals."
"We have to stop them, and we can't let them have a nuclear weapon," the president continued. American intelligence agencies and international watchdogs have repeatedly assessed that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.
Watch:
Reporter: How would it not be a war crime to strike Iran’s bridges and power plants?
Trump: They’re animals. pic.twitter.com/rWrj7oeTNx
— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 6, 2026
Brian Finucane, senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, said in response to Trump's remarks that "prior crimes against the Iranian people do not excuse fresh war crimes against the Iranian people."
Trump also told reporters, absurdly, that "the time the Iranian people are most unhappy... is when those bombs stop." US-Israeli attacks, which began in late February, have killed around 2,000 people in Iran so far and destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of civilian structures, including apartment buildings, medical facilities, and universities.
Over the weekend, Trump set new deadline of Tuesday at 8 pm ET for the total reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. If Iran doesn't agree to his administration's terms, the US president said Sunday that he is "considering blowing everything up"—a threat of indiscriminate attacks that would violate international law and kill many civilians.
"The 25th Amendment exists for a reason," US Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) wrote in response to Trump's Easter-morning threat. "The president of the United States is a deranged lunatic, and a national security threat to our country and the rest of the world."
The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that US military planners are "pulling out existing lists of potential targets to provide the president options if he decides to attack energy infrastructure" in Iran.
Amnesty International warned last month in response to earlier Trump threats that a major attack on Iranian energy infrastructure "would unleash catastrophic harm on millions."
“When power plants collapse, horrific consequences cascade instantly," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns. "Water pumping stations would stop functioning, clean water would become scarce, and preventable diseases would spread. Hospitals would lose electricity and fuel, forcing surgeries to be cancelled and life-support machines to shut down. Food production and distribution networks would collapse, deepening hunger and causing widespread food scarcity. Many businesses would also shut down with devastating economic consequences, including mass unemployment."
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said Monday that US lawmakers must investigate Trump's "targeting and threatening of civilian sites in Iran, including by utilizing all tools at Congress’ disposal including subpoena power to secure documentary evidence and testimony from relevant officials."
"Any actions that violate US and international law regarding the conduct of war must be thoroughly investigated and appropriate accountability pursued," said Abdi. "We cannot allow such brazen disregard for civilian life to be normalized."
First Lady Melania Trump, who accompanied the president to the White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday, defended the US-Israeli assault on Iran as a war for the "future" of Iran's children.
Melania Trump: All of this is happening for their future. They will be safe in the years to come.
Trump: We are fighting for the children who are in a war zone. pic.twitter.com/2GHTqA5nWM
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 6, 2026
The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said last week that at least 216 children have been killed by US-Israeli bombing in Iran, with many of the deaths caused by a US strike on an Iranian elementary school on the first day of the war.
“Children in the region are being exposed to horrific violence, while the very systems and services meant to keep them safe are coming under attack,” said UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell. “Urgent action is needed by all parties to conflict to protect the lives of civilians and uphold the rights of children."
"The American people understand that Donald Trump poses a direct threat to our Constitution and to the rule of law and must be impeached and removed from public office," said the head of Free Speech for People.
After just 14 months of President Donald Trump's return to the White House, polling released Monday found that a majority of likely US voters support impeaching him a historic third time—which one pollster called "an unprecedented result this early in a presidential term."
Lake Research Partners conducted the poll March 26-30 for Free Speech for People, a legal advocacy organization that has launched a campaign to "Impeach Trump. Again." As part of that effort, FSFP gathered more than 1 million supportive signatures ahead of the latest "No Kings" rallies and has publicly detailed over 25 grounds for impeachment.
First on that list is that "in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East, Trump is abusing his role as commander of the US military to commit atrocities that violate US and international law." The president notably spent the weekend threatening to commit more war crimes in Iran if it doesn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz to all ship traffic—which it only closed in response to the joint Israel-US attack on February 28.
Another key argument for impeachment on the FSFP list is that "Trump has militarized and weaponized federal law enforcement, particularly US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to punish the opposition party, disrupt local communities, instill fear in the civilian population, and quell lawful political dissent."
Pollsters noted both of those grounds in their question, asking respondents: "Several members of Congress have recently come out in support of impeaching President Donald Trump for violating Americans' constitutional rights and the law, including actions by ICE in the US and the war he started with Iran. Do you support or oppose President Trump being impeached?"
Overall, 52% of all voters said they support impeachment, including 84% of Democrats, 55% of Independents, and even 14% of Republicans. Just 40% opposed, including 8% of Democrats, 34% of Independents, and 81% of Republicans.

"The result is quite striking," David Mermin of Lake Research Partners said in a call with reporters. "It's a clear majority. It's a solid majority. And it reaches across all demographics and across partisan lines as well."
The 800 respondents represented a variety of perspectives in terms of age, gender, racial identity, education, region, and partisanship. The margin of error is +/-3.5%.
Putting the finding in a historical context, Mermin noted that there were majorities in favor of impeachment in the mid-1970s, when then-President Richard Nixon was approaching impeachment and then resigned, well into his second term. Nearly a quarter-century later, during the proceeding that led to the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton, "most of that period, we did not see majorities in favor of impeaching him, even during that process," the pollster explained.
"For President Trump, in his first term, there were two impeachment proceedings against him, and in the first one, near the end of 2019... some of the polls disagreed, but there were some polls showing him slightly about 50% approval of impeachment," he continued. "And then the second proceeding that happened after the January 6th coup attempt, there was a clear majority... during those last few weeks of his term prior to his when he left office in January of 2021."
As with Clinton, the House of Representatives impeached Trump, but the Senate declined to convict him. Now, both chambers of Congress are narrowly controlled by Republicans who have demonstrated an unwillingness to stand up to the president—including by refusing to advance war powers resolutions challenging his various unauthorized military actions abroad.
Mermin said that "this appears to be the earliest in a presidential term that you've seen a majority of Americans in favor of impeachment."
FSFP co-founder and president John Bonifaz highlighted that the polling comes when there is not even an impeachment proceeding in the House.
Since Trump's return to office last year, Reps. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) and Al Green (D-Texas) have introduced articles of impeachment against him, though those efforts have not gone anywhere. However, in the lead-up to the November midterm elections, even Trump has acknowledged that Democrats winning congressional races could lead to him being impeached a third time.
"You gotta win the midterms, 'cause if we don't win the midterms... they'll find a reason to impeach me," Trump told Republicans in January. "I'll get impeached."
The new survey shows even higher figures for disapproval of Trump's job performance: 57% of all voters disapprove of the job Trump is doing, including 92% of Democrats, 56% of Independents, and 16% of Republicans.
Bonifaz said that "this poll confirms what we are seeing across the country: The American people understand that Donald Trump poses a direct threat to our Constitution and to the rule of law and must be impeached and removed from public office."