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arms trade
Global Sumud Flotilla Urges Probe of US Complicity in Members' Abduction and Torture by Israel
"The torture of US citizens and humanitarian volunteers with American-made tools... is the direct outcome of unconditional US support for a regime continuously committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
May 26, 2026
Testimonies published Tuesday from activists, journalists, medical professionals, and others who took part in the latest international flotilla attempting to break Israel's genocidal siege of Gaza called for an investigation into US complicity in their illegal high-seas abduction and alleged torture, sexual assault, and other abuse by Israeli forces.
"As testimonies from the 428 participants illegally kidnapped by the Israeli regime continue to surface, the United States' critical role in the abuses and torture of humanitarian volunteers and journalists has become undeniable," Global Sumud Flotilla's (GSF) media team said in a statement.
"This role goes beyond the State Department’s diplomatic shielding and the US Embassy’s refusal to assist American families seeking information," GSF continued. "It includes the very ship on which volunteer participants were illegally detained and tortured, and the weapons used to inflict life-threatening trauma against them."
That vessel, the amphibious landing ship INS Nahshon, was built by Bollinger Mississippi Shipbuilding in Louisiana and was fully financed by the US government. GSF activists first became aware of what they now call the "torture boat" when it was used to detain members of the previous Gaza-bound flotilla, dozens of whom required medical attention for broken ribs, noses, and other injuries inflicted by Israeli forces.
This time, according to GSF, "detained humanitarians, doctors, and journalists were processed one by one through a darkened shipping container. Inside, groups of three to five soldiers systematically brutalized each person who came through the door while those waiting outside listened to the screams."
Flotilla participant Yassine Benjelloun described his mistreatment by his Israeli captors.
"All of a sudden I hear, 'Welcome to Israel.' And I start getting hit, like first hit on the head, second hit in the ribs, then I fall, then they kick me," he said. "What lasts maybe three or five minutes seems like a lifetime. You don't know that the door is going to open, and they're going to kick you out."
Dr. Jihan Alya Mohd Nordin, a Malaysian physician aboard the flotilla, documented 35 GSF members with fractured or dislocated bones, as well as severe head injuries including concussions and eye or ear trauma, and 14 cases of sexual assault.
"Being a doctor, the main aim is to reduce the sufferings of people," Jihan said. "But when we cannot do anything to help them, it was the worst and most horrible feeling that I have. It was so devastating."
Jihan said she was shoved, struck, punched, kicked, and choked by her captors, who forcibly stripped off her hijab.
In addition to the ship, the weapons used against the civilian flotilla members were also made in the USA.
"Stun grenades and metal-bearing projectile rounds were identified by manufacturer markings as products of Combined Tactical Systems (CTS), a brand of the Jamestown, Pennsylvania-based weapons manufacturer Combined Systems Inc. (CSI)," GSF said. "These weapons were fired at close range in enclosed spaces against participants who were sitting down or trying to sleep, a direct violation of the manufacturer’s own usage guidelines."
GSF argues that "none of this was accidental."
According to former State Department official Josh Paul—who resigned in protest in 2023 over US arms transfers to Israel as it began waging a genocidal war against Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack of October 7 of that year—"Under US law, arms transfers must only be made for purposes authorized by law."
"INS Nahshon's use by Israel to conduct an illegal seizure in international waters, and then to act as a base for the torture and sexual assault of foreign civilians, including Americans, who had broken no laws, and were acting from conscience to serve an urgent humanitarian need, plainly and grievously violates those terms," he continued.
"When this sale was authorized, US officials will have asked themselves how Israel might use this platform," Paul added. "The basis on which they should have denied this transfer has been there since at least the Mavi Marmara incident... but is now more clear than ever, and the lesson here is a simple one: that anything we transfer to Israel, Israel will find a way to misuse—whether it is a bomb, a bulldozer, or a boat.”
Paul was referring to the May 2010 raid on one of the first Gaza Freedom Flotilla convoys, during which Israeli forces killed nine volunteers aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
"While international law has been flagrantly violated and legal proceedings are now active in Turkey, Italy, and Spain, with Italian prosecutors opening an investigation into kidnapping and sexual assault, the US government continues to look away," GSF said in regard to the latest flotilla.
Americans aboard past Gaza flotillas said the Trump administration failed to provide any consular support during their abduction and abuse.
This time, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—a Christian Zionist who has denied the very existence of the Palestinian people—joined senior officials from other countries in condemning Israel's abuse of abducted flotilla members.
GSF said Tuesday that "the Israeli regime continues to commit genocide using US-built ships and US-made weapons. The torture of US citizens and humanitarian volunteers with American-made tools is not an anomaly. It is the direct outcome of unconditional US support for a regime continuously committing war crimes and crimes against humanity."
That support includes tens of billions of dollars in armed aid during the Biden and Trump administrations, which both also provided diplomatic cover for Israel, including vetoes of numerous Gaza ceasefire resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council.
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 250,000 Palestinians in Gaza—including thousands of people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble—while forcibly displacing, intentionally starving, or sickening around 2 million others.
Israel's actions are the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 other nations. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
Last year, a UN panel of experts said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a conclusion also reached by numerous governments, human rights groups, jurists, and scholars—including prominent Israeli and other Jewish Holocaust experts.
Flotilla participants have stressed that their ordeal pales in comparison to the plight of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children imprisoned by Israel, often without charge or trial under the country's administrative detention regime. Israeli authorities are investigating the deaths of dozens of Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were allegedly tortured to death and executed. Others have allegedly been subjected to widespread rape and sexual abuse in Israeli detention.
"What GSF participants survived for days, many Palestinians endure indefinitely without lawyers or consular access," the flotilla organizers said.
GSF is calling on the US government to take actions including the investigation of Israel's use of US-origin arms and other equipment to abuse American citizens, a suspension of arms transfers to Israel pending the outcome of the probe, and "end unconditional military and diplomatic support for a regime committing genocide."
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Trump Rebuked for Bypassing Congress With $8.6 Billion Weapons Sale to Israel and Gulf Allies
"The vaults are open and the arms trade is thriving before the war and after it," said one Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
May 03, 2026
As the US voting public continues to express its discontent over the disastrous war of choice against Iran that US President Donald Trump launched just over two months ago, fresh criticism followed after weekend reporting revealed the administration skirted congressional review to approve an $8.6 billion weapons deal with the United Arab Emirates and other allies in the Middle East.
Announced Friday night quietly by the US State Department, as the New York Times reports, the "sales would entail the transfer of rockets to Israel, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates and air-defense equipment to Qatar and Kuwait."
According to the Times:
Under the terms of the deal with Qatar, the Gulf country would pay more than $4 billion for American-made Patriot missile interceptors — global stockpiles of which have dwindled during the war with Iran.
Israel, the Emirates and Qatar would receive an Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, which fires laser-guided rockets. Kuwait also purchased an advanced aerial defense system for about $2.5 billion.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio expedited the deals under an emergency provision allowing the “immediate sale” of the weapons, the State Department said, bypassing standard congressional review and prompting criticism from Democratic lawmakers. This is the third time the second Trump administration has invoked an emergency authorization during the Iran war to bypass Congress on arms sales.
"No comment," said Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in an eye-rolling response to the news on social media.
After a commenter suggested that "America opened the door to war for [the countries taking part in the sale] so they would open their treasuries and the Israeli-American arms trade would boom after a slump," ElBaradei seemed to agree.
"The vaults are open, and the arms trade is thriving before the war and after it," he said.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and now a visiting professor at Princeton University, said: "Trump is bypassing Congress to fast-track arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, apparently without receiving any promise that the UAE would stop arming the genocidal Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan."
The RSF has been accused of atrocities in the ongoing Sudanese civil war, and the backing it has received from the US, with the UAE as its closely allied proxy, has been the source of outrage and criticism.
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'Genocide Has No Place in This World': Activists Sabotage Israeli-Owned Elbit Weapons Factory in UK
"We are fucking sick and tired of our government's collaboration in this genocide," said one activist who participated in the direct action.
Apr 24, 2026
In the early hours of Friday morning, members of the anti-war group People Against Genocide in the United Kingdom gained access to the roof of a drone manufacturing facility in the city of Leicester and began sabotaging a so-called "clean room" to hamper the building of weapons used in the ongoing Israeli military assault on Gaza that experts from around the world characterize as genocide and a crime against humanity.
The UAV Tactical Systems facility, owned by the Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems Ltd., has been the target of protest in recent years for its role in providing the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with unmanned aerial drones, combat vehicles, surveillance equipment, and other military hardware.
"We are fucking sick and tired of our government's collaboration in this genocide that Israel is committing against the Palestinian people," said one unnamed activist, sitting on the facility's roof early Friday. "We are tired of waiting for them to uphold international law."
Activists from ‘People Against Genocide’ have occupied a Leicester factory owned by Elbit Systems UK this morning, drilling a hole through its roof in order to abseil into the building.
The team of activists evaded security and used ladders to climb over razor-wire fencing at… pic.twitter.com/uWJ0r6s2av
— Novara Media (@novaramedia) April 24, 2026
Footage posted online by The Aftershock, a media outlet focused on the pro-Palestinian movement, showed members of the People Against Genocide on the roof of the facility in Leicester and then making their way down toward the manufacturing rooms inside.
"They're breaking the ceiling of the clean room used to make key parts for Israeli military drones," the outlet noted. "Contaminating the clean room can knock it out of use for several months."
BREAKING: 'People Against Genocide' have abseiled through the roof of Elbit's arms factory in Leicester.
They're breaking the ceiling of the clean room used to make key parts for Israeli military drones.
Contaminating the clean room can knock it out of use for several months. pic.twitter.com/BplVIb33bF
— The Aftershock (@The_Aftershock_) April 24, 2026
According to The Canary, a UK-based news outlet:
At approximately 10am, an action taker from the group occupying the roof abseiled into the factory through a hole made with power tools. Whilst abseiling into the weapons factory, the action taker proceeded to damage the ceiling and air supply to the clean room.
The clean room is used to make essential components for Israeli military drones and, once contaminated, it could be out of use for several months.
The action involved four people from direct action group People Against Genocide. They successfully evaded recently-increased security patrols at the plant, and used 10m extension ladders to ascend over razor-wire fencing, gaining access to the factory roof. The team next began to use high-grade power tools to cut their way through the roof, to damage weaponry inside.
"We cannot stand idly by while Elbit continues to manufacture death and destruction here in Leicester," a spokesperson for People Against Genocide said in a statement.
"Petitions, protests and lobbying decision makers who are actively involved in the Gaza genocide, has unsurprisingly, failed to create necessary change," the spokesperson explained. "Therefore, rather than appeal to politicians or the government, we’re bypassing the complicit decision makers and are taking direct action to shut Elbit down and disrupt the murderous Israeli war machine ourselves."
"Genocide," said the unnamed activist on the roof of the facility, "has no place in this world. That's why we're here today—to shut Elbit down."
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