SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
palestine
Greenpeace Arctic Sunrise to Join Upcoming Global Sumud Flotilla Mission to Gaza
"We stand firmly against war crimes, deliberate starvation, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and ecocide," said one Greenpeace campaigner.
Apr 06, 2026
Greenpeace International said Monday that the MY Arctic Sunrise—one of its largest and most storied vessels—will be taking part in the upcoming Global Sumud Flotilla relaunch in order "to directly challenge Israel’s ongoing blockade of aid to Gaza."
The green group said the Arctic Sunrise, an icebreaker that's been part of Greenpeace's fleet since 1995, will be "sailing alongside more than 70 vessels and over 1,000 participants" in the second Global Sumud Flotilla, which is scheduled to set sail from Barcelona on April 12, with subsequent stops in Syracuse, Italy, and Lerapetra, Greece en route to Gaza.
Greenpeace said the Arctic Sunrise "is providing operational and technical support" for the flotilla.
“The devastation inflicted on Gaza has become a dangerous doctrine of impunity, now spreading to Lebanon through relentless destruction and deepening human suffering," Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa executive director Ghiwa Nakat said in a statement. "The Greenpeace ship is joining this people-led mission to demand safe, unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza and to challenge the illegal blockade that continues to devastate civilian life."
"We stand firmly against war crimes, deliberate starvation, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and ecocide," Nakat added. "This flotilla is a call to governments around the world to end their silence, protect humanitarian action, and act with urgency and principle to uphold international law, human dignity, and justice.”
Global Sumud Flotilla organizers said the spring 2026 mission will focus on specialized medical care, with more than 1,000 healthcare professionals aiming to deliver lifesaving medicines and equipment to Gaza, where 29 months of Israeli war and siege have left the Palestinian exclave's medical infrastructure in utter ruins.
Last year, dozens of boats carrying hundreds of activists from over 40 nations took part in the last Global Sumud Flotilla—sumud means “perseverance” in Arabic—as it attempted to break Israel’s naval blockade and deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid including food, medicines, and baby formula to starving Gazans amid a growing famine.
Israeli forces intercepted and seized the flotilla vessels in international waters in early October, arresting all aboard the boats and temporarily jailing them in Israel, where some including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg said they were physically and psychologically abused by their captors.
The Freedom Flotilla Coalition has made numerous attempts to break Israel’s blockade by sea, all of which ended in more or less the same way. In 2010, Israeli forces raided one of the first convoys carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza by sea. The Israeli attackers killed nine volunteers aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
Numerous experts and the entire United Nations Security Council except the United States have called the starvation of Gaza deliberately created by Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
Israel—whose assault and siege of Gaza have left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead or wounded—is also facing a genocide case in the International Court of Justice filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 countries, including Spain, the mission's country of departure.
“At this time of escalating war, triggered by US and Israeli militaries and cascading into a cycle of destruction and pain across the Middle East, we are honored to answer the call to join the Sumud Flotilla," Greenpeace Spain executive director Eva Saldaña said Monday. "While world governments have lacked the courage and conviction to uphold international law and their obligation to prevent genocide in Gaza, the Sumud Flotilla has been a shining light of humanitarian solidarity and a symbol of hope in action.”
Global Sumud Flotilla leaders applauded Greenpeace's decision to participate in its spring mission.
“Greenpeace’s history of defending the seas, confronting injustice, and taking action in defense of life makes them a powerful addition to our 2026 spring mission," Global Sumud Flotilla Steering Committee member Susan Abdullah said Monday. "We sail together in the same direction, with a shared determination to help break Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Univ. of Washington Removes Mideast Center Director Who Criticized US-Israeli War on Iran
"There’s a chilling effect on not just my academic freedom, but that of my colleagues; anyone who dares to speak out against the war and against aggression," said UW professor Aria Fani.
Apr 03, 2026
The University of Washington has removed a professor from his role as director of its Middle East Center after he criticized the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran and condemned Zionism, the settler-colonial movement for Jewish hegemony in Palestine.
Aria Fani, who will remain an associate professor at UW’s Jackson School of International Studies, told The Seattle Times on Friday that new interim widirector Daniel Hoffman told him last week he was fired from his leadership role at the Middle East Center.
Fani, who was born and raised in Iran and came to the US when he was 18 years old, said he was hired for his research on Iran. However, he told the Times that he now feels "profoundly hurt and betrayed" by his removal.
"There’s a chilling effect on not just my academic freedom, but that of my colleagues; anyone who dares to speak out against the war and against aggression," he said.
In a separate interview Friday with My Northwest, Fani said he was removed "for improper use" of the center's listserv, an email application.
"I sent out two memos about this atrocious war on Iran in which I offered historical analysis that’s lacking in the media,” Fani said. “I was told that my email made ‘certain constituents feel attacked.’ By certain constituents, I assume the university means Zionists who would like to keep bombing every Middle Eastern country and continue dehumanizing their people.”
Last July Fani told the The Daily UW, a student newspaper, that President Donald Trump's militaristic foreign policy—he's bombed 10 countries, more than any other US leader—is not making the world safer.
“If you tell the dozens of children that were killed in Israeli bombardment... in Iran, or the families of the nuclear scientists who were just wiped out, I hardly imagine they would say that the world is a more peaceful place," he said amid the first round of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran.
Since then, many more Iranian children have been killed by US and Israeli bombing, including more than 100 students who were among around 175 people massacred in the February 28 US cruise missile strike on a girls' school in Minab.
“The [only] peace this secures is for weapons manufacturers, for oil companies, for drone companies," Fani said in an implicit rebuke of Trump's claim to be the "president of peace."
"It secures peace for them, fills their pockets with money, and makes them fully invincible," he added. "It’s creating a class of people that are living [on] an alternate planet."
Fani was a close friend and defender of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, the 26-year-old Turkish-American UW grad and International Solidarity Movement volunteer who was fatally shot in 2024 while peacefully protesting the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Witnesses said Israeli occupation forces deliberately shot Eygi in the head.
The professor also called Zionism—some of whose founders acknowledged the colonial nature of their endeavor—a "cancerous" ideology.
Fani noted that his removal from his position at the Middle East Center coincided with a recent town hall-style meeting attended by UW President Robert Jones and right-wing media personality Ari Hoffman. According to Fani, Hoffman "specifically asked Jones" about the professor's leadership at the center.
“All we can do is try to remind people of their responsibilities as members of the university community,” Jones said at meeting. “Not trying to tell them that they can’t have a discussion about Palestine or about Israel, but let’s be clear that those discussions need to be had in a way that doesn’t perpetuate an environment where people feel unsafe.”
According to its website, UW's Middle East Center seeks "to strengthen an understanding of the Middle East in all sectors of American society through training and research at the University of Washington, as well as through delivery of outreach programming across the nation."
Fani is one of dozens of US academics who have been fired, had their contracts terminated, lost job offers, or faced other punitive repercussions for advocating Palestinian rights or opposing Israeli policies and practices.
Earlier this week, Shirin Saeidi, who headed the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, was terminated for social media posts deemed supportive of Iran's government, despite the fact that the school's Faculty Committee on Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure ruled unanimously in February that she should return to her position.
Late last month, Texas State University philosophy professor Idris Robinson sued school officials after he was fired for what he says was his 2024 off-campus lecture in North Carolina titled “Strategic Lessons from the Palestinian Resistance."
Israel's conduct in Gaza is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 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.
The ICJ found in 2024 that Israel's occupation of Palestine is an illegal form of apartheid.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Palestine Defenders Decry 'Intolerable' Arrest of French Politician Rima Hassan
"Once again, the offense of glorifying terrorism is being used to repress a Palestinian activist known worldwide for her fight against genocide," lamented one attorney.
Apr 02, 2026
Police in Paris apprehended and briefly detained European Parliament Member Rima Hassan Thursday on suspicion of "apology for terrorism"—an allegation critics slammed as "judicial harassment" aimed at silencing her outspoken criticism of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza and the French government's support for it.
Hassan, who represents the leftist La France Insoumise (LFI, or France Unbowed in English) party in the European Parliament, was summoned as part of an investigation by the National Center for Combating Online Hate (PNLH), Le Parisiene first reported.
The newspaper also reported that "a few grams" of a synthetic drug—possibly 3-MMC—were found on Hassan, allegations that sparked skeptical reactions.
PNLH is probing a since-deleted March 26 post on the social media site X in which Hassan referred to Kōzō Okamoto, a member of the Japanese Red Army who, along with two others, killed 26 people and wounded 80 more in the name of Palestinian liberation during a 1972 massacre at Lod Airport in Israel.
Hassan, a descendant of Palestinians ethnically cleansed from their homeland during the foundation of the modern Israeli state, was born in a refugee camp in Syria and emigrated to France as a child.
The Sorbonne-educated jurist was one of the leaders of the June 2025 Gaza Freedom Flotilla Madleen mission, along with climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and others. Hassan and others aboard the Madleen were intercepted by Israeli forces and arrested in international waters as they attempted to deliver food, children’s prosthetics, and other desperately needed supplies to Gaza’s besieged and starving people. Hassan said that she was beaten in Israeli custody.
While far-right and pro-Israel French lawmakers celebrated Hassan's detention and called for her to be stripped of parliamentary immunity, Palestine defenders condemned the arrest.
"Once again, the offense of glorifying terrorism is being used to repress a Palestinian activist known worldwide for her fight against genocide," said leftist lawyer Elsa Marcel. "While Israel bombs Iran and Lebanon and colonization accelerates in the West Bank, the French state continues to repress the voices fighting for the liberation of Palestine. Immediate release!"
LFI French National Assembly Member Gabrielle Cathala voiced her "full support for Rima Hassan" in a post on X.
"In violation of her parliamentary immunity, she is currently being held in custody for a simple tweet that had nothing to do with 'apology for terrorism,'" she wrote. "This judicial harassment must stop."
"If this is already happening, just imagine what would occur in the event of a vote on the Yadan Law," Cathala added, referring to a highly controversial bill critics say would criminalize anti-Zionism by conflating opposition to Israel with animus toward Jewish people, aligning with the dubious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism.
Soutien à ma camarade et collègue Rima Hassan, en garde à vue pour un tweet, alors que le génocide à Gaza se poursuit et que les palestinien•nes subissent désormais un apartheid par le gouvernement d’extrême droite israélien.
[image or embed]
— François Piquemal (@francoispiquemal.bsky.social) April 2, 2026 at 6:51 AM
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the de facto LFI leader and a former European Parliament member, said on Bluesky: "The political police have once again summoned Rima Hassan for questioning regarding a retweet from March. Parliamentary immunity, then, no longer exists in France."
"It is intolerable," he added. "The Yadan Law was not passed—yet is it already being enforced?"
Hassan was previously summoned by authorities following a December 2024 complaint over social media posts, including one in which she asserted, “If Franco-Israelis are allowed to serve in the Israeli army while enjoying the gains of dual citizenship, every Franco-Palestinian must be able to join the Palestinian armed resistance, the legitimacy of which is recognized by [United Nations] resolutions on the right to self-determination of peoples."
Since she started speaking out against the Gaza genocide, Hasan has been subjected to online bullying, including death and rape threats and doxing.
Last week, Hassan was denied entry into Canada—where she was scheduled to speak at multiple conferences in Montréal and meet with left-wing pro-Palestine members of Québec's National Assembly—following concerns from the pro-Israel groups B’nai Brith Canada and the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs. Hassan attended the conferences remotely.
“The revocation of [Hassan's] travel authorization is part of a worrying trend of restricting freedom of expression and movement of political representatives," LFI said in a statement, "as well as part of a broader pattern of censorship affecting democratic debate."
Other Palestine defenders have been targeted by the French government, including Olivia Zemor, president of the advocacy group Europalestine, who last week was hit with a 24-month suspended sentence for "apology for terrorism" due to her support for Palestinian rights.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular