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Israeli forces have abducted over 500 peace activists over the past week who were sailing to Gaza in an effort to deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged territory. Organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla say most of the participants were sent to Ktzi’ot Prison, notorious for harsh and abusive conditions. Some have reported physical abuse, humiliation and inhumane treatment by Israeli soldiers.
In his first live interview since his release from ICE detention, Columbia University student and Palestinian activist Mohsen Mahdawi recounts the traumatic experience of his arrest and incarceration. Mahdawi, a green card holder who was born and raised in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, was arrested in Vermont on April 14 when he appeared for what he was told would be a citizenship interview, and spent more than two weeks in U.S. immigration custody, where he was held in retaliation for his speech in support of Palestinian rights. Mahdawi’s detention has led him to reflect on the “interconnectedness between injustices,” as multiple members of his family in Palestine have been “unjustly” incarcerated in Israeli jails. “Now I can feel their pain,” says Mahdawi. Despite the U.S. government and pro-Israel groups’ attempts to silence his calls for an end to genocide in Gaza, he adds, “I share my pain with the world.”
“There is nothing antisemitic about fighting for people’s right to live,” says Jewish Voice for Peace organizer Elena Stein, who on Monday joined hundreds of protesters arrested to block entrances to the New York Stock Exchange. We discuss the historic mass protest, which called for an Israeli arms embargo and an end to war profiteering by companies like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. “We are filled with horror beyond words and are attempting to embody just an ounce of that refusal,” Stein says of the moral urgency of protesting Israel’s actions in the Middle East, which she describes as a “war of extermination … done with U.S. cover.” She says JVP chose the stock exchange in order to draw attention to the role of U.S. financial and corporate interests in arming the Israeli military.
As Christians around the world celebrated Easter Sunday, Palestinian Christians from the occupied West Bank were prevented from reaching Jerusalem for Good Friday to walk the Via Dolorosa, the path Jesus is said to have followed on the way to his crucifixion more than 2,000 years ago. Meanwhile, Jesus’s birthplace of Bethlehem is uncharacteristically empty of tourists this year as Israel’s assault on Gaza and crackdown on the West Bank escalate. “Nothing can wash the blood from your hands,” said the Reverend Munther Isaac at an Easter vigil for Gaza on Saturday, about Western complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Isaac is a Palestinian Christian theologian and the pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. He joins Democracy Now! to discuss the history of Palestinian Christians in Gaza, Israel’s occupation of Bethlehem and its strangling of freedoms in the West Bank, U.S. Christians’ support of Israel and more.
At the U.N. Security Council, China and Russia have vetoed a U.S. draft resolution on the war in Gaza. The U.S. resolution appeared to call for a ceasefire, but it was written in a way to make the resolution unenforceable. Our guest Phyllis Bennis says this was mere “wordplay” and a “convoluted” attempt by the Biden administration to play both sides, as it comes under increasing internal and external criticism over its close relationship with Israel. Bennis is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and an international adviser to Jewish Voice for Peace. She has written several books on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East. When it comes to dissent over U.S. support of Israel, “the pressure is mounting in ways that I’ve certainly never seen,” she says, adding that it’s imperative for the public to continue pushing for more action, as “it’s crucial that the weapons sales be cut” and a real ceasefire be reached immediately.
Francis Boyle is an American human rights lawyer and professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law.
Two U.S. human rights lawyers were detained Sunday for 14 hours at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport before being deported back to the United States. Columbia University’s Katherine Franke….
As more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners have entered their ninth day on a massive hunger strike inside Israeli jails, we are joined by the Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti, who has come to the United States to receive the 2017 Gandhi Peace Award for his work as co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement. At the award ceremony, Barghouti dedicated the prize to Palestinians on hunger strike. He was almost prevented from attending after Israeli police arrested him, seizing his passport and forbidding him from leaving the country. An Israeli court eventually temporarily lifted the travel ban.
We speak with world-renowned political dissident Noam Chomsky about where the Democratic presidential candidates stand on the issue of Israel and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS. “Boycott….
