The four men are being held in a Tunisian jail, with one on the ‘brink of death’.
High-profile political leaders, artists, and activists – including Greta Thunberg – have called for the immediate release of four pro-Palestine organisers who are on hunger strike in a Tunisian jail, including one “on the brink of death”.
Wael Naouar was rushed to hospital yesterday after spending 40 days on hunger strike, according to the Gaza Sumud Flotilla (GSF), an organisation that looks to challenge Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza and deliver emergency aid by sea.
Alongside Thunberg, South African politician Zwelivelile Mandela, who is Nelson Mandela’s grandson, has also signed an open letter urging the Tunisian government to free Naouar and his three co-defendants. Both Thunberg and Mandela joined the same aid flotilla as Naouar last year.
Other signatories to the letter include Irish rap group Kneecap and Game of Thrones actor Liam Cunningham. They are also calling for “urgent medical care” for the detained men.
The four were arrested in March after being accused of misusing funds raised for the organisation. He launched his hunger strike at Mornaguia prison to protest his detention and that of his fellow activists – Ghassen Henchiri, Ghassen Boughdiri and Nabil Channoufi, who began their strikes around two weeks ago.
Naouar is in a semi-comatose state, GSF said, adding that the Tunisian authorities have sought to impose an information blackout to prevent updates about his condition. Naouar’s father said he was close to death after visiting him earlier this week.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.
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Zack Polanski, UK Green Party leader. [Photo/AA]
Green Party leader Zack Polanski has said Zionism is a form of racism and declared himself an anti-Zionist, drawing boos and heckling at a Jewish community election hustings in London.
Asked whether Zionism was racist, Polanski said: “If you’re defining Zionism as a displacement genocide, which is how, in practice, Zionism has become, then that is racism.” His answer followed a qualification that people understood the term differently, Jewish News reported.
Speaking in Holborn and St Pancras on Thursday, Polanski acknowledged that his declaration of anti-Zionism would be difficult for some audience members to hear.
When challenged about where Jewish people should go, he argued that Israel’s exercise of self-determination relied on the displacement and genocide of Palestinians. The response prompted further boos.
Jewish News described his explicit identification as an anti-Zionist as a shift from his previous non-Zionist label.
The hustings were organised by pro-Israel lobby group Board of Deputies of British Jews and the London Jewish Forum ahead of the constituency’s 8 October by-election.
Polanski, who is Jewish, also argued that criticism of Israel must be distinguished from anti-Semitism. “I think we need to separate antisemitism from criticism of the Israeli state, and I think far too often those things become conflated”, Polanski said.
Commenting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Polanski said: “Many genocide scholars around the world recognise it as a genocide, and calling it that is not antisemitic. And I think as a Jewish community we need to come together to recognise that, when we call that antisemitic, we are making ourselves as Jewish people less safe.”
His comments echo a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly more than five decades ago.
On 10 November 1975, the assembly passed Resolution 3379, determining that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. The resolution was adopted by 72 votes to 35, with 32 abstentions.
The General Assembly revoked that determination on 16 December 1991 through Resolution 46/86.
Polanski’s remarks also come amid a debate within his own party. Green members are expected to discuss a motion declaring Zionism racist at their forthcoming conference.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham admits to blatently lying and engaging in deception to become leader of the UK Labour Party and Prime Minister.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a pager as he speaks during the 81st United Nations General Assembly at UN Headquarters in New York on September 24, 2026. (Photo by Timothy Clary/AFP via Getty Images)
“No lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity,” New York City’s mayor said of the Israeli prime minister
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani hit back Thursday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to the United Nations General Assembly podium to accuse him of supporting Hamas and making Jewish New Yorkers feel unsafe—remarks that came after delegates from scores of countries walked out of the chamber to protest the far-right fugitive’s presence.
Refuting allegations that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza—where Israeli forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 21,500 children, since the Hamas-led attack of October 2023—Netanyahu said, “To all those spreading these lies about my country and about our brave soldiers, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the antisemitic mayor of New York City, I say this: Shame on you.”
“Mr. Mamdani, since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York,” the prime minister claimed. “It’s no wonder… You falsely and repeatedly accuse Israel of genocide. Israel didn’t commit genocide. Israel prevented genocide. And that’s exactly what Mr. Mamdani’s Hamas buddies would have done to us had we not stopped them. They would have killed every last one of us.”
Mr. Netanyahu, you do not speak for New York’s Jewish community.
Your government arrests hundreds of innocent yeshiva students each week, while we in New York practice our faith and live freely and safely.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a friend and ally to our community
Mamdani issued a statement later Thursday saying: “As he has done time and again, Prime Minister Netanyahu used his speech to repeat baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians. Yet no lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, where they are accused of murder and forced starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. The ICC also issued arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, but Israel assassinated them.
While neither Israel nor the United States is a party to the Rome Statute governing the ICC, the treaty states that people from nonsignatory states who commit alleged crimes in states that are party to the treaty—as Palestine is—can be arrested in third countries and subsequently tried by the court.
Mamdani has said that Netanyahu should be arrested and brought before the Hague-based tribunal for trial, but that he lacks the legal authority to apprehend the prime minister in New York.
The International Court of Justice—also located in The Hague, Netherlands—is currently processing a genocide case filed against Israel by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations. The case is based on what the ICJ called the plausibility that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The court has issued a series of provisional orders for Israel to adhere to the Genocide Convention—orders that critics say Israel has simply ignored.
Last year, an independent UN commission of inquiry found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, a conclusion shared by the International Association of Genocide Scholars and other experts including many Israeli and diaspora Jewish academics, jurists, human rights campaigners, and others.
As Netanyahu prepared to deliver his UN speech Thursday, delegates from a reported 77 nations walked out of the chamber in protest.
“If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t yet left this hall—please do so now,” the prime minister said. “Thank you very much.”
While some observers applauded the display of solidarity with Palestinians, others expressed disgust that Netanyahu was allowed to address the world body and that he has not yet been brought to justice.
“The head of the genocidal Israeli apartheid regime, a fugitive indicted for crimes against humanity, was allowed to enter the US and to address the UNGA today, without arrest,” said Craig Mokhiber, a former senior UN official who resigned in protest of what he described as the world body’s failure to stop Israel’s genocidal war.
“Netanyahu insulted delegations, openly celebrated the regime’s many crimes, bragged about its terrorist pager attacks on Lebanon, repeated the regime’s debunked genocide propaganda, defended the illegal occupation of Palestine and Syria, lied incessantly, called violent, racist, illegal Zionist settlers ‘peaceful’ and ‘honorable people,’ labeled human rights defenders as ‘antisemites,’ even arrogantly attacked American citizens and officials for speaking out against the regime’s crimes,” he continued.
“This violent psychopath cannot hide behind [US President Donald] Trump’s skirts forever,” Mokhiber added. “He (and his collaborators) must be captured and brought to justice. And the UN must finally act to isolate the regime and hold it accountable. ”
Referring to Netanyahu’s address and Trump’s threat on Tuesday to “annihilate” Iran during his rambling, lie-laden General Assembly speech, University of Colorado Law School associate professor Maryam Jamshidi said on social media, “Between Trump threatening Iran w/annihilation and Netanyahu bragging about Israel’s pager attacks, the UN podium has become a venue for promoting genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.”
Meanwhile, people took to the streets of New York to protest Netayahu’s presence in the city, US complicity in Israeli crimes, and to show solidarity with Palestinians.
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside UN headquarters in Turtle Bay for a sit-in demonstration led by Jewish Voice for Peace. Demonstrators blocked roads while chanting slogans including, “Netanyahu you can’t hide, you are wanted for genocide!”
As Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, more than 100 demonstrators were arrested.
THEY’RE PUTTING THEM IN THE BUS! Susan Sarandon Chelsea Manning, and MANY OTHER CELEBS ARRESTED at UN protest ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's address! 👀
The 79-year-old actress – who has previously said she's been blacklisted over pro-Palestinian comments… pic.twitter.com/pvzuRGwGG4
Among those reportedly arrested were progressive congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier; actors Susan Sarandon, Hannah Einbinder, and Cynthia Nixon; New York state Assemblymember Emily Gallagher (D-50); Democratic New York City Councilmembers Chi Ossé and Alexa Avilés; former Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning; and Palestinian American political activist Linda Sarsour.
“I will never, ever be silent,” Sarsour said on Facebook. “I will never just accept the world as it is. I want history to record for future generations of Palestinians that we fought. At every turn. In every way. When it was easy and when it was hard.”
“I want Palestinian girls in Gaza to see me in my hijab and my unapologetic Palestinian blood fighting for them to live FREE,” she added. “This is bigger than all of us. Netanyahu is a war criminal and belongs in The Hague, not the United Nations.”
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