Egypt sentences two Israelis to 5 years in jail for assaulting hotel workers
An Egyptian court has sentenced two Israeli citizens to five years in jail for assaulting hotel workers in the Red Sea town of Taba near the border with Israel last year, an Egyptian security source said on Saturday.
In August three Arab Israeli tourists and two Egyptian hotel workers were injured when a fight broke out at a hotel after one of the tourists insulted one of the employees, security sources said at the time.
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IOL News
11 hours ago
- IOL News
The battle on antisemitism: Fighting prejudice with prejudice
People attend a community gathering at the site of an attack against a group people holding a vigil for kidnapped Israeli citizens in Gaza oin Boulder, Colorado on June 4. The man suspected of a Molotov cocktail attack on Jewish protesters in Colorado is facing federal hate crime charges, officials said as President Donald Trump's administration vowed to pursue "terrorists" living in the US on visas. Image: Chet Strange / AFP Robin Givhan In the aftermath of the fiery attack on a group of people in Boulder, Colorado, who had gathered for a march calling for the release of hostages in Gaza, the brick plaza where they once stood was cordoned off with police tape. Men and women had essentially been fire bombed on a Sunday afternoon, so workmen washed the residue of mayhem from the ground in front of the county courthouse. In the distance, hanging over the courthouse's double doors was the rainbow flag, a symbol of tolerance and inclusivity - more hope than fact. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the Egyptian man who was arrested for the violence, which the FBI has characterized as a 'targeted terrorist attack,' was reported to have shouted, 'Free Palestine,' before allegedly flinging molotov cocktails at the marchers. The story of Boulder calls to mind the tragedy in Washington just 11 days earlier, when two employees of the Israeli Embassy were killed in front of the Capitol Jewish Museum after attending a reception there. The man who was arrested at the scene confessed, according to the FBI, stating, ''I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.' The tragedy in the nation's capital is a reminder of the terrifying moments in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, when police officers pounded on the doors of the official residence of Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) to alert him that the mansion was on fire. A man was arrested for climbing over security fencing and setting the house ablaze not long after Shapiro and his family, who are Jewish, had marked Passover with a seder. That suspected attacker also had Gaza on his mind. In the bleak hours and days after these attacks, the sky fills with the lights of police cars glowing brightly. Officers wearing helmets and bulletproof vests, and holding big guns, huddle around tactical vehicles. And all of those officers and weapons remind one of what has long been a familiar scene in front of synagogues across the country: Police cars parked out front as a visible deterrence to those who simply can't tolerate the worshipers being themselves in fellowship. The country has fought back with stern words and heartfelt prayers, deeply moving museums, congressional investigations, more and more security, and a death sentence in the federal trial of the man who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018. But in Washington's most recent battles in the war against intolerance, the choice of weapons has been … more intolerance. And what does that get us? Statistics tell the story in its breadth. Incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assaults have risen significantly since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 200. Hatred was already on the rise before that deadly day, but it spiked dramatically afterward. The war in Gaza, with Israel's stated aim being to destroy Hamas, gave rise to widespread death and suffering among Palestinians. More than 54,000 people have died, about a third of them children under 18, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for high-ranking members of both Hamas and the Israeli government, charging that they have committed crimes against humanity. So much suffering stirred protests, most notably on college campuses, where students constructed tent encampments and barricaded themselves inside buildings. According to a report from the Anti-Defamation League, many campuses became rife with antisemitism. For 2024, the ADL recorded 9,354 examples of antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assaults. Of those, 1,694 incidents occurred on college campuses. The ADL does not consider 'criticism of Israel or general anti-Israel activism' to be antisemitic. But often, the distinction was blurred. The White House has offered its own blurry response. In social media posts, officials quickly labeled the Boulder attack as terrorism. They promised to seek swift justice. Then Immigration and Customs Enforcement took the suspect's family into custody and pledged to deport them immediately. The family's lawyer argued, among many points, that Soliman's wife and children, who are also Egyptian and who had applied for asylum, are being punished for the alleged crimes of a relative, which is not how justice is supposed to work. A federal judge on Wednesday barred their deportation. The administration has also vowed to stamp out antisemitism on college campuses, with much of its animus aimed at Harvard University and its academic freedom, research grants and international students. In much the same way that careless and reckless protesters have conflated the Israeli government's policies in Gaza with the Jewish people at large, the Trump administration has merged eradicating antisemitism with controlling how broad swaths of the population speak, think and exist. It can be seen as fighting prejudice with prejudice. Fear with more fear. Hostility with hostility. It's a war on nuance and complexity, which is to say, it's a war on what it means to exist as an individual. In 2025, the ADL issued an updated campus report card assessing the actions that 135 colleges had taken in the prior year to root out antisemitism in their community. By the ADL's measure, Harvard's grade improved, from an F to a C. A significant number of institutions, however, received failing grades, among them the University of Illinois Chicago and nearby DePaul University, as well as the New School in New York and Haverford College in Pennsylvania. But they are not in the administration's crosshairs the way that Harvard, with its $53.2 billion endowment and reputation for cultural elitism, has been. About 10 percent of Harvard's undergraduate population is Jewish. At the University of California at Santa Barbara, for example, Jewish students make up 13 percent of the undergraduate population and the school received a grade of D for dealing with antisemitism on campus. But a campaign against UC-Santa Barbara doesn't have the same political resonance as one aimed at Harvard. And that's what so much of this devastation comes down to: People get conflated with politics and posturing. Their humanity can get lost in the fog of political one-upmanship. There's rarely a straight line between words uttered in one part of the culture and actions taken in another. A single deadly gesture typically springs from a perfect storm of fact and fiction, outrage and desperation, single-mindedness and isolation, mental illness and toxic social media where everything is written in all-caps and there's no space for complications. But this much is clear: Deporting immigrants, whether documented or undocumented, hasn't erased antisemitism. Silencing foreign students raising their voices against Israeli or American foreign policy hasn't made Jewish men and women safer on city streets. Putting ivy-covered institutions in the crosshairs of politicians doesn't seem to be helping either. Incidents of antisemitism have continued to grow since 2023's dramatic spike. Prejudice is one of many fine fertilizers. And the White House has insured that an abundance of it is raining down. Robin Givhan is senior critic-at-large writing about politics, race and the arts. A 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism, Givhan has also worked at Newsweek/Daily Beast, Vogue magazine and the Detroit Free Press.
IOL News
a day ago
- IOL News
Israel deports Greta Thunberg, bans her for 100 years after intercepting Gaza-bound aid boat
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg talks to journalists upon her arrival to Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport, as she left Israel on a flight to Sweden via France, after she was detained along with other activists aboard a Gaza-bound aid boat, on June 10 Image: Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, France Israel deported campaigner Greta Thunberg on a flight to Sweden via France on Tuesday, after detaining her along with other activists aboard a Gaza-bound aid boat. Of the 12 activists on board the Madleen, which was carrying food and supplies for Gaza, four including Thunberg agreed to be deported immediately, while all of them have been banned from Israel for 100 years, the rights group that legally represents some of them said in a statement. The remaining eight were taken into custody after they refused to leave Israel voluntarily, and brought before a detention review tribunal on Tuesday, rights group Adalah said. "The state asked the tribunal to keep the activists in custody until their deportation", Adalah said, adding that under Israeli law, individuals under deportation orders can be held for 72 hours before forcible removal. Israeli forces intercepted the boat, operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, in international waters on Monday and towed it to the port of Ashdod. They then transferred them to Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, the foreign ministry said, from where Thunberg flew to France ahead of a scheduled flight to Sweden. On arrival at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, 22-year-old Thunberg accused Israel of "kidnapping us in international waters and taking us against our will to Israel". "This is yet another intentional violation of rights that is added to the list of countless other violations that Israel is committing," she said. Video Player is loading. 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Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Four French activists who were also aboard the Madleen were set to face an Israeli judge, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said. He had earlier posted on X that five would face court action and only one would depart voluntarily. Barrot told reporters that French diplomats had met with the six French nationals in Israel, and that French-Palestinian European MP Rima Hassan was among those who refused to leave voluntarily. The activists, from France, Germany, Brazil, Turkey, Sweden, Spain and the Netherlands, aimed to deliver humanitarian aid and break the Israeli blockade on the Palestinian territory. In what organisers called a "symbolic act", hundreds of participants in a land convoy crossed the border into Libya from Tunisia with the aim of reaching Gaza, whose entire population the UN has warned is at risk of famine. Dire humanitarian conditions Israel's interception of the Madleen, about 185 kilometres (115 miles) west of Gaza, was condemned by Turkey as a "heinous attack", while Iran denounced it as "a form of piracy" in international waters. In May, another Freedom Flotilla ship, the Conscience, was damaged in international waters off Malta as it headed to Gaza, with the activists blaming an Israeli drone attack. A 2010 Israeli commando raid on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, which was part of a similar attempt to breach the naval blockade of Gaza, left 10 civilians dead. On Sunday, Defence Minister Israel Katz said the blockade, in place since well before the Israel-Hamas war, was needed to prevent Palestinian militants from importing weapons. Israel is facing mounting pressure to allow more aid into Gaza to alleviate widespread shortages of food and basic supplies. Israel recently allowed some deliveries to resume after barring them for more than two months and began working with the newly formed, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. But humanitarian agencies have criticised the GHF and the United Nations refuses to work with it, citing concerns over its practices and neutrality. Dozens of people have been killed near GHF distribution points since late May, according to Gaza's civil defence agency. The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on Tuesday that in Gaza's north, "Israeli military operations have intensified in recent days, with mass casualties reported". An independent United Nations commission said on Tuesday that Israeli attacks on schools, religious and cultural sites in Gaza amount to war crimes and the crime against humanity of seeking to exterminate Palestinians. "In killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites, Israeli security forces committed the crime against humanity of extermination," the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said in a report. AFP has contacted Israeli authorities for comment on the report but has yet to receive a response. The Israeli military said it intercepted a projectile on Tuesday that had entered Israeli airspace from Gaza. It later called for residents to evacuate several neighbourhoods in the north of the Palestinian territory. The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says at least 54,981 people, the majority civilians, have been killed in the territory since the start of the war. The UN considers these figures reliable. Out of 251 taken hostage during the Hamas attack, 54 are still held in Gaza including 32 the Israeli military says are dead. AFP
IOL News
2 days ago
- IOL News
What's next for the Madleen aid vessel and its crew detained by Israeli forces?
An image grab from footage released by Freedom Flotilla Coalition on June 9, 2025 shows activists on board the Gaza-bound aid boat Madleen, with their hands in the air, as they are being intercepted by the Israeli forces in international waters before reaching the blockaded Palestinian territory. Drones sprayed the vessel with an unidentified white substance, which crew members described as a paint-like substance that burned their eyes. Israeli soldiers then ordered the activists to discard their phones and were subsequently detained. The vessel was redirected to Ashdod, where the activists remain in Israeli custody. The Madleen was roughly 100 nautical miles (approximately 185km) from Gaza in international waters when Israeli forces intercepted and boarded it. It was forced to reroute to the Israeli port city of Ashdod, but the interception left the global community with many questions about the future of the ship and its detained crew. After an interception at sea , the aid vessel bound for Gaza, Madleen, part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, was seized by Israeli naval forces in the early hours of Monday morning as it approached Gaza. What happens next? Israeli officials have stated that they plan to deport the activists to their home countries. It's worth noting that no clear timeline has been provided, and the activists' legal teams are preparing to challenge the detention and possible deportation orders. The ship remains docked in Ashdod, and its humanitarian cargo has reportedly not been delivered to Gaza. Activists and lawyers are now demanding immediate access to their clients and calling for international observers to ensure their rights are not violated during detention and potential deportation. What does the law say? A legal statement from South African Lawyers for Justice, released shortly after the incident, asserts the detention and interception were both unlawful and dangerous: "What happened to the Madleen is a direct violation of international maritime law. This was a peaceful, civilian vessel, carrying humanitarian aid, sailing in international waters, under a British flag. That flag matters. It binds the UK to obligations under international law to protect its vessels from unlawful foreign interference. That responsibility does not end at convenience. "The UN and member states cannot look away. They must act—because this was not just an attack on a ship, but on the principles that are supposed to protect civilians in times of war. "The International Court of Justice has already ruled that Israel must not hinder humanitarian aid into Gaza. The ICJ has made it clear: the siege, the blockade, is unlawful. And yet here we are—watching Israel stop a civilian aid boat by force. Watching as drones pour paint from the sky and armed speedboats surround people carrying food and medicine. This is not security. This is siege warfare. Israel is once again using starvation as a weapon of war. "The Madleen was calm. It was lawful. It was peaceful. If even that is treated as a threat, we should be asking—what is Israel so afraid the world might see in Gaza? If governments will not act, we must."
