Latest news with #Hamas-supporting
Sky News AU
3 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News AU
Israel orders Greta Thunberg and activists to watch October 7 Hamas atrocity footage after Gaza Flotilla detention
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has ordered that detained Gaza flotilla activists be shown a harrowing video compilation of the October 7 Hamas massacre. The British-flagged yacht Madleen, party of the 'Freedom Flotilla Coalition' was seized by Israel on Monday with a crew of 12 activists, including Greta Thunberg on board. The activists attempted to break the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip to deliver aid and attract attention to their cause. After Israeli Forces took command of the vessel, Mr Katz said the activists must see 'exactly who it is they are supporting'. 'It's appropriate that Greta the antisemite and her Hamas-supporting friends should see exactly who is the terror group Hamas,' he said in a statement. According to the Defence Minister's office, the activists will be shown a 43-minute video produced by the Israel Defence Forces, titled Bearing Witness. The video includes uncensored footage of Hamas' October 7 attack on southern Israel—much of it taken from the bodycams of the attackers themselves. The footage has been described as 'difficult to watch' and includes scenes of massacre, mutilation, and terror inflicted on Israeli civilians. The Freedom Flotilla activists were warned not to attempt to reach the Gaza Strip before their expedition was stopped. Activists, including Ms Thunberg and Yasmin Acar claimed to have been 'intercepted at sea and kidnapped' by Israel. The group lost contact late at night after reporting they were surrounded by drones and naval vessels.
Sky News AU
3 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News AU
Pro-Palestine activists rally outside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's office after Greta Thunberg detained by Israel
Student protesters have gathered outside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's Sydney office to protest the detention of activists by Israeli forces. The 'Freedom Flotilla Coalition' was seized by Israel on Monday after a crew of 12 activists, including Greta Thunberg, tried to break a naval blockade. In response, protest group Students for Palestine (SfP) organised demonstrations around the country against the Israeli military's interception of the boat. 'After months of deliberately starving those in Gaza, Israel has illegally taken 12 anti-war activists hostage, including Greta Thunberg,' said SfP co-convenor Bella Beiraghi. 'This kidnapping is an attempt to cover up Israel's crimes against humanity. It shows Israel's willingness to violently suppress all those who oppose their genocide.' Ms Thunberg and her anti-war activists were taken to a nearby port 'unharmed' after attempting to break the Israeli naval blockade which has been enforced since 2007. The Freedom Flotilla activists were warned not to attempt to reach the Gaza Strip before their expedition was stopped. Activists, including Ms Thunberg and Yasmin Acar claimed to have been 'intercepted at sea and kidnapped' by Israel. The group lost contact late at night after reporting they were surrounded by drones and naval vessels. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz confirmed the boat had been stopped and said the activists were safe and unharmed. 'It's appropriate that Greta the antisemite and her Hamas-supporting friends should see exactly who is the terror group Hamas,' he said in a statement. According to the Defence Minister's office, the activists will be shown a 43-minute video produced by the Israel Defence Forces, titled Bearing Witness. The video includes uncensored footage of Hamas' October 7 attack on southern Israel—much of it taken from the bodycams of the attackers themselves. The footage has been described as 'difficult to watch' and includes scenes of massacre, mutilation, and terror inflicted on Israeli civilians.
CNN
13-04-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Sen. Warren: It's ‘entirely appropriate' to investigate Trump admin. for insider trading
A hijab-wearing student who was dramatically detained by ICE last month detailed the nightmarish conditions inside the infamous Louisiana immigration detention center she is being held at. Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, who is from Turkey and currently studying at Tufts University in Massachusetts, was swarmed by a group of individuals near her off-campus home in March. The US Department of Homeland Security has accused Ozturk of 'engaging in activities in support of Hamas', a Palestinian group recognized by the US government as a 'foreign terrorist organization.' Ozturk now says she's been squeeze into a cell with 22 other people, even though it only has the capacity to hold 14, the Boston Globe reported. No-one can sleep through the night, according to Ozturk – and she has not been provided with a prayer rug or Quran so she can practice her faith. Officials revoked Ozturk's visa and moved her to Louisiana – despite an order requiring agents not to move her out of Massachusetts without 48 hours' notice. She is known to have signed an op-ed in a student newspaper calling for Tufts to brand Israel's bombing of Gaza as a 'genocide' and for the college to divest from Israeli investments, but no further details of 'Hamas-supporting activities' have been shared. The rural facility where Ozturk is now being held also housed several other migrants who were detained under the Trump administration's round up of anti-Israel activists living in the United States under student visas including Mahmoud Khalil and Badar Khan Suri. In recent court filings, Ozturk claimed her detention violates her constitutional rights and she has been living in horrible conditions. Ozturk alleged once she was put in the Louisiana facility, she was not allowed to go outside during the first week and had limited access to food and supplies for two weeks. 'When they do the inmate count we are threatened to not leave our beds or we will lose privileges, which means that we are often stuck waiting in our beds for hours,' she said. Rumeysa Ozturk, 30, detailed the hellish conditions inside the infamous Louisiana immigration detention center she is being held at Ozturk, who is from Turkey and currently studying at Tufts University in Massachusetts , was swarmed by a group of individuals near her off-campus home in March 'At mealtimes, there is so much anxiety because there is no schedule when it comes… They threaten to close the door if we don't leave the room in time, meaning we won't get a meal.' 'I pray everyday for my release so I can go back to my home and community in Somerville,' she said. The Tufts student said she suffered multiple asthma attacks and had limited care at the medical center. While waiting a 'very long time' to be taken to the medical center for treatment, Ozturk said, she was denied the ability to go outside for fresh air.. 'While waiting, I still couldn't breathe well and was crying,' she said. 'They let me stand near the door to the outdoors to get a little fresh air.' At the medical center, a nurse removed her hijab, telling her 'you need to take that thing off your head.' 'After a few minutes I put my hijab back on. But they did nothing to treat my asthma and gave me a few ibuprofen,' she said Ozturk alleged once she was put in the Louisiana facility, she was not allowed to go outside during the first week and had limited access to food and supplies After that experience the Tufts student said she has been afraid to go back to the medical center. 'I was in pain and very scared but I didn't ask to go to the medical center because I don't feel that they address my medical needs,' she said. Ozturk's arrest came a year after she co-authored an opinion piece in Tufts' student newspaper criticizing the university's response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to 'acknowledge the Palestinian genocide.' The op-ed added that the university's response to the resolutions 'has been wholly inadequate and dismissive of the Senate, the collective voice of the student body.' Supporters of Ozturk say the Trump administration has yet to share any specific details of alleged support for Hamas and that the only incidents mentioned thus far were her expressing her free speech rights. Ozturk's arrest footage sparked backlash as video showed her being surrounded by six undercover ICE agents, who handcuffed her and took her into a vehicle as she walked to a meal with friends. *** Read more at
Vox
28-03-2025
- Politics
- Vox
The disturbing thread that ties together Trump's major moves so far
is a senior politics correspondent at Vox, covering the White House, elections, and political scandals and investigations. He's worked at Vox since the site's launch in 2014, and before that, he worked as a research assistant at the New Yorker's Washington, DC, bureau. Perhaps the biggest common theme of Donald Trump's second term is that his administration has aggressively used federal power to punish those deemed to be its — or his — enemies. Some foreign students who criticized Israel have had their visas revoked and have been whisked into ICE detention. Venezuelan nationals with tattoos — some likely members of a foreign gang, some likely not — have been deported to El Salvador and imprisoned there. Major law firms that displeased Trump have been hit with executive orders aimed at driving their clients away and destroying their businesses. Elite universities that were the site of protests or had policies the administration dislikes have seen hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding revoked. Related A longtime target of the right is finally buckling under Trump pressure It's a frightening turn for American governance. Trump and the hard-right appointees who staff this new administration seem intent on ruining the lives of the people they've deemed enemies of the state, punishing them with state power. Trump officials are punishing enemies first — with no process or fairness beforehand What sets much of this apart is that there is no semblance of process or fairness before any of these decisions are made. Detentions, executive orders, and funding revocations come first — as do deportations, if the administration can get away with them. After that, powerful institutions can possibly, with sufficient bowing and scraping, get these harsh actions rolled back (as the law firm Paul Weiss did and as Columbia University is trying to do). Less powerful people can only hope to sue in court and hope a judge will help them. This lack of process beforehand makes it more likely that innocent people are wrongly swept up. But Trump officials don't seem to mind. In their rush to deport Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador before the courts could stop them, they don't seem to care that they scooped up a gay Venezuelan makeup artist. In their zeal to revoke visas of 'antisemitic,' 'Hamas-supporting' foreign students, they don't seem to care that they may have detained a PhD student for co-writing op-eds in a campus newspaper. Trump set the tone, but his appointees are enthusiastically participating Trump and his MAGA true-believer appointees are clearly personally responsible for many of these policies aimed at their purported enemies. But more broadly, he's set an ethic that's pervaded the administration, even those who are less overtly allied with his movement. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for instance, bragged Thursday that he was personally responsible for revoking visas of hundreds of anti-Israel protestors. 'We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas,' he said. Another telling anecdote came out of the Social Security Administration, currently run by acting appointee Leland Dudek — a career SSA official who decided to work with Elon Musk's 'Department of Government Efficiency' team and was then promoted to head the agency. Earlier this month, the agency canceled a contract that allowed parents of newborns in Maine to get Social Security numbers for their new babies at the hospital. After criticism, the decision was reversed, but a mystery remained about why it happened at all. Was it a screw-up? Or was it deliberate punishment of Maine's people because of a frosty public exchange between Trump and the state's Democratic governor, Janet Mills? (Trump had threatened Mills with revoking federal funding over the state's policies on trans athletes, to which Mills responded, 'See you in court.') It was indeed payback aimed at Mills, Dudek admitted to the New York Times last week. 'I was ticked at the governor of Maine for not being real cordial to the president,' he said, while acknowledging, 'I screwed up.' Dudek wasn't even a longtime Trump crony (as seen in his willingness to actually admit screwing up). And if his account is correct, no one ordered him to target Maine. He just felt it was the appropriate thing to do when someone was rude to Donald Trump. There's likely more to come Though US citizens can't be summarily deported or ordered to leave the country, they can be retaliated against in other ways. For instance, Trump has long been clear about his desire to target his critics or political enemies with criminal prosecutions — but, unlike in his first term, he's appointed people like FBI director Kash Patel and interim US Attorney for the District of Columbia Ed Martin, who seem eager to actually make that happen. An attempt by Martin to have Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criminally investigated for comments he made in a speech flopped, but Martin has moved on to new targets. One of those targets is Andrew Weissmann, who was a top prosecutor in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Trump's ties to Russia, before becoming an MSNBC commentator. Earlier this month, Martin sent a threatening letter to Weissmann, demanding information about a decade-old matter he'd worked on at the Justice Department and alluding to impropriety. This seems like an obvious pretext for targeting Weissmann because he is an enemy of Trump. Further targeting of blue states through withholding of federal funds is likely coming too, as seen in, for instance, Trump's executive order on elections this week. Legal experts have said that Trump's revocation of funds in some cases — like the $400 million in grants to Columbia University he canceled — seems flatly illegal. But many targeted institutions have been reluctant to sue in court, fearing even worse retribution. The problem is, though, that if this tactic keeps 'working' for Trump, he'll just keep using it, in even more dubious or unlawful ways. Indeed, it's been startling how many institutions — corporations, elite law firms, and universities — have caved to Trump's pressure already. When will it stop? Will it stop?
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
State Department revokes first visa of foreign student linked to 'Hamas-supporting disruptions'
The State Department has revoked the visa of a student who participated in protesting in favor of Hamas, a move in line with President Donald Trump's call for canceling visas of students involved in the anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses. The State Department confirmed the matter with Fox News, without identifying the student or what university they attended due to "legal constraints." "Yesterday evening, we revoked the first visa of an alien who was previously cited for criminal behavior in connection with Hamas-supporting disruptions," the State Department said. "This individual was a university student. ICE will proceed with removing this person from the country." Barnard Student Demands Action After Pro-hamas Protest Turns Violent, Calls Out School's 'Pathetic' Response The State Department reviewed over 100,000 student visas and none were revoked during the Biden administration, despite all the anti-Israel protests and disruptions on college campuses. Trump has repeatedly called for foreign students attending American universities to have their visas revoked for supporting Hamas and other terror groups. Read On The Fox News App Upon taking office in January, he signed an executive order to combat antisemitism. Columbia Professor Slams University Leadership As Anti-israel Agitators Wreak Havoc At Barnard "To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you," Trump is quoted in a fact sheet issued by the White House. "I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before." U.S. college campuses have been a hotbed for anti-Israel protests and disruptions, including vandalism, threats against Jewish students and violence against law enforcement. "The Biden Administration turned a blind eye to this coordinated assault on public order; it simply refused to protect the civil rights of Jewish Americans, especially students," the fact sheet states. "According to a December 2024 U.S. House of Representatives Staff Report on anti-Semitism, 'the failure of our federal government departments and agencies is astounding.'" On Thursday, Axios reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is launching an AI-fueled "Catch and Revoke" effort to cancel the visas of foreign students who appear to support designated terror groups. "Those who support designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas, threaten our national security," he wrote on X. "The United States has zero tolerance for foreign visitors who support terrorists. Violators of U.S. law — including international students — face visa denial or revocation, and deportation."Original article source: State Department revokes first visa of foreign student linked to 'Hamas-supporting disruptions'
