American labor activist Chris Smalls was released from Israeli imprisonment on Thursday after being assaulted by soldiers who abducted him and the rest of the crew of a ship headed to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid on Saturday.
The Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition said that Smalls, the founder of Amazon Labor Union, and a Tunisian activist, Hatem Aouini, were released Thursday morning. All 21 of the ship’s crew members have now been released from prison, the group said.
“All 21 Handala crew members are no longer imprisoned in occupied Palestine but over 10,300 Palestinian prisoners remain illegally imprisoned in violation of international law,” the coalition said on Instagram. “The illegal Israeli occupation has no legal jurisdiction on stolen land.”
On Saturday July 26, Israeli forces intercepted and raided the ship in international waters as it was on its way to deliver supplies to Gaza. Smalls and other members of the crew are on their fifth day of their hunger strike that they began after Israel seized the boat.
Smalls, the only Black person on the crew, was assaulted by seven Israeli guards upon arriving at the prison, the coalition said. He was the only person on the crew to be treated with this level of violence.
“They choked him and kicked him in the legs, leaving visible signs of violence on his neck and back,” the coalition said. The group also reported that Israeli authorities were holding the activists in hot cells without ventilation, where they were forced to stay in confinement all day. They were denied access to basic hygiene supplies, and the cells are infested with bedbugs.
Despite Smalls’s abduction from international waters and assault by a foreign military, only a small handful of lawmakers and U.S. labor unions have spoken out about his detention.
“Chris Smalls — a Black American labor leader — was trying to feed Palestinians being starved in Gaza. The IDF detained and beat him for it,” said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pennsylvania) on Tuesday. “This assault must not go unnoticed and he must be freed immediately. Israel must be held to account. Let aid through. End the genocide.”
The Handala had set sail in hopes, like previous Freedom Flotilla missions, of helping to break Israel’s near-total humanitarian aid blockade in Gaza. In May, Israel bombed a Freedom Flotilla ship off the coast of Malta and seized it, and in June, Israel seized and arrested the members of another coalition mission, including activist Greta Thunberg.
“There’s no government power, no international power that has got the guts or the willingness to challenge what’s going on, or that can challenge the U.S. and Israel,” Bob Suberi, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen who was also on board the Handala, told The American Prospect. “The idea and the point of [the flotilla] is to break the siege.”
In response to international pressure and a recent spike in deaths caused by Israel’s famine campaign, Israeli officials have recently allowed a small trickle of humanitarian aid into Gaza. But the UN has said that this is a “drop in the ocean” compared to what is needed.
Gaza health officials have reported 154 starvation deaths, including 89 children, with most of them coming in the last two weeks. Meanwhile, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, one of the world’s leading hunger authorities, said this week that “the worst-case scenario of famine” is unfolding across the entire Gaza Strip.
As a result of Israel’s blockade, nearly 40 percent of Palestinians in Gaza are going days without food. UN officials have warned that every person under five in Gaza, over 320,000 children and babies, is at risk of acute malnutrition.
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