'Don't Be Bothered by Their Screams'
Ben-Gvir Posts Video of Police Dragging Detained Gaza Flotilla Activists
The video shows the activists kneeling on a metal floor in an unshaded area while Israel's anthem is playing and armed Border Police officers watch. Later in the video, a woman is heard pleading and screaming, as Ben-Gvir says, 'Don't be bothered by their screams.'
On May 15, more than 50 vessels sailed from the Turkish port city of Marmaris, in what organisers described as the final stage of a journey aimed at challenging Israel’s blockade of the besieged Palestinian enclave.
Israeli forces began storming the boats in international waters off the coast of Cyprus on Monday, organisers said, and abducted activists.
The Israelis called them terrorists, but who were the gagisters
Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, reported:
"Irish activist Dr Margaret Connolly, the sister of Irish President Catherine Connolly, said activists detained by Israel while aboard a Gaza-bound flotilla "got a feeling of what the Jews felt like during the Second World War," accusing Israel of "acting like a Nazi state."
Connolly and hundreds of other members of a Gaza-bound flotilla were detained on Israeli navy vessels after being intercepted and transferred to Israeli territory.
"I was on a warship … on Monday and Tuesday, which means we were kidnapped and abducted and held against our will on a warship, which was a prison ship," Connolly told RTÉ Radio, Ireland's public radio broadcaster.
On May 28, 2026, Benjamin Netanyahu said he had given orders to the Israeli army to seize control of 70% of the Gaza Strip in a move that threatens to torpedo an already fragile ceasefire and create catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the already devastated territory.
The defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Wednesday (May 29, 2026) that the government’s ultimate aim was for large numbers of Palestinians to leave Gaza by what he called “voluntary migration” but what human rights activists describe as a long-term plan for ethnic cleansing by making living conditions inside Gaza intolerable.
Samuel L. Clemens (1835-1910) was reborn as Mark Twain at age 27 with the job of a newspaper humorist. At 32, he caught a chance of getting to the Holy Land on the steamer Quaker City. His San Francisco newspaper, the Alta-California, sent him as their correspondent. The paper paid him $20 for each letter he sent home.
In his 1869 travelogue The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain compares the silent, staring Arab villagers of Palestine to Native Americans.
He writes that the villagers watched them with a "vile, uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly Indian", which made him so uncomfortable he wanted to "exterminate the whole tribe"
Twain utilised a common 19th-century American trope, projecting the stereotypes he associated with Native Americans ("Red Indians") onto the indigenous people of the Ottoman-ruled Middle East.
In 1867, the Palestine region was ruled by the Ottoman Empire (often referred to historically as Turkey). It was not a single, unified country at the time but was divided into administrative districts within the broader province of Ottoman Syria.
Also a pivotal legal change: the Ottoman Land Law of 1867 allowed foreign nationals the right to own real estate in the empire, directly affecting land sales and European settlement in Palestine.
Twain was particularly disappointed by Jerusalem. While it was the "stateliest name in history," he found it to be a small, poverty-stricken village defined by "rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt". He claimed that "Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes"
In 2017, on the 150th anniversary of Twain’s visit, every major Israeli newspaper published articles celebrating this anniversary.
These articles similarly discussed the importance of the travelogue in asserting that Palestine was empty and barren and that the Palestinian people are an invention.
Twain’s influence in Palestine and Israel through The Innocents Abroad has been appropriated, and this appropriation often underpins modern discourses on Palestine.
Benjamin Netanyahu and others are liars when they say that the Holy Land was void of people in 1867-1869.
1882 Jews 24,000 Others 276,000
1914 Jews 94,000 Others 595,000
1947 Jews 630,000 Others 1,324,000
1948 Jews 716,000 Others 156,000
Between 1946 and 2024, the U.S. gifted $330 billion to Israel in 2024 terms
Israel is the West's last settler colony
Forever-Occupation: Genocide, and profit: United Nations exposes corporate forces behind the destruction of Palestine
Prominent human rights organizations and United Nations experts increasingly characterize Israel's treatment of Palestinians as an apartheid regime. This classification is based on institutionalized discrimination, territorial fragmentation, and systemic oppression that heavily disadvantages Palestinians across areas under Israeli contro
