Reposted from @AliAbunimah on Twitter:
"I’m free! I wrote this on the plane and I’m posting it just after landing at Istanbul. On Monday evening I was brought to Zurich airport in handcuffs, in a small metal cage inside a windowless prison van and led all the way to the plane by police. This is after three days and two nights in a Swiss prison cut off from communication with the outside world, in a cell 24 hours a day with one cell mate, not even permitted to contact my family. On Saturday in a police interview in the presence of my lawyer they accused me of “offending against Swiss law” without ever telling me what crime I had committed in Switzerland or listing any charges. As far as I know I have not been charged with any crime whatsoever and I was held in “administrative detention.” On Sunday morning, they took me from my cell for questioning by Swiss defense ministry intelligence agents without the presence of my lawyer, and they again refused to allow me to contact her or my family. I refused to talk to them without my lawyer and told them take me back to my cell. During my imprisonment I refused every meal and every cup of coffee or tea they offered me except the last meal, after I knew I would be going home. I accepted only water, which is the right of every human being. All of this was after I was abducted off the street around 1:30pm on Saturday while on my way to the Palestine teach-in by undercover agents, handcuffed, forced into an unmarked car and sped straight to the prison. My “crime”? Being a journalist who speaks up for Palestine and against Israel’s genocide and settler-colonial savagery and those who aid and abet it. I came to Switzerland at the invitation of Swiss citizens to talk about justice for Palestine, to talk about accountability for a genocide in which Switzerland too is complicit. But while I was hauled off to prison like a dangerous criminal before I even had a chance to say a word, the Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who declared at the start of the genocide that there are no civilians in Gaza, no innocents, received a red carpet welcome in Davos, a carpet soaked in the blood of the more than 47,000 known victims of the genocide and the thousands more still under the rubble, or who died of deliberately inflicted starvation and denial of medical care. And on this very day Netanyahu freely travels to Poland to make a mockery of the Auschwitz commemoration despite an outstanding ICC arrest warrant. That is the perverse, unjust world we live in. This ordeal lasted three days but that taste of prison was more than enough to leave me in even greater awe of the Palestinian heroes who endure months and years in the prisons of the genocidal oppressor. More than ever I know that the debt we owe them is one we can never repay and all of them must be free and they must remain our focus. The police gave me my phone back only at the gate of the plane so I’m only seeing now the extent of the overwhelming support and solidarity from all over the world. I’m deeply grateful to each and every person who stood up for me. I’m especially grateful to my lawyer Dina Raewel and her team, to our friends in Zurich who I learned afterwards demonstrated outside the prison, to my family and my colleagues at EI and so many others. I honestly had no idea what was happening outside that concrete room! Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I want to tell the whole story of what happened, perhaps in an @intifada livestream in the next day or two, because I think it’s important for people to know the depths to which their Western so-called “democracies” have sunk in the abject service of genocidal Zionism. Right now I’m glad to be on my way home. I’m looking forward to hugging my mom and dad, taking a shower and sleeping in my own bed. Journalism is not a crime! Speaking out for Palestine is not a crime! Standing against racist genocidal Zionism is not a crime! Say it with me:
From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free! ❤️🇵🇸✌️"
i used to believe that western europe was a safe haven from american’s conservatism; but the gazan genocide makes it hard to ignore that it definitely isn’t and likely never was.
i learned recently that western europe was shaped by americans in the same way that latin america was shaped; but american’s actions in western europe were hidden behind a veil of national security, where as latin america was left out to public awareness. now i wonder if it was because they didn’t want people to know that the western europeans were no better because of american government shaping.
It’s not so much that it was ever really hidden, but that we as Europeans just didn’t want to see it. We didn’t want to know. We chose to pretend that the same attitudes were not present here - at least not anymore, not after the war - and that we had put all that behind us and that we were now these super enlightened and evolved societies. We talked ourselves into believing that we were so superior to the Americans, so much more “civilized”.
But the reality is that America’s barbarism is a reflection of our own barbarism, they are Europe’s creation and their evil is our evil just more nakedly visible, stripped of the aristocratic pretense and the veil of civility. And for a while i think we even managed to fool some of the rest of the world, but now it’s clearer than ever to see that the emperor has no clothes.
And frankly, even twenty years ago it was not that much better hidden. I mean have you ever heard how Europeans talk about the Roma people? How the oh-so-civilized “social democratic” nordics talk about Muslim people? We are still fundamentally the same continent that we were in the 1930s, the continent large parts of which willingly, eagerly, chose to join forces with the Nazis to commit genocide and wage a war of extermination in the east.
First as tragedy, then as farce. We are seemingly determined to prove this statement true. When you have most European countries aiding and abetting genocide, persecuting dissidents, banning non-regime aligned media, arming Nazis with German tanks to wage war in Russia against Russia, all while the EU’s top “diplomat” openly states the intention is to dismantle Russia, you see really not so much has changed since 1940. They still dream of Operation Barbarossa 2.0 and Generalplan Ost 2.0, only difference this time is they’ll call it “bringing freedom and democracy”.
I also came to that same realization after the yougov poll showing that the Democrats lost the election because of their complicity in the gazan genocide; they disregarded it in the same manner that the Western Europeans disregarded the political violence that the United States inflicted upon them.
However, unlike the yougov poll w Democrats or American fostered political violence w Western Europeans, Americans fostered violence in Latin America is a permanent sore spot in relations between Latin America and the United States; In many respects it feels worse that the Western Europeans dgaf about the political violence that the United States put them through simply because it stopped happening after the 1980’s.
It seems Europe just loves servitude. It’s no coincidence so many European countries still have monarchies. A lot of people seem to enjoy being subjects, whether of their own inbred aristocracy or of a decrepit empire on the other side of the ocean. At this point i just want to get out of here and go live somewhere where people at least have some dignity, even if they are poorer.
The Amerikkkan Empire is truly a global dictatorship. That’s why the head of the snake must fall.
Not anymore: coming soon
Europe needs to burn
It already has several times and it keeps coming back in the same way; something else is needed.
3 days? Fuck! I thought he’d be out sooner than that. Guess it just goes to show how powerful Ali and EI really are. They have the zionists lashing out like a cornered animal.
Another great discussion from EI! Honestly this video needs to be its own post. Everyone needs to hear how absolutely depraved the West has gotten in its frenzy to cover for and enable the Zionist entity’s crimes against humanity.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
