Brazilian activist Thiago Avila speaks to Swedish activist Greta Thunberg during a press conference before the departure of the Global Sumud Flotilla, a humanitarian expedition to Gaza, at the port of Barcelona, Spain, Aug. 31, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eva Manez

A flotilla of 20 boats which included participants from 44 countries, climate advocate Greta Thunberg, “Game of Thrones” actor Liam Cunningham, and a member of Samidoun (designated by the US and Canada as a “sham charity” for a terrorist group) left port in Barcelona on Sunday for Gaza only to return back within hours due to winds of approximately 35 miles per hour.

The anti-Israel assemblage of activists sought to break Israel’s naval blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza to deliver aid, an effort previously pursued with Thunberg in June, and notably first attempted in May 2010 by the Free Gaza Movement which resulted in 10 deaths and dozens of injuries.

Global Sumud Flotilla Mission says it has mounted the largest effort to date to try penetrating the Israeli naval defenses and released a statement about the decision to delay the voyage’s launch, saying “we conducted a sea trial and then returned to port to allow the storm to pass. This meant delaying our departure to avoid risking complications with the smaller boats.”

Israel had reportedly already prepared to intercept the boats and then planned to administer “terrorist-level” detention conditions to the celebrity activists and the group of international participants.

One factor potentially fueling such firm punition for the flotilla’s passengers could be the presence of Jaldia Abubakra, a co-founder of Masar Badil Palestinian Revolutionary Path and the coordinator for the Madrid branch of Samidoun, an organization birthed through 2011 hunger strikes fomented by prisoners in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group.

Masar Badil confirmed Abubakra’s presence in the flotilla on Friday.

Samidoun, which identifies itself as a “Palestinian prisoner solidarity network,” is a radical anti-Israel advocacy organization that has taken part in pro-Hamas protests across the West, including in the US, Canada, and countries in Europe.

Germany banned Samidoun, whose demonstrations in Berlin have featured cries of “Death to the Jews,” in the days following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Samidoun previously described the Oct. 7 atrocities as an act of “heroic Palestinian resistance” and hosted a webinar for a Hamas official who pledged that the Palestinian terrorist organization will repeat its slaughter of Israelis “again and again” to bring about the Jewish state’s “annihilation.”

In October 2024, the US and Canada jointly imposed sanctions on Samidoun, explaining that the prominent anti-Israel group has been operating as a “sham charity” fundraising for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist group.

“Organizations like Samidoun masquerade as charitable actors that claim to provide humanitarian support to those in need, yet in reality divert funds for much-needed assistance to support terrorist groups,” Bradley Smith, acting US undersecretary of the treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, said at the time.

Months earlier, in June, YouTube shut down the group’s channel as well as that of its International Coordinator Charlotte Kates. In May 2019, the payment platforms PayPal, DonorBox, and Plaid discontinued support for Samidoun due to its terrorist affiliations.

Abubakra founded Masar Badil in 2021 with Khaled Barakat, a Samidoun leader, also described by Fatah as a “member in the central committee of the PFLP.”

The US banned Barakat from entering the country in 2024 due to his terrorist affiliations. In March of that year he praised the use of airplane hijackings as “one of the most important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

Barakat and Kates attended the funeral for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in February 2025.

“This is my journey to Palestine. I am returning with the Freedom Flotilla, together with all the free people who have decided to break the siege, support the steadfastness of our people, and expose the crimes of the occupation before the world,” Abubakra said in a statement.

“We must assume our responsibility in the diaspora toward our people in Gaza, the West Bank, and all of occupied Palestine, which I see as one land from the river to the sea. After all, we are one people, with one cause and one destiny, and our rights are indivisible,” he added.

Kates wrote on X on Aug. 24, 2024, “Hate to self-post, but back in 2006, some zionist posted this video on youtube which was supposed to ‘expose’ me (and our movement). Inspired tonight to repeat that call today, 18 yrs later — We stand with the Palestinian resistance, with Hezbollah, with the resistance and people in Iraq. These are our troops, our freedom fighters, and we support them! And we must still work to build our resistance here [sic].”

That month, Kates traveled to Iran to receive the “Eighth Annual Islamic Human Rights and Human Dignity Award.” Other honorees at the ceremony included Ziyad Nakhaleh, a leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader killed by Israel in July 2024.

Illustrative: Demonstrators hold a giant Palestinian flag and anti-Israel signs during a protest against the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, in central Brussels, July 27, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

A Belgian doctor recently diagnosed a nine-year-old patient by listing “Jewish (Israeli)” as one of her medical problems on his report, continuing a troubling wave of antisemitism in health-care spaces leaving Jewish patients feeling concerned in Western countries.

The Israeli publication Israel Hayom initially reported last week that after the young girl came for treatment at a hospital in the town of Knokke in Belgium, a doctor of Middle Eastern origin with Arabic-language content against Israel on his Facebook page wrote “Jewish (Israeli)” in his detailed report under the section where her medical problems were to be listed. The newspaper noted that JID (the Jewish Information and Documentation Center), a Belgian nonprofit that combats antisemitism, investigated the incident and would be filing a formal complaint with law enforcement authorities and the medical establishment in the country.

A censored version of the letter then circulated on social media over the weekend, revealing that a radiologist, Dr. Qasim Arkawazy of AZ Zeno Campus Hospital in Knokke-Heist, filled out the medical report.

In the “Current Problem” section, Arkawazy wrote of the patient: “Pain in the left forearm, fell from the climbing structure to the ground; a man fell on top of her.”

The doctor then noted in the nine-year-old girl’s report that she had no allergies before adding “Jewish (Israeli)” for apparently no medical reason.

In Belgium, a doctor examined a sick young girl.

In the “medical issues” section, right after allergies, the antisemitic doctor wrote: “Jewish.”

What’s next, refusing to treat Jews?

This is beyond unacceptable. But after this summer, sadly, nothing surprises me anymore. pic.twitter.com/7acuxeEumZ

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 31, 2025

X/Twitter user SwordofSaolomon, who conducts open-source research into allegedly antisemitic individuals, found that Arkawazy has shared several antisemitic posts on Facebook. These posts include a cartoon of several babies decapitated by the point of a Star of David and an AI-generated image depicting Hasidic Jews as vampires about to eat a sleeping baby. The doctor is a native of Baghdad, Iraq and a Shi’ite Muslim, according to multiple reports.

SIGNALEMENT : Le Dr. Qasim Arkawazy, radiologue d’origine irakienne exerçant à l’hôpital AZ Zeno dans la station balnéaire de Knokke-Heist, relaie des dizaines de contenus antisémites, islamistes chiites et antisionistes.

Parmi ces publications : un montage ignoble… pic.twitter.com/IDTBYM5j1e

— SwordOfSalomon (@SwordOfSalomon) August 31, 2025

“We are outraged by the report of a Belgian doctor who listed ‘Jewish (Israeli)’ as a medical problem in a child’s emergency file,” the European Jewish Congress (EJC) said in a post on X. “This is blatant antisemitism: dehumanizing, discriminatory, and utterly unacceptable.”

The group, which for decades has functioned as the representative umbrella organization of national Jewish communities in Europe, argued that such actions cause Jewish patients to fear being mistreated, even in medical settings.

“This is not just unethical; it’s dangerous. No parent should fear that their child’s care might be compromised because of their Jewish identity,” the EJC said. “We call on Belgian authorities to take immediate disciplinary action and make clear: antisemitism has no place in healthcare — or anywhere.”

Sam van Rooy, a lawmaker in Belgium’s parliament, expressed similar sentiments in a social media post.

“How can a Jewish person whose medical file is being handled by this doctor now feel at ease?” he wrote on social media.

The incident in Belgium comes amid a surge in medical professionals expressing antisemitism or even outright death threats against Israelis.

Last month, for example, two medical workers in Italy filmed themselves discarding Israeli-made medicine in protest against the Jewish state at their workplace. A doctor and a nurse who work at a community hospital in Pratovecchio Stia, near Arezzo in Tuscany, posted on social media the video of dramatically throwing away products from Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli company.

Meanwhile, a doctor in the UK was allowed to return to work last month after praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler during an antisemitic rant and making racist comments about a colleague.

Other troubling incidents have drawn attention in the UK. The University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH Trust) recently issued an apology following a patient’s complaints about the placement of anti-Israel posters at a facility. These posters — which read “Zionism is Poison,” called for a “Free Palestine,” and accused Israel of wantonly starving and killing Palestinians — led a patient to reach out to the group UK Lawyers for Israel, expressing fear of receiving subpar treatment if the hospital staff discovered she was Jewish. The chief executive of UCLH Trust released a statement apologizing for the posters.

In a separate incident, midwife Fatimah Mohamied, who resigned from her position after UKLFI highlighted her anti-Israel social media posts, has now filed a claim against Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, alleging a violation of her rights. Mohamied’s posts included her defending and celebrating the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion and massacre across southern Israel.

Other Western countries have seen health-care providers’ antipathy toward Israel manifest as violent threats.

In the Netherlands, police opened an investigation into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.

Although Sa’id denied making the comments, claiming someone was “pretending to be me,” an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people last year, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”

The nurse’s alleged threat mirrors a similar incident in Australia, in which video showed two nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements. The widely circulated footage showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.

“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” Shira Nussdorf, a US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago, told The Algemeiner earlier this year when the video first emerged. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”

Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.

The issue of antisemitism in medical facilities also extends to North America.

A December 2024 study by the Data & Analytics Department of StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group, found that 40 percent of 645 Jewish American health-care professionals surveyed reported experiencing antisemitism in the workplace. A similar study of Canadian Jewish health workers conducted last year reached 80 percent.

This issue has been especially pervasive at institutions of higher education. In May, a separate study by the StandWithUs Data & Analytics Department contained survey data showing that 62.8 percent of Jewish health-care professionals employed by campus-based medical centers reported experiencing antisemitism, a far higher rate than those working in private practice and community hospitals.

Last week, US lawmakers announced an investigation into antisemitic discrimination at three institutions: the University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine, the University of Illinois College of Medicine, and the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

Illustrative: Anti-Israel protesters hold a banner that says, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” standing in front of the president’s palace in Warsaw, Poland, on Nov. 5, 2023. Photo: IMAGO/Marek Antoni Iwanczuk via Reuters Connect

Anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrators threw red paint on Israeli singer-songwriter and composer David D’Or and tried to storm the stage with a Palestinian flag during his performance in Warsaw, Poland, on Sunday night.

D’Or was singing the Hebrew prayer “Avinu Malkeinu” at a finale concert for an annual Jewish cultural festival in Warsaw when an anti-Israel agitator in the audience approached the stage and hurled red paint on him. While the protester was being apprehended by security, another activist emerged from the audience, carrying a Palestinian flag, and tried to storm the stage while reportedly shouting “Free Palestine.” Both activists were quickly removed from the auditorium.

D’Or posted a video of the incident on Instagram and detailed what happened in a Hebrew-language caption.

“In the middle of the prayer our father our king, when I pray for a good year and for peace in the world, I closed my eyes, when I suddenly felt a cold splash on my face, I opened my eyes to see a strong red color, similar to blood,” wrote the singer. “On the clothes on my face and on the stage and the musicians. The playlist was like stained in blood.” He said the stains of red paint reminded him “of the horror sights of October 7th,” referring to the deadly Hamas-led attack in 2023 in which Palestinian terrorists killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages back to the Gaza Strip, starting the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

D’Or said after he was splattered with red paint, “in the stunned crowd a sound of horror and crying began. I realized that I must pick myself up and encourage them.”

“I continued to sing and asked everyone to close their eyes and pray for the people of Israel,” he added. “It wasn’t easy, my eyes were teary with pain and great sadness from the situation we got to. At the end of the show the audience sang along with me and we came out strong … What terrible days, may God have mercy. Praying for better days.”

 

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D’Or’s performance on Sunday night, accompanied by Sinfonia Viva, closed off the 22nd edition of the Singer’s Warsaw Festival of Jewish Culture. The concert took place at the Moniuszko Auditorium.

D’or’s career spans over 35 years and he has performed with many philharmonic orchestras around the world, including the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Philharmonic Orchestras of Rome, London, Moscow, Shanghai, Budapest, Beijing, and Los Angeles. He has 17 gold and platinum albums and previously performed at the Vatican six times, the United Nations, in front of former US presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and had a close relationship with Israeli President Shimon Peres, who asked for D’or to sing at his funeral.