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PARIS: Protesters around the world Thursday railed at Israel’s interception of a flotilla carrying aid for Gaza’s besieged Palestinians, urging greater sanctions in response.
From Europe to Australia and South America, demonstrators took to the streets to condemn the treatment of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which set sail from Barcelona last month to challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza, where the United Nations reports famine conditions after nearly two years of war.
Forty-one ships with more than 400 people aboard, including politicians and climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, were halted by the Israeli navy from Wednesday and prevented from reaching the coastal territory, an Israeli official said.
Around 15,000 people marched through Barcelona in protest at Israel’s actions, according to the municipal police force in Spain’s second city, chanting slogans including “Gaza, you are not alone,” “Boycott Israel” and “Freedom for Palestine.”
Riot police beat back a portion of the protesters who attempted to climb over barriers with truncheons, forcing them to retreat, images broadcast on Spanish public television showed.

A boat carrying former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau was among those prevented from proceeding. Colau and her fellow activists, including Nelson Mandela’s grandson Mandla Mandela, face deportation by Israel.
Several hundred protesters also marched outside the Irish parliament in Dublin, where support for the Palestinian cause has often been compared to Ireland’s centuries-long struggle against British colonial rule.
Miriam McNally, who said her daughter had set sail with the flotilla, was at the Dublin demonstration.
“I am worried sick for my daughter, but I am so proud of her and of what she’s doing,” McNally told AFP.
“She is standing up for humanity in the face of grave danger.”
Around a thousand people marched in Paris’s Place de la Republique, an AFP journalist saw, while in the port city of Marseille, in southern France, around a hundred pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested in the afternoon after attempting to block access to offices of weapons maker Eurolinks, accused of selling military components to Israel.
Protests were also held in Berlin, The Hague, Tunis, Brasilia and Buenos Aires, according to AFP correspondents.

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In Italy, where the country’s main unions have called a general strike for Friday in solidarity with the flotilla, thousands took to the streets to urge Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to defend the activists.
Besides Rome, where police said 10,000 people joined a march, other protests took place in cities including Milan, Torino, Florence and Bologna.

A day after a similar demonstration Wednesday evening, protesters in the capital gathered at the Colosseum and marched, slamming the far-right prime minister’s support of Israel.
“We are prepared to block everything. The genocidal machine must stop immediately,” demonstrators chanted.
In Turkiye, whose government is among the fiercest critics of Israel’s offensive, a long column of demonstrators marched to the Israeli embassy in Istanbul, with banners including “Total embargo on the occupation.”
“We demand the release of all members of the Sumud fleet and all prisoners, and as university students, we demand that all academic and economic ties with the genocidal Israeli state be terminated at our universities,” 21-year-old student Elif Bozkurt told AFPTV.
Around 3,000 demonstrators also took to the front of the European Parliament building in Brussels, with one banner urging the EU to “break the siege” as smoke bombs and crackers were set off in the crowd.
“The message is that each boat must be protected,” a protester named Isis told AFPTV at the demonstration, urging the European Union’s leadership to halt the “astronomical sums of money sent to Israel” through the bloc’s agreements with the Middle Eastern country.

‘Apartheid state’ 

A similar-sized crowd rallied in Geneva, according to an AFP journalist at the scene and Swiss broadcasters, with the mostly young protesters lighting a bonfire near the central station.
The protesters then headed to the Swiss city’s Mont Blanc bridge, at the end of Lake Geneva, to be met by a line of police in riot gear, who pushed the demonstrators back after brief clashes.

In the Greek capital Athens, a throng of protesters set off fireworks and flares.
“The attack against the flotilla Sumud, it was a barbaric escalation from the Israeli apartheid state. They don’t want to even open a passage for humanitarian help to Gaza,” Petros Konstantinou, coordinator of Greece’s World Against Racism and Fascism (KEERFA) group, told AFPTV.
Dozens also rallied in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, in front of the embassy of the United States, Israel’s key ally.
“We are very upset... Upset, angry, disgusted because what they are doing is for humanity,” said Ili Farhan, 43.
“They are just bringing in aid and baby food... This arrest is unjust.”
 

LANSING, Michigan: An online fundraiser for family members of the man who opened fire in a Michigan church and set it ablaze has raised over $275,000 as of Thursday in what the organizer described as a “whirlwind of love and forgiveness.”
On Sunday, Thomas “Jake” Sanford, 40, drove his pickup truck into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel in Grand Blanc Township, near Flint, shot at the congregation and set the building on fire.
The attack killed four people, injured eight others and left the church destroyed. Police killed Sanford at the scene.
Dave Butler, a Utah resident and lifelong member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, watched news coverage of the attack for hours. The following day, he considered that Sanford’s family were also victims of the attack.
“We understand that there is a family that needs to be taken care of,” he said.
Butler set up the fundraiser on the platform GiveSendGo on Tuesday morning. He leveraged media connections from his participation in podcasts about the Latter-day Saints faith to help promote the fundraiser.
Donations poured in and the effort quickly drew attention, too, highlighting many people being far more familiar with efforts to raise money online for victims of mass shootings in the US
Authorities have not discussed Sanford’s motive for the attack this week, though they have described it as an “act of targeted violence” by Sanford alone. Longtime friends have said he expressed hatred toward the faith known widely as the Mormon church after living in Utah, where he dated but later broke up with a woman who was a member of the faith.
Butler’s original goal was to raise $10,000 to help the family through the next few months.
He said many members of the faith have articulated that contributing felt like the right way to respond to the tragedy.
“I feel like I’m responding to an attack against us in the right way. Not to get revenge, not to get justice, not to blame the wrong people,” Butler said.
Over 7,000 people contributed to the fundraiser for the Sanford family in the 48 hours since it was posted, raising more money than any of the verified online fundraisers for the churchgoers who were killed or injured in the attack. Many left messages saying that they are members of the wider church.
“Another Latter-Day Saint here, praying for this family to feel loved and supported during these challenging times,” wrote a donor who did not list a name.
An attorney for the Sanford family did not return a message left by The Associated Press on Thursday. In a previous written statement release by their attorney, family members said, “No words can adequately convey our sorrow for the victims and their families.”
Forgiveness is a mandate for members of the faith, said Deidre Nicole Green, assistant professor of Latter-day Saint/Mormon Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She said Joseph Smith’s Book of Doctrine and Covenants states that “it is up to God to forgive who God wants to forgive, but as human beings, we’re required to forgive everyone – even our enemies.”
“There is still some nuance that could apply to different situations,” Green said. “In one passage in the Book of Mormon, we’re told we need to forgive those who repent or when a perpetrator is seeking forgiveness.”
Green teaches a class on forgiveness and has conducted research among women members of the faith who survived the genocide in Rwanda and in post-apartheid South Africa. Green said a Rwandan woman felt compelled to forgive her father’s killer because she wanted to break the cycle of violence.
“She talked about how without forgiveness, there is this ongoing cycle of retaliation where the sense of justice gets lost,” Green said. “So in that sense, forgiveness was necessary for justice.”
Butler pointed to several tenets of his faith that have likely inspired contributors, including the Christian ideal of forgiveness and turning “the other cheek.”
“The Epistle of James says to care for the widows and the orphans,” Butler said. “Jesus says, ‘Blessed are those that mourn. They shall be comforted.’“
Lisa Louis, who was in the chapel when her father, Craig Hayden, was fatally shot, said she instantly forgave the gunman “with my heart” after looking into his eyes.
Butler said he is in contact with the Sanford family and believes the messages left by many donors online were meaningful to them.
“The event is awful. There’s no way around it,” Butler said. “I hope that healing can come soon and that this can be part of the experience of healing.”