Solidarity with Omar Alsoumi, spokesperson for Urgence Palestine and Palestinian activist, placed in police custody and subjected to a house search on accusations of “apology for terrorism”!
This morning at 6 a.m., the French national police raided the family home of Omar Alsoumi, one of the spokespeople for Urgence Palestine, the large Palestine advocacy coalition in France, and an activist from the Palestinian diaspora. This violent raid and his arrest, which took place at dawn in front of his wife and children, are part of a broader repressive policy targeting the movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people and their resistance, as well as the voices of refugees and Palestinians in exile — led by the French government and its imperialist allies in Europe, North America, and the reactionary and normalizing Arab states.
For more than six months, Omar Alsoumi’s assets have been frozen by the French state, in retaliation for his struggle and that of all his comrades in Urgence Palestine, against genocide, colonialism, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine. This shameful persecution is yet further proof of the French state’s direct participation in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and in the Zionist colonial project in Palestine.
After the attempts to dissolve Urgence Palestine, the dissolution of the Collectif Palestine Vaincra, the repression of the student movement for Palestine, the bans on demonstrations, rallies, and events against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the raids, police custody, and trials of activists accused of “apology for terrorism,” now, one of the spokespeople of one of the most important organizations supporting Palestine in France who is being targeted.
This repression adds to that underway in other European countries, including Belgium, where at least four Palestinian refugees from Gaza are currently being held in closed detention centers for their role in mobilizations against genocide and in support of their people’s resistance. Anas Siyam, another Palestinian refugee imprisoned with them, was deported from Belgium to Greece on October 10. On October 7, 2025, Mahmoud Farajallah, a Palestinian refugee from Gaza, took his own life in the 127bis closed detention center where he had been held for three months — shortly after learning, while imprisoned, of his mother’s martyrdom in Gaza. Mohammed Khatib, the European coordinator of Samidoun and a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon, is being targeted by a procedure to revoke his refugee status initiated by the Belgian government in retaliation for his long-standing activism in support of Palestinian prisoners and resistance.
In Italy, Anan Yaeesh, a Palestinian refugee from Tulkarem, has been imprisoned since January 2024 on Zionist accusations, and two other Palestinian refugees, Ali and Mansour, are also being prosecuted in the same case under article 270bis of the penal code, used to criminalize any form of collective engagement.
In the United States, two community activists from the Holy Land Foundation, Ghassan Elashi and Shukri Abu Baker, have been imprisoned since 2008 and sentenced to 60 years in prison. Tarek Bazrouk, a 20-year-old Palestinian student, has been imprisoned since May 7, 2025, for his involvement in opposing the ongoing genocide in Gaza, particularly his participation in demonstrations in New York.
In the United Kingdom, 24 people are imprisoned on charges linked to a sabotage action carried out by Palestine Action at a factory belonging to the Zionist arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, where several million pounds’ worth of damage was caused to equipment on site. At least three of them are currently on hunger strike in protest against several repressive measures targeting prisoners and against the British government’s designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization.
In France, Ali, a Palestinian refugee from Balata camp in Nablus, has been imprisoned on Zionist accusations since May 2024. As with Omar Alsoumi, the French police chose to conduct a violent raid on Ali’s family home, traumatizing his young children and their mother, even though a simple summons to the police station would have sufficed.
We could go on expanding this list and adding the names of the many refugees and Palestinians in exile, as well as internationalist activists, who have been targeted by such repression — in Germany, France, Belgium, the USA, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, the Netherlands, and elsewhere.
In the face of this brutal repression of the movement of solidarity with the Palestinian people and their resistance, against the ongoing genocide and the colonization of all of Palestine from the river to the sea:
Solidarity with Omar Alsoumi and with all those repressed! Supporting Palestine is not a crime! No to the criminalization of Palestinians in exile!
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