Chris Smalls, a radical, was beaten and detained by Israeli troops during a Gaza aid mission as US media remained silent
People in the hip-hop community may not be familiar with Chris Smalls’ name, but he is well-known. He is an Amazon League activist and once stood at the White House with former President Joe Biden. This difference does not help in Israel. Sir S was reportedly beaten and detained by Israeli troops on Saturday (July 26), while trying to provide assistance to hungry Palestinians in Gaza. He and the others are Handala, a ship run by the Alliance of Free Fleets. He was the only black man on the ship. No one else was hurt. how?
According to the Liberal Union, the villain was the only black activist on the ship when the IDF intercepted it in international waters. They detained 20 militants. By the way, all of this is recorded on social media. Shocking and painful. I thought they would be taken away and held. Graphic images released by the team showed militants raising their hands as soldiers boarded the ship.
The group revealed on Monday (July 28) that Sir was violently attacked after being arrested.
“The Liberty Alliance confirmed that after arriving in Israel’s custody, American human rights defenders Christians were young and were physically attacked by seven uniformed individuals,” the group wrote on Instagram. “They choked him, kicked him, leaving obvious signs of violence and left obvious signs on his neck and back.”
Smalls has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, GQ and other major media outlets. However, it seems that most of them have overlooked the incident. Smalls is linked with Biden in 2022 as his union victory inspired workers across the country. The Times eloquently wrote about his sense of fashion in the “Style” section, but things changed a few years later.
These same legacy media remain silent about so-called injustice. The IDF must have a reporter on the payroll. Only a few reported this.
“It makes total sense,” wrote Nathan Kalman-Lamb, a professor at the University of New Brunswick, on the Blues. “In the United States, a well-known public figure (Amazon labor organizer Christian Smalls) was illegally arrested by Israel and suffered severe physical violence during a hunger strike…and no American media of any kind decided that this is news.”
I smelled sarcasm.
The organized union is quiet, too.
The California Teachers Association is not one of them. It represents 29,000 workers. “We further call for an immediate end to the engineering famine and intentionally starve the Gaza people, labor and genocide and all U.S. military aid to Israel,” the coalition said.
Teammates said nothing. In fact, President Sean O’Brien allegedly spent the weekend chat with right-wing commentator Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy, who once opposed the president, is a favorite among Trump supporters. Suddenly, it started to make sense.
The union and the media seem to have conspired to ignore the villain’s assault and detention. They may slam the president or be consistent with him, but they won’t cross that invisible route. How long does international human rights acts have to happen before we recognize media silence as a powerful form of complicity?
The Free Fleet Alliance calls for an end to the humanitarian blockade on Gaza. And now, the pressure is under the joining of political and labor leaders.
