By Necva Tastan
ISTANBUL (AA) - A young Israeli activist said she and her friends have been facing harassment and arrests by police for protesting against atrocities in Gaza and West Bank.
Twenty-three-year-old Gaia Dan from Haifa, in a video posted on social media, said freedom of speech and freedom to protest was always limited in Israel, but "these days it's almost impossible to say you're against the war without fearing for your safety or your freedom being taken away."
"And it's even more dangerous if you're Palestinian."
Dan said she was arrested last month for a protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza, which began after the Oct. 7 Hamas offensive. Police, she said, "kept calling us sluts, and of course they called us traitors."
But, she added, "we cannot let them to silence us" and "we cannot ourselves to sit in silence," while the people of Gaza are being "massacred," and the people of West Bank are "suffering in the hands of the settlers and the military."
"I plead all who's watching to take action against the silencing of us, but most importantly to raise your voice against the ongoing massacre in Gaza right now," Dan said.
Israel's relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed more than 21,000 Palestinians, and has left Gaza in ruins, with at least 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicines.
Gaza is grappling with catastrophic hunger and 40% of the population are now at risk of famine, according to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
Authorities claim the Hamas attacks had killed around 1,200 Israelis.