Fighting state violence from Gaza to Los Angeles

Over the weekend, my social media feeds were dominated by two sets of images: twelve humanitarian volunteers with their hands raised in surrender on the Mediterranean Sea, and protesters in Los Angeles facing National Guard troops deployed by a president who calls them “violent, insurrectionist mobs.”  

The images revealed a troubling interconnectedness. Both scenes, unfolding within hours of each other, exposed the same imperial machinery: one that responds to moral courage with state violence, whether wielded by Israeli commandos in international waters or American soldiers on domestic streets. The common thread is the use of overwhelming force to silence political dissent.

Challenging state power

What connects these seemingly distant acts of resistance is their shared challenge to the fundamental dishonesty at the heart of both operations. The Madleen’s cargo of baby formula and medical supplies exposes Israel’s false claims about facilitating humanitarian aid to Gaza, just as the Los Angeles protests reveal the administration’s characterization of immigration enforcement as lawful order rather than organized cruelty.

The Israeli military’s interception of the Madleen aid ship, named after Gaza’s first and only fisherwoman, represents more than just another violation of international law. Israel has no legal authority to intercept civilian vessels in international waters, nor any right to stop humanitarian aid from reaching starving populations. The brazen nature of this action exposes Israel’s fundamental dishonesty about aid access to Gaza.

The dichotomy is glaring: Israeli officials routinely claim they are not impeding humanitarian assistance to Gaza, yet the world watched in real time as twelve civilians carrying aid were forcibly stopped by military commandos in international waters. Israel’s Foreign Ministry mockingly dismissed the humanitarian mission as a “selfie yacht” and “celebrities yacht,” while simultaneously deploying overwhelming military force to stop it. If twelve people with rice and medical supplies pose no real threat, why the massive military response? The answer reveals the deeper terror of those in power—not of the aid itself, but of the moral clarity it represents.

This live-streamed contradiction demolishes any remaining pretense that Israel’s blockade serves humanitarian purposes rather than collective punishment. It exposes the grotesque reality that in our interconnected world, where billions can be mobilized for military intervention within hours, volunteers are such a threat to the established order that they must be “kidnapped“, as Greta Thunberg accurately described it, by naval commandos deploying an unknown chemical spray and jamming communications.

Meanwhile, as Israeli forces were seizing humanitarian volunteers in the Mediterranean, Donald Trump was deploying the National Guard to crush protests in Los Angeles against his administration’s immigration enforcement. The president’s characterization of demonstrators as “violent” and “insurrectionist” echoes the same authoritarian playbook used to justify the detention of peace activists trying to deliver aid to starving children.

The scale and systematic nature of what unfolded in Los Angeles reveal the calculated precision behind the administration’s response. Over the last three days, federal agents have conducted coordinated raids across the city, not in the shadows of night, but in broad daylight at Home Depot parking lots, clothing warehouses, and day labor centers. They came armed with military-grade equipment: drones, tear gas, flash-bang grenades, and unmarked vehicles, targeting undocumented workers whose only crime was crossing borders by those who inherited their indigenous citizenship.

Crushing political dissent

The Israeli military’s response, deploying drones to spray unknown chemicals, jamming communications, and ultimately seizing the vessel in international waters, demonstrates the same authoritarian impulse Trump displayed in Los Angeles. Both actions send the same message: dissent will be crushed, moral courage will be punished, and the status quo will be maintained through violence if necessary.

Raids in Los Angeles deployed the same tactical arsenal: military weaponry and use of drones for aerial surveillance, a domestic deployment of the same military power and tactics refined through decades of Israeli operations in occupied Palestine. Israel’s decades-long use of Gaza as a laboratory for weapons testing has created a pipeline where surveillance technologies battle-tested on Palestinians are exported to over 130 countries, including the United States, where they are deployed against immigrants, protesters, and other marginalized communities. The same companies profiting from Israel’s automated killing in Gaza are now enabling Trump’s crackdown on American streets. 

The parallels extend beyond tactics to ideology. Both Israel’s blockade of Gaza and Trump’s immigration crackdowns represent forms of collective punishment designed to terrorize entire populations. Both rely on dehumanization—Palestinians as “terrorists,” immigrants as “invaders”—to justify policies that violate international law and basic human decency.

In Los Angeles, what began as “immigration enforcement” quickly revealed itself as a testing ground for domestic authoritarianism. The administration’s response continues to escalate, culminating in Trump’s unprecedented seizure of California’s National Guard without the governor’s consent—the first time since Selma in 1965 that federal troops were deployed  without state approval. The message was unmistakable: dissent would be met with military force, constitutional protections were negotiable, and entire cities could be occupied if they dared to resist federal authority. 

The response from Los Angeles communities was immediate and thunderous. Within hours, hundreds gathered at the federal building, then thousands spilled into the streets of Boyle Heights, Westlake, and Paramount. They chained themselves to government gates, blocked deportation vans with their bodies, and forced federal agents to retreat several times. This wasn’t just civil disobedience, it was a city refusing to let its people disappear quietly, transforming grief into resistance and every street corner into a conviction that no community is too powerless to fight back.

Now, while Israeli forces tow the Madleen to port and Trump’s National Guard occupies Los Angeles, the message is clear: this is what fascism looks like in practice. Not goose-stepping soldiers, but commandos seizing aid ships and troops deployed against protesters. Not dramatic declarations, but the quiet normalization of state violence against dissent.

The Madleen mission has ended, but its moral challenge remains. In a world where twelve volunteers with medical supplies are treated as threats to national security, where protest is met with military force, the question facing each of us is simple: Will we remain complicit in our silence, or will we find our own ways to resist? The volunteers aboard the Madleen, and the protesters in L.A., have shown us that another way is possible. Do we have the courage to follow their example?