Update from Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) -
Pressley Joins Tlaib, 39 Colleagues Demanding Release of Sama Safi, U.S. Citizen in Israeli Military Prison
WASHINGTON – Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) joined Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (MI-12) in leading 39 Members of Congress, including six Senators, in a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, demanding the immediate and permanent release of U.S. citizen Sama Safi, a 20-year-old student with a severe chronic health condition, from Israeli military prison. On June 2, in the middle of the night, Sama was torn from her family’s home in the occupied West Bank as part of a series of raids targeting Birzeit University students.
Congresswoman Pressley also met virtually with Sama’s parents to discuss efforts for her release, and demanded accountability from the Israeli government and for the Trump administration to secure Sama’s immediate release, continued access to medical care, and end all unjust and arbitrary detentions.
“Every day that Sama remains wrongfully detained in these inhumane conditions, she is at greater risk of irreversible and life-threatening repercussions,”the lawmakers wrote to Secretary Rubio. “It is your responsibility to ensure the safety of all Americans abroad, with no exceptions. Her life is at risk on your watch. We urge you to act swiftly and use every tool at your disposal to secure the immediate release of Sama Safi so that she can receive the medical care she urgently needs and return to her family, her studies, and the life and freedom that every 20-year-old deserves.”
“With every additional day that Sama is subjected to deprivation and abuse by Israel, our fear grows that her spark is being dimmed; that we are losing pieces of her health, her strength, and the vibrant, loving spirit that makes her who she is,” said Sama’s parents. “Every morning, we wake wishing this was only a nightmare, hoping to open our eyes to the sound of Sama playing music. Every waking moment, we cannot help but imagine what she must be facing alone. Yet we are holding on to hope through those who stand with us and are helping us bring Sama home. We are deeply grateful to Congresswoman Tlaib and all the signatories of this letter for standing with us in our urgent call to free Sama.”
Sama has described horrific conditions and violence by guards in Israeli military detention, including frequent physical assault, gas and stun grenades thrown in overcrowded cells, and lack of food and water. Every day, thousands of Palestinians in Israeli detention are subjected to these conditions as part of what the United Nations Committee Against Torture described as “a de facto State policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment.”
“Such wretched conditions and treatment have caused Sama’s health to rapidly decline to dangerous levels in detention. Sama suffers from a severe and complex chronic medical condition known as Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF), which requires regular monitoring, daily medication, and recurring specialized biologic treatment abroad,” the lawmakers wrote. “Sama has reported receiving her medication inconsistently, resulting in several missed doses. Stress positions and shackling have exacerbated her condition, causing severe rheumatoid and chest pain. Her doctors have warned that with her continued military detention and ‘being constantly exposed to conditions that exacerbate her inflammatory status, the possibility of progressive tissue injury and irreversible organ damage is our greatest concern.’”
On August 17, over 100 faith-based groups wrote a letter to Secretary Rubio demanding Sama’s release.
The letter was also signed by 33 Representatives: U.S. Reps. Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03), André Carson (IN-07), Greg Casar (TX–35), Joaquin Castro (TX-20), Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05), Christopher Deluzio (PA-17), Mark DeSaulnier (CA-10), Maxine Dexter (OR-03), Lloyd Doggett (TX-37), Maxwell Frost (FL-10), Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04), Robert Garcia (CA-42), Al Green (TX-09), Adelita Grijalva (AZ-07), Jonathan Jackson (IL-01), Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr. (GA-04), Ro Khanna (CA-17), Summer Lee (PA-12), Sam Liccardo (CA-16), Betty McCollum (MN-04), James McGovern (MA-02), Analilia Mejia (NJ-11), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Delia Ramirez (IL-03), Emily Randall (WA-06), Lateefah Simon (CA-12), Paul Tonko (NY-20), Derek Tran (CA-45), Nydia Velázquez (NY-07), Maxine Waters (CA-43), and Bonnie Watson Coleman (NY-12).
Six U.S. Senators also signed the letter: Senators Edward J. Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Peter Welch (D-VT).
The letter is endorsed by 85 organizations: IMEU Policy Project, A New Policy, Action Corps, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action), Arab American Caucus of the California Democratic Party, Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies at San Francisco State University, Arab Resource & Organizing Center Action (AROC Action), Arlington for Palestine, Beyt Tikkun Synagogue, Boston Coalition For Palestine, Brooklyn For Peace, CAIR Action, California Democrats for Justice in Palestine, Center for Constitutional Rights, Christians for a Free Palestine, Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), Cleveland Peace Action, Codepink, Common Defense, Community Alliance for Peace and Justice, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), Detroit & MI National Lawyers Guild, Disability Justice for Palestine, Doctors Against Genocide, Emgage Michigan, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Gen-Z for Change, Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ, Hind Rajab Foundation, Historians for Peace and Democracy, IfNotNow Movement, Indiana Center for Middle East Peace, Institute for Policy Studies New Internationalism Project, Jewish Voice for Peace, Just Foreign Policy, Majdal: Arab Community Center of San Diego, MARUF CT, Massachusetts Peace Action, Methodist Federation for Social Action, Minnesota Peace Project, MPower Change Action Fund, Musicians Against Genocide, Muslim Advocates, Muslims for Just Futures, NE Oakland Indivisible, NH Peace Action, North Carolina Peace Action, Northshore For Palestine, Orange County for Justice in Palestine, Palestine House of Freedom, Palestine Legal, Palestinian House Of New England, Pax Christi New York State, Peace Action Montgomery, Peace Action New York State, Peace Action of San Mateo County, Peace Justice Sustainability NOW, Philly Neighborhood Networks, Pittsburgh Palestine Solidarity Committee, Progressive Democrats of America – Central New Mexico, Queer Folk Inc., Rabbis for Ceasefire, Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, ReThinking Foreign Policy, River Valley for Palestine, RootsAction, Statewide Indivisible Michigan, Stu Maismith Veterans For Peace, Syrian Community Network, Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice, The American Council for Judaism, The Justice Coalition, Transition Security Project, U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR), US Campaign for Palestinian Rights Action, US Palestinian Council, Veterans For Peace, Veterans For Peace Chapter 74, Washington for Peace and Justice, and We the People Dissent.
The full letter is accessible here.
Israel Imposes Curriculum on 45,000 Palestinian Students in Occupied Jerusalem
By Palestine Chronicle Staff
Israeli authorities are expanding their curriculum across occupied Jerusalem schools, prompting warnings of an unprecedented assault on Palestinian identity and collective memory.
Key Developments
More than 45,000 Palestinian students, around 38 percent of East Jerusalem’s school population, will study under the Israeli curriculum in 2026-2027.
The Jerusalem Governorate said the expansion represents an unprecedented escalation since 1967 aimed at replacing Palestinian history and national narratives.
Israeli authorities are also moving into former UNRWA educational complexes in Shuafat and Kafr Aqab as their control over Palestinian education expands.
Israeli Curriculum Expands Rapidly
The Jerusalem Governorate warned on Monday that Israeli occupation authorities are dramatically expanding the imposition of the Israeli curriculum on Palestinian students in occupied Jerusalem, describing the policy as an attempt to reshape the identity, memory and historical consciousness of a new generation.
The latest phase is set to begin on Tuesday with the opening of the 2026-2027 academic year and will include first- and seventh-grade students in official schools affiliated with the Israeli occupation municipality.
Jerusalem Governorate spokesman Marouf al-Rifai described the measure as a “dangerous and unprecedented escalation since 1967” in Israeli attempts to exert control over Palestinian education in the occupied city.
According to figures reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, 39,363 Palestinian students will study according to the Israeli curriculum during the new academic year across 105 municipal schools.
Another 5,085 students will follow the curriculum in institutions classified by Israeli authorities as “recognized and unofficial.”
Together, more than 45,000 Palestinian students will therefore study under the Israeli curriculum — approximately 38 percent of the nearly 120,000 students in occupied East Jerusalem.
The expansion has accelerated considerably in recent years.
The number of Palestinian students studying under the Israeli curriculum stood at 10,347 in the 2020-2021 academic year. It rose to 19,402 in 2024-2025 and then to 27,041 in 2025-2026.
Around 15 years ago, only a few hundred Palestinian students in Jerusalem studied according to the Israeli curriculum.
Al-Rifai said the latest measures form part of a longstanding policy of pressuring Palestinian educational institutions, including through school funding and conditions imposed on administrations.
‘Targeting Awareness, Memory and Identity’
The Jerusalem Governorate warned that the issue extends far beyond the textbooks Palestinian children use.
Al-Rifai said Israeli control over education seeks to replace the Palestinian curriculum with the Israeli narrative while marginalizing central elements of Palestinian history and collective memory, including the Nakba, Palestinian detainees and Jerusalem itself.
He argued that education remains one of the principal means through which Palestinians in Jerusalem preserve their national and cultural identity.
Controlling curricula and shaping students’ awareness, he said, therefore form part of broader Israeli policies aimed at annexing and Judaizing occupied Jerusalem and erasing its Arab Palestinian character.
“Jerusalemites’ adherence to the Palestinian curriculum is not just about a school textbook,” al-Rifai said, describing it as a defense of “memory, identity, history and the national narrative.”
The governorate also pointed to Israeli measures against UNRWA educational facilities. Israeli occupation authorities have seized two UNRWA educational complexes serving Palestinians in Shuafat and Kafr Aqab.
According to the governorate, Israeli authorities intend to open 14 secondary-school classes, a primary school and five kindergartens in the Shuafat complex, while a boys’ secondary school is planned for the Kafr Aqab facility.
Al-Rifai said these measures were part of a broader attempt to restructure Jerusalem’s educational environment according to Israeli policies.
The pressure on schools also operates alongside physical measures separating Palestinian communities from Jerusalem, including Israel’s separation wall and checkpoints, which have isolated tens of thousands of Palestinian Jerusalemites from the city center and its institutions.
Governorate Calls for International Intervention
The Jerusalem Governorate said imposing the occupying power’s curriculum on Palestinians in an occupied city violates international humanitarian law.
Al-Rifai pointed specifically to Israel’s obligations as an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention, including protections for children and the continuity of educational institutions.
He warned that using education to impose a political narrative and undermine the identity of an occupied population was incompatible with those obligations.
The governorate called on UNESCO, the United Nations and other international institutions to intervene urgently to protect Palestinian educational institutions and Palestinians’ right to education, as well as Jerusalem’s cultural and historical identity.
Al-Rifai also urged the international community not to treat Israeli measures in occupied Jerusalem as either a fait accompli or an internal Israeli administrative matter.
He warned that the continued expansion of the Israeli curriculum threatens future generations of Palestinians and the city’s collective memory.
Education, al-Rifai concluded, would remain one of the primary “lines of defense” protecting Jerusalem’s Palestinian identity and the right of its children to know their history and preserve their heritage.
(PC, QNN, Haaretz)
You will want to read this...
Israel Isn't Debating a Palestinian State. It's Preparing for Expulsion.
by Amira Hass/Haaretz
Gadi Eisenkot's position on Palestinian statehood is beside the point. Across Gaza, the West Bank and Israel itself, the machinery for making Palestinian life impossible is already operating, laying the groundwork for mass expulsion
Gadi Eisenkot, the election frontrunner and leader of the Yashar party, has a stance on a Palestinian state that is ultimately irrelevant. What is at stake today is not a "diplomatic solution," but the very existence of the Palestinian people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Israeli forces striving to "erase" them recognize no limits or restraints. Their supporters are too numerous for us to rely solely on the steadfastness and resilience of a people that has already endured expulsion plans carried out by Israel.
The world stands by. The left is tiny, weak and hoarse from sounding too many warnings. The anti-Bibi opposition oscillates among downplaying the danger, remaining indifferent to it and outright supporting expulsion. The sporadic condemnations, prompted mainly by something the U.S. ambassador posted on X, are about as useful as a sieve in a rainstorm. The Jewish Phalangists attack constantly and everywhere, not only in Qusra.
The debate over one state, two states or a federation is more theoretical than ever. Any agreed-upon solution requires first acknowledging the problem and agreeing on what it is. Too many Jews in Israel have been conditioned to believe that the problem is the very presence in this land of a Palestinian people with roots, historical and economic continuity, cultural capital and material assets, a rich agricultural heritage and a profound love of homeland.
"Erasure" is the nightmare solution being written into reality every day. Knesset laws, politicians' declarations, military orders, school textbooks and the holy real estate battalions operating in Gaza, the West Bank and the Negev all work, together and separately, to advance this "solution" diligently and without fear of international condemnation.
Israeli policy is directed toward making life unbearable for Palestinians wherever they live, so that their emigration can be described as an act of free will. Within Israel itself, the authorities give Arab crime organizations free rein to arm themselves and kill Palestinian citizens in their homes. In the West Bank, those same Israeli authorities give "God's battalions" free rein to arm themselves, kill and expel, while the official army continues its raids day and night. In devastated and thirsty Gaza, the government and the army cultivate armed militias of criminal collaborators, while Israeli pilots continue to launch missiles of revenge and retribution that claim the lives of still more children. All these testosterone-fueled displays are interconnected.
At the same time, Israel is destroying or severely restricting Palestinians' ability to earn a living. In Gaza, that mission has been completed. A "living dead" population of aid recipients, two million people carrying the weight of some 74,000 fresh graves, families and memories, talents and professions, and evaporated savings, is crammed into roughly 150 square kilometers of scorched earth. Creativity, resourcefulness and mutual aid are dwarfed by the scale of the destruction and by Israel's prohibition on rebuilding and recovery.
In the West Bank, the Finance Ministry's financial noose is tightening around the necks of approximately three million people and the Palestinian Authority. The systematic theft of revenues is compounded by the army's campaigns of destruction in cities and refugee camps, as well as by the other methods used to prevent Palestinians from cultivating and developing their land: checkpoints, bureaucratic prohibitions, fences and Israeli-Jewish shepherds.
Within Israel itself, the "Judaization of the Galilee and Negev" was and remains code for stealing land and resources from Palestinian citizens of Israel. Discrimination against them in allocations, subsidies and employment, along with building prohibitions and demolitions, has always featured prominently in official policy within the Green Line.
Let me reiterate: The very existence of the Palestinian people between the sea and the river is now in danger. Too many active forces are creating that danger: Israel's military might and capabilities; the cult of military service under all conditions and under every government; obedience as a value; weapons and military attacks as the default modus operandi; the normalization of PTSD among soldiers and of soldiers dying by suicide; the attractions of a military career and the doors it opens; the lure of an affordable villa in a Galilee exclusionary community or a settler suburb in Samaria; the falsehoods of official and unofficial propaganda; indifference to the hell on earth Israel has created in the Gaza Strip; denial of 60 years of occupation and forced rule; the Pavlovian response, "But October 7"; the synergy among the army, the government, the rabbis and the kippa-wearing militias in the West Bank; equanimity in the face of Lebanon's destruction; disregard for the occupation of more parts of Syria; the normalization of expulsion discourse; justice and education systems tainted by secular and religious racism; and the army of jailers who abuse thousands of Palestinian prisoners, both under orders and by choice.
Together, these and similar forces are creating the material, ideological and psychological infrastructure within Israeli-Jewish society for another mass expulsion of Palestinians and for what might accompany it: mass slaughter.
The heroes of the settler militias openly declare that expulsion is their goal. They clearly recognize the readiness of large segments of Israeli-Jewish society to participate in carrying it out, actively or passively, directly or indirectly. Through their daily provocations and crimes, committed in broad daylight and made possible only by institutional support, the Phalangists constantly seek to provoke a Palestinian act of rage and revenge that "succeeds," so that it can be exploited as the match that ignites a new holy war.
The Jewish Phalangists and the right-wing organizations that fuel them are counting on broad mobilization, including from the leaders, voters and supporters of Yashar and the liberal Democrats party, for a war that could already be given the slogan: "One people, one army, one land cleansed of Arabs."