This is an open letter from representatives of the international volunteers and staff members, the friends, supporters and foundation of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin to the Israeli security apparatus including the Shabak, the IDF and Israeli Police.

After the attack on The Freedom Theatre's office and multimedia centre, during which you arrested our head technician Adnan Naghnaghiye and Bilal Saadi, the chairperson of The Freedom Theatre Board in Jenin; and after you have for two weeks refused Adnan and Bilaal access to a lawyer, treated them inhumanely and denied them their basic human rights, and after the arrest of our acting student Rami Hwayel, we hereby state:

We encourage all efforts to find whoever is responsible for the brutal murder of Juliano Mer Khamis and we are deeply concerned over the fact that the murderer has not yet been found. Nevertheless we reject the inhumane methods that you apply in investigating the murder. The Freedom Theatre has been seriously damaged by your actions which have further implanted fear and trauma not only among our students and employees but also into the very society we aim to empower.

By acting the way that you act you have once again proved to the residents of Jenin refugee camp as well as to the outside world that the only methods you know are the ones involving violence, terror and fear. We in The Freedom Theatre have nothing to conceal regarding the murder of Juliano Mer Khamis.

We have made that very clear and we state it again that everyone in the theatre has given statements to the Palestinian Police when they were asked to do so and are willing to do so again.

No matter what harm you cause to us or the theatre, we will continue our struggle for individual and collective liberation. We have joined our comrades in Jenin Refugee Camp in their struggle for liberation using culture and non-violence in order to not only shake off the occupation that you keep the Palestinian people under, but also other forms of oppression that they are faced with.

We demand that our friends and colleagues who have been subjected to severe cases of human rights abuses will be treated with absolute respect for all their basic human rights according to international conventions, receive immediate access to their lawyer and be promptly released.

The international staff, friends and supporters of The Freedom Theatre as represented by:

Jacob Gough, acting general manager at The Freedom Theatre

Micaela Miranda, Pedagogical Director at The Freedom Theatre

Jonatan Stanczak, co-founder of The Freedom Theatre

Udi Aloni, film and theatre director at The Freedom Theatre

Dror Feiler, co-founder of The Freedom Theatre and board member of The Freedom Theatre Foundation

Jan Tiselius and Britt-Louise Tillbom, chairpersons of the Friends of The Freedom Theatre (Sweden)

Constancia Dinky Romilly, president, Friends of the Jenin Freedom Theatre (USA)

Mrs Zahia Oumakhlouf and Mrs Marie-José El-Haimer, co-presidents of The Friends of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin (France)

You can also make your voice heard!

Contact your local The Freedom Theatre friendship association, or contact The Freedom Theatre if you want to start a group in your own country.

For more information on local groups: http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/support-friend.php

or contact us at: info@thefreedomtheatre.org

More than 10 people have been killed after Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army says.

Armed forces boarded the vessels overnight, clashing with some of the 600 protesters on board.

It happened about 40 miles (64 km) out to sea, in international waters.

Israel says its soldiers were shot at and attacked with bars and knives; the activists say Israeli troops came on board shooting.

The European Union has called for an inquiry to establish what happened.

'Guns and knives'

The six-ship flotilla, carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid, left the coast of Cyprus on Sunday and had been due to arrive in Gaza on Monday.

Israel says its soldiers boarded the ships in the early hours but were attacked with knives, bars and live fire.

Continue reading the main story We were not going to pose any violent resistance
Audrey Bomse

Free Gaza Movement
"Unfortunately this group were dead-set on confrontation," Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told the BBC.

"Live fire was used against our forces. They initiated the violence, that's 100% clear," he said.

Organisers of the flotilla said at least 30 people were wounded in the incident. Israel says 10 of its soldiers were injured, one seriously.

Audrey Bomse, a spokesperson for the Free Gaza Movement, which is behind the convoy, told the BBC Israel's actions were disproportionate.

"We were not going to pose any violent resistance. The only resistance that there might be would be passive resistance such as physically blocking the steering room, or blocking the engine room downstairs, so that they couldn't get taken over. But that was just symbolic resistance."

She said there was "absolutely no evidence of live fire".

Israel says it will tow the boats to the port of Ashdod and deport the passengers from there.

Condemnation

Turkish TV pictures taken on board the Turkish ship leading the flotilla appeared to show Israeli soldiers fighting to control passengers.

The footage showed a number of people, apparently injured, lying on the ground. A woman was seen holding a blood-stained stretcher.

Al-Jazeera TV reported from the same ship that Israeli navy forces had opened fire and boarded the vessel, wounding the captain.

The Al-Jazeera broadcast ended with a voice shouting in Hebrew, saying: "Everybody shut up!"

Israeli government minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer expressed his "sorrow over all the deaths".

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel had committed a massacre.

Most of the people on board the boats were Turkish.

Turkey said it "strongly condemn[ed] these inhumane practices of Israel", AFP news agency reported.

In Turkey, dozens of protesters tried to storm the Israeli consulate in the Istanbul, while the Israeli ambassador has been summoned to the Turkish foreign ministry.

Blockade

Israel had repeatedly said it would stop the boats, calling the campaign a "provocation intended to delegitimise Israel".

Israel and Egypt tightened a blockade of Gaza after the Islamist movement Hamas took power there in 2007.

Israel says it allows about 15,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid into Gaza every week.

But the United Nations says this is less than a quarter of what is needed.

The incident comes a day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet US President Barack Obama in Washington after one of the most strained periods in US-Israeli relations in years.

Question: Which country alone in the Middle East has nuclear weapons?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections? ?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East seized the sovereign territory of other nations by military force and continues to occupy it in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East routinely violates the international borders of another sovereign state with warplanes and artillery and naval gunfire?
Answer: Israel .

Question: What American ally in the Middle East has for years sent assassins into other countries to kill its political enemies (a practice sometimes called exporting terrorism)?
Answer: Israel .

Question: In which country in the Middle East have high-ranking military officers admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war were executed?
Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing prisoners of war?
Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East created 762,000 refugees and refuses to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses?
Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East refuses to pay compensation to people whose land, bank accounts and businesses it confiscated?
Answer: Israel .

Question: In what country in the Middle East was a high-ranking United Nations diplomat assassinated?
Answer: Israel .

Question: In what country in the Middle East did the man who ordered the assassination of a high-ranking U.N. diplomat become prime minister?
Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a U.S. ship, the USS Liberty, in international waters, killing 34 and wounding 171 American sailors?
Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East employed a spy, Jonathan Pollard, to steal classified documents and then gave some of them to the Soviet Union ?
Answer: Israel .

Question: What country at first denied any official connection to Pollard, then voted to make him a citizen and has continuously demanded that the American president grant Pollard a full pardon?
Answer: Israel .

Question: What Middle East country allows American Jewish murderers to flee to its country to escape punishment in the United States and refuses to extradite them once in their custody?
Answer: Israel .

Question: What Middle East country preaches against hate yet builds a shrine and a memorial for a murderer who killed 29 Palestinians while they prayed in their Mosque.?
Answer: Israel .

Question: What country on Planet Earth has the second most powerful lobby in the United States , according to a recent Fortune magazine survey of Washington insiders?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East deliberately targeted a U.N. Refugee Camp in Qana , Lebanon and killed 103 innocent men, women, and especially children?
Answer: Israel .


Question: Which country in the Middle East is in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions and has been protected from 29 more by U.S. vetoes?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East receives more than one-third of all U.S. aid yet is the 16th richest country in the world?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East receives U.S. weapons for free and then sells the technology to the Republic of China even at the objections of the U.S. ?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East routinely insults the American people by having its Prime Minister address the United States Congress and lecturing them like children on why they have no right to reduce foreign aid?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East had its Prime Minister announce to his staff not to worry about what the United States says because "We control America ?"
Answer: Israel .

Question: What country in the Middle East was cited by Amnesty International for demolishing more than 4000 innocent Palestinian homes as a means of ethnic cleansing.
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East has just recently used a weapon of mass destruction, a one-ton smart bomb, dropping it in the center of a highly populated area killing 15 civilians including 9 children?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East routinely kills young Palestinian children for no reason other than throwing stones at armored vehicles, bulldozers, or tanks?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East signed the Oslo Accords promising to halt any new Jewish Settlement construction, but instead, has built more than 270 new settlements since the signing?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East has assassinated more than 100 political officials of its opponent in the last 2 years while killing hundreds of civilians in the process, including dozens of children?
Answer: Israel .

Question: Which country in the Middle East regularly violates the Geneva Convention by imposing collective punishment on entire towns, villages, and camps, for the acts of a few, and even goes as far as demolishing entire villages while people are still in their homes?
Answer: Israel .