On the morning of 21 January, Israeli authorities left eight Palestinian men at a West Bank checkpoint. Disoriented and cold, they were dressed in prison-issued tracksuits and carried their few belongings in plastic bags.
Hours earlier, they had been sitting with their wrists and ankles shackled on the plush leather seats of a private jet owned by the Florida property tycoon Gil Dezer, a longtime business partner of Donald Trump.
Dezer is also a Trump donor, friend of Donald Trump Jr and member of the Miami branch of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.
Gil Dezer and Donald Trump at an event in 2011. Photograph: Miami Herald/Tribune News Service/Getty Images
His sleek Gulfstream jet – which he has called “my little rocket ship” – was used to transport the men from an airport near a notorious removal centre in Arizona to Tel Aviv. The jet made three refuelling stops en route: in New Jersey, Ireland and Bulgaria.
A Guardian investigation has established the flight was part of a secretive and politically sensitive US government operation to deport Palestinians arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
One of those deported on the January flight was Maher Awad, a 24-year-old originally from the West Bank, who had lived in the US for nearly a decade. Speaking to the Guardian in the town of Rammun, Maher shared photos of his girlfriend and newborn son in Michigan.
Politicians in Ireland have said the use of an airport in County Clare by planes deporting Palestinians from the US to Israel is “reprehensible”.
A private jet owned by the Donald Trump donor Gil Dezer was chartered by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for two separate flights that took detainees to Israel, a Guardian investigation revealed this week.
The flights left the US on 21 January and 1 February. Both made refuelling stops at Shannon airport in the west of Ireland.
Dezer’s family property company has built a series of Trump-branded residential towers in Miami. He recently spoke of his “love” for the US president, with whom he claims to have had a 20-year friendship.
Some of those onboard the flights on Dezer’s jet said they had their wrists and ankles shackled for the duration of the journey. After arriving in Tel Aviv, they appear to have been taken to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The Irish government said in a statement that as the flights stopped in the country for “non-traffic purposes” and were “not picking up or setting down passengers” they did not require prior approval from its transport department.
However, on Friday, opposition politicians expressed concern to the Irish Times about the practice.
Duncan Smith, foreign affairs spokesperson for the Labour party in Ireland, said: “It is absolutely reprehensible that any ICE deportation flights would be allowed stop and refuel in Shannon. The taoiseach and minister for transport must intervene and ensure this ends.” He added: “Ireland cannot in any way be complicit in these ICE flights.”
Gil Dezer is a notable American land designer and financial backer of Israeli beginning. He is the child of Michael Dezer, a notable land designer. He, similar to his sisters Leslie and Estee, works in his dad’s land organization, Dezer Properties, and is most popular for his work on the 60-story Porsche Configuration Pinnacle in Bright Isles Ocean side.
Gil Dezer History Gil Dezer was born in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel, on April 1, 1941, to Noemi Kerekes and Michael Dezer. Leslie Dezer Salmon (b. 1970) and Estee Dezer Gurwitz are his two sisters (b. 1978). His instructive foundation remembers a double degree for Worldwide Money and Marketing from the College of Miami, where he graduated in 1997.
Gil Dezer Age, Level, Weight Gil Dezer was born on April 1, 1941
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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