ISRAELI SOLDIERS SUBJECTED activists from the latest Gaza aid flotilla to sexual, psychological and physical abuse after intercepting their boats and taking them to Israel, according to numerous accounts from participants.
The Global Sumud Flotilla had been sailing towards the besieged Palestinian territory of Gaza, which has been blockaded since 2007, when Israeli forces boarded the boats and detained those on board last week off the coast of Cyprus.
The 428 activists were taken to Israel against their will before being deported to Turkey, where many of them were given medical treatment for injuries including broken bones, according to flotilla organisers.
At least 67 people suffered injuries that required medical attention, organisers have said, while 12 of them were hospitalised (nine in Turkey and three in Greece).
Two people remain in hospital in Turkey, the organisers said in a statement on Sunday.
One activist is under observation with a broken foot, while a third is being monitored due to concerns about internal bleeding and an irregular heartbeat, as well as a broken leg.
A captain of one of the boats is also still recovering in Turkey and is unable to travel because he suffered a punctured lung.
“I don’t think there’s a single person without some kind of injury,” Irish activist Catríona Graham said.
“There’s no way you’re getting out without a beating,” Joshua St Leger, another Irish participant, told Cork’s 96FM after returning to Ireland.
Flotilla organisers said that activists had provided “harrowing” testimony about their treatment while on Israeli ships and in detention when they arrived in Israel.
The abuses, according to organisers, included the use of rubber bullets at close range, stun grenades and tasers to the activists’ faces and upper bodies.
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As seen in a video shared by Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, activists were also forced to hold stress positions. This went on for hours, flotilla organisers said.
The organisers also said activists recounted “various forms of sexual violence”, including “humiliating strip searches, sexual taunting, groping and pulling of genitals, and multiple accounts of rape”.
The organisers said participants from a total of 40 countries have described being subjected to sexual violence.
“Some of the most horrifying accounts centre on a single vessel that participants call the ‘torture boat’,” the Sumud Flotilla organisers said, referring to a ship on which a makeshift prison had been built using metal containers.
One activist, Juliet Lamont from Australia, said she was sexually assaulted “in this kind of torture chamber as five men were bashing me and smashing my face.”
Another activist, Ariadne Telles from Brazil, said she suffered physical and psychological torture when subjected to severe sleep deprivation and physical assaults.
“They kicked me on the face, they kicked me on the legs, they zip-tied my hands; I don’t feel my fingers until now.”
Once they arrived at the port of Ashdod in Israel, the activists were subjected to further abuse, according to testimony and the video evidence shared by Ben-Gvir.
The flotilla organisers said the abuse at Ashdod “far exceeded” that shown in the videos featuring Israel’s security minister, which sparked global outrage and condemnation from multiple governments whose citizens were among those detained, including Ireland.
“Participants were subject to torture, extreme stress positions and prolonged interrogations,” the organisers said, as well as beatings and sexual humiliation.
The Israeli prison service told BBC News the allegations were “false and entirely without factual basis”.
The Israeli military (IDF) said: “IDF orders require respectful and appropriate treatment of flotilla participants on the intercepted vessels, and there are clear and established procedures in this regard.
“No specific incidents of deviation from these binding procedures are known within the IDF. Any concrete complaints submitted to the IDF on the matter will be examined thoroughly.”
Testimony from Palestinians held in Israeli detention centres and prisons has for years detailed various forms of torture and abuse, including sexual assault.
Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem has compiled many of these accounts and refers to the prison system as “a network of torture camps”.