Freedom Flotilla Coalition Condemns Grotesque Sexual Assaults by Israeli Forces
Demands Accountability Amid Systemic Culture of Impunity

It recently came to light that Israeli police and prison officials sexually assaulted and raped a participant on the Freedom Flotilla Coalition’s recent mission challenging Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza. The assault occurred following Israel’s unlawful military attack on flotilla vessels and the forcible seizure and detention of hundreds of civilians from international waters. Sexual crimes constitute egregious violations of human dignity and grave breaches of international human rights and humanitarian law. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) condemns these acts in the strongest possible terms and demands immediate, independent, and credible investigation and accountability for all those responsible.

On December 21, 2025, Anna Liedtke, a German journalist who was aboard the flotilla ship Conscience—a vessel carrying dozens of journalists and medics—spoke at an international conference in solidarity with political prisoners. In her remarks, she publicly revealed, for the first time, that Israeli personnel raped her after she resisted a forced strip search by female officers. Since disclosing her assault, the FFC has worked to support Anna and follow her lead in determining what is said publicly and when.

Anna is not the only flotilla participant to have suffered sexual violence at the hands of Israeli police and prison officials. Italian journalist Vincenzo Fullone, who was also aboard the Conscience, was subjected to repeated sexual violations amounting to rape while unlawfully detained, as was Australian activist Surya McEwen. Speaking about sexual violence, especially when committed by state actors who operate with impunity, is extraordinarily difficult. We therefore anticipate that, as space is created, additional volunteers may come forward. We will continue to center survivors, respect their agency when and if they are ready to speak up, and ensure that no one is pressured to speak before they are ready.

The horrific assault on flotilla volunteers must be understood in the broader context of an entrenched system of violence in which Israeli soldiers, police, and prison guards have long operated with impunity. Sexual violence, including rape, gang-rape, humiliating strip searches, and other forms of sexual torture, has been repeatedly committed against Palestinians in Israeli custody and documented by Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights organizations. While we are committed to offering care and support for flotilla volunteers who have suffered sexual violence, we recognize that Palestinians–activists, children, women, men, and elderly detainees– have endured far more pervasive and systematic sexual violence and torture by Israel, with no credible accountability mechanisms.

Recent investigations by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights describe the systematic use of sexual torture against Palestinian detainees, including rape, forced stripping, the filming of abuse, and sexual assault involving objects and animals. These acts, which have intensified amid Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, form part of a wider, decades-long pattern of treatment that constitutes torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law. In one testimony, a 42-year-old mother, abducted at a checkpoint set up by Israeli soldiers in Gaza, reports being blindfolded, cuffed to a metal frame, stripped naked, filmed, beaten, and repeatedly raped–anally and vaginally, over a period of three days. In another testimony, a 35-year-old father abducted from Al-Shifa Hospital reports that Israeli soldiers forcibly stripped him naked and then deployed a military dog to climb on him, urinate on him, and rape him.

These abuses are not isolated anomalies. United Nations bodies have reported widespread use of sexual and gender-based violence by Israeli forces and security services as part of patterns of detention and control, including forced public stripping and threats of rape. Amnesty International has correctly identified the torture and sexual violence against Palestinian detainees as war crimes. Moreover, rape and other forms of sexual violence constitute deliberate psychological humiliation designed to crush human dignity and erase individual identity—conduct that forms a recognized component of genocidal practices under international law. According to the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry, this is “one of the worst ways of inflicting serious physical and mental harm on the victim.”

Despite the extensive and well-documented record, mainstream media have largely failed to report on Israel’s widespread and systematic use of sexual assault and torture against Palestinians. This selective silence in the face of survivor testimonies—documented and investigated by leading human rights organizations as well as UN bodies—amounts to profound journalistic and ethical failure that erases victims, distorts public understanding, and enables the impunity that Israeli perpetrators enjoy.

This impunity is not incidental but structural and pervasive. It is embedded within Israel’s political and legal system where investigations are perfunctory, prosecutions are nonexistent or performed for public relations purposes, and the institutions nominally responsible for oversight routinely shield perpetrators rather than protect victims. It is inseparable from the broader policies that sustain Israel’s blockade, occupation, and institutionalized discrimination—policies that have enabled widespread and systematic abuses amounting to crimes against humanity, including apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. A political and legal order that tolerates, and even normalizes, such violations cannot be relied upon to investigate itself or hold its own forces accountable.

The FFC will pursue every available avenue to hold accountable those responsible for sexual violence against our volunteers, including through international legal mechanisms, human rights reporting, independent investigation, and coordinated advocacy with partner organizations. We call on:

• The United Nations and its member states to demand unfettered access to detention facilities and an independent international inquiry into sexual violence by Israeli forces;
• The International Criminal Court to urgently investigate all allegations of sexual violence and torture in Israeli detention;
• Global civil society, and particularly media institutions, to break the silence on abuses against Palestinians and international activists alike, and to demand an end to systems of violence that thrive on impunity.

These crimes cannot be separated from the broader context of enduring colonial occupation, and the denial of Palestinian freedom and dignity. Impunity for sexual violence—whether against flotilla and solidarity volunteers or against Palestinian men, women, and children—must end and those responsible must be held accountable.

Statements from Anna, Vincenzo, and Surya

Anna: “After I was kidnapped by Israeli forces, I was subjected to repeated physical and sexual abuse. During a forced strip search, I was raped by Israeli female guards. I am coming forward not for myself, but for all the women who have endured sexual violence and sexual torture in Israeli prisons—for those who did not survive these attacks, for those who are experiencing this abuse now, and for those who cannot speak about it.”

Vincenzo: “On three separate occasions, I was ordered to enter a small, specially arranged room where I was completely stripped and subjected to invasive and painful anal searches. I remained silent each time to avoid provoking further violence and to deny the guards the satisfaction of my suffering. During the third search, the pain became unbearable and was compounded by mockery, verbal abuse—including the words, ‘Don’t you like it, Hamas whore?’—and the photographing of my body. I am still unable to find peace because if they were willing to do this to me, I can’t imagine what they’ve done – and continue to do – to the Palestinians under their complete control.”

Surya: “I was stripped naked and sexually assaulted by Israeli officers while being held hostage. One held a gun to my head, angrily threatening that he would kill me, while the other yanked and pulled on my genitals, perversely and almost gleefully. While there is a psychic cost to this experience, I absolutely refuse to feel shamed, lessened, or stained by it, as these all belong solely to the perpetrators. This small taste of the sadism that Zionist colonisers inflict en masse on Palestinians has not weakened my commitment, but rather strengthened my resolve to work toward liberation.“

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