In April, a new flotilla set off for Gaza, once again attempting to break the Israeli siege. Late Thursday, Israeli forces intercepted 22 vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla. More than 170 participants were detained before being taken to the Greek island of Crete. Two participants were taken to Israel for questioning.
Journalist Noa Avishag Schnall covered last year’s flotilla for Drop Site, before it was illegally boarded in international waters, all participants were abducted by Israeli forces, and Noa was abused in Israeli detention. On board the Conscience, she met German journalist Anna Liedtke. Liedtke, too, was abducted by Israeli forces and raped by female guards during her time in Israeli custody, abuse she first made public in December 2025 via the women’s organization ZORA.
The brutal treatment came despite—or, perhaps, because of—the fact that Liedtke is from Germany, a country unapologetically supportive of Israel no matter what it does to Palestinians or even to Germans, and Schnall is American and Jewish, a fluent Hebrew speaker of Yemeni descent who had renounced her Israeli citizenship. The detention of those aboard the Conscience straddled negotiations over the so-called ceasefire, likely also contributing to the increasingly violent mood of the Israeli guards.
As another flotilla embarks, we asked Noa and Anna for a first-person reported account of their time on the water and in detention. They both wanted to be clear that the abuse they endured pales in comparison to that meted out on a daily basis to the some 10,000 Palestinians in custody, many of them held indefinitely without charge. Thirty-two Palestinian prisoners died in detention in 2025, and at least one has already died this year.
A first-person account with two authors creates unusual narrative challenges, but we wanted to explore the format, and Noa and Anna agreed to collaborate on the piece you’re reading below. The article is based on their observations as well as their additional reporting based on documents linked to their detention. When they were separated, the piece makes clear whose perspective is being shared.
What follows is the story of how the Israeli government treated two journalists from the two nations most supportive of its genocide. The Israeli government did not respond to a request for comment.
Noa, meanwhile, is covering this year’s flotilla for Drop Site News. Follow her updates on Instagram or our Drop Site social channels.
—Ryan Grim
We are publishing two versions of this story. You can read the longer version here.
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Launch for event for two Freedom Flotilla Italia Vessels, the Ghassan Khanafani and the Al Awda, from Otranto, Italy. September 25, 2025. Photo: Noa Avishag Schnall.
Remembering the Dead
It took us nearly half an hour to read all the names on the branches of the large tree we had all drawn on the ship’s masthead. There were 92 of us aboard the Conscience, headed for Gaza to support medical workers and journalists under fire there. On the tree’s branches, we had memorialized the names of those who had been killed by Israel since October 7, 2023. As we floated on the Mediterranean with our engines cut, Mutaz Jadaan and Dhia Daoud, both Palestinian doctors who had worked in Gaza since October 2023, took turns reading names into the warm evening wind.
Sofia Willer, a young German journalist, had begun the commemoration paraphrasing the last will of journalist Anas Al-Sharif, killed along with four Al Jazeera colleagues in August 2025: “We are the free people of the world…and we are sailing towards our heartbeat.” In her own words she added, “we will not be deterred, we will not be intimidated, and if it’s not our ships, it will be the next.”
Mutaz began his own commemoration with a call and response: “they tried to bury us, but they did not know that we were seeds.” The evening ended with stories from those who knew the slain workers personally.
We had boarded the Conscience, an old passenger ferry and a member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), in Otranto, in southern Italy, on September 30 and set sail for Gaza that evening. We were all civilians, from 22 different countries—doctors, nurses, journalists, conflict zone medical specialists, a fireman, search and rescue professionals, social workers, ship crew, lawmakers, and more. The day before, President Donald Trump, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side in the Oval Office, announced what he said was a 20-point ceasefire proposal that would end the fighting in Gaza.
Our comrades from the Global Sumud Flotilla, which carried more than 450 people from at least 44 countries, had come with more than 40 boats. They set sail from Barcelona on August 31. In total there were about 600 people from different countries on a human rights mission to Gaza—including some 100 journalists and medical workers on board the Conscience and about 50 people on the eight sailing boats of Thousand Madleens to Gaza. Along the way, one boat was bombed twice by a drone while docked in Tunisia. They were seized in international waters—a blatant violation of law—on October 1, meaning we overlapped with them in the water for two days.
The fact that we spent five days in illegal Israeli detention isn’t meant to be impressive. It’s meant to be a simple reflection of the brutality of a system that is built to break down and humiliate, so that all things human are torn away.
The Conscience just prior to launch, September 30, 2025, in the port of Otranto, Italy. Photo courtesy of Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
“Prepare Yourselves”
Before going to bed around midnight on October 7, something felt off. We assumed the lights we saw on the horizon were part of an oil station. We later realized that Israeli war ships and zodiacs were hiding behind it, waiting for us.
It was roughly 5 a.m. on October 8 when the Israeli forces radioed their intent to board and seize our ship and its passengers. The Conscience was 19 nautical miles from Egypt, not far from the Suez Canal and 120 nautical miles from Gaza—nowhere near Israeli jurisdiction. We subsequently received a radio call from the Israeli military ordering us to offload our medicine in the Israeli port of Ashdod, and turn back.
Huwaida Arraf, one of the founders of the flotilla movement who had previously sailed to Gaza and succeeded in early attempts, responded via radio. She reasserted our basic rights to safe passage and laid out the legal rationale of our mission.
“Prepare yourselves,” they responded. “Tell everyone to come on deck. We are coming.”
Soon our boat was boarded and seized in international waters. The eight Thousand Madleens to Gaza boats were taken at about the same time.
We were woken by an alarm. “This is not a drill,” we heard in the captain’s calm voice. “They’re coming.”
We filmed the scene, but because the internet communications were soon jammed we couldn’t transmit everything. Over marine radio, Captain Madeleine Habib told the Israeli forces that we were changing our destination to nearby Port Said in Egypt. Shifting our destination stripped the Israelis of whatever thin rationale they had to board our ship. It didn’t matter, they came anyway.
Infographic by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. On October 8, 2025, the Israeli military seized vessels from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which was sailing to deliver humanitarian aid and break the blockade on Gaza. Photo by Omar Zaghloul/Anadolu via Getty Images.
Everyone on board congregated at the muster station, where we had trained for this contingency many times. Gathered in our preassigned affinity groups, we put on our life jackets while trying to limit the chaos. Some journalists were still filming; others focused on breathing calmly as the helicopters approached. Two helicopters, two naval ships, and many zodiacs quickly surrounded us. The zodiacs emerged from the dark with their lights off.
Israeli soldiers rappelled from helicopters as we repeatedly chanted, “We are journalists! We are medics! We are journalists! We are medics!” It was difficult to be heard through the din, but we continued.
As we sat in bright orange life vests, hands out in front of us, the air displacement from chopper blades nearly lifting us from our seats, we could see green laser target marks jump rapidly from our comrades’ bodies to spots on the ship. When the soldiers came closer we could see the lasers’ source, their assault rifles. Faster than we could count them, soldiers streamed on to the boat.
They took control of the ship and brought the captain to the muster station. Simultaneously, some soldiers went down below to secure the rest of the ship while others broke down our surveillance system.
The other eight boats in our flotilla were also boarded; our comrades said they were all taken from their sailboats onto a single Israeli vessel and kept in caged compartments in the ship’s hold.
Noa was selected for separation, lumped in with fewer than ten people deemed problematic. She disregarded the taunting of the soldiers, who repeatedly asked questions and threatened to destroy her family’s home in occupied Palestine—which seemed counterintuitive considering her family there is made up of committed Zionists.
Activists are seen wearing life jackets as the Israeli Navy attack three ships of the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla Coalition in international waters roughly 120 nautical miles from the enclave on October 08, 2025. Photo by Freedom Flotilla Coalition/Anadolu via Getty Images.
The Palestine Hook
Arriving at the port of Ashdod at 7:45 p.m. on October 8, we were pushed off the gangway and swarmed. They ripped our keffiyehs off our bodies, pulled our hair, and threw many of us onto the ground. Noa was among the first to disembark, Anna among the last. Masked soldiers waited on both sides of the plank with big IDF flags, Israeli flags on their jackets, one yelling “passport!”
Those deemed most difficult were processed first, a designation that continued to include Noa. The rest were forced to kneel for hours on the concrete, prohibited from adjusting their positions and lessening the pain. The ground smelled like urine, and we guessed that it had been “prepared” in advance.
The guards had more interest in inflicting pain than documenting our arrival. As we were shoved toward Ashdod’s interior and through their administrative processing, all of us had our heads violently pushed toward the ground and our arms pulled behind us—many in zip ties—sometimes lifted up to maximize the discomfort of the stress position. Those still managing to wear items with Palestinian allegiance were punished with heightened brutality, their tight plastic handcuffs twisted to inflict more pain.
Noa was targeted for abuse from the start, as were several others including our Tunisian comrade, Ali Kniss, and Adnan Alisan, who is a German citizen of Turkish ancestry.
This action of restraining detainees’ hands behind their back, either with zip ties or handcuffs, and then lifting them up so that both their wrists and shoulders are in severe pain has a name. Adnan described this move to a Turkish officer at the Istanbul airport responsible for taking down the account of his treatment in Israeli custody. The officer, familiar with Palestinians who had left or been deported from the territory, responded, “Oh yeah, the Palestine hook.” Adnan recounted this encounter to both me and a Palestinian journalist from Haifa. She confirmed the usage and commented, “They should call it the Israel hook.”
Two soldiers escorted Anna to her place on the asphalt, where she was bent forward, arms twisted and held tightly behind her back. They pulled her hair and pushed her head down. She was put through a strip search, the first of many.
Nominally, the strip searches were a security measure, but they were clearly meant to degrade and subordinate us from the very start. We were shoved against walls, pushed and pulled. We were made to get completely naked, with multiple women watching each of us. Three women conducted Noa’s strip search. We were then instructed to put our clothes back on.
“Israel’s Finest Prison”: Anna
They lined us up after what might have been two hours. I noticed a Turkish crewman was standing next to me. I knew that he didn’t speak any English and I hadn’t seen him a lot on the boat, but I could tell he was in a bad way, seeming to shrink both spiritually and physically. He could barely stand up. So that the soldiers wouldn’t see the effect they were having on us, I started talking to him in Turkish: “We will go home. Everything will pass.” He smiled, but as soon as we started speaking, the soldiers, perhaps thinking we were speaking in Arabic, shouted at us to stop. “Most importantly: Palestine will be free,” I said in Turkish. “The Palestinian people will win.” He smiled again. The soldiers grabbed my arm very harshly and pulled me inside a room.
They took off my backpack and pulled me into another corner. We passed a scanner where they were amusing themselves by humiliating our friend Zohar about her artificial leg. I was told to strip down, and the soldier who had been with me the whole time started a little speech. He was very young and clearly inexperienced. His attempt to earn some respect went something like, “Listen, young lady. You did not listen to the things I told you to do and not to do. Usually I would have to treat you the same as the others, but you are German and that means that your government supports what we do here and is very kind to us. That is why I will also be nice to you,” he said. He made this speech while I was in the process of putting my clothes back on. The strip search had been conducted by the female guards—they hadn’t touched me this time—but the male soldier had been watching the whole time. Adnan recounted that men with dogs hovered during his strip search.
At the next station there was a man with a big beard. I was made to sit in front of the table as he started singing a Nazi song that I didn’t know before but whose melody I recall. He was singing it in accent-free German and then smiled at me, winked and said, “Verstehst du, oder?” (You understand, right?). And then he called me “Nazi-Schlampe”—a Nazi slut.
A handful of defense lawyers were roving around. “What’s your name? Do you need a lawyer?” asked one.
“Yes!” I said.
“No one needs a lawyer here!” shouted a soldier.
I was brought into a small corridor with a few more stations and saw Noa sitting on one of the chairs, fully shackled. We exchanged a few words as they yelled at us to be quiet. Down the corridor were more prisoners in handcuffs, shackles, and blindfolds. The blindfolds were jarring, because they appeared to be cut from the kind of pajamas infamously associated with Nazi concentration camps. They smelled stale and musty.
I told the intake officer that I was illegally kidnapped and that I did not wish to be here. “Have a pleasant stay in Israel’s finest prison,” he said.
Ketziot Prison
October 8: We were separated into groups of men and women, then blindfolded and put on buses, which we assumed were taking us to Ketziot Prison, where the Sumud flotilla had been taken days before, and where Palestinians accused of terrorism are sent. Prior to boarding the bus transporting us from Ashdod to prison, those wearing shoes with laces had the front of their shoes cut through as well as any clothes with drawstrings. On the bus, we adjusted each others’ blindfolds to see. We could hear another woman from our flotilla screaming that she had no menstrual products and was bleeding all over herself.
The bus was frigid, divided into cages. Being unsure of our destination was deeply unsettling. Worse still were the zip ties that one guard had been progressively tightening behind Noa’s back as we passed through the Ashdod stations. The guard showed a visceral disdain for her and by the time we reached the bus the zip ties had finally managed to cut off the circulation to Noa’s hands. The early stages of shock set in. She mumbled to her bus cellmates that she was feeling sick and about to faint. And for the only time in captivity she began to cry, then screamed in pain so loudly that the other bus cells could hear. The rest of the bus began screaming along with her, and the attention demanded saved her from devolving into the next stages of shock. When guards finally came, they realized that the zip ties had been over-tightened to such an extreme degree that they couldn’t be removed with scissors; there was no space between the plastic and skin. A blade had to be found and deployed. A new pair of zip ties was put on, but in front of her this time, and not as tight.
A view of Ketziot Prison, southwest of Beersheba, Israel, on October 03, 2025. Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images.
Ketziot Prison is in the Naqab region, close to the Sinai border. A special section was cleared for the flotilla participants. We arrived sometime between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. Men with dogs and guns roved the site.
Upon arrival, we were processed once again—brought out one by one for what was called a “medical check” but amounted to more nudity where we were made to get on a scale and our weight was noted down by a nurse. This was when we were given our prison clothes: plastic sandals that had the image of a cow head and the words “high and mighty”—a caricature beyond parody—as well as a white t-shirt, gray sweat pants and a gray sweatshirt. These are the same four items that can be found in news photos worn by Palestinian prisoners. The Muslim women who had their hair coverings confiscated, in denial of their religious beliefs, wrapped the white t-shirts around their heads as makeshift replacements. That left them with only sweatpants and a sweatshirt.
We were marched to another section within the massive Ketziot complex. Some of the flotilla members immediately began a hunger strike, and from that group, some decided to forego water. We were now about 20 hours into our own hunger strike.
In the cell we found filthy brown blankets and thin mattresses of matching color on a floor painted gray. There were bunk beds made of rusted, crumbling metal, but no one in our cells made use of them. There was a toilet in a small room within the narrow rectangle of the cell. Inside the room was a roll of toilet paper and a sink that spit out dirty water. The rusted metal door to the bathroom swung open and would not close. Chunks of sharp metal fell off in bits with each swing. The once-white walls were covered in Arabic, Hebrew, and English writing, mostly in pencil.
We identified Hebrew and English words side-by-side, or other combinations of the three with equivalent meanings on either side, some misspelled—signs of prisoners teaching one another. There was one window next to the door facing the courtyard, and a tiny window at the back of the cell. All were barred, of course.
“The New Gaza”
On the morning of October 9 we were brought outside at intervals. In the yard, beneath the large Israeli flag, hung a banner depicting a landscape of rubble. Across it in Arabic was printed “Gaza al-jadeeda” or “the new Gaza.” In that same open-air yard, Israeli footage of October 7 played on a loop on two large screens. The guards tried to force us to watch it, but they hadn’t thought through their presentation: the screens were positioned so that the glare of the sun made them difficult to see even if we had wanted to watch.
We were then brought to a man we were told was a judge. The Germans—Anna, Sofia and another woman—were the first to see him, and he asked them a rather absurd question: Do you want to go home? The women told him that they were victims of a forced kidnapping in international waters. They both asked for an attorney and were told their lawyers hadn’t shown up.
The day was marked by administrative chaos, supposedly organized by nationality. Some were allowed to see their consular representatives, some representatives didn’t show up. Noa and the other two American women, Mara Morgan and Eogan Moore, were eventually summoned to appear before a judge. They were asked to accept voluntary deportation in exchange for acknowledging “illegal entry into Israeli territory,” a claim they had no interest in confirming, since the statement was factually inaccurate. Noa translated the exchanges between the guards and the judge from Hebrew into English for her fellow Americans, and was expelled for doing so.
Transfer to Givon Prison: Anna
October 10: After another night with the same routine—coming to the cells to count us, to point at us with their guns’ laser sights, blast music at us—we woke up. It felt weird, like my body did not have any needs. Sometimes my stomach would growl, but I would jokingly tell it, “Don’t you get it, there is nothing to come.” Usually, I live with chronic pain, but this was completely gone, probably caused by the adrenaline in my body.
The guards came to move us to a different cell and they told us we were going home, and that we would have new cells until then.
In this cell, there was a pen that we used to write on the walls, adding our sketches to what was already there. We wanted Palestinian prisoners to see that. We wrote the lyrics to Bella Ciao on the walls, and told whoever would see it that we were from the Flotillas, hoping that it would give other prisoners some hope and a sign of life.
We were all taken out of the cells and had to stand in line again under the Israeli flag in front of the “new Gaza” sign. They put us in handcuffs and shackles and then into the prison bus again. My handcuffs were so tight that my hand started to tingle and become numb. My feet were so cold. People started sharing sweaters to stay warm and we were all talking with each other. Whenever humanity collided like this with such inhumanity it gave off a true sense of the absurd. Here we were being shuttled back and forth through a torture prison complex, with foot rubs, borrowed sweaters, and small talk for comfort.
We drove for what could have been 3 hours or could have been 20 minutes. I hadn’t believed their claim that we were going home, but I also had no other explanation for where we would go. Once we stopped, they took us violently out of the bus. You could tell immediately that the guards were more aggressive in this place. They took us into a hallway with many different cells. They put some of us in one cell, some in the others. There was a walk-through metal detector here and they checked everyone. Some of us were tied together with handcuffs so they had to separate us. They called our names, let us identify our bags, put them away, and then put us in another cell.
The attempts at humiliation were ratcheted to the extreme at this new place: the very loud noises of the doors, the handcuffs, the shackles, and the constant laughter from the male prison guards who were very tall and muscular. When we saw our bags, we thought for a moment that we truly would be going home, but then we were just transferred from one cell to the next one, over and over.
They called us in for a doctor’s visit again, measured our blood pressure, and weighed us. The doctor again asked for allergies or any chronic diseases. So we were definitely not going home. There was no need to ask about allergies just to put us on a plane.
One after another, we were called into a small area that was separated by a curtain from the rest of the hallway. In this hallway there were cells on every side—standing in the middle of the hallway you were able to see who was dragged in which cells. In one corner, there was a small curtain and one after another we were called and then pushed into that small “room” behind the curtain. We could tell strip searches were being performed as we waited to be called in. When my turn came, they tried to touch me. I resisted and told them I didn’t want to be touched. They covered my mouth. During the strip search, I was raped by female guards, while male guards were watching and laughing.
After they were done, they pushed me into one of the nearby cells with the others. It was a tiny cell, packed with 20 women, one metal bench for us all.
“I’m Being Brutalized”: Noa
On October 10, we were moved to Givon prison, the same detention center where previous flotilla members from the Madleen and the Handala, which sailed in 2024 and earlier in 2025, were unlawfully held.
During the bus ride, one of our comrades noticed that some handcuffs were stamped with “Made in England.” To us, this stamped message was a physical manifestation of the Balfour Declaration, settler colonialism, and England’s complicity in the genocide, all inextricably linked and descended from that original crime. Unlike most of the other women who were cuffed in front, mine were secured behind my back. A comrade told me that my cuffs were stamped in Hebrew.
To descend the bus, the guards barked their usual orders at me: “Noa, tell the girls to get in a single-file line.”
I believe what happened next was punishment for my active defiance in the face of their perceived menace and superiority. The Ketziot guards who had accompanied us for the long journey to Givon had one last chance for retaliation before they handed us off. Transit between cells or prisons is the most dangerous time, with the least amount of oversight or surveillance infrastructure. I was the first to step off the bus and was immediately lifted off my feet by the ankle and wrist shackles. Hanging in the air like a stuck pig, the guards swung my body into the first room in the nearest building. As I did every time I was abused, I narrated the violence loudly, for journalistic documentation, legal purposes, but also to remind the guards of their own brutality and to unnerve them. I would call out exactly what was happening, for instance, “My hair is being pulled. I’m being punched in the stomach,” and repeating as I had at Ashdod, “I’m being brutalized.” I wanted my comrades to know I wasn’t far away. Should any surveillance video of our imprisonment ever come to light, there would be proof of these screams.
I could hear all the girls on the bus screaming, “Noa, Noa, Noa!”
In that room was a metal bench onto which I was thrown. A group of three to five guards, men and women, beat me in the stomach, back, face, ears, and skull. I did not fight back. Then, the largest of the women guards sat on my neck and face, blocking my airways. I believe they stopped only because, in an effort to regain breath, I tried to kick free—the only physical resistance I posed during the entirety of our detention—and struck one of the women in the face. I had spent two months mentally prepping for the mission, but when I could no longer breathe, instincts took over. The reaction was primal.
Givon Prison: Anna
October 10: We did not know what time it was and the prison was more like a real “closed prison,” so not a torture camp like Ketziot was. There was only a small window through which we could see whether it was day or night outside, nothing more. The cells were way smaller than in Ketziot, but it was definitely cleaner here. It did not look like a torture prison—but that didn’t mean that the guards were not torturing us there.
As in Ketziot, we found a way to communicate with the other cells. For that, we used the small air vents in the door. We kneeled down on the floor to speak through the small slot and held our ears next to them to hear messages from the others. This way we knew how many we were and that meant we knew that some women were missing. We knew that some of them were isolated, so we made a pact: No one leaves to go home if the missing comrades are not released with us. I remember that feeling being very powerful, because I knew if I were isolated, they would do the same for me and that no one would be left alone in there.
Still figuring out where exactly we were, we saw in our cell the name of one participant of the flotilla that sailed before us.
At night, they came into our cells again, waking us up, making us stand. I told the cell mates to not get up every time, so perhaps that’s why the guards targeted me. I was the one in the cell to initiate the resistance against their orders to get up in the middle of the night. I spent a lot of time lying on my folding bed, not being tired and being exhausted at the same time.
They took us out again for our “outside time,” but as we were walking and running in a circle, we started chanting “Free Palestine,” so the guards immediately brought us back inside.
“Take Her Back”: Noa
October 11: When the guards came for a prisoner count, they yelled at me to get up. I leaned against the wall for support and they grew frustrated that I wasn’t moving fast enough. Exhausted from the lack of food and water, and sore all over, I could barely support my own weight. “I am trying,” I said. This exchange would recur every few hours. It was calculated; not simply a headcount but a deliberate technique, a form of psychological warfare meant to destabilize prisoners, disrupt any sense of time, and prevent sleep or any sense of mental calm.
During the day, I was yelled at for throwing a clump of hair through the slot in the cell door into the corridor, remnants that had been pulled out of my head. “What do you think this is, a hair salon?” the guard shouted back with the most typical of Israeli attitudes. I laughed, I must admit, my stomach retracting in pain. The arbitrary nature of the comment juxtaposed with what we were collectively experiencing, why we were enduring it, for whom, and to uphold what principles. I heard her rhetorical question again in my head. I had grown up around this tone exactly.
Weak from the worst beating and with a black eye beginning to swell, I was informed that I would be taken for a medical consultation with a doctor. I had been consistently and loudly demanding access to my lawyer. I stated that I had not asked for a doctor and that I would not leave my cell until I saw my lawyer. Guards entered the cell. I did not physically resist, but engaged in the non-violent protest technique of going limp, dead weight for the guards to manage and shackle. I would not help them.
One of the woman guards proceeded to drag me by my wrists into the corridor. My knees scraped through the sweatpants. Dirty water had pooled in the center of the corridor, soaking and soiling my sweatpants as I was dragged through it. Midway, the guard began yanking me by the hair. She now had a grip on both my hair and wrist shackles, as she pulled me through the prison hallway toward a doctor I did not want to see. I lost a rubber slipper somewhere in that corridor. Once she got me to the outer door, I was lifted by a male guard into a wheelchair. I slumped over as she pushed the chair on its back wheels down a few stairs into the courtyard. I was nearly vegetative, extremely dehydrated with dry and cracked skin and lips from lack of water, exhausted, beaten and bruised, unkempt hair now immense in volume, bra-less in a dirty white t-shirt, with a busted lip, and missing a shoe. In a state of protective disassociation, I refused to move a single muscle to assist their displacement of my body. I can remember a toe dragging across the black asphalt as they wheeled me across the yard and into the infirmary.
Even today, my most vivid memory is of being dragged through the prison hallway by my hair and wrist cuffs as dead weight.
An Ashkenazi doctor sat behind the desk, visibly unsettled by my appearance. He couldn’t ignore the black eye or the bruising across my arms. He asked the staff what I needed and to inform him of the situation. Though weak, I met his gaze and interrupted him. In Hebrew, I said “You’ve wasted your Shabbat in coming here.” I had, in a new way, made it clear that I wanted nothing from them, and would not accept this gesture of false benevolence. I repeated, “I’m not taking anything from you. I’m not doing anything until I see my lawyer.”
He responded, “OK, I guess there’s nothing to do. Take her back.”
Released: Anna
October 12: We went to bed and the same routine came during the second night: Every hour, I am guessing, we had to get up and say our names and our number—each time in a different way.
In the morning of October 12, they came into the cells very early and told us to get ready to go home. We got ready and then waited for a long time. They checked our cells three times before they took us out. I sat on the bus with three others, next to one another, looking out at the U.S. flags and “Thank you, Trump!” posters. We did not know it was the day of the prisoner release.
We also did not know where they would take us. We did not expect to be taken to Jordan, so we were looking for the airport, but we drove straight through the West Bank.
When we arrived in Jordan, they pulled us out of the prison bus violently, one after another. They opened our handcuffs and shackles and then asked for our identification as we stood between the bus and the armed soldiers, prison guards, and police. After having registered our passports, they pushed us up the two steps into a tour bus, and I remember that moment as one of the best feelings ever… All the men from the flotilla were standing in the back of the bus and in the front there were all the women. Everyone was applauding and smiling, hugging each other. We greeted everyone as they were pushed into the bus. As soon as everyone was inside, the two Jordanian bus drivers closed the doors and we started to hit the windows, screaming “Free Palestine.” The bus drivers said we needed to leave there quickly because it could get dangerous. At this moment I knew we were free.
So there we were—newly released after five days in Israeli detention—still trying to process what had just happened, yet aware that we were free. Back at the hotel, we were welcomed by numerous organizers from the Flotilla, whose support and relief were palpable. For the first time since we were captured, we were able to follow the news.
Banned for 100 Years: Noa
Some guards had alluded to our imminent departure but we did not yet know where we were being taken. Through the metal barriers and obscured windows of the prison bus, we caught glimpses of increasingly arid terrain. In retrospect, it was clear that we were being driven through the occupied West Bank toward Jordan and the Allenby-King Hussein crossing.
Once we arrived in Jordan, we were freed from the Israel Prison Service (IPS) buses and our shackles were removed for good. We cheered “Free Palestine!” in the faces of the IPS guards before boarding the Jordanian bus.
We hugged each other, sang, and shared cigarettes of relief donated by the bus driver as he drove us to what looked like a small, abandoned airport. Our belongings were laid out on the ground and we scavenged through the bags bearing the Hebrew acronym for prison, searching for our assigned prison numbers. Inside the vacant terminal, were consulate officials who had arranged transportation for their respective citizens into Amman and onward to the hotel where flotilla organizers were waiting. No American officials showed up. The Canadians were kind enough to help those of us with American passports arrange transport.
Representatives from Thousand Madleens and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, along with a Jordanian delegation, were waiting for us at the Landmark Hotel. We were met with fresh clothes, comfortable rooms, a buffet, and arrangements to get home. The contrast of this soft landing at this five-star hotel was jarring, a far cry from how we’d spent the previous night.
Ismail Beheşti, son of Cengiz Songür—one of ten participants killed by Israeli soldiers in 2010 aboard the Mavi Marmara as part of a flotilla mission—was there to welcome us. He spoke of his gratitude for our work, and we all cried.
We were told that Israel had banned us for 100 years, though we never received any documentation confirming whether this was a legal determination or simply the preference of the Israeli government.
At the hotel in Amman, I took my first shower and saw my reflection for the first time since leaving Otranto. The showers on the boat were in disuse, and we used the bathroom mirrors only when washing our faces in the morning. I’d barely broken 105 pounds before we sailed, and was likely in double digits now. The bruises made sense only if I really thought to trace their origin: This potato-sized purple mark in the middle of my spine must have come from one strike, this one from another blow. My calves were mottled, my eye had purpled profoundly over two days, with bruising extending up to my ear, into my skull, and around my neck. Dried blood sitting in my right ear like salt crystals had evaded the first shower.
It was on the flight to Istanbul that I realized I had lost sensation in my outer fingers. I began scraping the seat belt tab across my right thumb. Nothing. No sensation. My pinkies had limited sensation as well. My hands were covered in small slashes from the metal restraints. Some of the swelling had gone down. My forearms and upper arms were covered in bruises of varying sizes. I would later learn that this loss of sensation, caused by prolonged pressure on the radial nerve, is extremely common among Palestinian prisoners and is known as handcuff neuropathy, orWartenberg’s syndrome.
I was aware going into the flotilla that there was a high likelihood we would be banned from the territory, as previous flotilla participants had been. I would not be with my Yemen-born grandfather, now 93, in his final days, nor perform our shared ritual of mourning upon his passing. Though I hadn’t visited occupied Palestine in years out of solidarity, this was still a consideration, a sacrifice to be made, like the sacrifices we were all making.
Prisons like Ketziot that are designed to torture Palestinians continue to exist. We knew that this ceasefire would not end systematic oppression and occupation. Though the flotillas were not successful in reaching our Palestinian siblings this time, we remain undeterred.
Upon our release, one development dominated the headlines: the new ceasefire. Yet the situation on the ground remained deeply unstable. The need for international solidarity is more urgent than ever. Since October 11, the first day of the so-called ceasefire, Israel has killed more than 800 Palestinians, wounding more than 2,300, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. A report shared with Palestinian negotiators and obtained by Drop Site documents more than 2,300 ceasefire violations by Israel.
In recent weeks, the focus on the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has blotted out concern for ongoing crises, including the passage of an Israeli law authorizing execution by hanging of Palestinian prisoners; the spread of genocidal violence in the occupied West Bank and the continued expansion of illegal settlements there; as well as Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanese territory.
In April, a new flotilla set sail. Boats from multiple coalitions departed Mediterranean ports in France, Spain, and Italy, committed to breaking the illegal Israeli siege of Gaza. The repeated kidnapping, abuse, and assassination of journalists, medical workers, human rights advocates, and others aboard the flotillas has been met with near silence from the international press, diplomats, and the very organizations meant to stand up for these professions. And if the abuses we faced have been disregarded, the Palestinians continuing to endure a genocide have been actively normalized. The coalitions set sail with the determination to take action alongside Palestinians fighting for their very survival.
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