By John Reuwer, World BEYOND War, May 5, 2026

As part of the Gaza Sumud Flotilla of 2026, our honorable little sailboat Nagual was one of the last intercepted in international waters west of Crete on April 30. Seven Israeli commandos with full military regalia and automatic weapons pointed at us boarded our boat, searched it and us, and forced us onto their large inflatable for a high speed, cold, and uncomfortable ride to a cargo ship that had been converted into a floating prison. From the moment we arrived, we were treated as if we were dangerous criminals: heads down, often forced to our knees with heads on the floor, barked at, and hit if we complained about anything. During an overly long pat down search, most of our few remaining possessions were confiscated. We were then walked into a concrete and steel deck surrounded by large shipping containers. Many of us have described our conditions and treatment in detail elsewhere, but here want to share a few images that popped unexpectedly into my head during my brief captivity.

Quite unexpectedly to my mind, scenes from past movies about German Nazi concentration camps seemed to appear out of nowhere almost in sequence as if building a narrative. The first few hours after being left to ourselves on board where not terribly unpleasant. We milled about, making sure each other were okay, and trying to figure out which boats were taken, who was here or not, and speculating on our fate.

At one point, I noticed a man sitting in a chair on the deck of the ship’s tower several stories above us, observing our caged behavior. Relaxed and unarmed, sometime drinking from a cup while other times looking through binoculars. I could not help but think about the commandant of the concentration camp in Schindler’s List, who would sit over his subhuman charges and occasionally decide who to kill for sport that day. He was there much of the day leaving me with a creepy feeling.

Next, I noticed that the large steel cargo containers, unventilated but for a single door, into which we were crammed, reminded me of the many scenes in various movies of people being stuffed into train cars for transport to concentration camps. Only later would we experience being crammed into them knee to knee and shoulder to shoulder under the heat of the sun for hours, not knowing how long we might be there.

I looked at the zip tie on my wrist held a tag with my number 154. Certainly not a tattoo, but then we were only imprisoned for two days. What might come later, I pondered? Our initial guess that our captors would release us in Greece rather than drag us to Israel faded after we had long sailed past Crete. Would some of us end up for weeks or months or years in Israeli prisons like over 9000 Palestinians?

A fourth image manifested when we were awakened one night by seawater flooding the prison yard where many of us were sleeping. Since 180 people were crammed into space for half that number, 45 people were required to sleep outside in the damp chill. Engineers among us cleverly arrange the sleeping pads as both beds and arched coverings. I shared a 7 x 5‘ space with two other men. After a few hours, I awakened to hear talking and notice people standing around. The small space near my mattress pad was wet. I crawled out of my space to see that the yard had been flooded with one to 2 inches of water, which was absorbed by many of the mattresses. People were milling about shivering some with very wet clothes. To stay warm, they began to walk in a small oval defined by the short circumference of the yard. The spotlights and armed guards stood above. Mostly silent, they circled at a slow pace, over and over. For my taste far too much like my movie memories of thin and exhausted prisoners, silently making such circles to deal with the endless boredom and hopelessness of the concentration camps.

Reviewing these superficial thoughts during my brief experience makes me want to apologize to those who have and are suffering real and ongoing brutality. It also reminds me of the thorough education I have had about the Nazi holocaust of Jews, and much less about the genocides of others at the time, not to mention that of the many other peoples in history and ongoing in Africa, Asia and the Americas. The cry “Never Again” was such a noble one after WW2 until it has become clear that most governments of the world mean it only for those aligned with Israel, and everyone else is fair game.

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