The activists were among more than 400 people aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF), a convoy of roughly 50 boats that set out from Turkey on 14 May with the stated aim of delivering food and humanitarian aid to Gaza and drawing attention to Israel's blockade of the territory. Israeli occupation forces intercepted the flotilla in the Mediterranean several days later and detained the participants for roughly three days, first aboard Israeli vessels and later at the port of Ashdod.
The Times said its interviews found strikingly similar accounts of mistreatment. Twenty-two of the 24 people interviewed said they had been physically assaulted, while another said she witnessed such violence and a doctor said she treated injuries caused by it. Seven activists were hospitalized after their release, and medical records reviewed by the newspaper documented injuries including fractured ribs, a fractured vertebra, a broken coccyx, a firearm wound and a collapsed lung.
Four activists said they were shot with what they believed were rubber bullets or beanbag rounds while detained aboard an Israeli vessel. Three others said they were subjected to what they believed were taser shocks while being beaten inside a shipping container.
Accounts of violence aboard Israeli vessels
The occupation’s naval commandos began intercepting the GSF on 18 May in an operation that took more than 30 hours. One participant, Italian opposition lawmaker Dario Carotenuto, said commandos approached his vessel more than 100 miles west of Gaza, outside Israel's maritime border according to a tracking application he had with him.
Carotenuto said Israeli occupation forces shattered the boat's plastic windows with rubber bullets before boarding. Activists were then taken to larger Israeli vessels that served as makeshift detention centers.
According to the detainees, they were frisked, had some clothing removed, were restrained with zip ties and pushed onto wet floors before being taken for identification checks. Many were held for as long as two days and two nights in cramped spaces where they slept on floors, sometimes in shifts.
The makeshift detention areas consisted of shipping containers surrounded by barbed wire, with armed and masked officers positioned above them. Ten activists said Israeli soldiers threw flash grenades into the courtyard, while 13 said guards fired rubber bullets or beanbag rounds into the area. One Turkish aid worker said he was shot in the thigh at close range. His hospital report, reviewed by The Times, recorded a firearm injury.
At another detention site, all 17 interviewees who were held there said detainees were individually taken into a darkened shipping container and beaten. They described being kicked and punched, while three said they were also shocked with what they believed was a taser.
Australian activist and filmmaker Juliet Lamont said an Israeli soldier sexually assaulted her inside the container after being brought there with her ankles chained and wrists restrained. She also said guards beat her and pulled her hair. An Australian hospital report later documented a mild fracture to a vertebra in her lower spine, although doctors could not determine when it occurred. Lamont reported her allegations to Australian police. Israel's Foreign Ministry called her rape testimony an outright lie and said it would investigate if an official complaint were submitted.
Other detainees described hearing activists screaming while they were being held elsewhere in the detention facility.
One Irish doctor who participated in the GSF said Israeli forces confiscated her medical supplies after her capture and did not provide replacements to treat injured detainees. She and other medics instead improvised bandages, compresses and splints from clothing, bread and plastic bottles. She said she repeatedly pleaded for water, clothing, painkillers and sanitary products.
Israel abuses GSF detainees
The activists were transferred to Ashdod on 20 May. Some were deported immediately, while others were held overnight before being moved to prison and eventually flown to Turkey.
Footage released by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir showed detained activists kneeling facedown, some with their hands tied behind their backs. The video, which was later deleted, showed Ben-Gvir taunting the detainees and described them as supporters of terrorism. It also showed Israeli officers grabbing a female activist and pushing her to the ground.
Thirteen activists told The Times they were beaten at the port, in some cases by masked men. French sailor Adrien Pain said he was taken into a tent and beaten by several men, including being kicked in the testicles.
Lawyers from the Israeli rights organization Adalah were permitted to meet 220 of the detainees but were denied access to others, according to the group's spokeswoman. The lawyers said their meetings were frequently interrupted by Israeli officers, particularly when detainees began describing abuse.
The lawyers themselves witnessed officers slapping two activists and encountered detainees suffering severe rib pain, as well as people who said fellow activists had been sexually assaulted.
The detainees were subsequently taken to Ketziot Prison before being transported to an airport and flown to Istanbul.
Testimonies echo treatment reported by Palestinian detainees
The accounts from the flotilla activists resemble testimonies of abuse previously documented among Palestinians detained by Israel during the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza.
According to investigations cited by the NYT, thousands of Palestinians from Gaza have been held incommunicado, often for weeks or months and generally without charge. International organizations and rights groups have consistently documented cases of beatings, electric shock, torture, rape, and other forms of abuse.
The most prominent such case involves a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman military prison, who Israeli occupation soldiers raped on 5 July 2024 in an attack that left him with fractured ribs, a punctured lung, and a torn rectum requiring surgery. Video of the assault, verified by Al Jazeera, showed guards using their shields to hide their identities from the camera as they carried it out.
Ten soldiers were arrested in the case, which divided Israel and prompted far-right ministers and ultranationalists to storm the prison in protest of the arrests. Israel's military ultimately dropped the charges in March 2026, a decision Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed, and which rights groups condemned; the director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel said the military had effectively given "soldiers license to rape... so long as the victim is Palestinian."
The Sumud activists, however, were held for a much shorter period and said they were treated less harshly than many Palestinian detainees.
International law experts told the NYT that the conduct described by the activists would constitute violations of international law. Janina Dill, an expert in the laws of war at Oxford University, said detainees protected under the Geneva Conventions should not be subjected to violence such as beatings or tasering.
At least four branches of Israel's security forces were involved in detaining the GSF participants.
The GSF was the largest of at least eight attempts by pro-Palestinian activists to sail to Gaza since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023. Its participants came from dozens of countries and included experienced pro-Palestinian campaigners as well as doctors, sailors, a lawmaker and other activists who said they joined to protest Israel's war and restrictions on aid reaching Gaza.
Despite the abuse and torture, several activists said after returning home that they believed the voyage had succeeded in drawing attention to conditions in Gaza.
Belgian activist Arno Meyns, who said he was beaten after being captured, said the flotilla had made an impact and that he would probably participate in another attempt to reach Gaza.
Sharing the report, the GSF said it "confirms" systemic, state-sanctioned torture mirroring long-standing abuse allegations against Palestinian prisoners, and pointed to independent hospital records and European court investigations as refuting Israel's denials; the group also invoked the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) July 2024 opinion on Gaza's territorial status and international law on blockades to demand sanctions against Israel.
The NYT report itself stops short of that legal or political framing; it documents the interviewees' abuse in "neutral" language alongside Israel's outright denial, essentially equating both.
The GSF is a civilian-led mission organized in coordination with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), a grassroots network that has run boat missions to Gaza since 2010 to break Israel's naval blockade and draw attention to humanitarian conditions there. The 2026 mission set sail to challenge the Israeli blockade and deliver humanitarian aid, and was intercepted by Israel off Crete in late April before regrouping and being intercepted again off Cyprus on 18 May, when over 400 activists were detained and transferred to Israel. It was not the group's first attempt. An earlier GSF mission in October 2025 saw more than 450 participants arrested, including high-profile figures such as Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and South African activist Mandla Mandela.
Whether the flotilla investigation ultimately leads to accountability remains unlikely, especially given Tel Aviv's trumpetting of international condemnation of its genocidal war in Gaza and ethnic cleansing drive in the West Bank. However, Sumud flotillas have, and will continue, to expose the ugly face Israeli colonialist policies to millions around the world who no longer buy Tel Aviv's justifications for committing genocide against the Palestinians.
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