The complaint is horrifying: “I was hung by my wrists and ankles, handcuffed with metal chains, hit on the stomach, back, face, ear and head by a group of guards, men and women, one of whom sat on my neck and face, preventing me from breathing”. This is the chilling account of the torture suffered by Noa Avishag Schnall, a Jewish photojournalist of Yemeni origin born in Los Angeles in the United States, arrested on 8 October by Israeli special forces on the ship Conscience of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, with over a hundred doctors and nurses and some journalists on board who wanted to reach Gaza. A photographer and writer with a long history, spanning Yemen, Norway, and Africa, she was there to document the humanitarian expedition. Now she's free, like all the other participants. The case was made public by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
The ship Conscience and the eight sailing boats of the Thousand Madleens were stopped at dawn on October 8th, approximately 150 nautical miles from the coast of the Gaza Strip. A few days earlier, on the night between October 1st and 2nd, the 43 boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla had been intercepted a few dozen miles further. All participants, the 462 from the Sumud and the 150 from the Freedom Flotilla, were taken to the port of Ashdod and then to the special prison of Keziot. The acronyms and some details have changed, but the objective was always to break the naval blockade that has been enforcing the Gaza Strip for 18 years, including from the sea, leaving Israel with full power to decide what enters and what does not in terms of food aid, medicines, and humanitarian workers.
"Testimonies report physical and verbal assaults, people forced to remain in the sun for hours, the confiscation of personal property, extremely harsh prison conditions in Ketziot prison, including lack of food and drinking water, seizure and denial of life-saving medicines, denial of access to lawyers, and hearings held without prior notice or adequate legal representation," reports Adalah, the association of lawyers, almost all of whom are Arab-Israeli women, who assisted the participants in both missions to the extent possible. It is clear that this conduct was illegal, starting with the landing in international waters. A file has already been opened at the Rome Prosecutor's Office based on two complaints from the lawyers of the Global Sumud participants, and other legal initiatives are underway at the international level.
But in some cases the treatment was worse: those arrested were beaten, forced to kneel with their faces to the ground, forced by force and threats to repeat pro-Israel phrases or insults directed at themselves. The most serious episode involving Noa Avishag Schnall is found in this sample. In Keziot, several participants in the Global Sumud, including the Brazilian Thiago Avila, the Swedish Greta Thunberg, and the Italian Tony Lapiccirella, who were making their second attempt to break the naval blockade off Gaza, were held in solitary confinement. And from the time they were transferred from the port to the prison, dozens of those arrested were subjected to blasts of freezing air in armored vans, a technique also used with Palestinian detainees that certainly falls under all international definitions of torture. It was also administered to the writer.
