Earlier this fall, hundreds of activists from all over the world crowded onto several dozen boats and set sail for Gaza. Their goal: Break through Israel’s blockade of the territory and end one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet. They thought that by sharing their journey through social media, they could capture the world’s attention.
At first, it was easy to dismiss the Global Sumud Flotilla—until it wasn’t. Before reaching Gaza, the flotilla was attacked by drones, and activists were arrested by the Israeli navy.
“We were at gunpoint; like, you could see the laser on our chest,” says flotilla participant Louna Sbou.
They were then sent to a high-security prison in the middle of the Negev desert.
“You have no control, you have no information, and you have no rights,” says Carsie Blanton, another participant. “They could do whatever they want to you.”
This week on Reveal, we go aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla for a firsthand look at what activists faced on their journey and whether their efforts made any difference.
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Credits
Reporter, producer, and guest host: Nadia Hamdan | Editor: Taki Telonidis | Fact checker: Artis Curiskis | Legal review: James Chadwick | Production manager: Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Score and sound design: Jim Briggs, Fernando Arruda, and Claire Mullen | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Special thanks: Cynthia Rodriguez and Kate Howard
Support for Reveal is provided by Reveal listeners, and the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, The Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation.
Transcript
Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.
| Nadia Hamdan: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Nadia Hamdan, sitting in for Al Letson. In late September, somewhere on the Mediterranean Sea, my friend Louna Sbou sent me this voice note. |
| Louna Sbou: | It’s crazy to know that I’m laying in a room where to my left and right and everywhere around me is the sea. I don’t know if you can hear it in the background, but that’s the sea. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The engine is off and the boat is just drifting. Louna is laying on her back, looking through a ceiling window. |
| Louna Sbou: | And I’m seeing a bit of the sky with very visible bright stars, two drones, and just a very clear Milky Way. It’s such a gorgeous image. I think I need to sit with it. And then the sound of the sea, gorgeous. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Less than 48 hours after sending me this message, Louna would be detained by the Israeli Navy, driven out to the Negev desert and locked up in one of the country’s most brutal prisons. All because she wanted to deliver aid to Gaza. |
| Speaker 3: | Israeli forces have intercepted a number of boats that are part of a flotilla attempting to break the naval blockade of Gaza. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Louna was on one of the 42 boats that sailed to Gaza earlier this fall as part of the Global Sumud Flotilla. It’s described itself as a peaceful nonviolent mission, attempting to create a humanitarian corridor by sea. Sumud means steadfastness in Arabic. A reference to what Palestinians have been forced to endure the last two years in Gaza. |
| Speaker 4: | The death toll is believed to have surpassed 67,000. Among that number is more than 18,000 children. |
| Speaker 5: | It is a famine. The Gaza famine. |
| Speaker 6: | The United Nations investigation team says Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Organizers of the flotilla say they received around 30,000 applications to join the mission. It’s now been a couple of months since the flotilla was in the news. And since then, the world has largely moved on. I mean, I get it. A ceasefire and a peace deal were declared, albeit not necessarily honored. But I keep thinking about the flotilla. When it was first announced, people didn’t really take it seriously. Nearly 500 well-meaning activists, many of whom had never sailed a day in their life, crowded onto a bunch of boats, thinking they could end one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet with Instagram. It was easy to dismiss the flotilla until it wasn’t. So today, we joined Louna and her crewmates for an exclusive look into the Global Sumud Flotilla and find out what, if anything, it achieved. |
| I’ve known Louna for over a decade. We met back in my early 20s when we were both living in Beirut and then again in Berlin. We used to see each other almost every day, but then I moved back to the U.S. and we got busy with our own respective lives on different continents. Nowadays, we go long stretches without speaking. But when she went on the flotilla, I was back to checking in with her daily, asking for updates. Boats taking part in the flotilla originated from several ports, including Spain, Tunisia, and the port of Catania in Sicily, which is where Louna arrived on August 31st. | |
| Louna Sbou: | Good morning. It’s 7:58. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | She started sending me voice notes right away. |
| Louna Sbou: | [foreign language 00:04:10] Okay, I had my first sip of coffee. So needed. I have no idea how I’m going to do it on the boat. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | It very quickly started to feel like I was there with her. |
| Louna Sbou: | There’s a baby cat. You would love it. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Louna is Moroccan, but born and raised in Germany. A mother of two. She’s soft spoken, but formidable with dark curly hair and a line tattoo down the middle of her chin, meant to reflect her ancestral connection to the indigenous people of North Africa, known as the Amazigh. And Louna has always considered herself an activist. For her, some things are just black and white, right or wrong. And for as long as I’ve known her, Palestinian solidarity has always been one of those hard lines, but it reached an inflection point the past two years of the war. |
| Louna Sbou: | It’s just tough to say. These are humans. And these are humans who are capable of starving kids and civilians. I mean, the level of rage that we’ve been feeling is extraordinary and it’s really hard to stay sane. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | So when one of the organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla invited her to join, she was interested, but she’d never done anything remotely like this before. She’d also never left her kids this long. Still, if there was a chance it could make even a modicum of difference, it would be worth it. So she said yes. One of the people Luna would sail with is Carsie Blanton, a singer-songwriter based in New Jersey. |
| Carsie Blanton: | When October 7th happened and it became clear very quickly that as a Jewish person, my identity was being used in this propaganda push against Palestinian people, that was not okay with me. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Carsie was already a public figure with a large social media following, which made her a perfect candidate for the flotilla. |
| Carsie Blanton: | I got a DM from someone who was recruiting influencers to go on the flotilla and they were like, “Would you ever consider applying?” And I was like, “I already applied. You have my application. Call me anytime.” |
| Nadia Hamdan: | This aspect of the Flotilla, that it was actively recruiting influencers and celebrities, has been a point of contention for some. The Israeli foreign ministry called it a quote, “Selfie yacht.” And critics have argued that many people on the boat were just doing it for attention, and it was nothing more than a publicity stunt. |
| Carsie Blanton: | And my take on that is yes, of course it’s a publicity stunt. So much of politics is propaganda and Israel and the U.S. are making trillions of dollars worth of propaganda all the time. So if you can get 100 influencers onto some sailboats to make your own propaganda for free, definitely do that. |
| Dane Hunter: | I saw Carsie Blanton had a video out saying that she was joining the Global Sumud Flotilla. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Dane Hunter is from the British Virgin Islands and has been a fan of Carsie’s music for years. So he messaged her. |
| Dane Hunter: | I just commented on her video saying, “Hey, I’m a sailor. Wondering if they need any hands.” |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Carsie quickly connected him with one of the organizers for a phone interview. |
| Dane Hunter: | And they asked if I could come out the next day and I said, “Sure.” |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Dane arrived in Sicily on September 1st to help prepare the boats. |
| Dane Hunter: | In terms of what kind of boats we had, all of them. We had sailboats, we had motorboats, we had small boats, we had big boats, very Dr. Seuss kind of boats. The common denominator I would say was fixer upper. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | So Dane joined a group of volunteers who had to make sure they were all shipshape, or as Louna put it… |
| Louna Sbou: | Ship shift. Ship shift safe. Making all ships safe, ship shift safe, and then we have to make everything shape shift ship safe. What is that word? Shapeshift. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | She ultimately got there. Plumbers, electricians, engineers. Organizers say they all donated their time and expertise to outfit these rinky-dink boats. Not just making sure they were safe, but also jerry-rigging them with things like Starlink and cameras so they could live stream their journey on social media. |
| Dane Hunter: | Me and the mechanic would look at each other and we’d be like, “I mean, it’s a one-way trip. It really just needs to hold up for three weeks.” And we’d be like, “Zip ties?” “Yeah, zip ties. Let’s do that.” |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | So many people, Nadia, just came to Catania just to help prepare the boats, which is enormous, enormous amount of work. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | This is Yasseen Benjelloun, who also arrived early to help prepare the boats. Yasseen works for a tech company. He’s Moroccan, but was born and raised in Montreal and currently lives in Paris. |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | You hear your parents talk about how the First Intifada, the Second Intifada, people’s homes getting stolen and peoples not being able to come back. And so all these conversations growing up, they are why I think I went on this flotilla. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Organizers say the boats would be loaded with as much aid as they could carry. Things like canned foods, medicine, and baby formula. |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | It’s nothing in comparison to what they need. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And once they were all ready to go, they would all leave from Sicily together and sail towards Gaza. |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | Many of us have never sailed before. Most of us, I would argue. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The Global Sumud Flotilla says there were a total of 42 boats carrying 462 people from 45 different countries. This was undoubtedly the largest and most ambitious flotilla attempting to sail to Gaza, but it was not the first. Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza began in 2009, a year and a half after Hamas took control of the territory. Israeli officials argued that it was necessary to prevent the group from getting weapons delivered by sea. But critics of the blockade have long argued that it violates international law because it’s collectively punishing Palestinian civilians, severely restricting their movements, the importing of goods, even their ability to fish. Since Israel’s blockade began, dozens of flotillas have tried to reach Gaza and create a humanitarian corridor. In those first few years, everything remained largely peaceful and five flotillas actually made it to Gaza. But that changed in 2010, aboard the Mavi Marmara. |
| Speaker 10: | Tens of people, civilians have been injured. There are still sounds of life, fire despite the white flag being raised onboard the ship, which holds 600, all of whom are civilians. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | 10 people were killed by Israeli forces. An investigation by the International Criminal Court said it believed what happened on the Mavi Marmara constituted a war crime. Israel agreed to pay $20 million in restitution to the families of the victims. And still, the flotillas have not stopped. Most of them have been intercepted by the Israeli Navy and the people arrested and sent home. All of this was expressly laid out to everyone going on this flotilla. And on top of all of that, Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben Givir, had publicly called everyone on the flotilla a terrorist, alleging that they were not actually humanitarians, but Hamas collaborators. And they will, quote, “Meet a firm and unyielding response from Israel.” I asked Louna if this worried her at all. |
| Louna Sbou: | If we would let them scare us, why would we then continue or even start this mission? I think it’s important that we just continue and we see what happens. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The Barcelona fleet had already been sailing for a week when they stopped in a Tunisian port on September 7th. The plan was to take a break and then continue on to meet the rest of the fleet in Sicily. But around 11:30 PM the following night, a drone dropped an incendiary device on the family, the lead boat carrying all the main organizers of the flotilla. The fire was put out and no one was hurt. GSF organizer Yasemin Acar. |
| Quickly took to social media and accused Israel of the attack. | |
| Yasemin Acar: | They have bombed a boat once again with civilians on it in Tunisian territory. This is an attack against Gaza because they don’t want us there. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Then a second drone attack happened the following night. Again, there were no injuries or damage. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied the allegations that they were responsible for these attacks, but CBS News reported that two American intelligence officials speaking under anonymity told them that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had approved the strikes and that the drones had been launched from a nearby submarine. A few people reportedly left the mission after the attacks, but Louna said most everyone she spoke to saw this as nothing more than a scare tactic. For Carsie, this was not only a scare tactic, but a big miscalculation. |
| Carsie Blanton: | I remember my mom sent me a New York Times article about that, and I remember walking around the port in Sicily like, “Did you guys see this? The New York Times covered it. We have the attention of the world in a way that is unusual, and so again, we have to see this thing through.” |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Most people just continued as normal, loading boats and preparing to set sail. Louna’s boat was called Paola 1. It’s a small sailboat that can fit 10 people, and Louna tells me she hasn’t always liked everyone she’s met on this mission, but she liked her crew. It wasn’t long before they were all laughing and playing music together. The vibes were good. The boat was loaded and they were ready to go, but they were told they had to wait for the fleets coming from Tunisia who were still running behind. |
| Dane Hunter: | Then they kind of kept telling us, “Oh, one more day. Just one more day, guys.” And it really got to the point where it was feeling like one of those friends calling you up saying, “Oh, I’m almost there.” And they haven’t even put their pants on yet. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Everyone in Sicily had originally been told they would set sail on September 4th, and the entire trip was supposed to take around two weeks total. Now it was pushing two weeks and they hadn’t even started sailing. Boats kept breaking down. There were weather concerns. Seasickness was a real issue. Not to mention the steering committee was also juggling the wants and needs of nearly 500 different people. |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | I would argue maybe 60% of the mission was to manage everyone’s desires and fears and complications and baggage and the way they see life. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | People were getting antsy. Some had kids back home, parents with dementia. A few even lost their jobs to be here. They were getting nervous that this whole thing was about to fall apart. Not to mention the airstrikes in Gaza were only intensifying. And some people couldn’t hide their frustrations anymore. |
| Hamish Paterson: | Wow, who is calling [inaudible 00:16:13] on all of this? |
| Nadia Hamdan: | This is Hamish Paterson, captain of the boat Oahu, in one of the many Zoom meetings they had about the delays. |
| Hamish Paterson: | We are calling absolute bullshit. |
| Speaker 13: | Yes, can you just let me talk please? |
| Hamish Paterson: | No, I’m not going to hang up and I’m not going to get shut down because I’m sick of getting shut down and I’m going to call it now for what it is. You’re about to have a mutiny on your hands. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And there was a minor mutiny of sorts. |
| Carsie Blanton: | We’re not waiting anymore. We’re going. But then only three of us actually left. And then a fourth boat had to come get us physically and say, “We’re forming a captain’s union. Come back.” |
| Nadia Hamdan: | After Paolo 1 and the other boats returned, captains came together and created a list of demands to the steering committee. Any boats that weren’t ready to sail right now would not go on the mission. And they would leave the following day at 10:00 AM, no question. |
| Dane Hunter: | And if they were not all met, every captain would walk. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | So the steering committee agreed. |
| Carsie Blanton: | And so the miracle to me was that we did reorganize it from within and also nobody canceled it. You got 500 leftists from everywhere in the world to get together, do a thing that was clearly not very functional, and instead of whistle blowing on each other, everybody just got our hands dirty and made it work. And to me, that’s a really proud moment for the left. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And so the Global Sumud Flotilla officially set sail. |
| Dane Hunter: | Oh man, so getting underway finally was magical. Everybody cheering, everybody’s screaming. |
| CREW: | Let’s get out of here. |
| Let’s go. | |
| Dane Hunter: | Just this sense of we’re doing it. All of this preparation, all of this work, it’s actually come together and we’re sailing East finally. We’re heading towards Gaza. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | With sails unfurled, Paolo 1 joins dozens of boats heading across the Mediterranean. There’s a feeling of hope on the high seas. |
| CREW: | There’s a cargo ship. Oh, my gosh. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | But it wouldn’t last long. |
| CREW: | Cover, cover. Cover. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | That’s coming up on Reveal. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | From The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Nadia Hamdan sitting in for Al Letson. |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | The day we left, I was jumping on the boat, chanting, and I kept doing the very loud horn all the time. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | After weeks of feeling stuck, everyone on Paula I comes alive on the water. It starts to feel a little like a Disney movie. Louna sends me videos of sunrises, dolphins. |
| Louna Sbou: | Wow. Wow. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And of Carsie leading everyone in song at sunset. |
| Carsie Blanton: | And even if. |
| Crew: | And even if. |
| Carsie Blanton: | We don’t survive. |
| Crew: | We don’t survive. |
| Carsie Blanton: | We keep that little flame alive. |
| Crew: | We keep that little flame alive. |
| Carsie Blanton: | It was so beautiful. It was like the most beautiful experience of my life, and the hardest. It was the best of times and the worst of times. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Because it’s not all singalongs and lovable sea creatures. For one, they all have to get a crash course in sailing. The plan is to take shifts manning the boat at night, so everyone can get some sleep. |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | And so I was teaching all of my crew in the night, and quizzing them constantly like, “Okay, that boat, do we have to worry about it?” “No, they’re off our starboard and they’re going starboard.” “Correct. That boat, do we have to worry about?” “Yes. Yes, we do. Let’s turn right now.” Everybody on board Paola came out as a sailor. |
| Crew: | Go, go, go, go, go. Yep. Nice. Looking good. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And while things are pretty mellow, the boats are being followed by a few drones. |
| Crew: | I’m actually seeing one right now. It’s above our window, above the must. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | They’re far enough away that they don’t feel threatening, but the crew wants to be prepared for anything. So at night, they practice drills on how they would respond in different emergency situations. Louna records one of these drills in which she pretends to be the Israel Defense Forces coming to arrest them. |
| Louna Sbou: | IRF! IRF! Get your passports, your phone. Everything. Hurry up! |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The goal is to get passports ready, life vests on, and hands in the air as fast as possible. |
| Louna Sbou: | Who’s the captain? Who’s the captain? Who’s the captain? Are you the captain? |
| Nadia Hamdan: | They all stay silent because they were instructed not to identify the captain. |
| Crew: | Let’s see how much time that was. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And everyone learns just how loud a soft-spoken Louna can be. |
| Louna Sbou: | I’m sorry. Two and a half minutes. |
| Crew: | Two and a half minutes. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | By the fifth night on the water, the crew is feeling pretty confident. |
| Dane Hunter: | It was a very calm evening. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | There’s a light breeze. Virtually no waves. |
| Dane Hunter: | And I think I even mentioned to Louna, “Yeah, I think I’m actually going to get some rest tonight.” |
| Nadia Hamdan: | It’s Louna’s shift. At this point, Dane trusts her at the helm, so he tells her to just wake him up if there are any issues. And then something strange happens with the two-way radio. |
| Louna Sbou: | Can we turn up the volume? |
| Dane Hunter: | I heard something. |
| Louna Sbou: | There was something here, right? |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The Abba song, Take a Chance On Me, starts blaring on the flotilla’s radio frequency. |
| Louna Sbou: | Should we wake people up just to stay alert? |
| Crew: | I think so. What the fuck. |
| Louna Sbou: | It was cutting in and out and they scrambled our own communications. And it’d be like and then Take a Chance On Me would play. It was very horror movie like. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | This is fucking creepy. |
| Dane Hunter: | Yeah, this is screwed. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Most of the crew is getting nervous and starts scanning the skies for drones. |
| Carsie Blanton: | Like a star became a drone. An airplane became a drone. The word drone was said out loud many times when it was not. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Yasseen even tells Carsie, “Maybe we’re overreacting.” |
| Carsie Blanton: | And she’s like, “Yeah, I don’t really know, but okay.” So I go to bed, we’re sharing a bunk bed, and I hear a huge explosion. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Now, Louna and I had been texting since that Abba song first came on the radio. I remember telling her I had a bad feeling, but she told me not to worry. This is just another scare tactic. And then, I kid you not, I get a text literally a second later that just reads, “Bomb!” I text her. No answer. I call her. No answer. I remember just feeling paralyzed. Finally, after the longest few minutes of my life, she calls me and I just stay on the phone and listen. |
| Louna Sbou: | Five drones on harbourside. One drone is getting lower. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | At this point, everyone is on deck scanning the skies. The first explosion they had only heard. It had gone off somewhere in the back of the fleet. 10 to 15 minutes later, there’s another explosion. |
| Dane Hunter: | In that one we actually saw, we saw the bright flash of it, and then we really realized just how many drones were all around us. I mean, yeah, the sky was littered with stars and drones. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Then another explosion. |
| Louna Sbou: | Explosion in front one. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And another. |
| Louna Sbou: | Oh shit. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And another. |
| Louna Sbou: | Explosion. Which boat is that? Is that boat chef? You’re okay? Is everyone okay? |
| Nadia Hamdan: | For Dane, the scariest moment is when a drone hovers right over their boat. |
| Dane Hunter: | And we could hear this thing. We could see this thing. It was like a massive wasp. And right away, I remember Louna called out for everybody to get down and we all just hunkered in place. We all got down and we all braced. |
| Crew: | Oh my God! |
| Louna Sbou: | It’s okay. Breathe. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | I stay glued to my phone as reports of the attacks begin to reach the news and social media. |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | And at that moment, Nadia, I look at my phone and… So I grew up in the Muslim faith, the Islamic faith. And there’s this very famous sentence I’m sure you maybe heard or not, that Muslims say the moment they think they’re going to die or the moment they die. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The phrase is [Arabic 00:07:15] |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | We belong to God and to God we shall return. And so I look at my phone and I see my mother sends me in Arabic that text message. And that was pretty hard to live because, am I going to die? Is this the end? |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Thankfully, his mother was wrong. |
| Louna Sbou: | After four or five strikes, it became clear they were all at the front of the boats. They were all near the sails. And then we’re like, “Okay, they’re trying to make us scared and/or hurt our sails.” |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Soon, the sun starts to come up. Four hours have gone by, and I’m still on the phone with Louna. Does it seem to be calming down? |
| Louna Sbou: | It’s hard to say. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | I know. |
| Louna Sbou: | That was pretty exciting. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | In the end, organizers say there were at least 13 explosions on or around the boats. We learned later that these were mainly a mix of flash bangs and incendiary devices that did end up damaging three of the boats. No injuries were reported. This all happened in international waters, just south of Crete. So the flotilla decides to stop in Greek waters to regroup. |
| Process. They quickly point their fingers at Israel, which neither confirms nor denies the allegations. And after hearing reports there could be more attacks, about a dozen people decide to leave. Those who stay still believe all of this was a scare tactic, a way to get them to abandon the mission, but they don’t want to stop. | |
| And it turns out thousands of other people don’t want them to stop either. Protests breakout in places like Italy, Spain, Turkey, and Ireland. And that pressure actually seems to do something. Both Spain and Italy agree to send warships to accompany the flotilla as a precaution, and Turkey, a couple military drones. | |
| Carsie Blanton: | This mission has become about more than delivering aid. It’s testing the gap between the world’s rhetoric and its willingness to act. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And so the flotilla sets sail once more. It’s September 29th, a month since Louna left home. And this is the moment where we began with Louna laying on her back, looking through a ceiling window as the boat just drifts. |
| Louna Sbou: | And I’m seeing a bit of the sky with very visible bright stars, two drones, and just a very clear Milky Way. It’s such a gorgeous image. I think I need to sit with it. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | This would be the last moment of calm for Paola I. Two days after leaving Greece, the Flotilla is within 1150 nautical miles of Gaza. The Spanish and Italian warships turn around, but people start noticing other military vessels in the distance and they keep getting closer. On October 1st, this message comes across everyone’s radio. |
| Israeli Navy: | This is the Israeli Navy. You are approaching a blockaded zone. Attempting to reach the Gaza Strip via sea while breaching the naval blockade violates international law. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The Israeli Navy urges the flotilla to redirect their boats to the port of Ashdod in Israel, where the military would deliver the aid for them. |
| Israeli Navy: | Any further attempt to sail toward Gaza endangers your safety or places you within an active war zone. You’ll bear full responsibility for your actions. |
| Dane Hunter: | Louna and I responded to them on the radio each time they would send a message like that. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | They would quote various international laws, including Article 59 of the Geneva Convention, which basically requires any occupying power to either supply the civilian population with basic necessities, such as food, water, medicine, and clothing, or allow safe passage for humanitarian groups like the Red Cross who can provide that assistance. So despite the warnings from Israel, the Global Sumud Flotilla continues towards Gaza. |
| Louna Sbou: | Because the protocols let you go. We don’t stop. We just continue. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The flotilla is currently in international waters, and this is where things get really nuanced. According to the UN, everyone is allowed freedom of navigation on international waters and cannot be intercepted. Save some exceptions such as piracy and the slave trade. That’s why the activists and some legal experts say interception of any kind is illegal, but Israel argues that under the laws of naval warfare, if someone tries to breach a military blockade, a navy is within its right to intercept them. And so they do. |
| Louna Sbou: | Behind me is the military vessel. They’re intercepting us tonight now. We do not know how they will intercept us. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Louna’s crew mates send me videos. It’s dark, but you can see some stuff. Bright lights shining onto the boat, Zodiac speeding by, nearby boats being hit with giant water cannons. |
| Dane Hunter: | There was a submarine out there with us. There was this big mothership, huge barge looking thing. There were like three frigates versus 40 boats that we patched together with duct tape. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The Navy boards boats one by one and takes over the controls. Everyone throws their phones and computers in the water so that the Israeli military can’t access their data. So when I stopped getting videos from Paula I, I know it must be happening. |
| Louna Sbou: | Before they boarded, we were at gunpoint. You could see the laser on our chest. |
| Dane Hunter: | And their very first command was, “Shut your eyes.” And we heard them quietly, methodically going around, tearing off the Starlink, tearing off the camera, checking the inside of the boat. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The first question they ask is, “Who is the captain?” |
| Dane Hunter: | Nobody said anything. “Oh, so you’re all the captain? You think this is funny? “And then just guns caulking. And we all just quickly wipe the smile off our faces. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | It takes the Israeli Navy nearly 48 hours to take over all the boats. Everyone is brought to the port of Ashdod and made to sit on the ground of a parking lot zip tied for hours. It’s late at night when Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, arrives at the port. |
| Louna Sbou: | And so then we’re like, “Oh, that’s why they zip tied us so that Ben-Gvir can post on his TikTok like, ‘Look at all these terrorists. We’re treating them like terrorists.'” |
| Itamar Ben-Gvir: | [Foreign language 00:14:40] |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Ben-Gvir’s video cuts off abruptly. I’m told this was because everyone started chanting “Free Palestine.” At one point, Louna remembers people yelling behind her and tries to see what’s happening. |
| Louna Sbou: | And I see that they’ve placed a woman on the ground right in front of an Israeli flag. Someone pulled her hair so that she would have her head looking at the flag. And she must have been there for hours. And then I realized, fuck, that’s Great. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Greta Thunberg, the now famous climate activist, was on the flotilla and seemed to be singled out by the soldiers. |
| Louna Sbou: | They would take selfies. They would spit at her. They would kick her and fix the flag so that it would touch her constantly. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Everyone is then sent through an immigration processing center. They’re asked to sign a document saying they illegally entered the country of Israel. Everyone on Paolo I refuses to sign it, arguing that they never wanted to come here and had been kidnapped. Dane remembers one Israeli soldier turns to him and says, “You’re helping terrorists.” |
| Dane Hunter: | And I push back saying, “Hey man, my boat just had baby formula.” And I kid you not, this guy without blinking looks at me and says, “Fine. Future terrorists.” That’s when I was like, oh man, that’s fucked up, dude. How do you fix that? |
| Nadia Hamdan: | People on previous flotillas have been detained in the past, but this was the first time they were sent to Ktzi’ot, a high security detention facility deep in the Negev Desert. |
| Louna Sbou: | That was the part that for my soft Western brain was a new understanding. Being detained is not like being in prison. It’s not. You don’t have anything. You have no control. You have no information, and you have no rights. They can do whatever they want to you. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And the firsthand accounts paint a disturbing picture. Some alleged being beaten and kicked, threatened and humiliated, denied medication, food for long periods, and clean drinking water for days. Woken up in the middle of the night with dogs barking in their faces. Others say they were forced to stand outside in the hot sun for hours until they fainted. |
| Louna Sbou: | I mean, it was devastating. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The Israeli Foreign Ministry called the claims of mistreatment “brazen lies,” and that all detainees’ legal rights were fully upheld. But their National Security Minister, Ben-Gvir, said he was proud of the fact that they were treating the activists like terrorists. |
| In a statement, he said, “Whoever supports terrorism is a terrorist. It is worthwhile for them to experience the conditions in Ktzi’ot prison and think twice before they come close to Israel again.” Yasseen and everyone else I spoke to were quick to make one thing clear. This was nothing compared to what Palestinian detainees were experiencing. | |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | I know for a fact that we got it way easy. It was Disneyland for us. We were on a field trip of a prison experience because we had the good passports, we had the cameras of the world looking at us. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Amnesty International and the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem have accused Israeli authorities of abuse and inhumane treatment of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are being held under administrative detention, a policy that allows officials to hold people without charges or a formal trial indefinitely. According to data from B’Tselem, as of September 2025, nearly 3,500 administrative detainees were being held across the Israeli prison system. |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | And so what we did is to start shouting, shouting chats, “Free, free Palestine! Free, free Palestine!” And you know that they hear you. You know that they’re there. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Yasseen, Louna and Dane joined dozens of people who took part in a hunger strike while they were detained. |
| Dane Hunter: | Then one guard was trying to force me to take a sandwich. And I was telling him, “Give it to a Palestinian. I’m not eating any of your food.” And yeah, I just threw the sandwich at him. I just couldn’t help myself. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Everyone from Paola I tells me the entire experience only made them feel closer to the very people they spent years protesting for. Carsie remembers finding a broken pen hidden in one of the cells. |
| Carsie Blanton: | Without the plastic part, just the inside part of the pen. This was almost certainly a Palestinian prisoner smuggled this pen in here and they could have been in here for years. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | They all remember seeing writing all over their cell walls, mostly in Arabic. People wrote their names, where they were from. Phrases like, “God give us strength.” There were also poems and song verses. |
| Carsie Blanton: | Some of them were songwriters. I’m not different from these people. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Using that same pen, they all added their own names to the cell walls. And next to them, they drew a sailboat. Coming up, the prisoners from the flotilla are released. And even though they didn’t reach Gaza, they’re surprised to learn their voyage still had an impact. |
| Dane Hunter: | Carsie and I looked at each other. I remember we just said, “We did something.” |
| Nadia Hamdan: | You’re listening to Reveal. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Nadia Hamdan, sitting in for Al Letson. It’s October 6th and a crowd has formed at the Athens Airport to welcome back around a 160 Flotilla members who have just been released from Ktzi’ot prison. Greta Thunberg is one of them. |
| Greta Thunberg: | And I could talk for a very, very long time about our mistreatment and abuses in our imprisonment. Trust me, but that is not the story. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Most people’s stuff was either tossed or confiscated, but Greta got her luggage back. Except now the words “Poor Greta” were written on it with permanent marker. Next to that, a drawing of an Israeli flag and a penis. Louna was on the same flight as Greta after nearly a week in detainment. |
| Louna Sbou: | I think a lot of us have underestimated the impact of the violence that we’ve endured, but we’re processing. It might take some time, but … |
| Nina: | Have you called a therapist yet? |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Louna’s partner, Nina, is sitting next to her. |
| Louna Sbou: | I messaged them. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | We reached out to the Israeli government multiple times to ask about the allegations of mistreatment in Ktzi’ot and what evidence they had to suggest the activists were colluding with Hamas. We asked about the drone attacks and allegations that the Israeli military was responsible. And we wanted to know what happened to the aid after the boats were confiscated by the Navy. Israeli officials did not respond. Everyone on the Flotilla wasn’t released all at once. Remember, these are people from dozens of different countries, and each of their respective embassies was handling the release of its own citizens. Yasseen was one of the first to leave. |
| Yasseen Benjell…: | And I was there drinking water, having my meal on Turkish Airlines and flying over Gaza, the place where we were trying to enter, and it felt so surreal, so surreal. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Carsie, Dane, and other US citizens were held another three days, making them some of the last to leave. |
| Carsie Blanton: | Many of us, the Americans were like, “We have the ‘strongest passport’ because Israel really cares what the US thinks.” What we hadn’t calculated was that by making ourselves an enemy of the Israeli state, we had also made ourselves an enemy of the American state. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | They were released on October 7th, the two-year anniversary of the war in Gaza. Carsie and Dane tell me they were bused to Israel’s border with Jordan and pretty much left to fend for themselves. |
| Dane Hunter: | We saw that other consulates, other ambassadors were there with trays of food, bottles of water, packs of cigarettes. |
| Carsie Blanton: | The US person from the embassy shows up and is like, “I just want you to know we’re not going to be babysitting you. You guys are going to have to find your own way home.” |
| Dane Hunter: | And when she had found out that we were on hunger strike, she dug through her purse and had half a bag of a snack size thing of pretzels, which she offered to us. |
| Carsie Blanton: | So that was the welcome of the US embassy. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | I reached out to the State Department and the US Embassy in Jerusalem to ask about this incident. They did not respond. The Flotilla organizers get in touch with the Americans and tell them to meet at a hotel in the heart of Jordan’s capital, Amman. Dane says they walked in looking and smelling terrible, but the welcome they got from the owner of the hotel was a stark contrast to everything they just experienced. |
| Dane Hunter: | She came around and hugged each of us, and then she let us know that there was a buffet for us upstairs. And I remember walking up and seeing Carsie staring, and she looks at me and she says, “There’s a chocolate fountain,” and then she just starts weeping. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Dane says, sitting at that hotel in Jordan, they couldn’t help but feel like they’d failed. They hadn’t broken the blockade. They hadn’t delivered the aid. He says it wasn’t until he was in a taxi on the way to the airport that he started to feel differently. The driver had just finished his night shift, but wanted to take them free of charge. |
| Dane Hunter: | This gentleman lets know that many Palestinians, his family included, were able to fish for two days while the Israeli Navy was occupied with us and everybody in the taxi just broke down crying. And Carsie and I looked at each other, I remember we just said, “We did something.” |
| Abeer Barakat: | Well, yeah. Actually, we could see the fish in the market. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | This is Abeer Barakat, a Palestinian woman in Gaza. |
| Abeer Barakat: | So when Israel was occupied with the Global Sumud Flotilla, the fishermen were able to go into the sea and at least catch few fish, and I was so happy for them. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Abeer and her family lost their home two years ago, just a few days into the war. She’s now living with her in laws in Gaza City. |
| Abeer Barakat: | And it’s the last remaining home for the extended family. So if anything happened around here to this area, I think I will have no place to go home. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | A ceasefire brokered by the Trump administration began on October 10th, but Israeli airstrikes have continued, killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians. Israel blames Hamas for violating the ceasefire. Hamas blames Israel. And still, President Trump is moving forward with a peace deal. Although Abeer says that’s not what she would call it. |
| Speaker 10: | If you were to give this peace deal another name, what would you call it? |
| Abeer Barakat: | The deal of shame. This is what I call it because it’s like they are putting a gun to your head and a knife to your neck and telling you you must accept it. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Abeer is a lecturer and PhD candidate who used to spend her days teaching English at the University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza. Now, Abeer spends her days doing what she calls stone-aged chores. She builds a fire to heat water for coffee, makes bread for breakfast, waits for a truck to come by once a day with fresh drinking water. Lunch is usually canned beans. |
| Abeer Barakat: | When I look at my life, it’s very miserable. My God, I look at my hand. They used to be very soft. Now they look very black. I have many cuts on my fingers, bruises. I have burns from the wood fire. And my God. Just thinking about this makes me have this kind of self-pity because of this kind of abrupt transition in life. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | When the Flotillas started making the news, Israel and other critics argued that this was largely a publicity stunt and that it was taking away attention from people like Abeer rather than bringing it. |
| Abeer Barakat: | Well, actually, we don’t feel like that at all. In my opinion, to see international activists sailing toward Gaza, risking their freedom to challenge an illegal blockade reminds us that our struggle is not isolated and told Palestinians, “You are not alone and the world still sees you.” |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And it really did feel like the world was watching. |
| Speaker 11: | Israel, you can’t hide. You’re committing genocide. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | The Israeli’s interception and detainment of the Flotilla prompted worldwide protests that eclipsed the ones we saw after the drone attacks. |
| Speaker 8: | From Israel’s border with Gaza, to London, Athens, Barcelona, Zurich, Geneva, and Europe’s largest pro-Palestinian rallies in Milan, Naples, and Rome. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | Italy’s largest labor union even held a general strike that effectively shut down the entire country. |
| Speaker 12: | Free, free Palestine. Free, free Palestine. Free, free Palestine. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | And it wasn’t just Europe. There were protests in Malaysia and Bangladesh, Turkey and Tunisia, the US, Brazil, and Colombia, where President Gustavo Petro expelled all of Israel’s diplomats and ended the free trade agreement between the two countries. |
| Abeer Barakat: | Justice for Palestine has become a global issue of conscience. It’s no longer confined to the region. People everywhere are connecting the dots between Gaza and the broader struggles for equality and liberation. So that, to me, is a source of real hope. |
| Nadia Hamdan: | While others may not share Abeer’s optimism, it’s become clear that more and more people around the world are changing the way they feel about this conflict. In the US, the shift has been described as seismic with a recent poll by the New York Times finding that for the first time, voters now sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis. As for the Global Sumud Flotilla, organizers say until the blockade of Gaza is lifted, they will continue sailing. The next mission is scheduled for spring. |
| This week’s show was edited by Taki Telonidis, special thanks to Cynthia Rodriguez and Kate Howard. Artis Curiskis is our fact-checker. Legal review by James Chadwick. Our production manager is Zulema Cobb. Score and sound design by Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda. They had help from Claire Mullen. Our executive producer is Brett Myers. Our theme music is by Camerado/Lightning. Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Schmidt Family Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation. Support for Reveal is also provided by you, our listeners. We are a co-production of the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I’m Nadia Hamdan, and remember, there is always more to the story. |