Israel ‘beat, tied up and tortured’ Gaza flotilla activists in prison
In Ketziot prison, 2020
Oscar Rickett reports in Middle East Eye on 7 October 2025:
A Jewish American activist deported from Israel after participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla has told Middle East Eye that he and his fellow detainees were regularly beaten, tied up, psychologically tortured and denied food and medicine over a period of five days in prison.
David Adler, the co-general coordinator of the left-wing organisation Progressive International, was one of about 470 activists intercepted by Israeli naval forces in international waters and taken first to the port of Ashdod and then to Ketziot, a prison in the Negev desert notorious for rampant sexual abuse and violence.
He said the naval interception had been violent, that an Israeli barge had fired water cannons at the flotilla, tried to ram them and that in the end Israel had stolen all the ships. Taken in international waters, the activists were abducted and brought to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
“From the first moment we stepped onto that tarmac after interception, we were violently forced onto our knees into positions of submission,” Adler said, speaking from Amman, the capital of Jordan, on Tuesday.
He said that once in positions of submission in the detention centre at Ashdod, he and the other Jewish member of the flotilla “were taken by the ear and ripped from the group for a photo op with Ben Gvir staring at the flag of the state of Israel”. Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler and Israel’s far-right minister of national security, visited the site and derided the captured members of the flotilla as “terrorists”. Adler said he and the other activists were “taunted by his goons”. “I went to visit Ketziot prison and I was proud that we are treating the ‘flotilla activists’ as terror supporters. Whoever supports terrorism is a terrorist, and deserves the conditions of terrorists,” Ben Gvir said.
Israel’s foreign ministry has denied mistreating members of the Global Sumud Flotilla. Middle East Eye wrote to the Israeli Prison Service asking for a response to the allegations.
‘Psychologically tortured’
Speaking from Amman after his release, Adler said that “our belongings and boats were stolen from us”.
Before they left Ashdod, he said that the activists were “stripped, zip-tied, blindfolded and sent to an internment camp in a police van without any access to food, to water or to legal support”. Over the next five days, he said the group was “psychologically tortured” at Keziot Prison in the Negev desert.