“Designed to Break You”: Gaza Flotilla Activists Faced Violence, Sexual Abuse in Israeli Detention

“I could hear screaming the whole time.” Our guests Alex Colston and Haitham Arafat spent days in Israeli custody after being abducted from a humanitarian mission sailing to Gaza. They share accounts of violence, abuse and torture at the hands of Israeli soldiers. “The process that they have there in the jail was designed to break you as a human,” says Arafat, a Palestinian American activist born in Gaza who has taken part in multiple missions attempting to break Israel’s long-standing siege. Over 100 members of his family have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. While incarcerated, the activists were visited by Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was recently banned from France after publicly ridiculing flotilla members. “They call us provocateurs, or they say we’re terrorists … and yet, whenever Ben-Gvir shows up to these things, he’s the one provoking us,” says Colston, a journalist who was previously detained by Israel while sailing with the Global Sumud Flotilla last year.