‘The story is still Gaza’, Flotilla detainees continue to urge

On 6 October, Monday, Israeli officials announced the deportation to Greece and Slovakia of 171 individuals involved in the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla — including well-known Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

The Israeli foreign ministry shared on X that the deportees hailed from nations including Greece, Italy, France, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Germany, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Austria, Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark, Slovakia, Switzerland, Norway, the UK, Serbia and the United States.

Accompanying the statement were images of Thunberg and other activists dressed in white T-shirts and grey sweatpants.

Israel followed it up by taunting the flotilla’s meagre supply of aid and calling it a publicity stunt and implying it was a 'Hamas' project — right on the eve of the 7 October anniversary, with its walls plastered with efforts to drum up sympathy for killed Israelis and hostages after two years of devastation in Gaza, provoking a famine there (while boasting of how a single Gaza aid truck supplies more than the flotilla), and while holding hundreds of Palestinians (including women and children) in 'detention' (a polite name for civilian hostages?) over years and years with no intention of releasing the ones who've been held longest even in the latest ceasefire negotiation.

Since it does not amount to much and the point was always to break the Gaza sea blockade, would it not be logical to conclude Israel's assault on the ships in the flotilla was disproportionate — much like the Gaza reprisal, one might suggest?

And why did it involve mistreatment of detainees — most popularly discussed being Greta Thunberg? (Of course, detainees mistreated by Israel is not new, whether involving a flotilla or a local Palestinian.)

Israeli authorities have repeatedly denied allegations of mistreatment raised by the activists deported to Turkiye, Spain and Italy over the weekend.

Lubna Tuma, a lawyer from the Adalah association representing over 470 of the participants in the Flotilla, however reports that 150 individuals remain in custody at Israel’s Ktziot prison, with 40 of them engaging in a hunger strike.

“Some stated that they prefer that their food go to the people in Gaza,” Tuma said during a live briefing on Monday, streamed on Adalah’s and the flotilla’s Instagram accounts. She added that some detainees were also refusing water “until medical treatment is given to all detainees” — including those mistreated by the IDF.

Tuma noted that while Adalah lawyers have met with most detainees, access to all has not been granted. She accused Israeli authorities of violating activists’ rights, beginning with their interception in international waters, followed by their transfer to Israel and detention in a maximum-security facility, where she alleged they faced physical abuse and humiliation.

Israeli officials have firmly denied these accusations, insisting that the detainees’ rights were upheld throughout the process. The foreign ministry instead highlighted an incident in which one activist allegedly bit a female medical staff member.

The flotilla’s interception sparked widespread protests in cities globally, with large crowds gathering at airports to welcome returning deportees. Several activists released in recent days have shared accounts of alleged mistreatment by Israeli authorities.

“There was some dehumanising and violence and shouting,” said Roos Ykema, a Dutch flotilla participant deported to Madrid on Sunday, in an interview with the Associated Press. “But we got the ‘European’ treatment,” she added.

Some of those highlighting Greta Thunberg’s mistreatment can only compare that meted out to Australian Surya McEwan, violence against whom began the hunger strike by fellow flotilla activists.

Then there’s Mandla Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela and chief of the Mvezo Traditional council, still detained in Israel. His wife has not heard from him. Nosekeni Rabia Mandela fears for her husband's safety, even as at home she must answer the questions of the couple’s three children: "Will they kill daddy, or will he be okay?"

Perhaps not coincidentally for what many observers see as a rampant Islamophobic and racist attitude in modern-day Israel, from the ruling regime in particular, Chief Mandela practices both Thembu and Islam concurrently — and is clearly not of Caucasian descent, unlike many of the matrilineal Jews who inhabit not only Israel but, as settler-colonisers, also have been aggressively expanding the occupied territories of Palestine, including the West Bank as well as Gaza.

Some of the members of the flotilla, notably, are also politicians in their own right — and several hold public offices even now in their home countries.

One of them is Ada Colau, former Barcelona mayor, who upon her return to Spain late on 5 October, Sunday, said, “We were detained in a maximum security prison where there was no rule of law, they didn’t respect any of our rights,” Colau told journalists at the airport. “But we know this is nothing compared to what the Palestinian people are suffering every day in Gaza.”

David Adler, a Jewish member of the Flotilla who posted recently about arriving in the Red Zone on Yom Kippur, the most important holiday of his community, the Day of Atonement, is another individual still in custody.

Calling for his release, UK politician Jeremy Corbyn reiterated, “The siege is a crime. Breaking it is not.”

Colau’s sentiment was repeated by Thunberg too, who said she could speak of the mistreatment for hours — but urged journalists to remember the real story is Gaza and the attention must remain on Palestine on this day too.

Yes, this day that is the anniversary of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack — the day that was preceded by decades of Israeli violence against Palestinians, in the occupied territories of Palestine and beyond.