05/23/2026
Doctors, nurses, aid workers, and everyday people whose only crime was trying to bring food and medicine to starving civilians in Gaza are coming home beaten, sexually assaulted, and traumatized, after Israeli military forces stormed the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters last Tuesday and treated humanitarian volunteers like enemy combatants.
Israeli forces abducted about 430 people aboard 50 ships, cable-tied and forced to their knees, a scene Israel's own far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted to social media while taunting the detainees.
Al Jazeera reports that organizers documented at least 15 cases of sexual abuse on a landing craft converted into a makeshift prison, where detainees were beaten and subjected to humiliating strip searches, groping, and multiple accounts of r**e.
Among those detained were 14 Irish citizens, including Dr. Margaret Connolly, a Sligo GP and sister of Irish President Catherine Connolly, people who left their homes to deliver medicine to a population that has almost none.
The Irish Examiner reports that one activist described hearing more than 170 people being beaten inside what detainees called a "torture chamber" before being thrown through the door to their fellow activists. That sent the Irish government into open fury, with Tanaiste Simon Harris telling RTE the actions were "despicable" and pushing for suspension of EU-Israel trade agreements.
Reuters confirmed Italy launched a criminal investigation into possible kidnapping and sexual assault, and Germany called some accusations "serious."
The people on those boats weren't soldiers or smugglers. They were grandmothers, doctors, and activists with cargo holds full of humanitarian supplies, treated by one of the most heavily funded militaries on earth as though mercy itself were a threat.
Irish activist Mikey Cullen said it best: "The fact that Israel would do that to us with the world watching us, I can only imagine what they do to Palestinian prisoners."
*copied from someone else’s post *
