Australians Allege Abuse After IDF Intercepts Gaza Flotilla; Ben-Gvir Taunts Detainees

Australian Zack Schofield said he watched helplessly as Israeli soldiers beat an Irish female flotilla activist to the ground after she shouted “free Palestine” at Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Schofield, speaking from Istanbul after deportation, said her hands and feet were zip-tied together, then she was dragged around the processing center before being taken to a prison bus.

Schofield said many of the Global Sumud flotilla’s 428 members received brutal treatment after the Israel Defense Forces intercepted their boats sailing from Turkey to deliver food and aid to Gaza.

“Many people received similar or worse treatment for much less,” the climate action organizer from Newcastle said. “There’s no consistency to the violence. It was really at the whim of whichever guard was in front of you.”

Eleven Australians were among those detained by the IDF earlier this week. The detainees allege they endured torture, sexual assault, beatings and non-lethal shooting.

The Israeli ambassador to Australia, Hillel Newman, claimed the detained flotilla members were handled with “great sensitivity.” He rejected claims of violence and sexual abuse.

“Out of the 400-plus people that were on the flotilla, no one was harmed,” Newman told the ABC on Thursday.

All of the Australian activists needed first aid after their detention, and three were taken to a hospital in Turkey, flotilla coordinators said. Other members were photographed with bruises and torn skin.

Juliet Lamont, an Australian filmmaker, told reporters in Turkey that Israeli soldiers sexually assaulted and beat her. She said soldiers beat 180 people on her prison boat, leaving at least 40 with broken bones, while others were Tasered and sedated.

“We were tortured,” Lamont alleged. She traveled on another flotilla in October 2025 and claimed she was sexually assaulted then. The soldiers’ violence was far worse this time, she said.

“It was a relentless and very targeted and very planned campaign of violence so that we wouldn’t come back.”

Schofield insisted he would willingly sail toward Gaza again.

“Every activist on the flotilla, whether they choose to come back or not, has only had their heart more emboldened by witnessing and experiencing the brutality of the Israeli state,” he said.

Schofield said the violence began when IDF ships intercepted their aid-carrying boats on Monday and forced the crews onto prison ships.

Armed guards threatened detainees with stun guns, shot them with non-lethal “beanbag rounds” for the slightest “supposed provocations,” and left some bleeding, Schofield alleged.

They were left to sleep in light grey prison tracksuits on cold, wet floors for two days, with no blankets or mattresses, “cheek by jowl,” Schofield said. He estimated each exposed container held four people per square meter.

Taken to the port of Ashdod for immigration processing, Schofield said detainees complied with soldiers’ instructions until one soldier took a man of Arab appearance from the crowd to a shipping container.

“We heard his screams for about a minute, not the screams of being punched or beaten, but of a constant pressure being applied,” the 27-year-old alleged.

“When our people rose up, in protest of this shouting, they used that as an excuse to shoot beanbag rounds into a crowd.”

They were taken to Ktzi’ot prison and spent two days there, where Schofield said he had his hands handcuffed behind his back for hours at a time. Detainees were made to lift their arms over their heads “to the point of dislocation,” he alleged.

Schofield said prison guards restricted detainees’ access to water and forced them to sit in painful stress positions on the ground or pushed them to crowd into each other.

He said he never saw the face of an IDF soldier or prison guard; all of them were masked.

Ben-Gvir avoided meeting his gaze during his tour of the detainees’ prison, Schofield said.

“He was doing his tour in front of us and always looking past our ears, never in my eye. I tried to catch his eye, but no … the veneer of courage is pretty thin,” Schofield said.

Ben-Gvir faced condemnation in Australia and around the world after sharing footage of himself verbally abusing the kneeling and bound detainees.

He was criticized within Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defending the flotilla’s interception but condemning his minister, stating: “The way that minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms.”

Schofield said: “He [Ben-Gvir] is a wonderful example of the policies of the Israeli state … It’s very, very good that he has been so public in displaying his attitudes towards humanitarian volunteers.”

Melbourne student Neve O’Connor, another flotilla participant, alleged soldiers kneed her in the face and stomach, slammed her head into a table and pulled at her earrings with pliers. She said she was subjected to degrading comments during a strip search.

O’Connor said guards forced detainees to swap cells almost every hour, playing “mind games,” where prisoners saw drawings on cell walls left by former Palestinian prisoners.

“It was a physical reminder of the fact that we may have been brutalised, but it was nothing in comparison to what Palestinians go through,” she said.

Jewish Australian Anny Mokotow joined the flotilla after growing frustrated with the federal government’s refusal to support Palestinian voices. She said she wanted a new way to raise awareness of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The 71-year-old said at sea she was galvanized by news of a Palestinian peak body being refused leave to appear at the Australian royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion, which was prompted by the antisemitic Bondi terror attack that killed 15 people in December.

“Gaza is being decimated, people are dying every day,” she said.

“I felt … only with my body can I make a difference now, because it seems as if nobody is really able to listen,” Mokotow said.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs was contacted for comment.