cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/46744691

May 02, 2026

Journalist Noa Avishag Schnall covered last year’s flotilla for Drop Site, before it was illegally boarded in international waters, all participants were abducted by Israeli forces, and Noa was abused in Israeli detention. On board the Conscience, she met German journalist Anna Liedtke. Liedtke, too, was abducted by Israeli forces and raped by female guards during her time in Israeli custody, abuse she first made public in December 2025 via the women’s organization ZORA.

The brutal treatment came despite—or, perhaps, because of—the fact that Liedtke is from Germany, a country unapologetically supportive of Israel no matter what it does to Palestinians or even to Germans, and Schnall is American and Jewish, a fluent Hebrew speaker of Yemeni descent who had renounced her Israeli citizenship. The detention of those aboard the Conscience straddled negotiations over the so-called ceasefire, likely also contributing to the increasingly violent mood of the Israeli guards.

As another flotilla embarks, we asked Noa and Anna for a first-person reported account of their time on the water and in detention. They both wanted to be clear that the abuse they endured pales in comparison to that meted out on a daily basis to the some 10,000 Palestinians in custody, many of them held indefinitely without charge. Thirty-two Palestinian prisoners died in detention in 2025, and at least one has already died this year.