Israel Detained Over 450 Activists, Including Greta Thunberg

“They dragged little Greta before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag,” one of the activists aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla said.

By Danielle Han  |  October 6, 2025 | 5:34pm
Politics
Israel Detained Over 450 Activists, Including Greta Thunberg
Greta Thunberg speaks to the press after arriving at Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport on October 6 in Athens, Greece. Photo: Getty Images
Israel has blocked Gaza from receiving life-saving food and medical supplies. Again.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Israel’s navy seized the Global Sumud Flotilla, capturing over 40 vessels, detaining 479 activists from 70 different nationalities, and continuing its malicious campaign to starve Palestinians. Among those apprehended were activist Greta Thunberg, the former Mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau, and European Parliament member Rima Hassan.

According to one Turkish filmmaker and activist on board, Thunberg was specifically targeted and mistreated during the imprisonment as a “warning to others.”

“They dragged little Greta before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag,” Ersin Çelik told Anadolu Agency, a Turkish news outlet. “They did everything imaginable to her.” Italian journalist Lorenzo D’Agostino further told the outlet that she’d been “wrapped in the Israeli flag and paraded like a trophy…We were shocked by the level of humiliation and gratuitous cruelty that these people used on us.”

After seizing the last vessel on Friday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry tweeted that the humanitarian campaign was “nothing but a provocation,” emphasizing it was starting the process of deporting the participants. “Israel is keen to end this procedure as quickly as possible,” the ministry claimed. But the experience of Thunberg and others suggests otherwise.

“No immediate deportation,” Kieran Andrieu, a British-Palestinian journalist aboard the flotilla, said he was told by Israeli officials after being captured. “Even if you want to be immediately deported, you’re going to prison.” He—and others—were bound with cable ties for three to four hours, and he recounted how he’d moved his fingers around to try and keep the blood circulating. Speaking to Democracy Now!, he added that “the most egregious thing of all…is that they were throwing people’s medicine in the bin in front of them and laughing in their faces.”

Other flotilla members corroborated the abuse accusations, with another Italian journalist saying they were “treated like monkeys.” Detainees were reportedly served rotten food, undrinkable water, and sometimes beaten. After returning home, Spanish lawmaker Juan Bordera said, “We fear” for the remaining prisoners.

Israel has “no right” to intercept the flotilla in international waters, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, told Al Jazeera. On Wednesday, she tweeted: “As I watch Israel’s illegal abduction of the only humans who have risked their lives to break Israel’s unlawful blockade, my thoughts are with the people of Gaza, trapped in Israel’s killing fields. Shame on Western governments first and foremost, and their complicit inaction.” Albanese has also described the interceptions as an “illegal abduction.”

As of Monday afternoon, Israel says it deported at least 170 of the flotilla participants—though it also purports “the claims regarding the mistreatment of Greta Thunberg and other detainees from the Hamas–Sumud flotilla are brazen lies.”

In the last two years, Israel’s continued genocide in Gaza has killed more than 67,000 people and wounded nearly 170,000. Nearly a third of the casualties have been children under 18.

Donald Trump has offered a 20-point peace plan, which was accepted by Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, last Monday. But the plan does not require Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza. On Sunday, Trump said the first phase would be completed this week.

The Global Sumud Flotilla was one of the largest civilian flotilla coalitions to try and break Israel’s blockade, and was captured just months after the “Handala” was seized in July. Currently, another floating-hospital flotilla is bound for Gaza, carrying 250 doctors, nurses, and journalists, and is about 200 nautical miles from the territory.

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