“We are members of the Israel Defense Forces. We do not want to hurt you. Do as we say and you will not be harmed.”
With those words, the notorious Shayetet 13 Naval Commando unit, in full US-taxpayer-funded special-forces regalia, boarded the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) mother ship, Alma, at 8.30pm Gaza time on October 1st, when we were 15 hours from the coast.
The IDF soldiers who thundered on board were met with the quiet, calm determination of the 29 volunteers on the Alma – aged from 22 to 74, and representing 22 countries. We were ordered to kneel on the deck, and taken one by one to be searched in the darkness.
The flotilla of 41 vessels was transporting humanitarian supplies to Gaza and drawing attention to the ongoing genocide. This was my third attempt to sail with aid to alleviate suffering, break the siege and fuel some hope: in May, I was with the vessel Conscience, which was struck by what has since been confirmed by Israel as its drones off Malta.
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These were the elites of the IDF, yet they were people too, some of whom tried to be humane to us. We held their gaze from behind their balaclavas, which occasionally elicited a red dot on the forehead as they trained a machine gun on someone and reacted with a bark of “Stop looking at me!” We huddled in silence, feeling the warmth of one another, buoying our spirits with glances or smiles.
Daylight came as we remained heaped on top of one another in the below-deck common area. Not all of us had been zip tied and some were permitted a furtive smoke – an opportunity for a propaganda photo. We were allowed to drink from shared bottles of our own water. Someone found noodles and boiled a kettle, spoon-feeding others who remained zip tied.
We docked midmorning at Ashdod and flotilla members from other vessels were boarded on to the Alma to await their processing. We welcomed them with cold water and heartfelt joy; no one had been killed.
Late at night we remnants were finally disembarked. The highest profile – Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, Chief Nkosi Zwelivelile “Mandla” Mandela (the grandson of Nelson Mandela), Omar Faris (a 73-year-old Palestinian with Polish citizenship) and the Brazilian activist Thiago De Ávila – were taken first, and we knew to worry for them.
Eventually a muscled uniform grabbed me by the shoulder and drag marched me to the dockyard where others sat silently cross legged and stress positioned. Hundreds of police circled, barking orders and zip tying my comrades. Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, bustled in, shouting that we were “baby killers” and “Hamas”. Someone spat at him and we chanted “Free Palestine.” His men closed in, and the protagonists were pulled away, still shouting defiantly.
We were shoved into plastic cubicles to see doctors who dismissed some people’s claims of medicinal requirement or chronic illness. And then we were stripped, even our bras removed, and left with only a T-shirt and pants. Jostled on again, I was asked my nationality. When I said “Ireland”, the uniform flashed me a toothy smile. He put a zip tie on my wrist so tight it bit into my skin. The next five hours were spent in a metal dog-box transporter, with freezing air conditioning blowing full at me and my box mate, an American musician. We were so exhausted, cold and shocked that we were mute. I eventually passed out and came to in the fresh hell of Ktzi’ot prison in the Negev Desert.
There, we were pulled from the van, stripped naked again, prison uniforms shoved at us.
Initially, we were held in cages surrounded at head height by barbed wire. A woman with arms wrapped around herself beside me got her period, but the guards refused us sanitary pads or a change of pants. I tore the sleeves off my T-shirt and offered them to her. This was how our “incarceration couture” line was established: sweatshirts and sweatpants were torn or made into shorts; one girl crafted a bikini top, another tore her hijab to share with those who had been violently unveiled. We resisted by all imaginable means.
When we were transferred to cells, we were provided with a brown mat, blanket and a black bag containing a plastic cup, a thumbsized toothbrush, toothpaste, prison knickers, a hair tie, a towelling rag the size of a tea-towel and three sachets of shampoo.
The cells were solid stone of about 18sq m, each holding 15 people, a stinking tin toilet and sink with murky brown water. Vaguely whitewashed walls barely covered the handwriting of previous prisoners, their words left behind in Arabic, English and Hebrew. Across the slightly larger barred window on the rear wall we hung what became a colourful collage of washed knickers.
Then the soft torture started. This involved being barked at constantly to “stand”, “sit”, “come”, “walk”, “stop”, “go there”, “no here!”, “get up, get up, get UP”, “sit down, sit down, sit down”. We became edgy and jumpy. The heavy cell doors were constantly pulled open and slammed shut. At night there were constant spontaneous wake-ups for a “count”, our names shouted in unintelligible syllables. I always shouted “Anseo”. They made a great display of aggression, lining up in armed formation with dogs in the prison yard beneath the lookout tower. There was no fantasy of escape; besides there is nowhere to go in the desert.
We did as we were ordered, often at gunpoint, but we refused to be intimidated. We mocked, taunted and laughed at them. Perhaps most powerfully we pitied them.
One day, they rolled out the propaganda screens and played musak on a loop loudly for about 16 hours. We responded by composing a pro-Palestinian ballad to go along with it, singing the chorus through the bars. Then we decided to host our own theatrical production. We crafted costumes of black plastic bags, plates, spoons and wrist ties, creating an extraordinary wardrobe for Cell 10’s production of “The River and The Sea” against the backdrop of the knickers window.
Exhausted from sleep deprivation, from hunger strike and from our refusal to drink filthy water, we never knew the time.
I am inexpressibly proud of how we flotilla women reacted in the pit that was designed to crush our spirit. We unmanned them. They couldn’t break us.
Tara Reynor O’Grady is president of the Italian-based NGO Non c’è Pace Senza Giustizia (No Peace Without Justice) and was senior co-ordinator of the lead aid ship Alma in the GSF
