“We have been beaten, every single one of us has been beaten with electric shocks all over our bodies. We have bruises. Many people have broken ribs. Many people cannot walk.”
—Paneli Greek activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla
Israel’s assault on the Global Sumud Flotilla participants is an international outrage. The Flotilla, designed to break the siege on Gaza and bring much-needed aid to the Strip, was intercepted miles from its destination. The father of one of the Australian activists said he had been in touch with his daughter Neve. He related in a message to an Australian Palestine solidarity campaigner:
“She has been beaten regularly and might have concussion. She said she was lucky to be on the boat she was, as on the other boat, the IDF [Israel’s military] were brutal. Other participants had broken ribs, jaws and savage beatings. Shooting with rubber bullets [was] common. She was shot at, as a group tried to protect people from the Global South who were receiving brutal treatment. She was lucky not to one of the people that was sexually assaulted.”
Activists were arrested by the Israeli military in international waters. They were hog-tied and then humiliated by Israel’s fascist security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Surrounded by masked and uniformed officials, Ben-Gvir taunted activists, telling them: “We are the landlords of this land”.
In response, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Poland summoned Israeli ambassadors and top diplomats to formally protest and demand explanations for the conditions their citizens faced while in Israeli custody. The Australian foreign minister, Penny Wong, said:
“The images we have seen are shocking and unacceptable. We condemn the actions of Israeli minister Ben-Gvir—who Australia has sanctioned—and the degrading actions of Israeli authorities towards those detained.”
In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that although Israel has every right to stop “provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters”, the way Ben-Gvir dealt with the activists was “not in line with Israel’s values and norms”. American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, called Ben-Gvir’s actions a “betrayal of Israel’s dignity”. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar declared that Ben-Gvir “knowingly caused harm to our state in this disgraceful display”.
“No, you are not the face of Israel”, Saar wrote.
What cant. What hypocrisy. Israel’s norms are genocide. Israel’s values are the industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. There is no dignity in a state whose soldiers shot children in the head. The face of Israel is the calculated starvation of millions of people. It is the offering of aid and then the shooting of people who try to access that aid. It is the rape of Palestinians prisoners with bottles. Israel is the turning into dust, debris and rubble, kilometres of trees, buildings and homes. Israel is destruction. Israel is imperial warfare at its most naked and brutal.
Ben-Gvir might be the most brazen and the most openly fascistic representative of the Israeli state. But he is no aberration from Israel. He is its logical product. A society built on occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing was always going to produce men like him—politicians who delight in humiliation, torture and racist terror. The only difference between Ben-Gvir and other politicians in the Israeli cabinet is that he says out loud what the others attempt to cloak in the language of “security” and “self-defence”.
The Australian government’s condemnations are not worth the paper they are written on. The Australian government, and Wong in particular, have spent the last two-and-a-half years either defending Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians or deflecting attention away from their own utter inaction. They have wrung their hands over individual outrages while continuing military ties, intelligence cooperation and diplomatic support for the Israeli state. Wong can denounce Ben-Gvir’s theatrics all she likes, but the Australian government continues to back the machinery that makes such barbarism possible.
When Israel flattened hospitals, Australia called for “restraint”. When Israel starved Gaza, Australia issued statements filled with “concern”. When aid workers, journalists and children were massacred, Labor responded with carefully managed condemnations while refusing to impose meaningful sanctions. Now that Western activists have been brutalised and humiliated on camera, suddenly there is outrage in Canberra. Palestinians, of course, have endured far worse every single day for decades.
The flotilla activists exposed something important. Not simply the cruelty of Ben-Gvir, but the face of the Israeli state and the cowardice of governments like Australia’s that continue to shield it. The beatings, the torture, the racist taunts and the sexual violence are not unfortunate excesses. They are the methods of a state carrying out genocide. And every government that continues to arm, defend or legitimise Israel shares responsibility for those crimes.
