Detained Gaza flotilla activists face increasing violence in Israel custody, and spurious terrorism claims

Drop Site News reports that attorneys from Adalah, the Palestinian legal rights organization, visited Thiago Ávila and Saif Abukeshek, the detained Gaza flotilla activists, who are both on the sixth day of a hunger strike, at Shikma detention facility in Israel on Monday, and that they affirmed “escalating psychological abuse and threats.”

Thiago “reported being subjected to interrogations lasting up to eight hours, during which interrogators told him he would either be ‘killed’ or ‘spend 100 years in jail.” He also “reported being held in extremely cold temperatures.”

Both men, as Adalah described it, “are held in total isolation, with cells kept under constant high-intensity lighting around the clock”, a vile practice “designed to induce sleep deprivation and sensory disorientation.”

They are also “blindfolded whenever [they are] moved outside their cells, including during medical examinations”, which Adalah called “a gross violation of medical ethical standards.”

Adalah also noted that the Israeli’s interrogations of the two men “focused heavily on the flotilla itself”, which, as they described it, “confirms that the detention is an attempt to criminalize humanitarian aid and solidarity.”

The Times of Israelhad another take on the interrogations, reporting that Saif and Thiago are accused of “assisting the enemy during wartime” and “membership in and providing services to a terrorist organization.”

According to the Israeli authorities, they are “affiliated with the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA)”, a legitimate organization that has, nevertheless, been “accused by the US Treasury of ‘clandestinely acting on behalf of’ Hamas.”

Adalah rightly “challenged the state’s jurisdiction”, arguing, correctly, that “the activists were seized in international waters”; in other words, they were kidnapped and illegally “rendered” to Israel.

Are we meant to accept that Israel can now kidnap anyone anywhere on earth and “render” them to Israel if they make spurious claims that they are connected to any kind of organization that Israel or the US regard as terrorists?

And are we also meant to ignore the fact that the governments of the men’s home countries, Spain and Brazil, have both been especially critical of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and that Saif, in particular, is especially at risk because he is of Palestinian origin?