Cássio Pelegrini is a pediatrician from Brazil. He went out to sea with other flotilla activists carrying food and humanitarian aid for people starving in Gaza. By the time Israeli soldiers were done with him, he had a fractured rib — and they kept beating him anyway, he told The Nation.
Even after he told them it was broken.
Pelegrini is one of roughly 430 activists Israeli forces abducted in mid-May from dozens of boats sailing under the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and the Global Sumud Flotilla.
Boats carrying flotilla activists and humanitarian aid were intercepted in international waters, dozens of nautical miles from the Palestinian coast, as part of a years-long civilian effort to break Israel’s siege on Gaza by delivering food and medicine directly.
Now that the participants are home, a consistent and damning account is emerging: many say they were beaten, shocked, sexually assaulted, and psychologically tormented in ways that mirror how Israel treats the Palestinian prisoners it holds every day.
Pelegrini believes the distance from shore was the point.
The farther out the interceptions happened, he said, the more time soldiers had — and the fewer witnesses there were.
After his boat was taken about 90 nautical miles from Gaza, he was moved to a vessel detainees came to call the “torture boat,” which the Global Sumud Flotilla identifies as a U.S.-built and U.S.-funded naval ship.
He described being taken into a dark shipping container, surrounded by armed soldiers, kicked and struck with weapons until his rib fractured, then ordered to strip while cold water was poured over him.
That water, he said, was used deliberately and repeatedly to keep detainees freezing in the damp containers.
As you watch the video below, pay attention to the English translation as Ben-Gvir speaks. What he says is not only infuriating; it should disqualify Israel from ever receiving American taxpayers’ dollars again.
Content warning: This video contains sensitive scenes that some viewers may find difficult to watch.
Right-wing Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a video of himself taunting Gaza flotilla activists held on the floor with their hands tied.
— AJ+ (@ajplus) May 31, 2026
He captioned it “Welcome to Israel.” pic.twitter.com/6izbTUVX6o
Others had their warm clothing confiscated. Crammed in with 188 people split across three containers, many of them injured.
There wasn’t enough room to lie down and no comfortable way to rest a broken rib.
Pelegrini and fellow detainees began counting the injuries on that ship: 35 fractures, 22 taser wounds to the head and neck, and 10 incidents of sexual violence.
Israel is unpopular, “antisemitic” label loses meaning
When is Congress going to realize that Americans are angry and stop referring to Israel as our “special ally”?
The American people have woken up. They increasingly recognize what they see as a coordinated effort by corporate media and political leaders to shape public opinion about Israel and Gaza.
One tactic that appears to have backfired is the routine labeling of critics of the Israeli government as “antisemitic.”
While that accusation may have once discouraged some people from speaking out, it has been used so broadly that it no longer carries the same weight.
Consider how one of the three largest pro-Israel organizations released a list of the “top antisemites” in America.
Near the top of that list was Ms. Rachel, a children’s show host and author known for her kindness and work advocating for children.
She was targeted not for expressing hatred toward Jewish people, but for speaking out against the killing and starvation of children in Gaza.
The cruelty, by multiple accounts, was the goal rather than a byproduct. Amrou Ibrahim, a U.S. citizen from New Jersey who was beaten three separate times in custody, said the soldiers fed on the screaming — that the louder you reacted, the longer they kept at it.
Ariadne Telles, a Brazilian human rights attorney, said she was zip-tied so tightly that the restraints crushed the nerves in her wrist and fractured her radius.
She traced the brutality to a moment of defiance: she had screamed at Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, calling him a criminal, after watching him taunt detainees.
“They are very sadistic,” she said. Activists reported that soldiers were especially vicious toward people of color, people from the Global South, Muslims, and anti-Zionist Jews.
The torment was not only physical. Pelegrini said guards blasted the Israeli national anthem on a loop — by his count, 72 times.
He described being forced to watch a video of an alleged militant beheading someone while soldiers sneered that these were his “friends.”
Other participants reported sleep deprivation and being made to watch violent propaganda, methods documented in previous flotilla detentions.
Mecid Bağçivan of Turkey, shot in the leg with a rubber bullet at close range as he shielded a friend, was left with a two-centimeter hole in his leg that required two surgeries back home.
Most disturbing are the accounts of sexual violence.
Both flotilla coalitions reported that participants were sexually harassed.
Pelegrini believes some were raped: held in a stress position with his head on the floor, he said he watched detainees be singled out and led into a room, after which he heard soldiers making moaning sounds.
Muslim women reported having their hijabs forcibly torn off during invasive searches.
The activists were flown to Turkey by May 21, several of them seriously injured.
Malaysia is preparing to bring Israel before the International Court of Justice over the treatment of its citizens, and Pelegrini hopes Brazil will join the case.
The ICC issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant’s war crimes and starvation in Gaza in the past. The news that Malaysia is preparing an ICC case should elicit hope, but instead it’s more like, “Why bother?”
Each time the UN attempted to pass a resolution demanding a ceasefire and end to the slaughter and starvation of Palestinias, the U.S. used its veto power to block the action. Every time.
Congress voted to sanction ICC judges for investigating war crimes and the starvation of Palestinias in Gaza.
Why are we protecting a country that is starving children to death from scrutiny or accountability?
What the survivors keep returning to is not their own suffering but the scale of it among those they were trying to help.
They are free; the people they sailed for are not. Pelegrini named Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the Kamal Adwan Hospital director held without charge for more than 500 days, who reportedly suffered the same broken ribs and denied care that Pelegrini did.
He named Walid Ahmed, a 17-year-old with Brazilian citizenship who became the first child known to die in Israeli custody since October 2023; an autopsy pointed to prolonged malnutrition AKA he was starved to death like children who died in Gaza after wasting away in front of helpless parents.
WARNING: Graphic photo of a 12-year-old-boy who died of malnutrition in Gaza. (Click drop-down symbol to view image 🔻)
He invoked the thousands of Palestinians still held in Israeli prisons, including hundreds of children, and the more than 1,500 medical workers killed in Gaza.
That is the system the flotilla was built to confront — not a series of bad nights on a prison ship, but an occupation that subjects an entire people to this treatment without cameras, without diplomatic protection, without the world bothering to look.
The activists got a few days of it because they carried strong passports. As Telles put it, Palestinians and the world’s other dispossessed peoples become visible only when someone with the right citizenship finally bleeds beside them.
The horror isn’t that this happened to a doctor from Brazil, but that this is the daily, unseen reality for everyone he left behind.
