The first thing the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers did as they detained Marie Tota on a cramped, heavily reinforced prison ship was violently rip the “Free Palestine” bracelets from her arms.
“They didn’t ask me to take them off; they just tore them off of me,” she tells The Progressive. “They then told me to remove my prayer beads, and I said no, because I have them for religious purposes. The IDF soldier told me, ‘I don’t give a fuck, you’re under arrest,’ and they then proceeded to rip the beads off my arm until they were literally just . . . everywhere.”
The thirty-nine-year-old Canadian nurse is one of 175 pro-Palestine activists who were illegally detained late on April 29 while sailing with the Global Sumud Flotilla as it attempted to break the blockade on Gaza by sea. A total of twenty-one boats associated with the flotilla were unexpectedly intercepted in international waters off the coast of Greece, more than 600 nautical miles away from their destination, while another vessel was damaged by Israeli soldiers and left adrift with its crew still onboard as a storm approached. United Nations experts say Israel’s interception, kidnapping of passengers and damage of vessels in international waters are a “blatant” violation of international and maritime law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which allows freedom of navigation.
Tota was on the last boat that boarded in the early hours of the morning on April 30. The Israeli boat onto which she and her fellow flotilla passengers were transferred, she says, “looked like it was deliberately set up to be for our detention.” Tota says several metal containers framed by barbed wire had been set up onboard to keep the passengers detained, and armed soldiers patrolled the top of the makeshift prison. None of the captives were told where they were being taken.
Tota describes their period of detention onboard the prison boat as chaotic. “It was cold,” she says. “There was nowhere to really rest. There were no pillows, no blankets.” Tota wasn’t physically harmed during the ordeal, but she recalls turmoil, uncertainty, and violence. At one point, she says, “they made us kneel on the ground with our faces down, hands above our heads in a very small cramped area.”
Two days later, on May 1, Tota and all but two of the other kidnapped participants were dropped on the Greek island of Crete, while prominent leaders Saif Abukeshek and Thiago Ávila remained imprisoned and taken to Israel. Their phones and money had been taken from them; some were never even given their passports back by the IDF officers. It was only through the local Greek activist community that they were able to find shelter at an abandoned building that had been repurposed into a thriving squat in the city of Heraklion, which temporarily housed the activists as the flotilla movement regrouped.
At the vast building in Heraklion where they sheltered after being released, many activists bore visible marks of the brutality they’d experienced at the hands of IDF soldiers, including bruises and wounds wrapped in slings and bandages. Fifty-three-year-old Turkish national Hüseyin Oral, another participant on the flotilla who was intercepted at sea, had two black eyes and a swollen face when The Progressive spoke to him about his experience.
“You can see on my face what they did,” says Oral. “They fight me on this side”—his right—“and three times on the left side. And the other comrades also, one of them broke the ribs, the other broke the nose.”
Despite his injuries, Oral is committed to continuing his activism. He says he plans to travel to Turkey, where he hopes to rejoin the fleet when it sets sail again. “We had only three bad nights,” he says. “The children, the families in Gaza, they have had these things for about two years.”
Flotillas have been trying to break Israel’s illegal blockade on the Occupied Palestinian Territorial waters since 2008, with missions achieving varying degrees of success throughout the last two decades. Some have been deadly, such as the 2010 mission during which Israel killed ten Turkish activists aboard the Mavi Marmara. The Global Sumud Flotilla organisation is now in its second year; in October 2025, the Israeli military detained all participants in the first mission including well-known activists like Greta Thunberg.
Despite the violent recent intervention and continued potential risks, the Global Sumud Flotilla plans to continue its mission to break the blockade on Palestinian waters and deliver lifesaving aid to Palestinians in Gaza, while creating a sea corridor for more aid to enter. But for the intercepted participants, the decision to continue onward is a weighty one. Many of them experienced deep trauma at the hands of the Israeli military, or were physically wounded, and others had money stolen and belongings lost during the ordeal.
Tota is still debating whether to set sail again with the flotilla. “Personally, I’m trying to figure out where I can have the most impact,” she says. “Really, where my heart is at is in solidarity with the health care workers in Gaza specifically.”
While intercepted participants grapple with what comes next, participants on boats that evaded the Israeli military are also hard at work. More than thirty vessels escaped the April 29 interception, anchoring in Greek waters while rallying behind their kidnapped comrades. Italian politician and activist Antonella Bundu, former member of the Florence City Council and member of the Communist Refoundation Party, was aboard one of the boats that narrowly escaped Israeli forces. Bundu tells The Progressive that at least two empty boats sank after the interception, but that the flotilla members were undeterred by Israel’s efforts to damage the vessels.
“We were scared while going through [what we called] the cemetery,” she recalls, describing the abandoned and empty boats left behind by her comrades. “You see the way they treated the boats. They are like animals, the way they disrupted everything inside.” One boat they passed was intercepted just as participants were serving dinner, their plates of sliced beetroot left behind as they were kidnapped by the IDF.
“It’s much worse what they’re doing in Gaza and to the Palestinians on the whole,” says Bundu. “What scares me the most is that [the Israeli soldiers] don’t even pretend that there’s something that can stop them.”
Bundu’s vessel was eventually towed by the rescue boat Open Arms, an independent NGO that was accompanying the fleet with its own vessel for safety, to escape an approaching storm, and, like other participants, she arrived in Heraklion. But like most, she is ready to set sail again. “I definitely, for now, want to go on,” she said. “It’s very important that we act now.”
On May 7, the boats that escaped the initial interception left Crete and departed for Marmaris, Turkey. At least a dozen new vessels await there, along with boats that arrived from other parts of Greece. The entire Global Sumud Flotilla fleet plans to regroup there this week to discuss next steps in the mission—but for now, the consensus plan is that they will move forward with attempting to break the siege.
Amid all of this, there remains a great sense of camaraderie, community, and hope for what the flotilla participants can achieve, driven by their solidarity with the people of Palestine.
As terrible as her experience of being kidnapped was, Tota says, she draws strength from the community she found with her fellow activists aboard the prison boat. “Despite the circumstances, despite people being hurt or injured,” she says, “we were fighting for each other.”