Australian Zack Schofield watched, powerless, as Israeli soldiers beat his fellow flotilla activist, an Irish woman, to the ground after she was filmed shouting “free Palestine” at Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.

“Her hands [and] feet were zip-tied together, and then she was dragged around the rest of the processing centre, before she was taken into a prison bus,” Schofield says from Istanbul after the activists were deported from Israel.

Schofield says many of the Global Sumud flotilla’s 428 members were treated brutally after the Israel Defense Forces intercepted their boats sailing from Turkey to deliver food and aid to Gaza.

“Many people received similar or worse treatment for much less,” the climate action organiser from Sydney says. “There’s no consistency to the violence. It was really at the whim of whichever guard was in front of you.”

‘A very planned campaign of violence’

Eleven Australians were among those detained by the IDF earlier this week. The detainees allege they endured torture, sexual assault, beatings and non-lethal shooting.

The Israeli ambassador to Australia, Hillel Newman, has claimed that the detained flotilla members were handled with “great sensitivity”. He rejected claims of violence and sexual abuse.

“Out of the 400-plus people that were on the flotilla, no one was harmed,” he told the ABC on Thursday.

All of the Australian activists needed first aid after their detention, and three were taken to hospital in Turkey, flotilla coordinators say. Other members of the global campaign were photographed with bruises and torn skin.

Juliet Lamont, an Australian filmmaker, told reporters in Turkey that Israeli soldiers had sexually assaulted and beaten her. She says soldiers had beaten 180 people on her prison boat, leaving at least 40 with broken bones, while others were Tasered and sedated.

“We were tortured,” Lamont alleges. She travelled on another flotilla in October 2025 and claimed she was sexually assaulted then. The soldiers’ violence was far worse this time, she says.

“It was a relentless and very targeted and very planned campaign of violence so that we wouldn’t come back.”

Schofield insists he would willingly sail towards Gaza again.

“Every activist on the flotilla, whether they choose to come back or not, has only had their heart more emboldened by witnessing and experiencing the brutality of the Israeli state,” he says.

Schofield says the violence began when IDF ships intercepted their aid-carrying boats on Monday and forced the crews onto prison ships.

Armed guards threatened detainees with stun guns, shot them with non-lethal “beanbag rounds” for the slightest “supposed provocations”, and left some bleeding, Schofield alleges.

They were left to sleep in light grey prison tracksuits on the cold, wet floors, for two days, with no blankets or mattresses, “cheek by jowl,” Schofield says. He estimates that each exposed container had four people per square metre.

Taken to the port of Ashdod for immigration processing, Schofield says detainees complied with soldiers’ instructions until one soldier took a man of Arab appearance from the crowd to a shipping container.

“We heard his screams for about a minute, not the screams of being punched or beaten, but of a constant pressure being applied,” the 27-year-old alleges.

“When our people rose up, in protest of this shouting, they used that as an excuse to shoot beanbag rounds into a crowd.”

They were taken to Ktzi’ot prison and spent two days there, where Schofield says he had his hands handcuffed behind his back for hours at a time. Detainees were made to lift their arms over their heads “to the point of dislocation”, he alleges.

Schofield says prison guards restricted detainees’ access to water and forced them to sit in painful stress positions on the ground or pushed them to crowd into each other.

He says he never saw the face of an IDF soldier or prison guard: all of them were masked.

Ben-Gvir avoided meeting his gaze during his tour of the detainees’ prison, Schofield says.

“He was doing his tour in front of us and always looking past our ears, never in our eye. I tried to catch his eye, but no. The veneer of courage is pretty thin.”

Ben-Gvir faced condemnation in Australia and around the world after sharing footage of himself abusing the kneeling and bound detainees. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, condemned Ben-Gvir, stating: “The way that minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms.”

Schofield says: “It’s very, very good that he [Ben-Gvir] has been so public in displaying his attitudes towards humanitarian volunteers. He is a wonderful example of the policies of the Israeli state.”

‘Gaza is being decimated’

Melbourne student Neve O’Connor, another flotilla participant, alleges soldiers kneed her in the face and stomach, slammed her head into a table and pulled at her earrings with pliers. She was subjected to degrading comments while being strip-searched, she says in filmed testimony.

O’Connor says guards forced detainees to swap cells almost every hour, playing “mind games”, where prisoners saw drawings on cell walls left by former Palestinian prisoners.

“It was a physical reminder of the fact that we may have been brutalised, but it was nothing in comparison to what Palestinians go through,” she says.

Jewish Australian Anny Mokotow joined the flotilla after growing frustrated with the federal government’s refusal to support Palestinian voices. She says she wanted a new way to raise awareness of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The 71-year-old says at sea she was galvanised by news of a Palestinian peak body being refused leave to appear at the Australian royal commission into antisemitism and social cohesion, which was prompted by the antisemitic Bondi terror attack that killed 15 people during Hanukah celebrations in December.

“Gaza is being decimated, people are dying every day,” she says.

“I felt… only with my body can I make a difference now, because it seems as if nobody is really able to listen.”

The Israeli ministry of foreign affairs was contacted for comment.