Ben-Gvir Accidentally Exposed the Truth About Israel

After startling images showed peaceful, humanitarian activists who had attempted to deliver aid to Gaza arriving back in Istanbul on stretchers late last week, stories have continued to emerge over the weekend of systematic beatings, torture and rape in Israeli detention. If you’re on day three of a bank holiday bender, you might not have heard the harrowing testimonies yet, but if you’ve been at least semi-online, you almost certainly will have done.

That’s because something shocking and unprecedented has happened. No, I’m not talking about Israel – a genocidal entity where prison guards routinely rape Palestinian detainees with dogs and soldiers gun down five-year-old kids and the paramedics who try to save them – displaying utter depravity. I’m talking about the rest of the world suddenly, at least temporarily, actually seeming to give a shit.

“Outrage grows,” the Guardian reported in a live blog last week, where it explained that Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had sparked a “diplomatic crisis” by sharing footage of soldiers severely mistreating detained activists, as he personally gloated over their kneeling, bound bodies. British foreign secretary Yvette Cooper – not usually a champion of direct actionists or their basic human rights – quickly condemned Ben-Gvir’s behaviour, while France and Poland banned him from entry. The mainstream media, too, suddenly snapped into gear, publishing dozens of stories of activists alleging abuse, when in the past it hasn’t really been interested.

So what happened? And what changed?

In all the testimony from activists describing “the roughest 72 hours of my life”, as one German man put it, the worst bit isn’t something someone says, it’s something someone can’t. After recounting the rest of her ordeal, an older French activist starts crying and ends the interview abruptly, unable to speak about the experience of hearing other women systematically sexually assaulted by Israeli prison guards.

It’s hard to summarise the abuse activists say was meted out against them across three days last week, after 428 people were kidnapped in international waters near Cyprus last Tuesday. In dozens of interviews shared online, flotilla participants describe being told “welcome to Israel” by soldiers, and then by the national security minister himself, before being brutalised. One by one, people were taken away to a shipping container or tent, they say, where some were raped and all were beaten, while others outside had to listen to them screaming. Countless ribs were broken. People were shot at, attacked by dogs, photographed topless, denied water and injected against their will with unidentified drugs. Several activists remain in hospital in Turkey, one with a punctured lung, another with internal bleeding.

Zeteo journalist Alex Colston, who was sailing for the second time, said the violence was “magnitudes worse” than when two flotillas were intercepted in October last year. “The guards were getting very obvious pleasure from hurting us as much as they possibly could,” he said.

“We were tortured,” said Australian filmmaker Juliet Lamont. “They put so much water under me for an hour that I thought I was going to drown. I was sexually assaulted in this kind of torture chamber… five men were bashing me and smashing my face.”

Thanks to Ben-Gvir – who visited detainees shortly after they arrived at Ashdod port, filmed their abuse, and shared it online – we now have graphic footage to prove much of what flotilla activists are saying. And it seems to have made all the difference. Because while this mission clearly saw a marked escalation in violence, some people who sailed in October were raped and beaten then, too. As shocking as it is, nothing that Israel did this time was really surprising.

Four flotillas were intercepted in 2025, and Israel’s response escalated from taking pictures of Greta Thunberg being given sandwiches back in June, to badly beating labour organiser Chris Smalls in July, to cable-tying activists’ hands behind their backs and forcing them to kneel on the ground for five hours in October, and then to shackling journalist Noa Avishag Schnall by her wrists and ankles and beating her black and blue a week later.

Britain and other governments received their citizens back with black eyes, a few broken bones, and, in some cases, serious trauma – and said nothing about it. Aside from coverage by Novara Media, Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye, which all sent journalists on board, the detention of 400 people in October barely made a ripple in the international media.

If anything, October’s flotillas seemed only to illustrate Israel’s utter impunity. That is the tip of the iceberg of the same impunity that lets it hold more than 9,500 Palestinians – including at least 350 children – and around half without trial – in prisons where they are routinely tortured. Palestinians are beaten, raped and starved over weeks, months and years rather than just 72 hours, with at least 100 dying in two years as a result. Shortly after flotilla activists spent a brief few days in detention in autumn 2025, nearly 2,000 Palestinians were released from prison as part of a ceasefire deal. They staggered out gaunt and broken, some physically disabled by Israeli abuse.

It is the same impunity that, beyond the prison system, has let Israel perpetuate a genocide, killing over 72,000 people – likely far more – and lets it continue to commit war crimes in Palestine and Lebanon.

The problem Israel has now is that Ben-Gvir has broken a pact it had long since established with the rest of the world. While clearly playing to a domestic audience (which says a lot about the Israeli public at present), he probably assumed that internationally, no one would care what he did to activists, as few had cared before. And so he shared footage that was a little too graphic, of Europeans being treated a little too much like we all know Israel treats Palestinians, in the shadows of deep desert torture prisons. In doing so, he made it that bit harder for Israel to deny what it is, and what it does, and harder for the world to agree to pretend not to see.

On Thursday evening, all 400-plus participants were abruptly deported after the far-right minister’s videos spread. Unfortunately, the damage already done to their bodies has only made things worse for Israel.

Amid a diplomatic crisis, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has desperately sought to distance himself from the footage, saying “the way that minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms.” Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar went further. “You knowingly caused harm to our state in this disgraceful display – and not for the first time,” he wrote to his colleague on X. “You are not the face of Israel.”

Ben-Gvir has momentarily shattered the normal order. “Welcome to Israel,” he said, on camera, and showed us brutality. Watch the Israeli establishment now scramble to disown him – when his actions epitomise it entirely.