“When Governments Fail, We Sail — Humanity’s Compass Points to Gaza.”

Joshua Scheer

As Gaza remains under siege and much of the world looks away, activists continue to challenge the blockade through acts of nonviolent resistance. In this powerful interview with Chris Hedges, Brazilian organizer Thiago Ávila recounts what he describes as one of the most brutal crackdowns yet against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla movement.

Ávila details the interception of a multinational humanitarian mission in international waters, the detention of more than 180 activists, and allegations of beatings, threats, solitary confinement, and interrogation by Israeli authorities. His account is not only a personal story of suffering, but also a broader indictment of what he argues is the collapse of international law in the face of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

While supporters view the flotillas as acts of civil resistance aimed at breaking the blockade and drawing attention to Palestinian suffering, Israeli authorities have repeatedly portrayed such missions as security threats. The interview explores this clash of narratives, the growing international solidarity movement, and why activists continue to sail despite knowing interception is likely.

For Ávila, the story is ultimately not about himself. Again and again, he returns to the plight of Palestinians living under siege and bombardment, insisting that whatever he endured remains only a fraction of what Palestinians face daily. The result is a sobering conversation about resistance, repression, and the lengths ordinary people are willing to go to challenge what they see as a historic injustice.

Israeli Torture Dungeon Revealed: Thiago Ávila’s Harrowing Account of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Seizure

In a disturbing interview with Chris Hedges, Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila describes what he says was a brutal campaign of violence, intimidation, and abuse carried out after Israeli forces intercepted the latest Gaza Freedom Flotilla mission in international waters.

Ávila, a longtime organizer with the flotilla movement, alleges that activists were seized hundreds of miles from Gaza, held aboard what he describes as a floating military prison, denied adequate food and medical care, subjected to beatings, threats, and prolonged detention, and later interrogated by Israeli intelligence services. He recounts being repeatedly punched and kicked, blindfolded, threatened with execution, and held in solitary confinement after refusing to abandon the mission.

Yet for Ávila, the story is not primarily about his own suffering. Throughout the interview he repeatedly returns to Gaza itself, arguing that the treatment of flotilla activists is inseparable from the broader humanitarian catastrophe facing Palestinians. He describes the flotilla campaign as one part of a growing international movement attempting to break the blockade, challenge what activists characterize as Israeli impunity, and force renewed global attention on Gaza after months in which the crisis had largely disappeared from Western headlines.

Among the interview’s most striking revelations:

• Activists say Israeli forces intercepted 22 vessels and detained more than 180 participants during the mission.

• Ávila alleges detainees were handcuffed, blindfolded, subjected to stress positions, denied basic necessities, and threatened by soldiers.

• He describes being beaten unconscious twice while in Israeli custody and later interrogated for days by security services.

• Israeli authorities reportedly threatened activists with terrorism-related charges carrying decades-long prison sentences.

• Despite the crackdown, Ávila argues the mission succeeded in drawing renewed international attention to Gaza and helping spark additional diplomatic pressure on Israel.

The interview offers a rare firsthand account of what activists say they experienced after attempting to challenge Israel’s blockade by sea. It is also a reminder that, even as geopolitical attention shifts elsewhere, the struggle over Gaza remains far from over.

For More: Itamar Ben-Gvir Turns Torture Into a Public Spectacle: “Don’t Be Bothered by Their Screams”

Rape, Assault And Abuse Are Signature Israeli Government Values

Gaza Flotilla Activists Kidnapped By Israeli Forces Begin Hunger Strike

Transcript

Chris Hedges: Nothing illustrates the inversion of the international and moral order more than the genocide in Gaza and the shipment of billions of weapons by Western nations, especially the United States, to sustain it. Part of this inversion is the unrelenting persecution of those who denounce the genocide, risk their lives to halt it, and call for the rule of law. But the rule of law is buried under the rubble in Gaza. And because of that, Israel is able, with barely a word of protest by Western nations, Spain being one of the few exceptions, to abduct a hundred and eighty Sumud Flotilla crews 500 nautical miles from Gaza off the coast of Crete.

This open disdain for the law of the sea was accompanied by the usual Israeli brutality. Flotilla members were denied food, drenched in seawater, punched, kicked, dragged across decks with their hands tied, and shot at with rubber bullets and live ammunition. Eventually, crew members were transferred to Crete, where thirty-one were hospitalized. Two high profile members of the Flotilla, the Brazilian organizer, Thiago Avila, and the Spaniard, Saif Abu Keshek, who is of Palestinian descent, were kidnapped and taken to Israel. They were blindfolded, forced to lie on their stomachs and beaten with such severity that Thiago lost consciousness twice. When they appeared in an Israeli court, the bruises on their faces were visible. Thiago had trouble lifting his right arm. The two men were held in solitary confinement and went on hunger strike. They were accused of supporting terrorism and illegal activity.

Joining me to discuss resistance to the genocide, the importance of the flotillas and the egregious Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law is Thiago Avila. Before we begin with this latest – this is not the first time you have been held, of course, Thiago, by the Israelis – lay out the history of the flotillas and the importance of the flotillas.

Thiago Avila: Well, Chris, first of all, thank you so much for having me here. It’s very important that we speak about what’s happening in Gaza all the time. I’m one of thousands of people that have been involved throughout the years with the flotillas, with the solidarity movement for Palestine, who have been answering the call of the Palestinians to continue talking about eight decades of genocide and ethnic cleansing and apartheid colonial state and how to defeat this racist and supremacist ideology called Zionism.

It’s very important the work that you do, as well, sharing the truth in a moment in history where the truth is so scarce to see. So, the flotillas are part of this movement. Imagine eight decades of genocide and ethnic cleansing, but Gaza itself has been under siege for 19 years, by sea, by land, and by air. And for eighteen years there were attempts to break this siege. And the first five attempts in 2008, they actually broke this siege. Two small fishing boats made it there. They did the volunteer work. They brought the food and the aid, all the things that they were bringing. But then after the fifth mission, Israel started intercepting every single one of them. Some by this illegal kidnapping, and others by attacking them and even killing 10 people in the Mavi Marmora in 2010, others by sabotaging the boats.

Chris Hedges: Let me just stop you there, Thiago, because people may not understand. This was a Turkish ship and Israeli commandos repelled onto the ship and… I mean, explain what happened.

Thiago Avila: Yeah, it was actually like this that after December 2008, the first interception started. And in 2010, after a few failed attempts that the Israelis were intercepting the boats or attacking the boats, people decided that they needed to go with a flotilla. So, they came with several boats, including a very big boat called the Mavi Marmara. They left some from Greece, some from Istanbul, and when they were approaching Gaza, the Israeli commandos, the unit Shayetet 13, it’s an elite unit of the Israeli Navy, they attacked the boats and killed nine people immediately, six of them with shots in the back, and another one was put in a coma for four years and then eventually died. More than fifty other people were shot with live ammunition. And the Israelis said that they were attacked. That’s why they had to shoot and assassinate people in their self-defense. And that’s what the mainstream media disclosed to the world.

But, of course, it was a lie. There was a United Nations investigation that showed that six of these ten people got executed from shots from behind. And they were actually shooting before they even boarded the boat. So, there’s a documentary about this called “The Truth: Lost at Sea”, with the single amount of footage that managed to escape the detention and the kidnapping. So, it shows the truth. It shows the truth about this attack. And every single attempt since then have been either attacked again by bombs, like when they bombed our boats in Malta, by bureaucratic warfare, then when they pressure the governments to not allow us to sail, or insurance companies or flag states that give us a flag to sail international waters, or have been sabotaged when they put ropes in the propellers, when they pierce the hull of the boats, when they try to put acid in our water tanks and so many other things. And, of course, the interception, the illegal kidnapping.

So, it’s been more than twenty missions since then attempting to break the siege with people from all over the world and have been intercepting one after the other. After the pandemic and after the escalation of genocide, we understood that it was time to do bigger missions. So, we decided to do an emergency mission leaving from Turkiye with three big boats that in April 2024 ready to sail, with more than 30 countries represented, more than a thousand people, more than five thousand and five hundred tons of humanitarian aid. And they did bureaucratic warfare and pressured the government of Guinea-Bissau to remove the flag. We were not allowed to sail this time. So, we kept on going. Then we tried to sail from Malta and they bombed our boat in Malta in May 2025. Then in June, we managed to sail with the Madleen, a small boat of 12 people, myself, Greta, Rima Hassan, Yasmine, and eight other people from six different countries, and we got intercepted at 120 nautical miles.

And then the Handala boat went again and tried to get there and got intercepted again. And then we went with the Global Sumud Flotilla in October 2025, with 42 boats with more than 400 people. And wem also got intercepted, but the boats got very close. Some boats got 24 nautical miles to Gaza, and there was a huge global uprising, Chris, where even a general strike happened in Italy. The government was so cornered that they had to take measures against the Israeli apartheid regime. They had to, some of them, recognize the Palestinian state. Some of them applied sanctions. Some of them even sent military vessels to accompany our boats way close, but not close enough, to get to Gaza. And after October, we decided that we needed to keep on going. We were planning this next mission. And then on this next mission, we suffered another attack and huge violations this time. But that’s the history of the flotillas, which is important to say – people from all over the world, like many other nonviolent direct action solidarity missions, trying to do what is necessary. When the states don’t do enough, when the international community does not do enough, it’s everyday people who need to do it. Well, like we say, when governments fail, we sail.

Chris Hedges: But they’re seizing these boats in international waters. It’s a clear violation of the Law of the Sea.

Thiago Avila: Yes, it is. We are talking about a rogue state, Chris, a country that is committing genocide, is committing ethnic cleansing, is structured an apartheid state in the whole historical Palestine. So, for the level of violations that they continuously apply against the Palestinian people, this is just another one. But the thing is that when they intercept an international mission, they are violating different laws because there is law against colonization, there is law against the violations that they do against Palestinians as well. But the Law of the Sea says that when you are in international waters, no government can intercept any boat, especially when you have the right of innocent passage, like we did. And other than that, the international humanitarian law and the International Court of Justice, in the case opened by South Africa against Israel for the crime of genocide, they made a provisional ruling in June 2024 that stated that no country, especially Israel, but any other country as well, cannot stop any humanitarian mission heading to Gaza. And when they do that, they’re not only violating the Law of the Seas, but they’re violating the biggest judicial court in the entire planet. And they really don’t care. And that’s why we need to make them accountable.

Chris Hedges: Before we go into what happened to you in this latest flotilla and your detention, explain why. You know you’re going to get intercepted, it’s almost certain, but you keep pushing anyway. Why?

Thiago Avila: Well, Chris, when we are part of this, first of all, we don’t understand that the flotillas are the only tactic. For example, spreading the truth like you do is a very important way of promoting a better world. Doing demonstrations, doing boycott campaigns, the people very brave disrupting the arms factories, people doing all types of grassroots movement, of awareness. It’s all part of the same process. We don’t see the flotillas as something apart from this global uprising with a multiplicity of tactics.

But the flotillas themselves, they have a special place in people’s consciousness because it sets the alarm clock, it makes people move. Because people sometimes they get stuck in the blockade of information from the mainstream media, in the boycott, in the censorship from the big techs in their algorithms, with the silence of the states, the complicit states. So, the flotillas they have a way of showing a big mobilization and a sense of urgency that puts some things to move.

So, that’s why the flotillas are important. When we sailed this last mission, we were sailing with around seven months of the so-called ‘ceasefire’ on Gaza. And this so-called ‘’ceasefire didn’t really materialize for the Palestinian people. Seven months, and people were still getting killed, aid was still being hindered, the land was being stolen from the Palestinians, and their plans for the region was far from peace, was being ruled by war criminals like Netanyahu and Donald Trump, was being ruled by billionaires from the big techs with techno-authoritarian models of, dystopic models of working in Gaza with artificial intelligence and drones shooting people randomly. So, very bad things. And the industrial military complex profiting from war, from every bomb that falls onto a Palestinian children’s head, there was someone profiting at the end of that quarter. So, the perspectives of this so-called ‘ceasefire’ were dire for the Palestinian people.

That’s why we understood that we had to sail again. Not because we want it, because we were doing all the other tactics as well. We were mobilizing all the other fronts, but the flotillas, they had a way of breaking the silence about this. And so, we understood that it was necessary to sail, even despite the fact that the biggest probability was to be intercepted. But we don’t actually sail to get intercepted, because we really cannot tell, Chris, when is going to be the moment, when the world is going to rise up, when the pressure is going to be so big under the complicit states that they’re going to break their complicity and the pressure is going to be so big on the Zionist regime that even themselves they will not be able to pay the political cost of committing this war crime again, of intercepting a peaceful, non-violent humanitarian flotilla, of denying the right of the Palestinian people to access and control their own borders, like international law says. So, we never know. It’s like we are seeing a wall, and the Palestinians have been hitting this wall of colonization for decades. And we go side by side with them, shoulder to shoulder, hitting this wall as well. We never know which is going to be the strike that is going to break this wall apart, and then people will have their rights. We just need to be there with them, banging on this wall, hitting on this wall, until this wall collapses.

So, we never know which is going to be – the flotilla, the blockade, the boycott – which is going to be the action that will consolidate the victory of the Palestinian people in their indigenous resistance, in true self-determination and sovereignty. We actually cannot tell. So, we don’t sail to be intercepted, but we sail to maintain consistency and solidarity. We never know when we’re going to break this horrific siege.

Chris Hedges: You’re from Brazil. What’s the message that the genocide has sent to the Global South?

Thiago Avila: Well, I believe the most important message, Chris, is that nobody is safe. That the Zionist and the imperialist system, they can go very far. The total impunity that they committed is genocide in Gaza. They understood that they could escalate to Lebanon, they could escalate to Iraq, to Syria, to Yemen, to Iran, to Venezuela. They could bomb a country in Latin America, kidnap the president. They could create a naval blockade in Cuba. They could threaten any attempt at sovereignty from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, or any other country. They could interfere with elections everywhere. So, it set a precedent, a very dangerous precedent for humanity. And it showed that whoever thought that the genocide was only about Palestinians was very, very wrong. What we were saying for years in the flotillas is that the destiny of the Palestinian people is most likely the destiny of all humanity.

We’ve seen the countries that were shown as the beacons of civil liberties, of democracy and human rights, arresting people carrying signs, arresting people using watermelon flags, arresting people posting on social media. So, we broke completely the mask of the Global North as the governments who should preserve an idea of civility, ‘beacons of civilization’. So, the Palestinian people, really, they actually show us the lenses to see society as it really is, but also show us the map, that there’s no way out of this except for resisting, except for mobilizing.

Chris Hedges: So, let’s talk about the latest – this, as I said, is not the first time you’ve been detained by the Israelis. From the descriptions that I read, this was worse. You were, what, 600 nautical miles from Gaza, and you can take it from there. What happened?

Thiago Avila: Well, first of all, we were at that moment of the mission, Chris, that we were not going yet to Gaza. Our mission goes a long way. So, we sailed from Barcelona on May the 15th, and we were sailing from Barcelona to Sicily, where we got more boats, more people, where we trained more of our teams, and then we kept on going. When we left Sicily, we were going to pass by Greece, where more boats would be joining us, and then we would stop in Turkiye. And in Turkiye, we would train again all of our teams, bring more boats, bring more people, do more mobilizations. Some people that went just for the journey all the way there, they would disembark, and more people, who were going for the final leg, they would join our boats and would accompany us to Gaza. But, actually, there was a storm brewing in the Mediterranean. We needed to escape the storm. So, we decided that we would anchor in Greece. We actually needed that because our boats are old. Our financial capacity is not infinite. So, we have old boats with the as many boats as we can, but very old boats in bad quality. So, we had to stop for the safety of our participants as well. So, we were going to Greece and at the island of Crete, and then we started receiving radio messages and we started receiving some boats reporting malfunction in their communications until we lost the signal with one of our boats. And then we understood that there was something odd happening. And then some other boat’s reporters seen RHIBs coming with soldiers to that boat. And then we know very well what it is. It is an interception. And then we said from the steering committee, we said, “Prepare for interception.” The boats that can head to Greek territorial waters, despite the fact that Greece is a complicit state, and they were probably totally involved in this and what the reports we see from the people who went to Crete is that they were totally involved, totally aware of what was going on as well. But then, we said, “Try to get into territorial waters.” And for the other ones, they were coming and intercepting. They actually managed to intercept 22 boats. We were around 50 boats at that time, so 30 something, they actually got to Crete.

Chris Hedges: Let me just stop you, Thiago, explain how interception works.

Thiago Avila: Yes. Well, and what we call an interception is actually a kidnapping. They come and they come with big military vessels nearby us. From these military vessels they deploy some RHIBs, some small rubber boats full of commandos, around twenty commandos, full of rifles and no type of modern warfare gear. A lot of drones also accompany the action. And they come and they board our boats with one or two RHIBs. Once they board our boats with the barrel of the gun, they surrender everybody, they take control of the boat. Sometimes they move people to another place inside the boats. They take control. Sometimes they steer the boat all the way to Israel, to Ashdod Port. But this time they had a different plan. They just wanted to kidnap the people. They actually destroyed the boat and abandoned the boat there. Some boats, they pierced the hull, destroyed the engine for the boat to sink. And then just took the people, put on another of their RHIBs and took to a military boat, like a very big military vessel adapted to be a military prison at sea. And so that’s what they did this time. So, an interception is this when they kidnap the people, the boat, the humanitarian aid, but this time they were not even interested in that – stealing the boat and the aid like they do all the time – they wanted to sink the boats and abandon them there. They just wanted to kidnap the people. And so that’s what they did with 22 of these boats and 30 escaped. And so, we were 22 boats, 181 people in a military prison in the Mediterranean, with nobody having a single contact with the outside world, nobody knowing how was our state, our health, if anybody was injured, if anybody got hurt in any way. And we were in their custody and in their custody they did very, very violent treatment with us. So, when we got to this military prison, they first of all put us in stress positions like kneeled to the ground.

Chris Hedges: Were you handcuffed? You were handcuffed behind your back?

Thiago Avila: They would handcuff most of the people with zip ties. Sometimes when we got to the prison system in occupied Palestine and Israel, they would put the metal handcuffs as well. But sometimes during some procedures from transferring from one boat to the other, they would cut the zip ties and then people would go and they would put them again. And sometimes they would blindfold the people or would not blindfold the people. To me it was bit different this time because they recognized me from the start. It was actually the third time they were kidnapping me in less than a year. So, they knew me and they would treat me as an organizer. So, whenever they wanted to give a message to all of our participants, they would call me into a container full of commandos, and then their commander would say, “I want you to tell them to do this and this and this.” And I said to them, “I don’t mind telling our participants anything that is for their welfare. Something for their welfare, I would gladly do. But if something to make them harm, I refuse to do it.” And then they would say, “No, we just need to count them, this and this and this.” But then sometimes, they would ask me to do things that would do harm to our participants. For example, they were angry because when they put us in this military prison at sea, it was four containers and a square in the middle of these four containers. And in these four containers, three of them were for the people to stay, to sleep, extremely hot during the day, extremely cold during the night. And in the square, there was no coverage at all for the heat and for the moist of the ocean and for the cold. So, it was very harsh conditions. People lack water, but there was some water, but not enough for everybody. And people lacked food. There was some old, old bread, but some people, as well, went into a hunger strike, myself included, Chris.

So, what happened is that they put us in this military prison. They would put at the barrel of a gun to put people in line, to count them. They would throw stun grenades. They would throw flashbangs to scare people off. And people would get very cold at night. So, people would ask for jackets, for blankets. And what they would do, they gave like fifty jackets, but we were 181. And so, some people got jackets, but most of the people didn’t. So, they would go inside the container, they would pack themselves and cramp themselves in a way that would make it hotter, but still would not fit everybody. And so, people would stay outside walking all night to accelerate the metabolism and to stay a bit warmer. And when somebody asked for blankets or for jackets, they would laugh and they would make fun. They would point the lasers with the crosshairs of the rifles.

And then eventually, there was many people complaining. What they did was that they flooded the deck. They put a pipe, the pumps to flood the deck, and people would get even more wet and more cold. So cruel that they are. But at that moment, – we decided that it was at the end of the second day in this military prison with no communication to the outside world, without knowing how our other boats, because we didn’t know that these 30 boats escaped. They could have been shot, they could have been bombed, they could have been – we really didn’t know. So, we were saying, how is the situation of the other boats? And how is everybody here? Because they separated six people on our prison boat on the first day. And so, we said we made an assembly. And at the assembly, we made a collective decision that we would stop cooperating with them and would start this hunger strike process until they bring back our six friends that they separated from us, until they brought people their medicine, especially the people with cardiac diseases, especially the diabetic patients. People needed blankets and jackets, and people needed sanitary pads for women, and people needed more water. So, those were our demands. And we told them that we would stop cooperating, we were on a strike, a hunger strike, but also a non-cooperation strike. And so, they said that we needed to shut up, we could not shout or chant. And we decided that we would not obey them until they gave us our demands: bring the six people and all these other demands. And then we started chanting all night. And they would point the rifle at us, they would threaten us, and we would keep on chanting anyway. Non-violent type of resistance. And then, in the next morning, they were extremely violent. So, they throw a lot of bombs, a lot of flashbangs and stuff, and enter inside the area of the prison because they would stay above in platforms on that boat. They would not enter, just when they wanted to promote violence and to do some act of violence.

So, this day they got in with a lot of soldiers, put everybody on their knees with their heads for many, many, for a long, long time. And then they said that people were being transferred from boats. And then we said, “We only accept to get transferred once we see our six friends. We don’t want to leave them behind,” and then they said, “No, you’re not going to have this option.” And it just started trying to drag people, and so we stayed on our knees with our hands up and they started dragging people. And I was in front because I was negotiating with them, and they would not come for me, they would come for the people beside me and would take them and drag them very violently, and then would take more, two more, and then two more, and eventually they came for me. And when they came for me, they came extremely violent, just grabbing me by my neck and dragging me. And when they brought me halfway through the door of the entrance of this prison, of this square, there were already five to six soldiers inside the other part of the door. And they started kicking my head and kicking my body. And so, my leg was outside. People would see my leg like shaking, and I’m being kicked by them. And would hear them throwing me by the metal doors of the of the wall. And that’s when I passed out the first time. Literally everything went black. And then eventually they dragged me up. And when they dragged me up, they were trying to take me outside to another part. And that’s when I woke up. I regained consciousness. I was being dragged by them. And then when I regained consciousness, they took me to a processing table and I was already handcuffed and to the back. They were pulling my arm very high on my back. It was hurting a lot my shoulder. I thought it was broken. And then I could barely see from my right eye. It was already so, I don’t know how to say, so swelling that I could barely see. And then they took me to this processing table, and then the woman asked, “You’re Thiago, right?” And I said, “Yes.” And then she started making fun of my face, said that I didn’t look like Thiago. And I said, “Yes, you’ve been hitting me very hard.” And then she said something in Hebrew which I cannot understand, and then they started taking me to another corridor. And when they were taking me to this corridor, eventually, they actually blindfolded me at that time. I could only see a little bit from below the blindfold, it was not very well tied. So, I could see that they were dragging me, and then eventually I would see some boots of the soldier coming, and then when they come, they would punch me. And then eventually they would continue taking me and then another soldier would come that crosses us in this hallway. And then this soldier would punch me as well and say something, try to make a joke or something. And then it was very hard.

Chris Hedges: Thiago, where were they punching you? In your stomach, in your head, where?

Thiago Avila: They were punching me mostly in my face, but also on my chest, on my stomach as well. And then the other ones would continue dragging me. And then eventually they got close to the hatch, close to the exit and to the place where we entered this military prison boat. And then they would put me on my knees and with my head on the ground as well, a very compact turtle stress position. And then I would only hear that they were dragging people from behind me. They were dragging the other participants. So I was in the transfer lane hearing them being dragged to another out of outside of the prison boat where they had to climb a ladder, go to a RHIB, and then from that RHIB they would go to the other boat that I didn’t know what it was, but I was staying behind. I was just hearing them. And eventually the soldiers that would come and bring these people behind me, when they were leaving them at the hatch to the other boat, when they were going back to get more prisoners, they would come and kick me. They will come and spit on me and say bad things. So, it was a very bad moment where I stayed for a long time there seeing people being transferred, being attacked by these soldiers. And then eventually they were dragging most of the people. All of a sudden I hear someone well that looked like a commander, that sounded like a commander giving some order very loud. And he mentioned my name. I could not understand the rest of the sentence in Hebrew, but I could only understand Thiago. And when he did that, like four or five soldiers came close to me and started kicking me very hard and then dragging me. I understand he gave a comment regarding my situation. And then they were dragging me inside. And then when they were dragging me inside, I could see that I was being taken to like a dormitory. But there was a stair to this dormitory. And when I got to this stair, they would start beating me so hard, so hard, so hard, that I passed out again. And before I passed out, they actually got the shoelace. Because one woman found a shoelace in these days in the prison and she gave it to me. I put it in my pocket. And when he found the shoelace, he put the shoelace on my neck and he said, “Now we can hang you. It’s the new law. You know that we can hang you.” And they were all the time threatening to kill me, all the time saying, “Welcome to Israel” and all these things, but then again eventually they beat me so hard that that I passed out. And when I woke up, I was being dragged with my head on the ground, and my head was hurting because it was scratching on the ground. And he was dragging me by the foot and with my head on the ground, and then I didn’t know where he was taking me. Eventually he threw me in a room in this dormitory, and they left me and they closed the door. And when they locked the door, I could see a little bit from here, but also the ziplock was not very tight. So, I managed to get rid of one of my hands. And then I managed to raise the blindfold and to see the situation. And I was in a room where there were six bunk beds for militaries. There was even a military vest nearby. There were 10 bottles of water, 10 to 12 bottles of water, and there was a toilet. And that’s when I managed to get to the toilet. And that’s when I understood the situation that I was in. I could only feel, there was no mirror there, but I could only feel that my head was very swelled. So, I saw some blood, but not that much. So, I knew I was okay, but I could not see from my right eye because it was already closed of the swelling. I could barely hear from my right ear as well. And that was pretty much the situation. And then they covered the window of this dormitory that I was in with a trash bag, like a black bag. So, they taped it. But the corner was not very well taped. So, when I stood up, I had my blindfold up, I could see a little bit that they were still dragging people and taking people outside of the vessel. And I heard that for like more than one hour, Chris.

And then I could hear that the soldiers would come in the hallway of this dormitory, we’ll go to another room, and then someone would start screaming very loud. So, I understood that they were hitting the people in their nearby dorms. And I could understand, was actually hoping that at least it was the six people that were missing, that they that they were alive and at least they were there. And I could hear them transferring some of them. So, I understood that they were taking people out and they were leaving me behind. I didn’t know if anybody else would be left behind. And then, whenever I heard the soldiers coming, I had to go back to my position. I had to pretend that I had the blindfold down all the time. I had to pretend I had my head tight on the ziploc. So, I would go and get back into positions because I I didn’t want to get more attacked than I was. And so, I also put the blindfold back down, but I would not put it perfectly, so I could still see something below. So, I have this tactical advantage. And that’s what I did for a few hours, I cannot say exactly how many, and then they came again. And when they came again for my room, they did the same thing again with the rope. They said, “You know that now we have a new law that we can hang you, and we can hang any Palestinian.” And I would not engage on that. And they stood me up and they were taking me, that time not as violent as before. And then they took me to a place on this boat that I’d never seen before, Chris. When they took me to this place, I could see a little bit from below. So, I could see that I was close to the port side of the boat, and they opened a hatch. When they opened the hatch, there was just the ocean. No boat, no RHIB below. So, I understood that they would either throw me or they would threaten to throw me. And that’s what they did. And so, they started saying, “Do you like to swim? Do you know how long you can survive in this cold water?” And I would never respond to any of this because they were just provoking. I would not engage to encourage them on anything like this. So, I would just stay quiet. And then they come with a taser gun and to use the taser on on my right leg. And I didn’t do anything. All the time I stayed with my hands tied to my back on the ziploc, so I never have any reaction. I would not talk to them when they were doing these things. And so, they kept me there a little bit, threatening to throw me to the sea. Eventually they closed the hatch and then they took me to the other side of the boat. And there was a hatch. They opened the hatch again, but there was a RHIB. And they put the rope stairs. And then they lift my blindfold, they cut my ziplock, and they asked me to climb down. And when I was climbing down, at the last five steps, the soldier below, they just grabbed me and they throw me in the RHIB and asked me to be on my knees on the ground and my head on the ground, on the RHIB. And then they ziplocked me again. And then they started going with the RHIB to another boat. And then they put my blindfold again. And they put me on the very front of the RHIB. So, a lot of water would come and I was soaking wet. It was actually very cold and I was so hurt, so bruised, all my body was bruised. And then I could hear the engine of another boat after we left this boat. So, I understood that they were taking me to a different boat, but I could not see this time. When they put my blindfold again, they put very good, very firmly, with a second one. The first one was covering it all, the second one was putting a lot of pressure here. So, they put very tight. I really could not see anything.

So, I don’t know which boat we boarded. They actually made me climb with my eyes blindfolded. And then from this boat they took me to the toilet. And when they took me to the toilet, they asked, “Are you cold?” I said, “Yes,” and then they throw me more water. And then they continue taking me into many, many walls and stairs and doors until eventually they put me on a very small mattress close to a wall on the boat, and they ordered me to lie down there and not to move. And then I stood there for the night, for the morning, for a long time. And I could hear only one person beside me, which was Saif. So, I understood that at least me and Saif we were on this boat.

And then eventually the next day, a very extremely cold night, with all my body bruised, very, very hurt, they threatening to kill us all the time. And then they took us outside of this boat, to a prison car. From this prison car, still blindfolded, they took us into a military facility. In this military facility with the military checkpoints, I could understand that they brought us to a prison. When we got to this prison, they took the blindfold. I could see that I was with Saif there, just me and him.

And then police officer came and said, “Welcome to the Shabak interrogation facility. Shabak was the internal intelligence of Israel. And then they asked us to sign documents and they took all of our stuff, they took all of our clothes, put us in prison clothes, and then they separated us and I didn’t see Saif again for around eight days. And then we were put in interrogation from the Shabak, from the Mossad, from the police and other intelligence that didn’t identify themselves for all these days, for around ten days, eighteen hour interrogation.

Chris Hedges: In the interrogation, Thiago, what were they asking?

Thiago Avila: First of all, Chris, they were very, very angry about the mission. And they said that this was a terrorist mission and that we were the leaders and that’s why we had to be punished, that we would get killed. If we didn’t get killed, we would spend our life in prison, and that since they were not the Israeli prison system, they were a Shabak interrogation facility, they could torture people. We could actually hear people being tortured all around us and they had no restrictions of hours that they could interrogate us. They said that the lawyers would never see the reports, only the judge, if they would show the judge their reports, that basically there were no rules for what they could do there. And they would ask about the flotilla, why did we insist on going to Flotilla? I said all other things because it’s very obvious, it’s very public what we do.

They asked where the funding came from. And we said, “Look, there’s an online fundraising. You can check the website.” Which countries we were organized. I said, “Look, we put all these things public on our website. We’re not afraid of doing our organize because we’re doing for the right reasons.” And then they would say that we would spend our all of our lives there if we were not killed. And then eventually they would keep on insisting on all the other missions. So, they asked me to narrate all the other missions. It was actually the ninth mission I was organizing of the Flotilla. So, they wanted details. What did we do? How did we do? And all these things were public. We would do public because we have nothing to hide. We should not fear them and they was insisting on why do you do this because there’s no starvation in Gaza? You know that this is not true. And we said, “Actually, we know that it is true.” And they said, “No, you’re accessing wrong information. Every day I see here on my WhatsApp hundreds of trucks get into Gaza.” I said, “I’m sorry, but this is fake because the United Nations proves that there’s no aid coming in. The doctors in Gaza, they prove there’s no aid coming in. That the journalists that you didn’t kill, they prove that there’s not enough aid coming in.” And they said, “No, this is not true. This is just to attack Israel.” So, they get a fabricated version that they actually believe in that version or they say they believe, and they stick to that.

And so, they kept us there for all these days, asking pretty much the same things. So they would actually access my social media and say, for twenty one years of solidarity work for Palestine, and they would ask about every single thing, all the times that I’ve been, and when I went to the West Bank, and what did I do there, every city that I went. And I was actually using this as an opportunity to tell them the story that they don’t hear in their country about what they are doing, the colonization, the apartheid and the genocide.

And they hated it so much, Chris. They hated to hear these things, but I thought it was important for them to hear. And eventually, they came a few days later asking for a renewal of our remain there. So, they would take us to court hearings and they would ask the judge to keep us there for longer. And the judge would grant them that. And when they actually were deciding to press charges, which charges they would press, they decided they came and said, “You’re going stay here for your whole life because we are charging you of five terror crimes, each of them for 20 years sentence. So, in total is a hundred years. You’re being charged of being a terrorist, you’re being a leader of a terrorist organization, a member of a terrorist organization, in contact with transporting terrorist property because these boats are terrorist boats, and you’re aiding the enemy in times of war, because the propaganda you do is against Israel, it’s actually assisting our enemies.” And that’s the sum of the accusations that they try to pull on us for a hundred years. And I said, “Look, I don’t fear getting in prison. You have almost ten thousand Palestinian people in your dungeons being treated much worse than I am, being tortured much worse. Almost 400 of these people are children that you’ve been keeping here in administrative detention with no right of even a proper defense. Some of them are not even properly charged of anything. You killed so many Palestinians, you’ve been killing for eight decades. So, we should not be afraid of getting killed, of spending our life in prison. That’s the reality of anti-colonial struggle. We are actually on a hunger strike. So, you say you have a hundred years to keep us here, but you actually have a bit more than a month. So, I’m sure that the whole world is mobilizing against this other violation of humanitarian law. And yeah, we are here with all the dignity that we have. We do not fear you, and we continue going.”

So, when they took us to the court hearing, I did this victory sign that Nicolas Maduro did in prison as well. And so that’s the moment where they got very violent and very angry at me as well. And they said that they would break every single bone in my hand and in my arm if I did any move on the next time. Because whenever they brought us to a court hearing, first of all, we were blindfolded and with two handcuffs on each wrist and in each ankle. And then they would take off, but we still have to walk with our hands on our back. And they would take it off just for us to go inside the room. First to the press for them to make videos and then they would take away all the press and then we will go back again and would sit down there. And that’s what we did. And when I did this sign on the first hearing, all the other hearings before was like 10 minutes of them pushing me to the to the wall and pressuring me and say, “We are going to break every bone on your hand if you do that sign again.” And then they will say, “Because we are a fair and just state, but we don’t want to do that to you.” So that’s amazing how they flipped from very violent, genocidal, and horrific people to people that say that they have a rule of law in their country. And then in the end, we stayed there for 10 days. So around two days in the prison boat, around 10 days on the on the torture interrogation facility of the Shabak. And they decided to let us go.

The political pressure that was made by the campaign to release us put them in a situation that they could not kill us. They could not imprison us for a hundred years. It was better for them to let us go. And so, they let us go in a way that Saif was allowed to take a flight to Spain, but there were no direct flights to Brazil. So, they would not allow that. So, they would just drop me in Egypt. And in Egypt, I was taken to the Sinai Desert in the border of Tabah, and from there I found my way.

And when I was finding my way in the Sinai Desert to go to Cairo to take the flight to Brazil, I had no communication with the outside world, there with nothing. So, the guy who was taking me, Mohammed, he was taking me to the Brazilian Embassy. So, from the Brazilian embassy I would go to the airport. And then I asked to use his phone to send a message to my wife and my baby because I’m sure they would be very concerned about me. And then when I sent her a message, her Instagram is actually blocked for people who are not her friends to see. So, I just sent her a message and I went to my Instagram to say, let me see on my page if they know that I’m being released, because they would have published on my page. And when I went there to access, Chris, I saw the videos of the funeral of my mother that she had died five days before and I was not there. So, it actually broke me to see. It was so sad, so sad.

They can actually inflict on us a huge amount of pain. They’ve been doing this to Palestinians in much worse pains for such a long time. But that’s the thing. Whatever they do to us is still a small fraction of what they do to Palestinians. Hussam Abu Safiya, the doctor of Kamal Adwan Hospital, has been tortured for five hundred days now, more than five hundred days. He’s in solitary confinement right now. He also lost his mother and could not see and pay respects for his mother. Marwan Bhargouti, imprisoned for decades as well. He also lost many, many family members he could not see. They actually, the Zionists, erased entire families from the registry in Gaza. And so there was not even anyone to grieve them because they erased completely entire lineage, entire family, thousands of years of lineage there, erased on a genocide. So, the torture that we suffered, the violence that we suffered, they were very, very hard, but nothing compares to what they do to Palestinians. That’s the problem of this.

Well, when I got back to Brazil, I never speak about their violence as soon as I get back, because I always want to speak about what’s happening to Gaza and to the Palestinians. Otherwise, people put us on the subject. And so, I’d wait a few days. I only speak about the situation that motivated the mission. And then after a few days I start talking.

And then the other boats that escaped, the thirty boats, they actually joined twenty more boats and they actually went again. So, two weeks later they were there going again. And so, I went to Turkiye, to Istanbul, to help to pressure if they got intercepted, to support. And then when they came back from detention after three days’ detention, they were broken, Chris. People got raped, people got so many broken bones, so many violations in the second interception. So, it was very, very hard to see.

And so, in a way that usually we don’t speak immediately about the violations that the participants suffered. We only speak about Gaza. But this time we had to speak. People who had so many ribs broken, clavicles broken, cervical broken, punctured lungs, the rapes case. So, it was such an absurd that Itamar Ben Gvir bragging about that, but he didn’t calculate it very well because he posted a video and then there was a huge diplomatic and political backlash. So, that’s actually what changed because the world got shocked on how they brag about doing these horrific violations. So, that’s the outcome that we had. It was a mission like the other missions, a non-violence, civil disobedience, direct action, solidarity mission, humanitarian mission with the idea of breaking the siege, creating a humanitarian corridor, supporting the Palestinian in the right for self-determination and liberation. But it was the biggest mission ever attempted. And the effect was that it created more than 20 countries condemning Israel, some applying sanctions from October to now, many countries recognize the Palestinian state. And first and most important of all of this, after seven months now, eight months of the so-called ceasefire in Gaza, people are finally talking again about Gaza. So, it was very hard for all of us. Very, very tough. They can inflict on us a lot of pain. But it was worth it because people are not silent about the genocide anymore. So, we understood that we fulfilled our role in solidarity with this mission.

Chris Hedges: I mean, clearly the violence, I know from speaking with you from previous detentions, they were violent but it appears they ratcheted up to a level not seen before probably to prevent people from carrying out further flotillas. Would that be correct?

Thiago Avila: Yes, they had these two things going on, these two phenomena. First, they were understanding that the flotillas were escalating every time with more and more boats, growing every time they attack us. So, they wanted to send us a message not to do. And another thing is there is this internal political struggle in the Zionist regime, which is carried by the far right, represented by Netanyahu, by Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and the so-called representatives of the state of Israel, not the far right, which they’re also Zionists, they also promote genocide and ethnic cleansing, but in a different way, more strategic, more concealed way. And so, they were struggling about what to do because whenever we get arrested in a flotilla, they had this struggle going on that Ben Gvir wants to punish us as publicly as they can and as hard as he can to show that he’s a strong man. It’s going for election, so he wants to get votes. As incredible as it may seem, the violence that he promotes gives him more votes. And the Netanyahu, the attacks, as it doesn’t foreign and neighboring countries, also actually gives him more votes as well. So, they wanted the votes and they wanted to punish and violate people to show strength. On the other side, the other sectors, not the very, very far right, they wanted to show a good image of Israel. So, they wanted to get rid of us of this PR crisis as soon as they could.

There’s always this tug of war of some wanting to get rid of us, some wanting to punish us. Most of the other missions, the ones who want to get rid of us, they got the best. And we got released and deported very soon. But from the previous missions, Itamar Ben Gvir was already having his way in some parts of the detention process. This time, he was in full control for the first days and for the first moments of interception. And when he made this video, that he actually did to promote himself, the public outrage and global condemnation, created a way that this Israeli state, once again the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Saar, for example, he said, “This is not acceptable. He’s not abiding by the Israeli values and all this stuff. So, I’m ordering the release of all prisoners immediately.”

So, after the video, after the attacks and the violations, this side of the politics in Israel, they got the best as well and got rid of us, but still they are more patient Zionists. It’s not that they respect international laws. Actually, Itamar Ben Gvir controls the police, the internal police because it’s the Ministry of Interior. But the Israeli navy is controlled by Netanyahu himself and the Ministry of Defense, Israel cuts. So many of the Israeli states that happens over there is not under Ben Gvir’s command. And the genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the apartheid state is under every aspect of the Israeli State. So, it’s not that Itamar Ben Gvir is an error in the system, he’s just a symptom of this sick society, genocidal society.

Chris Hedges: And what’s next for you and for the Flotilla?

Thiago Avila: Well yeah, Chris, whenever people ask us should we continue, I always ask them,

“Have we solved the root causes that create a flotilla to happen? Are the Palestinian people free? Do they live with equality regardless of their race, their gender, their ethnicity, their religion in their land that they are indigenous from? Or have they stopped calling for solidarity? No. None of these things are solved.” Actually, the situation in Gaza is getting worse and worse now. Netanyahu is bragging about controlling 70% of Gaza in the so-called Yellow Line in eight months of the so-called genocide. They are attacking Lebanon to prevent a ceasefire deal in the region between the other world criminal Donald Trump and the Iranians and the Yemenis and the Lebanese resistance as well. So, they want to escalate the world to total destruction, and we need to stop these people. Not we individually, but the global uprising of people, the free people of the world. We need to stop them. Otherwise, we’ll be on our homes. We’ll be on everyone’s… people that think they’re so far away from all of this. They think it’s just a matter of conscience, but it’s not. Eventually we’ll be you. Every single person that had breakfast, that had lunch today paid more for their food because of the wars of Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Every person that used gas, that took transportation, they paid more for this because of terror wars and if not only the crisis of cost of living but the risk that these bombs eventually will fall on us, that these exception states, these terror states, these repressive states, they will come into your country as well, into your society as well, so we need to stop that.

Every generation, they have a mission like who said – that was Franz Fanon who said that every generation has a historical calling that you have to fulfill it or betray it. And we understand this very well. The Palestinian people show the world that the evil of this generation is called Zionism and United States imperialism. And we need to stop this for all the people to be able to live free, to live with dignity, to have the right to live in peace with justice. So, we need to do all the efforts. Flotilla is just a tool, a tactic, but we need to dedicate our lives to do that. We need to do like you do, to bring free information, to open people’s minds to what’s actually going on. We need to organize people in the territories, to create social strength, answering the problem to the problems that people are suffering every day that sometimes prevent them from engaging in solidarity and mobilizing in solidarity in as many actions as we can by sea, by land, by every means necessary. It’s our task. I’m a father of a two-year-old baby daughter that of course she misses me. And it’s very dangerous to do what we do. I was threatened so many times. She was threatened so many times when I was in prison by them. But there’s nothing more dangerous for my daughter than to live in a world and normalize genocide because eventually these bombs could be on our homes, could be in our countries. So, we need to mobilize right now. That’s why when people say what’s next is to do everything that we are still doing, but stronger, with more people, more organized, more dedicated, even more than what we already are. We need to be better for this great battle of our generation.

Chris Hedges: Great, Thiago, and thanks for the interview and all you do. I have tremendous respect for you and for all of the activists who are fighting against the genocide. I want to thank Max and Nawell and Thomas, who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.substack.com.