His Harrowing Experience in an Israeli Torture Dungeon (w/ Thiago Ávila) | The Chris Hedges Report

A

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. 180 Samud Flotilla Cruise 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 31 were hospitalized. Two high profile members of a flotilla, the Brazilian organizer Tiago Avila, and the Spaniard Saif Abu Keshek, who is of Palestinian descent, were kidnapped and taken to Israel. They were blindfolded, forced to lie in their stomachs and beaten with such severity that Tiago lost consciousness twice. When they appeared in an Israeli court, the bruises on their faces were visible. Tiago had trouble lifting his right arm. The two men were held in solitary confinement and went on hunter 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 Tiago Avila. Before we begin with this latest, this is not the first time you have been held, of course, Tiago, by the Israelis, layout the history of the flotillas and the importance of the flotilla flotillas.

B

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, the Palestinian, 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, they are part of this movement that 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 18 years there were attempts to break this siege. And the first five attempts in 2008, they actually made, to break this siege, two small fishing boats. They 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 Marmara in 2010, others by sabotaging the boats.

A

Let me just stop you there, Tiago, because people may not understand. This was a Turkish ship and Israeli commandos rappelled onto the ship and I mean, explain what happened.

B

Yeah, it was actually like this. After 2008, 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, 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 Shayate 13, it's an elite unit of the Israeli navy, they attacked the boat 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 50 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 10 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 20 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 Turkey with three big boats that in April 2024 was ready to sail with more than 30 countries, represented more than a thousand people, more than 5,500 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 Madrina, a small boat of 12 people, myself, Greta, Rima, Hassan, Yasmin 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 smooth flotilla in October 2025, then with 42 boats with more than 400 people. And we also got intercepted. But the boats got very close. Some boats got 24 nautical miles to Gaza and there was a huge global uprising. Greece, 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 up to a 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 for this next mission. And then on this next mission we suffer 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 non violent 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 like we say, when governments fail, we sail.

A

But they're seizing these boats in international waters. It's a clear violation of the law of the sea.

B

Yes, it is. We are talking about a rogue state, Chris. A country that is committing genocide, is committing ethnic cleansing structured and apartheid states 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 Court of Justice in the case opened by South Africa against Israel for the crime of genocide, they made a provisional rulings 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 are 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.

A

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

B

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. Like doing demonstrations, doing boycott campaigns, the people 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, 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 our 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, AIDS was still being hindered, the land was being stolen from the Palestinians and their plans for that 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 in artificial intelligence and drones shooting people randomly. So very bad things. And the industrial military complex profiting from war, from every bomb that falls into a Palestinian children's heads. There was a month 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 wanted, 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 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 where the world is going to rise up. But the pressure is going to be so big under with the complicit states that they're going to break their complicity. And the pressure is going to be so big in 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, nonviolent 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 the rights. We just need to be there with them, banging on this wall, hitting on this wall until this wall collapse. So we never know which is going to be the flotilla, the blockade, the boycott, which is going to be the action that will consolidating the victory of the Palestinian people in their indigenous resistance and 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.

A

You're from Brazil. What's the message that the genocide has sent to the global south?

B

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 this 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 of sovereignty from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil or any other country 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 by carrying signs, arresting people using watermelon flags, arresting people by posting on social media. So we broke completely the mask of the global north as the people who. 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.

A

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're, what, 600 nautical miles from Gaza, and you can take it from there. What happened?

B

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 15, and we were sailing from Barcelona to Sicily, where we got more boats, more people, where we trained, more 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 Turkey. And in Turkey, we would train again, all of our team, 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 come with us to Gaza. But we 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 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 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 boats, reporters seen ribs coming with soldiers to that boats. 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.

A

Let me just stop you, Tiago. Tiago, explain how an interception works.

B

Well, 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 ribs, some small rubber boats with full of commandos, around 20 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 ribs. Once they board our boats with the barrel of the gun, they. They surrender everybody. They. They take control of the boat. Sometimes they move people to another place, to inside the boat to. They take control. Sometimes they. 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. They pitched the hole, destroyed the engine for the boat to sink, and then just took the people, put on another on their ribs, 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 kidnapped the people, the boat, the humanitarian aid. But this time, they were not even interested in that, of stealing the boat and the aid, like they do all the time, they wanted to sink the boat 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 moved. 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 kneel to the ground.

A

Were you just. Tiago, were you handcuffed? You were handcuffed behind your back?

B

Yes, yes. They Would handcuff most of the people with zip ties. Sometimes when we got to the prison system in occupied Palestine, in 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 a bit different this time because they recognized me from the start. It was actually the third time they were kidnapping me 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. If 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 would lack water, but there was some water, but not enough for everybody. And people lacked food. There was some old bread, but. 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, would ask for blankets, and what they would do. They gave, like, 50 jackets, but we wore 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 feed 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. And so at that moment we decided that was at the end of the second day in this military prison with no communication to the outside world, without knowing how were our other boats, because we didn't know that these 30 boats escaped. It could have been shot, they could have been bombed, they could have been killed. We really didn't know. So we were saying, how was 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 when 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 bore entered the inside 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, they said that people were being transferred by from boats. And then we said, we only allow 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 they 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 from the people beside them, 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. My. By my neck and dragging me. And when they brought me halfway through the door of the entrance of this. This prison, of this square, they. 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 see my leg shaking, and I'm being kicked by them and would hear them throwing me by the metal doors of the wall. And that's when I passed out the first time. Literally, everything went black. And then they eventually 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 conscious, they took me to a processing table. And I was already handcuffed 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. 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 Tiago, 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 they did. 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 tight, 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.

A

Where were they punching Thiago?

B

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 to the place where we entered this military prison boat. And then they would put me on my knees and with my head. My knees on the ground 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 wasn't at the transfer lane. That's hearing them being dragged to another. Out of. Outside of the prison boat where they had to climb a ladder, go to a rib. And then from that rib they will go to the other boat that I didn't know where it was or what it was. And then. 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 would 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 would. They were dragging most of the people. All of a sudden I hear someone that looked like a commander, that sounded like a commander, saying, 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 Tiago. 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 command 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 stare to this dormitory. And when I got to the stair, they would. Started beating me so hard, so hard, so hard that I passed out again. And when I actually, before I passed out, they actually got the shoelace. Because one. One woman found a shoelace these days in the prison and she gave it to me. I put on my. On 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 beaten me so hard 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 I was. Was scratching me 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 on 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 Ziploc was not very well, 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 was six bunk beds for militaries. There was even a military vest nearby. There was 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. 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 off, 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 with 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, would go to another room, and then someone would start screaming very loud. So I understood that they were hitting the people in the nearby by dorms. And I could understand. I was actually hoping that at least it was the six people that were missing, 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 that 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. More attack than I was. And. And so I also put the blindfold back. Back up, but back down, but I would not put 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 from my room, they did the same thing again with the rope. They said, you know, that now we have a new law that we. And we can hang any Palestinian. And I would not engage on that. And they would. They stood me up, and they were taking me. Taking me that time, not that violent as before. And then they took me to a place on this boat that I'd never seen before. 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 side on port side of the boat. And they opened the hatch. When they opened the hatch, there was just the ocean, no boat, no reef 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 can you survive in this cold water? And I will not, never respond to any of this, because they were just provoking. I'm not engaged 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 my right leg. And I. I didn't do anything all the time. I stayed with my. I had 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. 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 and. But there was a reap. And they put the. The rope stairs. And then they lift my blindfold. They cut my Ziploc. 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 throw me in the rib and asked me to be on my knees on the ground and my head on the ground on the rib. And then they. They ziplocked me again. And then they started going with the rib to another boat. And then they put my blindfold again, and they put me on the very front of the rib 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, so 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 these boats, they took me to the shower, 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 take, continue taking me into many, many walls and stairs and doors, until eventually they put me on a small, 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 rest, 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 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 years, eight days. And then we were putting interrogation from the Shabak, from the Mossad, from the police and other intelligence that didn't identify themselves for all these days, for around 10 days, 18 hour interrogation.

A

In the interrogation, Tiago, in the interrogation,

B

first of all, please. 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 Shabb 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 the reports, that basically there were no rules for what they could do there. And they would ask about the flotilla, why did we insisted on going the flotilla? I said 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 organized because we're doing for the right reasons. And then they would say that we would spend 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 in 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 were 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 said, no, you're accessing wrong information. Every day I see here on my WhatsApp hundreds of trucks getting to 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 proved 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 21 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, 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 gonna stay here for your whole life because we are charging you of five terror crimes, each of them for 20 year sentence. So in total is 100 years. You're in charge 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 tried to pull on us for 100 years. And I said, look, I don't fear getting imprisoned. You have almost 10,000 Palestinian people in your dungeons being treated much worse than I am, being tortured, murdered 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 100 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 would go back again and would sit down there and that's what. 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 wall and pressuring me and saying, 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, around two days in the prison boat, around 10 days on the torture interrogation facility of the Shabak. And they decided to let us go. The pressure, 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 100 years. It was better for them to let us go. 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. 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 Taba. And from there I. 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. So I was left there with nothing. So the guy who was taking me, Mohamed, he was taking me to the Brazilian embassy, so that 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 to. 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 Palestinian 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. Hussain abu Safiyah, the doctor of Kamala One Hospital has been tortured for 500 days now, more than 500 days. He's in solitary confinement right now. He also lost his mother and could not see and pay respects for his mother. Marwa Barghouti, imprisoned for decades as well. He also lost many, many family members that could not see. They actually designed, erased entire families from the registry in Gaza. And so there was not even anyone to grief them because they erased completely entire lineage, entire family, thousands of years of lineage there erased on a genocide. So the tortures that we suffered, the violence that we suffered, they were very, very hard with nothing compares to what they do to Palestinians. That's the, the problem of this. 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 the US on the subject. And so I 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 13 boats, they actually joined two, 20 more boats and actually went again. So two weeks later they were there going again. And so I went to Turkey, 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. People got, 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 suffer. We only speak about Gaza. But this time had to speak people who had so many ribs broken, clavicle broken cervical broken punctured lungs, the rapes case. So it was such an absurd that in Itamar Benvir 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 war 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 is of non violent civil disobedience, direct action, solidarity mission, humanitarian mission, with the idea of breaking the siege, creating a humanitarian corridor and supporting the Palestinian in the right for self determination, liberation. But it was the biggest mission ever attempted. And the fact 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.

A

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

B

Yes. They had these two things going on, these two phenomenon. 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 Vere and Bezales Motric and the so called representatives of the State of Israel. Not the far right, which they're also Zionists. They also promote genocide and anti 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 Afotila, they had this struggle going on that Benqville wants to punish us as public as they can and as hard as he can to show that he's a strong man, he's going for elections, so he wants to get votes. As incredible as it may seem, the violence that he promotes gives him more votes. And Netanyahu, the attacks, as it does on foreign and neighboring countries, also actually gives him more votes as well. So they wanted the votes, 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 is 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 wanted to get rid of us, they got the best and we got released and deported very soon. But from the previous missions, Itamar Bengvi 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 in global condemnation created a way that this Israeli State once again, the Ministry of Foreign affairs, 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.

A

Okay, Al,

B

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, they are more patient Zionist. It's not that they are. Respect, respect international laws. Actually Itamar Ben Vion throws the, 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 state that happens over there is not under Benvir'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 Sikh society, genocidal society.

A

And what's next for you and for the.

B

Yeah, Chris, whenever people ask us should we continue, I always ask them,

A

have

B

we solved the root causes that creates a political to happen? Is 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 Yadav Line in eight months of the so called genocide. So they want to take, they want to escalate the world to total destruction. And we need to stop these people. Not, 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 will 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 their wars. And it's 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 Frantz Fanon. 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 the 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 problems 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 that normalizes 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 the this great battle of our generation.

A

Great Thiago and thanks for the interview and all you do. I have tremendous respect for you and all of the activists who are fighting against the genocide. I want to thank Max and Noel and Thomas who produced the show. You can find me@chrished substack.com. Sam.