Anas Mohammed recounts his own experience and details of what he said took place during his time in Israeli custody after his boat in the Global Sumud Flotilla was intercepted by Israeli forces on international waters. Some readers may find the account below distressing
I’m Anas Mohammed. I’ve been intercepted in the Global Sumud Flotilla, between Italy and Greece.
One of the aspects of the torture that we faced was sexual assault and sexual abuse.
Personally, when we were intercepted and transferred, one [Israeli] soldier noticed that I had short pants under my pants, my normal pants, my jeans.
So he took them out and grabbed me by the genitals with some physical grip, hard grip, and he was very proud of it. He was pleased. I don’t understand why, to be honest, and he was sarcastically saying that, let’s see how resilient you are.
This is my personal story, and for me it’s not that huge story compared to stories that I saw around me with in other people who faced harsher sexual violence, and for Palestinians also, who are raped but the Israeli government system didn’t do anything about it, and the people who raped these prisoners didn’t face any kind of punishment.
I witnessed on the ship other people who were physically raped, and had things put in their private areas. I am not going to get into details in these stories because they’re not my own. They have the choice to tell it or not, but for us, the participants of the Global Sumud Flotilla, one of the main missions for us is to spotlight the torture, the life that the Palestinians live through.
I encourage other participants to speak up and share their stories, because for people with European passports with white heritage have the support system that they need to process these stories to process this torture, but the Palestinians don’t have such systems; they don’t have anything to rely on to support them in such harsh, abusive surroundings.
That’s why it’s important for everyone to speak up for themselves and share their stories, because their stories are always a fraction of what the Palestinians have to face each day in prison and outside the prison system.
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