"This role goes beyond the State Department’s diplomatic shielding and the US Embassy’s refusal to assist American families seeking information," GSF continued. "It includes the very ship on which volunteer participants were illegally detained and tortured, and the weapons used to inflict life-threatening trauma against them."
That vessel, the amphibious landing ship INS Nahshon, was built by Bollinger Mississippi Shipbuilding in Louisiana and was fully financed by the US government. GSF activists first became aware of what they now call the "torture boat" when it was used to detain members of the previous Gaza-bound flotilla, dozens of whom required medical attention for broken ribs, noses, and other injuries inflicted by Israeli forces.
This time, according to GSF, "detained humanitarians, doctors, and journalists were processed one by one through a darkened shipping container. Inside, groups of three to five soldiers systematically brutalized each person who came through the door while those waiting outside listened to the screams."
Flotilla participant Yassine Benjelloun described his mistreatment by his Israeli captors.
"All of a sudden I hear, 'Welcome to Israel.' And I start getting hit, like first hit on the head, second hit in the ribs, then I fall, then they kick me," he said. "What lasts maybe three or five minutes seems like a lifetime. You don't know that the door is going to open, and they're going to kick you out."
Dr. Jihan Alya Mohd Nordin, a Malaysian physician aboard the flotilla, documented 35 GSF members with fractured or dislocated bones, as well as severe head injuries including concussions and eye or ear trauma, and 14 cases of sexual assault.
"Being a doctor, the main aim is to reduce the sufferings of people," Jihan said. "But when we cannot do anything to help them, it was the worst and most horrible feeling that I have. It was so devastating."
Jihan said she was shoved, struck, punched, kicked, and choked by her captors, who forcibly stripped off her hijab.
In addition to the ship, the weapons used against the civilian flotilla members were also made in the USA.
"Stun grenades and metal-bearing projectile rounds were identified by manufacturer markings as products of Combined Tactical Systems (CTS), a brand of the Jamestown, Pennsylvania-based weapons manufacturer Combined Systems Inc. (CSI)," GSF said. "These weapons were fired at close range in enclosed spaces against participants who were sitting down or trying to sleep, a direct violation of the manufacturer’s own usage guidelines."
GSF argues that "none of this was accidental."
According to former State Department official Josh Paul—who resigned in protest in 2023 over US arms transfers to Israel as it began waging a genocidal war against Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack of October 7 of that year—"Under US law, arms transfers must only be made for purposes authorized by law."
"INS Nahshon's use by Israel to conduct an illegal seizure in international waters, and then to act as a base for the torture and sexual assault of foreign civilians, including Americans, who had broken no laws, and were acting from conscience to serve an urgent humanitarian need, plainly and grievously violates those terms," he continued.
"When this sale was authorized, US officials will have asked themselves how Israel might use this platform," Paul added. "The basis on which they should have denied this transfer has been there since at least the Mavi Marmara incident... but is now more clear than ever, and the lesson here is a simple one: that anything we transfer to Israel, Israel will find a way to misuse—whether it is a bomb, a bulldozer, or a boat.”
Paul was referring to the May 2010 raid on one of the first Gaza Freedom Flotilla convoys, during which Israeli forces killed nine volunteers aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
"While international law has been flagrantly violated and legal proceedings are now active in Turkey, Italy, and Spain, with Italian prosecutors opening an investigation into kidnapping and sexual assault, the US government continues to look away," GSF said in regard to the latest flotilla.
Americans aboard past Gaza flotillas said the Trump administration failed to provide any consular support during their abduction and abuse.
This time, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee—a Christian Zionist who has denied the very existence of the Palestinian people—joined senior officials from other countries in condemning Israel's abuse of abducted flotilla members.
GSF said Tuesday that "the Israeli regime continues to commit genocide using US-built ships and US-made weapons. The torture of US citizens and humanitarian volunteers with American-made tools is not an anomaly. It is the direct outcome of unconditional US support for a regime continuously committing war crimes and crimes against humanity."
That support includes tens of billions of dollars in armed aid during the Biden and Trump administrations, which both also provided diplomatic cover for Israel, including vetoes of numerous Gaza ceasefire resolutions passed by the United Nations Security Council.
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 250,000 Palestinians in Gaza—including thousands of people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble—while forcibly displacing, intentionally starving, or sickening around 2 million others.
Israel's actions are the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 other nations. The International Criminal Court has also issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation.
Last year, a UN panel of experts said that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a conclusion also reached by numerous governments, human rights groups, jurists, and scholars—including prominent Israeli and other Jewish Holocaust experts.
Flotilla participants have stressed that their ordeal pales in comparison to the plight of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children imprisoned by Israel, often without charge or trial under the country's administrative detention regime. Israeli authorities are investigating the deaths of dozens of Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were allegedly tortured to death and executed. Others have allegedly been subjected to widespread rape and sexual abuse in Israeli detention.
"What GSF participants survived for days, many Palestinians endure indefinitely without lawyers or consular access," the flotilla organizers said.
GSF is calling on the US government to take actions including the investigation of Israel's use of US-origin arms and other equipment to abuse American citizens, a suspension of arms transfers to Israel pending the outcome of the probe, and "end unconditional military and diplomatic support for a regime committing genocide."
