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sexual assault
France Asks Top Prosecutor to Probe Alleged Israeli Abuse of Gaza Flotilla Members
French nationals and people from dozens of countries who were abducted from the Global Sumud Flotilla say they were beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted by their Israeli captors.
May 29, 2026
France's government on Friday asked prosecutors to investigate Israel's alleged mistreatment of French nationals aboard the last Global Sumud Flotilla, which was intercepted earlier this month in international waters while trying to break the illegal decadeslong Israeli blockade of Gaza.
“Based on a report I requested from our Consul General in Turkey—who informed me of sexual violence, exposure to the cold, beatings, and repeated humiliation of French nationals—all of these acts are likely to constitute criminal offenses," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said during an interview with France Inter, adding, "I decided yesterday to refer the matter to the public prosecutor."
The move follows France's indefinite ban from its territory of far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who posted a video on social media showing him joyfully humiliating detained activists, journalists, and others who were mostly kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs and their foreheads forced to the ground following the May 18 interception of flotilla vessels off the coast of Cyprus and the abduction of all aboard.
“We cannot tolerate that French nationals can be threatened, intimidated, or brutalized in this way—all the more so by a public official," Barrot said last week.
People from around 40 countries—including 37 French nationals—were seized from dozens of flotilla vessels and held in harsh conditions on what many of them called a "torture boat."
According to Global Sumud Flotilla (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.”
French medical professional Meriem Hadjal said she was "subjected to torture" in the container, where at least one Israeli soldier allegedly sexually assaulted her.
"We were treated like animals," Hadjal added, accusing her Israeli captors of "sadism."
GSF said Tuesday that "legal proceedings are now active in Turkey, Italy, and Spain, with Italian prosecutors opening an investigation into kidnapping and sexual assault" of flotilla members.
Numerous national governments condemned Israel's treatment of the flotilla abductees, including the United States. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said that Ben-Gvir "betrayed the dignity" of his nation, which receives billions of dollars in annual armed aid and diplomatic cover from the United States to carry out what many experts say is a genocidal war on Gaza.
Malaysia is reportedly preparing to initiate proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice over the abduction and alleged torture of its citizens, 29 of whom were aboard the flotilla. The ICJ is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations.
“We will not remain silent, we will not stop. While the legal team gathers all documentation on violations of international law; they were kidnapped more than once, they were tortured,” Amirudin Shari, chief minister of the Malaysian state of Selangor, said during a homecoming ceremony for the flotilla members at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Israeli troops have physically and psychologically tortured past flotilla abductees. Dozens of members of the previous Global Sumud mission required medical attention for broken ribs, noses, and other injuries inflicted by Israeli forces. In 2010, Israeli troops killed nine activists aboard one of the first-ever Gaza flotillas, including Turkish-American teenager Furkan Doğan.
As some countries pursue justice for flotilla members, others have declined to act. In the United Kingdom, Zarah Sultana, who represents Coventry South for the socialist Your Party in Parliament, is demanding "urgent action" in the wake of abuse allegations made by British flotilla abductees.
"France is acting. Spain is showing leadership. Where is the UK government?" Sultana said Friday on X. "Nothing but a simp for Israel, a genocidal apartheid state."
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In Wake of NYT Uproar, UN Rights Office Calls for Independent Probe of Israel's Sexual Abuse of Detainees
While Israel said the claims amount to "blood libel," a spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office said, "torture and ill-treatment, including sexual and gender-based violence, are systematically perpetrated against Palestinian prisoners."
May 18, 2026
As Israel attempts to discredit New York Times reporting published last week that detailed systematic sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli forces, the United Nations Human Rights Office over the weekend called for an independent probe into what a spokesperson characterized as well-documented mistreatment.
"Torture and ill-treatment, including sexual and gender-based violence, are systematically perpetrated against Palestinian prisoners under Israeli custody. This includes numerous cases of rape, involving children," said Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Saturday, in response to questions from the Anadolu Agency.
Al-Kheetan added that the human rights office had confirmed the deaths of at least 90 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody since October 7, 2023, including a 17-year-old who showed signs of starvation at the time of death.
Israel has announced that it will sue the Times for the report by opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof, which included testimony from 14 Palestinians who said they faced sexual assaults in Israeli custody or during attacks by the Israeli military or settlers. Threatening legal action, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other government officials described the reporting as “blood libel.”
But Al-Kheetan said the OHCHR had “systematically documented the practice of torture and ill-treatment, including sexual and gender-based violence, against Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons."
Reports from other human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli group B'Tselem, have included similar testimonies in which Palestinian former detainees say they've experienced or witnessed sexual violence while in custody.
Al-Kheetan added that it was part of a “flawed Israeli detention and justice system,” which includes arbitrary detention, unfair trials, and violations of international law. "This system must end, and Israel, as an occupying power, must respect international human rights law and its obligations," he said.
While rejecting allegations of systemic abuse, Israel has denied requests by the UN and other agencies for access to its detention facilities. Last year, Israel refused a request from the UN to investigate possible sex crimes committed by Hamas militants against Israelis on October 7, 2023, because it would have also involved a probe into its own treatment of Palestinian detainees.
Al-Kheetan said, "independent, impartial, and transparent investigations must be conducted into every death, torture, ill-treatment, and other case of inhuman or degrading treatment, and those responsible must be held accountable."
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Antisemitism Watchdog Rips 'Blood Libel' Smear Against NYT for Reporting Israeli Rape of Gazans
"To weaponize the term 'blood libel' to dismiss Kristof's thorough reporting is dangerous. It's insulting to the term's violent history and hinders our community's ability to call out actual blood libels when they occur."
May 13, 2026
A Jewish-led organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism was among the groups and individuals who on Tuesday condemned attacks on The New York Times and one of its most prominent columnists, who published accounts by alleged Palestinian victims of sexual abuse perpetrated by Israeli soldiers and settlers.
Nicholas Kristof's column, "The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians," combines interviews with 14 former Palestinian detainees and information from reports published by United Nations experts and human rights groups to highlight documented rape and other systemic sexual abuse of Palestinians jailed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops, as well as sexual assaults and other abuses allegedly committed by Israeli settler-colonists. The column features the controversial claim by one former prisoner that he was raped by a dog unleashed upon him by Israeli soldiers.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry responded to the column in a social media post alleging that the Times "chose to publish one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press."
"In an unfathomable inversion of reality, and through an endless stream of baseless lies, propagandist Nicholas Kristof turns the victim into the accused," the ministry said.
Responding to the ministry's post, the Nexus Project—a group "made up of individuals deeply committed to the fight against antisemitism"—said on Bluesky: "To weaponize the term 'blood libel' to dismiss Kristof's thorough reporting is dangerous. It's insulting to the term's violent history and hinders our community's ability to call out actual blood libels when they occur."
"Kristof's article is a challenging and important read," the group added. "It takes courage and care to expose sexual violence."
On Tuesday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry accused the Times of serving "a Hamas-driven narrative," claiming the newspaper "deliberately timed its piece to undermine today’s horrific Civil Commission report documenting Hamas’ preplanned, systematic sexual atrocities on October 7, [2023] and against hostages thereafter—attempting to create false equivalence and belittle documented crimes."
The Times refuted a claim by the ministry that the newspaper "said it was not interested" in reporting on Hamas sexual violence on and after the October 7 attack. In fact, the Times updated its earlier reporting on Hamas sex crimes after Israeli investigator called said critical details were "false."
Critics of the column also cast aspersions upon the alleged Palestinian victims and rights groups that documented the sexual violence they suffered, linking them to Hamas. The Times and other US media have been accused of accepting Israeli claims at their word but treating Palestinian testimonies with skepticism or outright dismissal.
Numerous other pro-Israel accounts, including the American Jewish Committee and EndJewHatred, have either repeated the "blood libel" accusation against Kristof or amplified social media posts that did so.
Many—including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—denied or questioned the veracity of Kristof, his sources, and the Times.
Well documented reporting about abuses committed by a particular nation-state is not a “blood libel,” and misusing Jewish history to protect the state of Israel from criticism like this is ultimately going to make people take all of Jewish history less seriously.
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— Joel S. (@joelhs.bsky.social) May 12, 2026 at 1:21 PM
This, despite numerous reports by United Nations experts, as well as Israeli and international human rights groups, of Israeli rape and sexual violence against Palestinian men, women, and children in both Gaza and the illegally occupied West Bank—a pattern that goes back to the Nakba ethnic cleansing of Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel.
Senior Israeli officials including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have defended soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner in an attack caught on camera at the notorious Sde Teiman prison. The IDF is investigating the deaths of dozens of Palestinians at Sde Teiman, including one man who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
Right-wing Israeli politicians, pundits, and others publicly argued that IDF troops should have free rein to rape, torture, and murder Palestinians as revenge for the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
An August 2025 investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation featured Palestinian boys kidnapped by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza who said they suffered or witnessed sexual torture committed by their jailers.
Last year, Israel blocked a request from UN sex crimes experts to probe alleged sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas fighters during the October 7, 2023 attack, reportedly to avoid attendant scrutiny of rapes and other abuses allegedly committed by Israeli forces against imprisoned Palestinians.
Other Israelis and their defenders expressed incredulity or proclaimed the impossibility of dogs being trained to rape people.
"My brain does not know how to process the fact that The New York Times—the paper I grew up worshiping and hoping to work for one day—published, on the front page, that Israelis are training dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners," tech entrepreneur and anti-progressive commentator Michelle Tandler said Monday on X.
However, in addition to repeated Palestinian claims of such abuse, female Holocaust survivors have said they were raped by dogs specially trained by Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie. Later, Ingrid Oderock, a Chilean raised in a Nazi colony in the South American country, became one of the most feared torturers during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Her specialty, as noted in the Academy Award-nominated animated short film Bestia, was training dogs to rape jailed female dissidents.
Israel has repeatedly attempted to neutralize criticism of its crimes during the Gaza onslaught—from the deadly famine that's claimed at least hundreds of lives, to the apparently deliberate shooting of children, to attacks on aid workers and civilian "safe zones," to the torture of Palestinian prisoners—by smearing those who expose them with accusations of blood libel.
Responding to the common Israeli smear, socialist author Owen Jones said on Bluesky: "Israel's crimes are not a 'blood libel.' They are documented truth."
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