News- Middle East: A Jewish-American journalist who was detained in the occupied territories after joining a Gaza-bound aid flotilla has recalled witnessing and personally experiencing torture alongside Palestinian detainees in an Israeli prison.

Noa Avishag Schnall, a Jewish-American who took part in the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), shared her account in a video posted on her X account on Saturday.

“What happened to us in the light does not hold a candle to what happens every day-- and continues to happen to our Palestinian siblings in the dark. No comparison,” she said.

The journalist went on to say that she was beaten by prison guards after being shackled hand and foot.

“They hung me like a pig on a stick, if you can imagine that. And then brought me into the room and just went for it on my skull, and my stomach, and my ear,” she said.  

Schnall also noted that one of the guards sat on her neck and face to the point she could not breathe, adding that the restraints left her with bruised ankles and numb fingers.

“I knew I could endure, that there was an expiration date. I knew we were getting out.  I have an American passport. Palestinians have no such luxury,” she said.

Schnall further said she joined the flotilla out of “personal responsibility,” and described “overt racism” in how detainees were treated.

“Our Tunisian comrade, our Turkish comrade, who they just assumed was Arab—I saw them immediately being selected, and those people got it the worst. I saw it myself. I saw their bloody bodies,” she said.

According to Schnall, Israeli forces separated men and women before transferring them to Ketziot Prison.

“The men told us they were awoken by threatening dogs and the soldiers holding guns,” she said. "The women, including our cell, were woken with threats of rape. Everything was like a psychological torture and elements of sexual assault.”

Schnall further said that one day after Israel released the last of the flotilla detainees, it began freeing 2,000 Palestinians—around 1,700 from Gaza.

“The fact that we get released before they do is just the unjustness of a passport, of a nationality. You see the bodies that are being returned now—bodies that show signs of torture, execution, some not even identifiable, they still had restraints on them,” she said.

“And that happened at Ketziot and other prisons,” she stressed.  

Schnall was among dozens of journalists and activists who sailed aboard The Conscience—the lead vessel of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition—which attempted to break the Israeli regime’s longtime blockade of Gaza.

Israeli troops intercepted the flotilla in international waters on October 8, boarding the ships and taking the participants into custody. The detainees were later transferred to Israeli prisons, including the Ketziot facility in the Negev Desert, which is notorious for torture and inhumane treatment.

Human rights groups estimate that Israel currently holds more than 9,000 Palestinians in prisons and detention centers, including women and children.  

Rights organizations have repeatedly called for independent investigations into rights abuses against Palestinian inmates in Israeli jails.

Source: Press TV