The failure of Australia and Western governments to hold Israel to account enabled the abuse of Gaza flotilla detainees, Jerusalem Peace Prize recipient Stuart Rees argues.

If bullies notice that no one intervenes to stop their behaviour, they may interpret such non-intervention as permission to continue bullying.

Gaza flotilla. Reluctance to protest Israel’s cruelties enabled the abuse

by Professor Stuart Rees

For years, the same process has operated in relation to the thuggery of Israel’s Netanyahu government, and in that respect, Israeli Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s abuse of detainees from the Gaza international aid flotilla was no surprise.

Suddenly, even the Australian government condemned the abuse meted out to hundreds of humanitarian activists, but that condemnation was too little too late.

The first measure concerns politicians’ and journalists’ reluctance to question Israeli spokespersons’ claims that they and their army operate according to the highest moral standards. The second concerns the failure to hold Israel accountable to the rules of international law.

This culture of non-accountability, coupled with acceptance of Israel’s false claims, reappeared when 430 sailors from 40 different countries were taken into Israel’s detention, forced to kneel with their hands zip-tied behind their backs while the Israeli national anthem played and Ben-Gvir taunted them.

On ABC television’s 7:30 report, the Israeli Ambassador to Australia repeated that Israeli forces had boarded the flotilla with great sensitivity. He assured listeners there would be no ill-treatment of the detainees. His claims followed a litany of lies.

In the Gaza slaughter, Israeli military spokespersons insisted they would not harm civilians, Palestinians were allegedly not short of food, and the bombing of hospitals, schools and so-called safe houses was justified by claims that these were all sites of Hamas operations.

The adjective ‘Hamas’ is used to stigmatise anyone who opposes Israeli actions.

Ben-Gvir and others labelled participants in the humanitarian aid flotilla ‘Hamas terrorist supporters’. This all-purpose label apparently explains terrorism, but even regarding a slaughter of innocents in Gaza, on the West Bank and in Lebanon, few politicians have asked, ‘whose terrorism are you referring to?’

Israeli officials claimed that no flotilla detainees were harmed, but a video showed detainees being abused in Israeli captivity, and returning Australian detainees reported experiences of violence and sexual abuse.

The Israeli legal rights centre Adalah reported ‘systemic violations of due process and widespread physical and psychological abuse by Israeli authorities’. The same organisation said, ‘ at least three people (from the flotilla) required hospitalisation due to injuries such as rib fractures and breathing difficulties’, each incident raising questions about the Israeli Australian Ambassador’s assertion that Israeli forces showed ‘great sensitivity.’

It is predictable that governments would be reluctant to ask whether Israel’s attacks on the international aid flotilla could be justified in international law.

In relation to other Israeli killing sprees, governments have treated international law as of no consequence.

The 1948 Genocide Convention identified genocide as a crime and obliged signatory governments to prevent such actions and to punish perpetrators. These obligations have been ignored. Neither has action been taken to obey the International Court of Justice’s January 2024 ruling that Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands is illegal and should end immediately.

Israel insists that theirs is a lawful blockade of Gaza, but Western governments, having never used their navies to escort small boat flotillas to the shores of Gaza, have colluded with this claim.

Under what circumstances can a country that illegally occupies another’s waters be entitled to enforce a blockade?

The UN has described the Israeli blockade of Gaza as a ‘direct contravention of international human rights and humanitarian law’. Don Rothwell, Professor of international law at the ANU, concludes ‘there has been no legal basis for Israel to enforce a blockade off the coast of Cyprus (within 200 miles of Gaza), yet under international law an exception to a blockade exists for the provision of humanitarian aid to a civilian population.’

Ben-Gvir’s bullying had been practised for years, but who cared if it was exercised at the expense of Palestinians? Now, however, international human rights activists have been abused. In response, previously silent commentators have rediscovered their principles and expressed outrage.

The chances of that outrage leading to a revival of respect for international law appear to depend on governments admitting that

the Ben-Gvir abuse was a feature of overall Israeli state violence towards Palestinians,

a policy facilitated by Western democracies.

Ben-Gvir’s treatment of the flotilla detainees was the tip of an iceberg. The UN’s February 2026 Report concluded that the Israeli prison system had degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem published its 2026 paper, ‘Welcome to Hell: the Israeli prison system as a network of torture camps.’

Abuse of Palestinians, mostly in secret, had been reported but elicited nothing like the outrage expressed about the treatment of the flotilla crews.

The UN reported that as Minister responsible for Israeli prisons, Ben-Gvir had institutionalised torture, collective punishment and dehumanising conditions. Abuse of detainees included rape with bottles, metal rods, and knives, starvation, breaking of bones and teeth, burning, being spat upon, being attacked and urinated upon by dogs.

In total contrast to that bestiality, 430 courageous individuals sailed to Gaza, motivated by the ongoing genocide in Gaza and by feeling betrayed by governments that had not intervened in the genocide in Palestine and stayed silent when Israeli forces boarded the flotilla.

Parents of those detainees have condemned governments for a failure to intervene.

But a failure to stop ethnic cleansing, stealing of lands and eventually a genocide had been underway for years, long before October 2023. Throughout those decades, the victims were a stigmatised other, so international humanitarian law could be ignored, and Israel and the US were given assurance that murder and mayhem in Palestine and Lebanon should continue.

Ben-Gvir noticed governments’ collusion with slaughter in Gaza and would have taken silence about the boarding of the flotilla as similar to Western collusion with death and destruction in Gaza, and with silence about the extent of cruelty in Israeli prisons.

Abuse of the gutsy flotilla crews has prompted outrage, but that protest has been far too little and far too late.

https://michaelwest.com.au/gaza-flotilla-reluctance-to-protest-israels-cruelties-enabled-the-abuse/

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