Israel Repeatedly Shows It Has Impunity to Kidnap, Torture and Sexually Assault Australians

Eleven Australians were amongst 422 foreign nationals kidnapped at gunpoint by Israeli Defence Force officers in international waters close to Cyprus on 19 May 2026. These people were illegally held hostage for four days, and were repeatedly beaten, tortured and some were even sexually assaulted. Yet, the Australian government has only issued slim words of condemnation.

The Australians and other nationals were participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla: an ongoing campaign to break the Israeli siege on Gaza to deliver aid to local Palestinians. Last week’s kidnapping and brutalisation of some citizens from this country by Israeli soldiers was the third such episode since last October, and the second in three weeks. But it was the first time ministers acknowledged it.

Australian foreign minister Penny Wong spoke out about the kidnapping and torture of our citizens only because Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted footage of himself revelling amongst kidnapped foreign nationals being forced to maintain stress positions or being randomly beaten, otherwise she would have made no comments as was the case last October and in April.

The foreign nationals kidnapped on the high seas, or outside of Israel’s territorial waters, were held on a prison boat for two days, and after arriving in Israel were held at a detention centre in the port city of Ashod, prior to being transferred to Ktzi’ot prison in the Negev Desert. And this involved four days of constant torture and humiliation, before being put on planes bound for Türkiye.

The extent of the heightened and calculated abuse the flotilla participants experienced, compared to other recent attempts, was not understood until after their release. But the news that multiple Australian women were sexually assaulted by an allied nation didn’t prompt Wong to issue any further condemnation, while the PM said it was inconsistent with how Australians should be treated.

Brutalisation and violation

Australia flotilla participant Isla Lamont explained her experience in a 23 May 2026 social media post. She was in the first boat intercepted, and like all other detainees arriving on board the prison ship, she was initially sent inside a shipping container where five IDF soldiers beat her and also injected he in the chest her with an unknown substance. And all flotilla participants were bashed on arrival.

“Some came out” from the container, Lamont continued with “broken bones, welts from being beaten by guns – their pants around their ankles”. During the 50 hours on board, detainees were repeatedly shot with rubber bullets, and the floor was flooded with freezing water to prevent people sleeping. The hostages were given no food, “very little water” and no medical treatment onboard.

Gemma O’Toole another local participant spoke about repeatedly being strip searched and humiliated in her post recounting her ordeal. O’Toole also spoke of the constant taunting of herself because she is androgenous looking, and that once they arrived at Ktzi’ot prison, the IDF crammed in as much torture as they could in 24 hours.

Further Australian flotilla participants Violet Coco and Juliet Lamont have both provided statements underscoring the extreme violence and the assaults they underwent, and Neve O’Connor recounted that she’d had her hands zip-tied behind her back for so long that she almost started vomiting, whilst she was further kneed in the face and in the stomach.

But all of the women reiterated that their four day experience was nothing compared to the lives that Palestinian people are made to live whilst under the occupation of the Israeli state, and they highlighted that while they always knew their abuse would come to a halt, for Palestinian people in Israel and the occupied territories, this type of abuse and mistreatment is constant and never ends.

International law once was

As occurred during the October 2025 and April 2026 kidnappings of Australians off ships on the high seas, last week’s illegal detainment of eleven Australians was dealt with by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which provided regular consular assistance. Yet, when another nation detains a citizen in respect of no crime and tortures them, one might expect a tad more help.

Article 87 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea stipulates that on the high seas there is freedom of navigation for nationals from all countries, so Israel has no justification for its actions and no authority to assert jurisdiction over foreign nationals in international waters. And article 101 of the UNCLOS stipulates that Israel’s detaining of the participants amounts to piracy.

In a three post thread on X on the morning after Ben-Gvir commenced bragging about his abuse of the foreign nationals that Israel had it its clutches, Wong stated that the images were “shocking and unacceptable”, and she further outlined that her government condemned “his actions and the degrading actions of Israeli authorities towards those detained”.

The foreign minister added that Australia’s ambassador to Israel had been told to reiterate to Tel Aviv that they ought not to continue the abuse of these Australian citizens, whilst she’d asked DFAT to call in the Israeli ambassador to have a chat about his nation’s acts of piracy. But since the extra details of the abuse have emerged, Wong hasn’t thought it necessary to address them.

DFAT has, however, issued a post-release statement outlining that this nation has “condemned the degrading treatment of flotilla participants by Israeli authorities shown in publicly available footage”. The department adds that it’s “also deeply alarmed by individual allegations of mistreatment of Australians” and it’s further insisted that it expects Israel will urgently investigate the claims.

Skewed allegiances

Many Australians would expect more from their government on learning that an allied nation had kidnapped some of their fellow countrypeople off the high seas and then spent days torturing them and even sexually assaulting them. But the truth of the matter is that the Australian government is under no obligation to assist its nationals if they do experience difficulties overseas.

As for DFAT’s request that the Israeli government probe the allegations that Australians citizens have made about their treatment after being illegally kidnapped on the high seas and then mistreated and abused for days on end, it is highly unlikely that the state that coordinated the entire operation is going to turn around and investigate and penalise itself.

Another common idea as to why the Albanese government isn’t kicking up a fuss about a group of citizens falling prey to hideous crimes perpetrated by the army of a nation that is also an ally is that Israel and its lobby are such powerful players on the global stage that our top ministers are simply too afraid to seriously challenge them due to the detrimental effect it could have on their careers.

But according to Greens Senator David Shoebridge this rendering of the situation fails to capture why federal Labor appears to be sitting on its hands while another nation assaults its own.

“People are watching the Albanese Labor government and asking why they’re not critiquing this. They’re assuming that they want to speak out but are somehow being silenced by pressures from Washington,” the senator told Sydney Criminal Lawyers recently.

“This misunderstands modern Labor. Modern Labor is quite comfortable with Israel behaving like this, with the solid backing of Washington. They have signed onto a global project while Washington, its allies and proxies literally do whatever they like, wherever they like. This is part of modern Labor’s worldview of how the world works.”

So, based on Shoebridge’s take, it would appear that foreign minister Penny Wong is not screaming out about the rights of the Australians participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla, even after sexual assaults have been raised, because she considers their actions to be problematic and getting in the way of the greater project of Israel in the Middle East.

And let’s face it, over recent years, modern Labor, whether that be the NSW Minns government or the Allan government of Victoria, has certainly been mistreating civilians who do take on the responsibility of forging justice through activism as criminals to be punished.

Shoebridge’s version of the political climate also makes more sense of the prime minister’s response when asked whether he’d meet with Gemma O’Toole, who was hoping to speak to him, alongside some of her other fellow flotilla participants, about the crimes that Israel perpetrated against them.

As Albanese came back with, “Look, I’m not going to respond without any notice for someone I don’t know. I don’t know their circumstances. But what I would say very clearly is that the government made our position very clear and it went to the behaviour of Ben-Gvir.”

“I think that people have a look at the way that people were treated isn’t consistent with how we want Australians – but I go further than that – how we want anyone treated,” the PM added.

But Albanese failed to explain why, if these people weren’t being treated in the proper manner by an allied nation, he, as the top minister responsible for them, isn’t going to lift a finger about it.