Spanish police assault Gaza flotilla activists

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]It it is interesting to see how uh increasingly isolated the UK is and how the flotillaa forced this issue. Uh this is Giorgio Giorgia Maloney the Italian prime minister. The images of Bengavir are unacceptable. It's inadmissible that these demonstrators are subjected to this treatment that violates human dignity. And she uh summoned the Israeli ambassador and demanded an apology, a formal apology from Israel. many other European states. I think France also summoned Israeli ambassadors.

[00:00:31]I think the UK summoned the ambassador, but they were it was a much more um calmly worded, clinically worded tweet.

[00:00:38]Maloney has previously condemned the flotillaa. There are many many Italian citizens who who go on these and help coordinate them. So, you know, the there's much more pressure on her to condemn it. And this uh to me represents something of a diplomatic shift that could I don't do you think this could lead to any concrete change in policy from the uh non non-commonwealth European states?

[00:01:05]>> I mean I really hope so. Ireland was very close to to bringing in a law that would have applied full sanctions on on Israel. Um even though if they had done so they would have been in breach of EU law and would have been fined fined a million pounds a day um for for taking those sanctions but they were still within like five or six votes of um applying those sanctions and taking the fine anyway.

[00:01:31]>> So the EU the EU will find you a million pounds a day if you sanction Israel w >> without uh the the full cooperation of of the EU. So for a country to do it independently that would be a breach of EU law. Yeah.

[00:01:46]>> Um yeah. So but even with that they the the Irish uh parliament were very very close to passing the sanctions anyway and saying basically finess if you like.

[00:01:56]Um I'll say this about the the consulate staff. Um, so when we arrived in t Turkey after like 4 days of like horrific torture, um, I went to the to the to the British consulate staff and I told them that I had witnessed sexual assault and I needed to give them a statement about that um, and that uh, this was a very important matter. And three times they said, "Yeah, yeah, no, that's really really important." And then walked away. And I had to go up to them. I went up to them three times and tried to raise this issue with them. and three times they walked away without taking a statement and basically refused to do anything. Um uh as we went to the medical center afterwards where people were getting their their uh uh wounds checked and and and everything uh officially taken down for all of the uh results of the torture. Um there were Irish, there were German, there were Belgium uh consulate staff there till 3:00 in the morning. I literally saw them with my own eyes. Um the Brits were gone uh from the from the center within the first hour. Um they didn't even go to the health center. Um they just left the airport. So this was the this was the the the quality of the response from the British consulate. And honestly, >> I've come to expect no better from them.

[00:03:18]Um the the Irish the Irish consulate uh were telling me I need to to pull my finger out and get my I get an Irish passport cuz my family are originally Irish and then they were like then we can come and help you as well. I was like if ever there was a strong argument for uh for doing that now's the time.

[00:03:37]>> Yeah. I was reading a testimony from a uh Kiwi activist from New Zealand who was actually Mouy and said that uh you know he was brutalized >> brutally beaten. They threatened to throw him in a room with dogs to be tortured. Uh he witnessed many of the horrors that you did and then you know upon return to Auckland uh they were not received by anyone. There was simply no government support for them. Complete silence about what took place there. Uh in Australia we saw a green member of parliament uh speak up about the sexual assault and torture, but uh you know Labor was pretty silent >> and Yeah. Go ahead.

[00:04:16]>> I can go I can go one up on that um on on that um uh New Zealand uh uh case >> as we arrived in the UK. Um the British delegation, there was a a press conference organized in a hotel next door. Um and the police went and threatened the hotel that if they allowed them to do the uh um press conference that they they would uh bring problems for them use using prevent legislation.

[00:04:42]>> What? um said that it would be radicalizing. And so we we had to go and do the press conference out in the in a in a field um not too far away from the airport because of the hotel where we had booked were um uh basically uh intimidated by the British police to not even allow us to have the press conference there.

[00:05:02]>> That is insane. That's incredible. And and >> welcome to the home of democracy and free speech.

[00:05:08]>> Yeah. Yeah. The West Valleyian values are increasingly looking like Israelian values in the UK.

[00:05:18]This is how activists were received in Bill Bao, Spain by Basque Police. And I want you to address this as well. This was pretty wild.

[00:05:33]They're still wearing the sweatuits that you know that you were put in in prison that you see so many prisoners come out of Gaza wearing.

[00:05:50]>> This is really hard for me to watch cuz I was um in the cells with a lot of these people and and I mean they're really brave. Wonderful.

[00:05:59]These are Spanish police.

[00:06:00]>> Wonderful captains. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:02]>> Why are they beating them? Like they just walked out of the airport.

[00:06:06]So to to to my understanding um even though the Spanish government is generally um uh pretty uh positive on the on the issue of Palestine um a lot of these uh activists are from the Catalan region and uh uh and so because they were um uh support uh uh Catalan independence and and uh that's why the the Bas police came in at them like this um >> okay >> a lot of the a lot of the the skate the sailors and the skippers were uh were Spanish um because the flotilla actually began in Barcelona.

[00:06:47]So, so would you say, you know, Pedro Sanchez has been one of the most outspoken European leaders, Western leaders, condemning Yeah.

[00:06:54]>> what Israel's been doing in Gaza, its attacks on Iran, but you know, he he was essentially greenlighting this treatment of these activists because of their affiliation with the Catalan independence movement.

[00:07:07]>> That's my understanding. Um, but unfortunately, you know, in in in my experience, uh, cops lean into fascism all too quickly. Um, >> and are often sort of like a a rule unto themselves, even if they're even if they're politicians. Um, might have different positions. Um, I think there's a lot of local politics that that's going on there in in in in that scene.

[00:07:32]>> Yeah. It's really hard for me to watch cuz like they literally just come from being um beaten and battered and abused in similar ways by the by the Israelis and then they come home and their own country does the same thing.

[00:07:48]>> Yeah. I mean that was uh just kind of shocking to me and I saw the Israeli foreign ministry promote it and say oh we we we condemn this and you know you know we're not basically to say we're not the only ones and actually your own governments are worse which was extremely cynical but but typical of them just as typical as them condemning the UN for placing Israel on a blacklist of nations that practice sexual abuse on a systematic scale. in their prisons when they had lobbyed the UN and that very body to place Hamas on that blacklist. So they they said the UN has no validity. This is a fake body. But they were lobbying that same body back in uh starting in 2023. Just everything they do is completely cynical.

[00:08:38]>> Uh yeah, rules for thee, not for me. Um, and and this has been the uh the um operating procedure for for Israel for as long as I followed this this conflict. Um, >> and you know, like I remember being a kid and and my mom explaining to me my mother had spent time in um in the West Bank uh before I was even born um working with um Palestinian organizations and groups. And yeah, it it's um this is a story that as we said at the beginning, it's been going on 75 years um from before either of us um with twinkles in the eyes of our parents.

[00:09:29]>> Indeed. So where does the where does the float I mean you're still working on the flotilla?

[00:09:35]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:35]>> What's next?

[00:09:37]So, um, what's next is, um, actually I I can send it to you as as well. I've got, uh, footage of our boat that was scuppered and sunk. Um, and so one of the other boats managed to get back to it as it was sinking and and get some footage of that. Um, which I can send you. I don't think it's been made public. Um, >> yeah.

[00:09:59]>> Uh, but what's next for us is, uh, I'm going to be doing uh, a range of talks, uh, across Europe. um with comrades um at mosques um uh with as many people as I can um trying to to um show what happened. One of the things that one of the other objectives of this flotilla was to uh create firsthand witnesses who can speak from personal experience about what what had happened. Um, and so we have a duty to the to the people of Gaza to to keep speaking out and, uh, and to keep working on this issue. So, um, as we do those events, we'll hopefully be raising money for for more boats and and and a bigger flotilla. The last flotilla that went was about 40 boats. This one was 82 boats. So, um, hopefully the next one will be 120, 150 boats. and we will we will come back with numbers until we get that aid through to Gaza.

[00:11:04]>> We need to do more to draw attention to the fact that there are over 8,000 Palestinian hostages being tortured right now. And you know what? And and we in the United States, we look at the civil rights protesters who crossed the Edund Pettis Bridge and were beaten with trenchons, who were beaten at Woolworth's lunch counters, who were hosed down by Bull Connor, protesting segregation in the Jim Crow South as heroes. The Democratic Party fetishizes them. these activists, what they are doing, putting their bodies on the line against the modern-day Nazis in Tel Aviv who are holding millions of people in open air prisons, destroyed their cities, are still subjecting them to genocide. what they are doing is no less heroic and they're risking they're taking an even greater risk to their lives confronting a a military that kills civilians for sport.

[00:12:05]These are the heroes of our time. And one day we will we'll look at them the same way we looked at the civil rights protesters who are now held up as the icons of the Democratic party that still supports this aparttheid state.