On October 8, 2025, Israeli authorities arrested freelance U.S. journalist Emily Wilder, while she was sailing aboard the Wijdan (Conscience), a vessel that was part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), one of several aid convoys that have attempted to break the blockade on Gaza. She was released and deported from Israel on October 10.
Wilder told CPJ that she was reporting for Jewish Currents when “in the early morning of October 8th, the Israeli military encircled us, boarded the boat, took control of the vessel, and held us captive for 12 hours on board until we reached the port of Ashdod.”
“I identified myself as press multiple times and had my press card around my neck the entire time,” she said. “At one point, one of the soldiers took my press notebook. It was later returned to me, but it had clearly been read.”
At the Ashdod port, she told her outlet that “as the two women twisted my arms behind my back and folded me forward, I announced, in case some camera somewhere was rolling, I’m a journalist, I’m press. The woman to my left hissed, “We don’t give a fuck,” and the other dug her nails into my scalp and pulled me by my hair across the port. I alerted them my glasses were falling off and they told me to shut the fuck up—though in Hebrew, one said to the other, “Grab her glasses.” They deposited me in the final position of the last row and zip-tied my hands tightly behind my back.”
The Adalah Center — a legal advocacy group for Arab minority rights in Israel that is representing the detained journalists and activists — told CPJ that Israeli authorities “treated the journalists accompanying the flotilla no differently than they treated the activists,” even though the press were there to report on the voyage.
Adalah said that at Ashdod Port, “the authorities issued arrest and long-term entry ban orders against several journalists,” calling the actions “a serious and unlawful infringement on their right to work and a restriction on their ability to cover events in the region.”