On October 8, 2025, Israeli authorities arrested Irish journalist Fionn MacArthur while he 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. He was released and deported from Israel on October 10.
MacArthur told the Irish Independent that Israeli forces pointed “guns at us the whole time, told us not to move and then searched us one by one. Then they put us all into one big room on the boat, the dining room and it was really hot. This room is always hot, you couldn’t open any windows.”
When asked how they were treated by their captors, he replied, “It was pretty rough. They searched our person, they went through all our belongings. First they ransacked the boat, they went through the whole boat and tore it upside down while we were outside on the deck.
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.”