On October 8, 2025, Israeli authorities arrested French-Moroccan videographer and photographer Hicham Rami 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.
In a video released shortly after his release, during an interview in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 10 with the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, Rami recounted his experience, saying, “We were intercepted in international waters by helicopters. It was very violent, the way they treated us on the boat.”
“When we arrived, they mistreated us and insulted us for a couple of hours. We were forced to sit on our knees for at least two hours or more. They called us terrorists when we arrived there,” he said.
“We were only civilians. I myself was a journalist. I was on the boat to cover the people who were on board, who were humanitarian doctors,” he said.
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.”