On October 8, 2025, Israeli authorities arrested freelance U.S. journalist Noa Avishag Schnall 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 12.
Schnall, a Paris-based Yemeni Jewish visual storyteller who was reporting for Drop Site News, appeared in a video on Instagram, visibly bruised, and described being “hung from the metal shackles on my wrists and ankles and beaten in the stomach, back, face, ear, and skull by a group of men and women guards, one of whom sat on my neck and face, blocking my airways.”
“The women were threatened with pepper spray. Our cell was awoken with threats of rape. At least one woman has reported being physically penetrated by guards who laughed at her pain. Others, including myself, endured threats of rape, beatings, and suffocation,” she said.
The Adalah Center — a legal advocacy group for Arab minority rights in Israel that represented 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.”