California Journalist, Others on Second Gaza Aid Flotilla Released From Israeli Prison

Less than a week after Israeli forces intercepted a global flotilla attempting to deliver aid to Gaza and detained hundreds of participants, a second contingent of international activists, medical workers and journalists was captured on Wednesday — including a California-based journalist reporting on the barriers to covering the ongoing war.

Emily Wilder, a Stanford University graduate and former reporter for Santa Rosa’s Press Democrat, had joined the second flotilla as a reporter for Jewish Currents, a left-leaning magazine based in New York. Israel deported her to Istanbul on Friday alongside many others from the flotilla, according to Jewish Currents, and U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez said she “is on her way home.”

One of Wilder’s goals was to shed light on the struggle journalists are facing to report on the war and conditions in Gaza from the ground, two years after Israel blocked foreign journalists from accessing the region, Jewish Currents associate editor Mari Cohen said.

“There was a specific call for media and medical workers to join [the flotilla] with the idea … for there to be an opportunity for journalists to cover Gaza on the ground,” Cohen said. “She went on this mission partly for the sake of this broader coverage — to cover the Israeli blockade of Gaza.”

Her release came as Israeli forces began pulling back from Gaza after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet approved phase one of a ceasefire deal that would end the two-year war. Many details remain unknown, but NPR reported that as of midday Friday in Gaza, Israeli forces had retreated to an agreed-upon line and airstrikes had ceased. The deal, brokered by the Trump administration, would mean the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza next week.

Wilder, a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, was aboard the Conscience, a 100-person boat that set sail on Sept. 30 with a fleet of international ships carrying humanitarian aid days after the high-profile Global Sumud Flotilla. Both were part of an ongoing movement to break Israel’s yearslong blockade of Gaza.

Throughout Wilder’s career, much of her work has focused on social justice, including reporting on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, according to Alana Minkler, a former coworker and close friend.

“I know her as someone who is very brave and fearless, and also just very committed to reporting about the conditions in Gaza,” said Minkler, who worked with Wilder at the Press Democrat from 2021 to 2022.

Minkler met Wilder when they were both interns at the Phoenix-based Arizona Republic, covering the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

“She’s always been incredibly dedicated to covering social justice and human rights issues across the world and in her own communities,” Minkler said.

Minkler said she wasn’t surprised to hear that Wilder would be joining the flotilla last month.

“Emily was already aware of a lot of the backlash that a lot of journalists, including herself, have faced when reporting on these issues,” she told KQED.

In 2021, Wilder was hired as a news associate for the Associated Press but was fired after a little more than two weeks over “violations of its social media policy that took place after she became an employee.”

At the time, the organization reported on its decision, citing in its coverage a number of posts Wilder had retweeted on the social media platform X, then known as Twitter, that were “sympathetic to Palestinians in the current Gaza conflict,” including a video in which demonstrators chanted “Free Palestine!”

Wilder’s termination came days after a student group at Stanford blasted the AP on social media, calling it biased against Israel for hiring her, since she had formerly been a “leader” in pro-Palestinian student organizations at the university.

According to Cohen, Wilder had brought the idea to join the Conscience to Jewish Currents, in part to bring attention to the difficulty and danger of reporting on the war and conflict in Gaza generally. Throughout her time on the boat, which set off Sept. 30, Wilder shared updates from the journey via social media that the outlet was re-sharing.

Up until the day before the Conscience was intercepted, Cohen said they were in touch daily, discussing what reporting would come out of the endeavor. She said she last heard from Wilder the afternoon before Israeli military forces intercepted the Conscience.

“She went to bed and we knew that it was possible the following morning,” Cohen said. “The next time I got updates and was in communication with her family was that evening when we saw on the live feed [streamed from the ship] that they were being intercepted and that they were on the deck and wearing life jackets and putting their hands up and preparing for arrest.”

Cohen said the detainees were taken to Israel’s Ashdod Port and were held in Ketziot Prison, like members of the Global Sumud Flotilla were last week.

While most of the more than 400 people detained as part of that fleet have now been deported, according to organizers, many Americans remained in custody for nearly a week, where they reportedly went without food, water and medication and had to sleep in overcrowded cells and on floors with little support from the U.S. government.

San Francisco resident Sidney Hollar, whose son Logan Hollarsmith was among the American detainees from the Global Sumud Flotilla, told KQED that she struggled to get support from state and federal lawmakers despite repeated attempts, and that “the U.S. Embassy offered no help [to detainees] when they were deported.”

Cohen said it appears the Embassy was responding more quickly to support detainees from the Conscience and had visited Wilder, who they said was safe.

She was deported to Turkey on Friday morning and would be flying back to Los Angeles from there, according to Minkler.

Cohen said that while the magazine’s decision to send Wilder on the flotilla might have been different after hearing reports of the treatment of Global Sumud Flotilla participants, “it was her decision and something she wanted to do.”

“One of the reasons that Emily went on this trip was to shed light on the conditions of the free press and trying to report on these issues in Gaza,” Minkler said.

Israeli attacks have killed at least 245 media workers since the war began two years ago, according to lists published by Palestinian journalists. The United Nations has reported a similar number killed. More have been taken into captivity.

“I can’t speak for Emily, but she really wanted to raise awareness about the need to have journalism in the ongoing conflict,” Minkler said. “Emily would not want this story to be about Emily. This is about what she was trying to cover as a journalist, which is the conditions in Palestine and about these efforts to deliver humanitarian aid.”

KQED’s Juan Carlos Lara contributed to this report.