Bay Area Residents Among the Hundreds Detained on Flotilla, Deported to Istanbul

Last week, another 20 or so ships joined the fleet for the final leg of the journey in Turkey. But Israeli forces on Monday intercepted all of the remaining ships in international waters off Cyprus, according to the global flotilla.

The activists were deported Thursday morning amid international outrage after the office of Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir released video footage on social media showing the far-right leader taunting detained activists.

One video featured a woman who yelled “Free Palestine” being pushed to the ground as Ben-Gvir walked past, while another showed dozens of activists with their hands tied behind their backs and their faces pressed to the ground in what appears to be a makeshift detention space.

In the footage, Ben-Gvir said, “Welcome to Israel, we are the landlords,” while waving an Israeli flag. He also said he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “give them a long, long time, give them to us for the terrorist prisons.”

Logan Hollarsmith, one of the flotilla participants, grew up in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood.

“The Israelis kidnapped these people in international waters,” his mother, Sidney Hollar, told KQED.

At least six of the more than a thousand flotilla participants had ties to California, and at least four with Bay Area connections — Hollarsmith, 34, and North Bay residents Kelly Riggle, Gregory Elias Terry and Silas Beaver, were among the most recent detainees.

“I’m calling on Secretary Rubio and the State Department to ensure their safety and fair treatment,” North Bay Rep. Jared Huffman said in a statement on Thursday. “The U.S. has an obligation to protect Americans abroad, and my team and I are working to safely get them home.”

U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said Ben-Gvir’s treatment of the activists “betrayed dignity of his nation,” while globally, the prime ministers of Spain and Italy, along with the president of the European Council, condemned the behavior.

Netanyahu also made a rare condemnation of Ben-Gvir’s behavior, releasing a statement that it was “not in line with Israel’s values and norms” and demanding that the participants be deported as soon as possible.

Hollar said that the detainees were initially held in a makeshift detention area on a military cargo ship, before they were taken through the city of Ashdod, to the maximum security prison Ktzi’ot, where they were held briefly before being deported to Istanbul.

She said that upon their arrival in Turkey, many detainees were taken to receive medical care via stretchers, and others appeared barely able to walk.

“It was really, really disconcerting, the torture that these people experienced,” Hollar said. She added that she had spoken to Hollarsmith, who said he was not tortured.

Hollar said that while her son was detained in Ashdod, she and others tried calling the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem to ask for welfare checks on him, but were either hung up on or “cross-examined” when they mentioned the flotilla.

Hollar said she was told that the flotilla was a “terrorist organization connected with Hamas.”

The activists will likely remain in Turkey for a few days to receive medical care and meet with a legal team before flying home.

“While I’m super glad he’s coming home, the focus should remain on the need to stop the genocide,” Hollar told KQED. “That’s where the focus of everything should be, the point of what their mission was.”