Sebastian Tow is a 24-year-old activist from Vancouver and one of 12 Canadians who tried to sail to Gaza with hundreds of others in April to deliver humanitarian supplies.
Similar flotillas have been sailing since 2008, but in 2025, the Global Sumud Flotilla's attempt to break through Israel’s blockade amid war and deprivation gained international attention when climate activist Greta Thunberg was among the participants detained by Israel. Thunberg and other activists said they’d been mistreated while in Israeli custody, something Israel denied.
This time, over 400 flotilla participants were intercepted and detained by Israeli forces.
And a video of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir berating flotilla participants as they knelt with their wrists shackled sparked condemnation. Some of the activists have now alleged they were sexually and physically assaulted while in Israeli custody.
Canada’s foreign affairs minister, Anita Anand, said she had raised concerns about flotilla participants being denied access to consular services and being mistreated with Israel’s foreign affairs minister. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office said he also raised concerns about the treatment of the activists with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and called for an independent investigation.
Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on social media that “Israel has every right to prevent provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters from entering our territorial waters and reaching Gaza.
“However, the way that Minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms.”
The Canadian flotilla activists are now calling on the Canadian government to do more to call out the alleged mistreatment.
Tow told The Tyee he’d become passionate about the Palestinian cause as a university student in the United States. He took part in campus protests following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that led to an intense bombing campaign in retaliation and strict control of the food and medicine allowed to enter Gaza. Amnesty International and two Israeli human rights groups have written reports saying that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
“The response that we got from professors, from parents, from administrators and from peers, it really changed me,” Tow told The Tyee, “because many people I trusted that I thought were humane... I was taken aback by their really sort of lazy and timid reaction to the genocide.”
After graduating, Tow said, he applied to be a member of the spring 2026 flotilla and got word he’d been accepted just a few weeks before the boats were due to attempt to sail from Athens to Gaza. Tow said he was a member of the eight-person crew of a sailboat that was intercepted by Israeli forces southwest of Cyprus.
Now back in Vancouver, Tow spoke to The Tyee about what happened after Israeli forces boarded the boat. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Tyee: Can you tell me what happened when Israeli forces boarded your boat?
Sebastian Tow: We saw them on the horizon. There were about 15 commandos, they were masked and they had several assault rifles pointed right at us when they sped their boat close to ours. They were yelling at us to turn off the engines and keep our hands up. We already had our hands up, and we had already run the engine to a standstill. It was very dangerous, because when they climbed on the back of our ship, they made us scooch forward out of the deck and onto the front of the boat, and we were in high waves in the middle of the sea.
I was the designated speaker. Nobody else wanted to engage with them, and our agreement to one another was that we would not name the crew and captain. So I was to speak to the commandos and say, “Look, we're lawful humanitarians in international waters, this is illegal. You cannot abduct us. There is no captain.”
That was very difficult, because there were some who were sort of listening to me, and then there was some commandos yelling at me to shut up, and the whole time we were crammed on the end of the boat, trying to stay safe while we had our hands raised in the air.
Why was it important to not say who the captain was?
If they know that someone's a captain, it could have been that they just used them to close the sails, or it could have been that when they dragged them back to the prison ships they would tell their other soldiers that this person is a captain, and they could have used this to say, “Oh, let's beat him up more” or “Let's torture him more.” We had no idea. It was just a safety measure, just like we wouldn't pick out who was the political organizer for the boat. We wouldn't have said who was the doctor on the boat. We didn't want to give them any means to inflict more violence than they did.
Can you tell me what happened after that? Were you taken to shore?
We were on the speedboat, then taken to a modified warship, and as soon as I went up the rope…
Read the full article at The Tyee →
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