Captured flotilla activist Helen O’Sullivan arrived home to Queensland displaying the banned “from the river to the sea” slogan handwritten on her Israeli-issued tracksuit as she alleged widespread abuse by soldiers.
The grandmother-of-eight was one of about half a dozen who sailed on boat Perseverance from Syracuse in Italy to join the flotilla of more than 400 people. It was intercepted about 130 kilometres off the coast of Gaza by the IDF on May 18.
She burst into tears as she was greeted by about 20 family members and friends – including Liam Parry, the first person charged under new Queensland hate speech laws – at Brisbane International Airport arrival gates just before 7am on Monday.
“Don’t for one minute mistake [my tears] as regret or sadness because it’s not,” she told reporters.
“All they have succeeded in doing is expanding our resolve to make sure that those war criminals are held to account for the children, the men, the women, they have massacred.”
O’Sullivan alleged her captors were cruel and abusive. She said many of the detained group suffered fractured bones and were sexually assaulted over several days in a converted cargo ship.
She further alleged her arm was twisted behind her back until she screamed, and her reading glasses were smashed by soldiers.
“It was cruel conditions, but the cruelest of all was them dancing to the suffering of what they were seeing in front of them,” she said.
The Israeli consulate did not immediately reply to questions from this masthead, but the country’s government has repeatedly denied abuse of detained activists.
Queensland Police said they did not yet know if O’Sullivan would be charged in relation to the slogan on her shirt, which was prohibited in certain contexts under legislation passed by the Crisafulli LNP government in March.
“No formal reports have been received about the incident; however, police are making inquiries into the matter,” a spokesperson said.
O’Sullivan said she understood the phrase could attract an up to two-year prison sentence, but chose to display it regardless.
“The statement I’m making here is how on earth can this be an illegal thing to say? You’re going to charge me and sentence me to two years jail when the Australian government cannot even deal with their own responsibilities for international law?” she said.
“If [Queensland premier David] Crisafulli wants to put me in jail for this, I willingly go once you hold that regime accountable for a genocide.”
O’Sullivan, a social work field educator who now lives on the Gold Coast, conceded the flotilla had, at least partially, been about attracting publicity.
“Our mission was not just to take aid and break the illegal siege on Gaza … but was to try and bring your attention to a genocide that is occurring in Gaza, and that has been going on for decades and decades,” she said.
“What we experienced is a glimpse of what Palestinians have been experiencing from the Israeli military for decades.”
Speaking shortly after the airport rendezvous, minister Laura Gerber backed the legislation but did not say if O’Sullivan should be charged.
“I do know in the wake of the Bondi massacre we legislated laws to be able to stamp out antisemitism, and so those laws are there to ensure that the hate … can be dealt with,” she told reporters.
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