Two Washington State Residents Kidnapped At Sea By Israeli Military

Andrew Bly and Alex Schaeffer, two residents of Washington State, were kidnapped in the Mediterranean Sea by the Israeli military on May 19. They were both sailing to Gaza to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to the Palestinian people.

They follow Washington State resident Jas Ikeda, who was kidnapped by Israeli forces in September 2025 on another flotilla mission to Gaza.

Eleven tons of aid was enroute to Gaza as part of the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF). All of it pirated by the Israeli military. 

The 50 vessel flotilla was “encircled in all directions” and “illegally intercepted by the IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] in international waters. 429 participants from nearly 45 countries were unlawfully and violently abducted by the IOF,” GSF legal counsel Bader Alnoaimi announced this morning at a virtual press conference attended by HardPressed.

GSF vessels were attacked and boarded at gunpoint. Six vessels were shot at with "less-than-lethal" rounds according to Alnoaimi. 

“The sails of multiple intercepted boats were actually ripped, water supplies were tampered with and lower decks were flooded with water," Alnoaimi said. “We know at least one boat so far has actually sunk into the sea.”

GSF sailors were kidnapped and taken to a central Israeli navy ship at sea that had been outfitted as a floating prison, where GSF sailors were forced to kneel in stress positions inside metal shipping containers that reeked of urine, according to Alnoaimi.

“There was really severe physical violence, especially in the time between the transfer from the military boat onto Ashdod port, where they were brought against their will,” Miriam Azem with The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Adalah, told reporters at the GSF press conference.

All GSF sailors were then taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod and then to Ktzi’ot Prison in the Negev desert, 45 miles southwest of Seattle’s sister city, Be’er Sheva.

In captivity, Azem and Alnoaimi said at a press conference today that many sailors were subjected to physical and sexual violence.

“Our lawyers have documented really extreme levels of violence, we’ve documented dozens of suspected broken ribs. We’ve documented repeated use of tasers that have caused pain. They have documented sexual harassment and sexual abuse. In addition to beatings and repeated accounts of being held in stress positions for prolonged periods of time,” Azem said.

Photos of injuries sustained by some GSF sailors have since been posted online.

Alnoaimi said the Israeli actions constituted serious violations of international law under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, the Rome Statute, 4th Geneva Convention and the U.N. Convention On The Law Of The Sea.

“One of the activists was forced to strip naked and run while guards were laughing,” Azem said. “This comes in light of a broader longstanding well-documented policy of torture within Israel’s detention system that truly goes on with near total impunity.”

While in Israeli detention, Israeli Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir paraded around toting an Israeli flag while taunting GSF sailors who were forced to kneel with their face on the ground and hands tied behind their backs.  

Ben-Gvir follows the Kahanist Kach Party legacy, which was previously designated as a terrorist organization in Israel. Within the United States, the State Department designated the Kach Party's offshoot, Kahane Chai, as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). However in 2022, President Joe Biden mysteriously removed it from the FTO list.

As a child, Ben-Gvir was a Kahanist youth activist, and today, his violent Jewish supremacist ideology is almost indistinguishable from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) terrorist group description of Kahane Chai. 

While Bly and Schaeffer have been kidnapped and kept in captivity, both of their U.S. Representatives, Marilyn Strickland and Emily Randall, have been conspicuously silent. 

Bly follows a legacy of human rights activists from Olympia, including Rachel Corrie, who was killed in Gaza by an Israeli operating a bulldozer. Since then, multiple Washington State Governors have had secret meetings with Israeli officials. Antiwar activists in Olympia were later infiltrated by the U.S. Military in a scandal that attracted nationwide attention.

Bly’s U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland (WA-10) has also been a target of Israeli influence. 

HardPressed can reveal that in 2011, while Strickland was serving as Mayor of Tacoma, she had a secret meeting booked with Israeli Minister Limor Livnat, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party cabinet.

It’s unclear why Strickland had this meeting and what was discussed. Both Strickland and Livnat did not respond to a request for comment. 

While Israel has perpetrated a genocide in Gaza, Strickland has taken two junkets to the country. In 2024, she attended a trip paid for by AIPAC’s American Israel Education Fund, and in 2025, Strickland traveled on an official congressional delegation to Israel, where she met directly with Netanyahu.

At the time Strickland met with Netanyahu, an active International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant had been issued against him for the "war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts." Haaretz has further reported that an ICC warrant is pending for Ben-Gvir as well.

Strickland’s staff have also been treated to junkets in Israel paid for by J Street Educational Fund and the Jewish Institute for National Security in America, that included multiple meetings with Israeli military units.

This morning, the Israelis released GSF sailors from detention and placed them on flights to Istanbul. HardPressed has seen a photo of Bly released in Istanbul. Schaeffer's status is unknown currently.

Strickland, Randall and the Washington State Democrats did not yet respond to a request for comment.

Within video messages recorded by Bly and Schaeffer, they both urge the public to pressure the U.S. government to end funding and support of Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people.

"The world must rise up," Schaeffer says looking into the camera.

This report will be updated as new information is received.