“We were transferred from one prison to another, and during the strip searches I was raped.”
With these words, Anna, a member of the young women’s organization Zora, speaks publicly for the first time at the ‘International Conference in Solidarity with Political Prisoners’ and recounts the horrific physical violence she experienced during her five-day detention in Israeli prisons.
In autumn 2025, Anna took part in the Freedom Flotilla humanitarian mission as a journalist for Zora on the ship Conscience, which aimed to break the illegal Zionist blockade of the Gaza Strip by sea and establish a humanitarian corridor. During this attempt, countless other activists were arrested, illegally abducted, and imprisoned alongside her.
In her speech, Anna emphasized, “I’m sharing it for all the women who experienced sexual violence and sexual torture in the prisons, for all the women who have experienced similar horrible things in prison and are probably experiencing them right now as we’re speaking at this conference.” The comrade thus makes it clear that the violence she experienced is not an isolated case and that the violence done to her is experienced by women in prisons every day.
Rape is used as a weapon to break women’s will, especially in Zionist prisons. But history has shown time and again that women remain resilient despite these attacks and do not give up the fight for a more just world. Palestinian women in particular demonstrate this every day in their struggle against occupation and the Zionist state. Anna made it clear: ‘I will not stop fighting for justice and the end of violence until every woman is free and has received justice. I will not stop fighting until patriarchy no longer exists.’ The struggle will continue, as it has for so many women before her. In her combative speech, she made it clear that it is not women who experience patriarchal violence who should be ashamed of this experience, but that those who are prison guards, the perpetrators, should be ashamed.
We, as TSP (Voice of Prisoners Platform), declare our unconditional solidarity with comrade Anna and all other prisoners who have experienced patriarchal violence.
We demand immediate action against these dehumanising practices and call on all progressive forces to step up the fight against patriarchal, sexualised violence and to carry the voices of the prisoners affected onto the streets.
Women own their own bodies! Women who fight are women who live!
