David Adler, a 33-year-old political economist from Los Angeles, has returned to the U.S. after more than two weeks at sea and five days in an Israeli prison.

Adler told LAist his upbringing in a Los Angeles Jewish community motivated him to help organize the Global Sumud Flotilla, a step that eventually led to his detention by the Israeli government.

“Here comes a Jewish kid from California, raised and reared in the Jewish community of the San Fernando Valley, who's speaking on behalf of Jewish principles,” he told LAist. “ We became objects for humiliation and abuse and treated as ‘animals’, in their language.”

Adler was one of about 450 people from more than 40 countries, including four Californians, who sailed with the flotilla that first departed Barcelona, Spain, at the beginning of September. The flotilla set out to break an Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and open an aid corridor to the war-ravaged population.

David Adler waves from onboard the Ohwayla on Sept. 27, 2025, off the coast of Crete.

(

Courtesy David Adler

)

A famine was declared in Gaza by a United Nations-backed panel in August, just a week before the flotilla kicked off.

A second flotilla with 145 passengers, including L.A.-based journalist Emily Wilder, set sail toward Gaza at the end of September.

Several people who sailed in the flotillas have made statements online that they were attacked outside Israel’s jurisdiction — in some cases far outside Israel’s declared blockade zone — before being detained and abused by the Israeli government.

Flotilla members from the U.S., along with their families and some U.S. members of congress, say they saw a lack of basic support from the U.S. State Department.

A spokesperson for the department told LAist they considered the flotillas “a deliberate and unnecessary provocation” and that the department was “focused on realizing President Trump’s plan to end the war.”

With a shaky ceasefire now in place, the U.N. has reported an increase in aid being allowed into Gaza, but challenges remain.

A spokesperson for the State Department told LAist in a statement that the U.S. is working hard with partners and allies to bring large-scale distribution of humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

Israeli government officials have not responded to LAist’s requests for comment.

We’ll share Adler’s story in a moment, but it might be helpful to know some history about the blockade and a previous aid flotilla that turned deadly.

What is the blockade?

Israel began its naval blockade of Gaza in 2009, following restrictions it placed on land border crossings more than a year earlier.

The legality of Israel’s blockades have been hotly contested. International observers from the International Committee of the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and Amnesty International have said the land and naval blockades violate international law by inflicting collective punishment on Gaza’s civilian population.

Israel denies these claims, supported in part by a U.N. report in 2011 that found the naval blockade was legal at that time, because the humanitarian impact of the blockade was not “disproportionate” to Israel’s military objectives.

The Palmer Report was conducted after Israeli Defense Forces killed nine crew members of the Mavi Marmara in international waters on May 31, 2010. The ship was part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which was made up of six vessels and intended to break the blockade and deliver a total of 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza.

The report found that the crew was made up of unarmed civilians, including “politicians, academics, journalists and religious leaders.” It also determined Israel’s use of force to be “excessive and unreasonable” and was followed by “significant mistreatment” of passengers after they were detained.

When determining whether the blockade had an outsized effect on Gazan civilians, the report assessed the naval blockade separately from restrictions Israel placed on land borders and reasoned that “the prospect of delivering significant supplies to Gaza by sea is very low” due to a lack of large port facilities.

The U.S. government has vetoed several resolutions at the U.N. Security Council calling on Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian aid since before the naval blockade began.

Most recently, the U.S. vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza on Sept. 18.

U.S. Deputy Special Envoy Morgan Ortagus said the veto would “come as no surprise” since it did not condemn Hamas or acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself.

Before he joined the flotilla

Adler has been involved in progressive organizing from a young age. He helped to lead a project out of Oakwood High School in North Hollywood, where they worked with women's cooperatives of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico.

“ I grew up in a tradition of Angeleno political community that was about standing up for our Latina and Latino neighbors,” he told LAist.

Adler has spent much of his adult life as a researcher and activist across the world: New Delhi, Mexico City, Athens — all places he says he saw impacts of U.S. policies before he turned his attention to Gaza.

Adler said he visited Palestine for the first time in April 2023 on a trip to the West Bank, where he said he heard “bombs raining down on Gaza.”

This was months before the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s ensuing declaration of war on the organization.

Joining the crew

Adler said he didn’t intend at first on sailing with the flotilla.

He went to Barcelona to meet with the organizers and to gather support across Spain and the rest of Europe, but he said his mind was changed once he arrived.

“ I got there and I saw, at that point, 200 activists and organizers and ordinary people from around the world,” Adler told LAist, “I felt so deeply inspired by their courage and by their conviction that I decided to go myself.”

He decided he would join the flotilla in Tunisia, where they would be stopping at the port of Sidi Bou Said.

Adler’s mother, Ruth Kremen, said when he told her he was joining the flotilla she wrote him a letter pleading for him not to go.

She and Adler’s father, Paul Adler, told LAist during an interview from their home in Encino that they were nervous, recalling the killings of the nine Mavi Marmara crew members in 2010, but “ understood he was going to do what he thought was right.”

On Sept. 8, after Adler had arrived in Tunisia, he said he was having dinner with Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur tasked with investigating human rights conditions in the Palestinian territory, when he got a call from flotilla organizers.

“Get down to the port now,” they told him.

When he got to the port, he said he was “horrified and stupefied” to find that a drone had dropped an incendiary device onto one of their boats, the Family, which started a fire on the bow of the vessel.

Another boat, the Alma, was attacked the following day in a similar way.

Both attacks were later confirmed by U.S. intelligence officials to have been directly ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Adler said that instead of convincing the flotilla to turn around, the attack brought more support.

“ Within half an hour the port of Sidi Bou Said was full of Tunisians who were marching, chanting, singing, supporting us, encouraging us to keep going, not to be deterred by that mission,” he said.

Setting sail

Flotilla boats began setting off from Tunisia on Sept. 13 and then stopped in Sicily to wait out a storm before heading to Crete.

Flotilla members sit on their boat at night between Sicily and Crete.

(

Courtesy David Adler

)

Before they arrived at the Greek island, the flotilla again fell under attack by drones in the early morning hours of Sept. 24, in international waters off the Greek island of Gavdos.

Flotilla members uploaded videos on social media describing what they experienced: Over a dozen drones flew above, flotilla VHF radio communications were jammed, and flashbangs, itching powder and incendiary devices were dropped on several of their boats.

 “That was a terrifying night,” Adler recalled, “I mean, we spent from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. just hearing explosion after explosion in the distance, being unable to communicate across jammed communication lines.”

Later the same day, Spain and Italy sent military warships to protect the flotilla as it passed through the Mediterranean Sea.

Adler said the flotilla members saw the dispatch of a military escort as a small victory.

“ It shouldn't have to be ordinary people who are establishing the corridor and maintaining the corridor and delivering aid to the corridor, but should be the states themselves,” he told LAist.

He saw the ships’ involvement as a modest step forward to creating a permanent humanitarian corridor to Gaza.

In the following week, the flotilla set off from Crete. Adler published letters in The Guardian and The Nation, explaining why he and the flotilla were sailing into what they knew would be a dangerous situation.

Seized in international waters

“I fear this will be the final letter that I write to you from the Global Sumud Flotilla,” Adler wrote in a letter posted on social media on Oct. 1.

Surveillance drones had been circling overhead and several Israeli military ships gathered near the flotilla, Adler said, leading him to expect the flotilla members would soon be detained.

The Spanish and Italian warships had left the flotilla, and Adler recounted how Israeli military ships sailed dangerously close to flotilla boats as they sailed in international waters more than 100 nautical miles from Gaza.

“ We had a giant barge that was probably 50 times the size of our sailboat that was chasing us down and trying to smash our boat in half,” Adler said.

He said that other flotilla boats were sprayed with a water cannon by Israeli vessels.

Before noon the next day, the Israeli Navy had detained all flotilla crew members, who were then brought to the Port of Ashdod in Israel.

Treated like “terrorists”

Adler said the flotilla members expected to be treated as ordinary citizens, or even as humanitarian workers, as they awaited deportation by Israel.

Instead, he said, they were zip tied, blindfolded and abused.

Adler said that after they arrived at the Israeli port, he and another Jewish American were “thrown in front of the flag of the state of Israel,” and made to stare at the flag for hours.

Several other flotilla members have spoken about mistreatment once they arrived in Israel, including Greta Thunberg. The Swedish activist says she was hit and kicked, and that soldiers threw an Israeli flag over her in order to humiliate her.

In videos shared on social media, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir is seen pointing at the flotilla members as they were detained at the Port of Ashdod, saying, “These are the terrorists of the flotilla.”

From Ashdod, the flotilla members were taken to the Ketziot prison in the Negev desert in southern Israel.

Adler said that while in the prison, they were “ robbed of basic rights to speak to our lawyers, to speak to our families, to shower and to eat and drink.”

Those who took medicine had it taken away, he said, and many of them were “ psychologically and physically tortured.”

Adler echoed statements by several other flotilla members who have told the press that they were beaten, threatened with guns, and kept awake at all hours of the night.

Ben Gvir was again seen in social media videos, this time from Ketziot prison, saying the flotilla members were getting “conditions like terrorists.”

Adler told LAist he shares a concern expressed by other flotilla members who have spoken out since their release: If the Israeli government mistreats aid workers who have the world’s eyes on them, how are they treating imprisoned Palestinians?

A lack of help from the U.S. government

While the flotilla members were detained, Adler’s family said they were working hard to get answers from the U.S. government and had grown frustrated by a lack of urgency from the State Department.

Adler’s parents spoke with LAist on Oct. 6, while their son was still in prison. They said other countries were much more responsive than the U.S. government.

Along with his U.S. citizenship, Adler also inherited Australian and French citizenship through his father, Paul Adler. When their son was detained, the parents reached out to the U.S. State Department and both foreign embassies.

“We contacted those embassies and they stepped in to help him a day, a full day, before the Americans got around,” Paul Adler told LAist.

Kremen, Adler’s mother, said both the French and Australians told them they had met with their son one-on-one, while the Americans had briefly interviewed the detained U.S. citizens as a group.

“ They generally asked them, how are you? Are you okay? What's your name?” Kremen said, “And then they left.”

David Adler recalled the experience to LAist.

“ After about four days of our families trying to break down the door and get some attention from the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv,” Adler said, eventually, the detained U.S. citizens met with three embassy workers who told them there was nothing they could do to help other than confirm that the flotilla members were there.

He said they met with the embassy workers for only 10 minutes, with no lawyers or opportunities to call home.

While other flotilla members were given food and water by embassy staff from their countries, Adler said “the U.S. government couldn’t even bring a pen.”

Back in the U.S., some California elected officials were trying to get more help for the flotilla members.

U.S. Representative Jimmy Gomez wrote a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Oct. 5. He urged Rubio to “use the full diplomatic resources of the United States” to secure the U.S. citizens’ release.

Gomez is the congressman for California’s 34th District and journalist Emily Wilder lives within his L.A. district. Wilder was detained in the most recent flotilla to Gaza and released on Oct. 10.

Gomez criticized the Trump administration’s response to the U.S. citizens’ detainment, saying his office found the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., was more forthcoming than America’s own State Department.

“ They tend to look at party before country,” Gomez told LAist, referring to the Trump administration.

U.S. Representative Ro Khanna and 24 other California congressional Democrats also sent a letter to Rubio on Oct. 6, calling for the State Department to work for the flotilla members’ release and humanitarian aid to be sent to the people of Gaza.

A spokesperson for the State Department told LAist in an emailed statement that “the Department has no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens.”

They said the department was providing consular services to detained citizens and coordinating directly with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Released to Jordan

The flotilla members were never told if or when they would be released while they were in prison in Israel, Adler said. One of the first signs he saw that they might be moved from prison was when they were brought to see doctors for the first time since being detained.

Then they were loaded into vans, but Adler said he still didn’t know where they were headed.

“It was only by looking through this little hole in the shading of the police van that I could see that we were driving North and East, based on the position of the sun,” he said.

That suggested to Adler that they were on their way to the Jordanian border.

When they arrived, representatives from every country with members on the flotilla were there to meet them.

 “They were hugging them and providing food and shelter and tickets home,” he said.

Adler said the U.S. consulate provided no such help to the American flotilla members.

With their cell phones, money, and clothing all taken from them when they were detained, Adler said they were left with nothing but their prison outfits.

“ We had no way to talk to people at home,” Adler said, “I had to borrow a cell phone from another country's consulate to try to reach my family to tell them that I'm alive.”

He also discovered that six members of the flotilla had not yet been released.

One of those six people had gotten Adler a partially written letter, describing his conditions.

Adler shared the letter with LAist:

David Adler shared a photo of a letter he received from a flotilla member who remained in the Israeli prison after Adler had left.

(

Courtesy David Adler

)

Back in the States

At first, Adler felt unsafe coming directly back to the U.S. and instead flew to Paris.

A few days later, on Oct. 12, he was on a plane to New York, where he landed to visit his sister.

Adler has seen some who have rallied to his defense and organized for his release from prison, but he said he also receives hate mail and death threats.

“ It's so interesting to see how we are smeared as ‘terrorists’,” Adler said, referring not only to statements by Israeli officials, but those in the U.S. who see the flotillas as aiding Hamas.

Adler’s parents have seen the tension as well, with people they know having a wide range of views.

“ It's still a very difficult conversation in the Jewish community,” Paul Adler said.

Some of their friends in the Jewish community had a sense of solidarity with Israel from the beginning, but have since taken a more critical view after seeing the devastation in Gaza.

Others in the community, Paul Adler said, still believe the flotillas are part of a Hamas propaganda operation.

Some U.S. officials have expressed this view, like U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who called David Adler a “self-absorbed tool of Hamas” on social media.

Talking with LAist on Oct. 14, just days after the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas had been announced, Adler expressed deep skepticism that it would hold and protect the lives and livelihoods of the Palestinian people.

A rapid escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas on Sunday put the ceasefire at risk of falling apart, with Israel halting aid from entering Gaza.

Adler said he's focused on continuing to apply pressure on Israel to increase humanitarian aid allowed into the area.

“We're already planning the next flotilla and we won't be satisfied until we actually complete our mission,” Adler said, “which is to break the siege and to establish a humanitarian corridor.”

He said he sees a rich tradition of Anglenos standing up for their beliefs, and he hopes people in his hometown rally together for people facing oppression.

“ Los Angeles has been a hotbed for some of the most exciting and principled stances against forms of tyranny across the world,” Adler said, “and I think we have to recover those traditions.”