The Gaza Strip, home to 2.2 million people, is a tiny land mass about the same size as the Isle of Wight. Yet in terms of munitions by weight, Gaza has been subjected to more than all of the bombs dropped on Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined, over the whole of World War II. Another even more terrifying statistic: in Ukraine, after two years of conflict, there were around 30 cases of child amputees. In Gaza, there were a thousand cases of child amputation in two months.

This October marked two years since the high-intensity genocidal assault on the people of Gaza began, though the attempt to erase Palestine and ethnically cleanse its people began a century before. To mark the occasion, we hosted a live event at EartH Hackney to raise awareness and raise money for Medical Aid for Palestinians.

Kieran Andrieu is a political economist, journalist, and activist with six siblings living under Zionist occupation in the West Bank. Earlier this year, he joined the Global Sumud Flotilla, a fleet of over 40 boats and 500 activists, taking humanitarian aid to Gaza in an attempt to break Israel’s naval blockade of the strip. In conversation with Aaron Bastani, Kieran tells the whole story for the first time. What was it like being kidnapped at sea by amphetamine-using IDF soldiers? How were tactics of sleep deprivation used against them? How did the activists maintain morale in such circumstances? And what were the political victories of the mission?