Stanford alumna Emily Wilder ’20 recounts experience in Israeli captivity

On Oct. 8, 2025, at 5 a.m., Emily Wilder ’20 and nearly 100 other medical workers, journalists, activists and crew aboard the Conscience woke to a blaring alarm. The group was part of the latest wave of a flotilla movement to break through Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza and provide humanitarian aid.

“This is not a drill,” Wilder recalled the captain announcing over the loudspeaker. Wilder and the others assembled on deck, donning life jackets, dropping their devices overboard and taking their seats. Within ten minutes, they were surrounded by Israeli military ships and helicopters. The group chanted, “We are journalists. We are medics,” over the sound of helicopter blades, Wilde remembered.

Speaking at Meyer Green, Wilder recounted her capture and time spent in Israeli captivity at a Monday talk organized by Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace at Stanford (JVP). The conversation drew over 50 attendees.

Wilder, who is a freelance writer and researcher and a former contributor to The Daily, learned of an opportunity to join the flotilla movement through an online journalism network. The movement has been ongoing since 2010, but grew in August of 2025 in response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where human rights organizations have described “acts of genocide” taking place.

“Presented with an opportunity to do something, I had to,” Wilder said.

Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community, Wilder said she learned only one narrative about Israel and Palestine. “Like many people who grew up in a Jewish community, let alone an orthodox one, I was presented… the Zionist version of history, which was hypocritical and totally invisibilized Palestinians,” she said.

According to Wilder, it was only when she created a secret social media account on a popular micro-blogging platform during high school that she discovered anti-Zionist views.

Once at Stanford, Wilder immediately joined SJP and later founded JVP. “[SJP] was so important to me,” she said. “It was in some ways my social home, but also my political home.”

After graduating from Stanford with a degree in history, Wilder worked as a breaking news intern at The Arizona Republic for a year before transitioning to freelance journalism. It was while writing for Jewish Currents, a magazine devoted to thought, activism and culture on the Jewish left, that she received an offer to join the Conscience.

She and the others aboard the Conscience sailed for eight days before they were captured by the Israeli military – time they spent talking, doing chores, watching for drones and practicing drills in case of Israeli interception.

Once captured, the crew was detained for 12 hours while the military sailed the boat to a port in Israel. Wilder said they were kept in a sweltering room with overflowing capacity and told not to talk. Some were pulled aside and subjected to “special brutality,” she claimed. After reaching the port, the group was separated by gender, moved to a cell block and held for around 36 hours. 

Despite their circumstances, the crew navigated their captivity with resilience. Wilder shared several poignant moments from her time in the cell block, including singing a women’s warrior song that an indigenous activist taught them, braiding each other’s hair using the single military-issued pair of underwear the group received as a hair tie and banging on the door in protest when a man from the Conscience was transferred to solitary confinement. The group also hummed as a form of resistance to soothe each other and build feelings of solidarity while making it difficult for military officers to identify the source.

Even as Wilder described the treatment she faced from the Israeli military, including being pulled by her hair, she recognized her privilege relative to Palestinians in captivity. “We were in this prison for two days. Palestinian political prisoners are kept there indefinitely,” she said. “I say all of this knowing that what we experienced was very minimal in comparison.”

In Wilder’s view, the professional division between journalists and activists is “fully fabricated.”

“To believe in journalism, to believe in civil society, to believe in democracy – which is a prerequisite for journalists to be able to do their jobs – you also have to believe in human rights,” she said.

SJP and JVP tabled after the event, while members of the audience lingered to speak to Wilder directly. Event organizer and SJP member Aiden Delgass ’26 said that he was “incredibly touched” by the event’s turnout. “I think it’s important that we have these conversations out in the open on a campus that has been quite hostile to Palestine advocacy,” he added.

Delgass said that he is deeply inspired by Wilder, who helped him and other Jewish students restart JVP after the pandemic. “I continue to be just absolutely floored by her conviction and also her continued humility,” he said.

The event moderator, an SJP member who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said that she appreciated how Wilder lent an insight into a global movement that felt far away.

“Having someone from the Stanford community come and speak about it gives it a much more personal feel – like we’re not so distant from this,” the moderator said. “Someone from our own community experienced this, and that’s just a very minimalized version of the Palestinian experience.”

“[The conflict in Gaza] transcends religious boundaries and ethnic boundaries,” she added. “It’s just about having a conscience, which, ironically, is the name of the boat that Emily Wilder was on.”

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