“I Was Kidnapped in International Waters. What Happened Next Mattered More …”

In October 2023, my understanding of my own work changed completely. I’d spent years as a social media content strategist—building campaigns, writing scripts, the usual work of getting people to pay attention to something. After that month, I was doing the same job for a different reason: helping people find language for a genocide that platforms kept trying to silence them for naming. That work reached over a hundred million views. But it still didn’t feel like enough. So when I stood at Arafah during Hajj last year, the final dua that Allah inspired me to make was a specific one: “Ya Allah, allow me to be used as a vessel for the Palestinian cause.” I didn’t know what drew me to that word, vessel, but it just felt fitting in that moment.

Abubakir Rafiq

A few months later I was on an actual vessel, the Global Sumud Flotilla, sailing toward Gaza. Although I was part of a maritime mission, I had no sailing experience at all, because the mission didn’t need another sailor. It needed someone who understood that the story is its own battlefield. So that’s what I did—documenting the journey and sharing it with the world’s most powerful weapon, social media: the aid on board; the sea sickness; the drone strikes; the stories of the Palestinians we were sailing for.

Twenty-four hours from Gaza, I could begin to feel Gaza’s presence, through the wind, through the waves. In that moment I filmed something raw and uploaded it. That was the last time people heard from me. Twelve hours later, a pre-recorded video started making its rounds on social media—a video announcing that I had been kidnapped by the IDF.

At that point I was forced into silence, no longer able to create content or amplify the mission. I was taken to Ktzi’ot Prison, forty kilometres from Gaza, where I experienced just a small taste of what eleven thousand innocent Palestinians experience at the hands of the same oppressor, in the same kinds of cells. My silence lasted five days and ended with people waiting for me at the airport. I didn’t earn that ending. I was given a platform, a following, a way of telling a story that happened to travel—and I used it. That’s the only reason any of this reached anyone. Somebody else on that boat had medical training. Somebody else spoke three languages. Somebody else was a lawyer. None of us on that boat were doing the same job, and we didn’t need to be—and that was true of the entire mission, not just my boat. Five hundred people took part in the flotilla, and it only worked because those five hundred people brought five hundred different gifts and skills to it.

I was taken to Ktzi’ot Prison, forty kilometres from Gaza, where I experienced just a small taste of what 11,000 innocent Palestinians experience at the hands of the same oppressor

I think that’s the part people miss when they hear a story like mine. The lesson was never “go get on a boat.” Most people never will, and they don’t need to. The dua I made before any of this happened wasn’t “let me go to Gaza.” It was “let me be used as a vessel”—let me be used, however I’m useful. Everyone has a version of that same question sitting in front of them, whether they’ve said it out loud or not: what do I actually have, and what am I doing with it? Not what does the person next to me have. Not what worked for someone else. What’s actually in your hands.

Because everyone has something. A voice, a skill, a platform, a trade, money, time, proximity to people in power, the ability to organize a room or write a sentence that sticks. The question was never whether you have a role to play. You do. The question is whether you’ve figured out what it is, and whether you’re actually willing to spend it—because a gift that costs you nothing to use probably isn’t being used for much.

I gave up safety for five days and got to come home. That’s not a sacrifice worth admiring. It’s barely a down payment. The real question isn’t what I gave up. It’s what you’re willing to.