Seraj Assi
Truthout / August 12, 2024
Some Israeli leaders are pushing to legalize the torture and rape of Palestinians to avoid accountability.
On June 26, 2023, President Joe Biden declared: “Torture is prohibited everywhere and at all times. It is illegal, immoral, and a stain on our collective conscience.”
Yet since last October, Israel, emboldened by Biden’s “ironclad support,” has tortured to death at least 60 Palestinians, according to a new report by Israel-based human rights group B’Tselem. The report comes barely 10 days after Congress gave Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu more than 60 standing ovations, with U.S. lawmakers leaping to their feet at Netanyahu’s claim that the genocide the world is witnessing is merely a “clash between barbarism and civilization.”
The report, titled, “Welcome to Hell,” offers a dystopian glimpse into Israel’s network of military prisons and detention centers — which B’Tselem characterizes as “torture camps” — where Israel holds thousands of Palestinians prisoner in inhumane and degrading conditions. Drawing on testimonies collected from 55 released prisoners, the report reveals a policy of “institutionalized abuse,” which includes sexual violence, severe beating, extreme hunger, humiliation and deprivation of basic human needs such as, water, daylight and sanitation, including soap and menstrual pads.
The quoted testimonies demonstrate “a systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners,” the report adds. “Such spaces, in which every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering, operate in fact as torture camps.” The report concludes: “Given the severity of the acts, the extent to which the provisions of international law are being violated, and the fact that these violations are directed at the entire population of Palestinian prisoners daily and over time — the only possible conclusion is that in carrying out these acts, Israel is committing torture that amounts to a war crime and even a crime against humanity.”
Because probes of war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers are virtually nonexistent in Israel, where “all state systems, including the judiciary, have been mobilized in support of these torture camps,” B’Tselem calls on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate individuals suspected of planning, directing and committing these crimes. “We appeal to all nations and to all international institutions and bodies to do everything in their power to put an immediate end to the cruelties meted out on Palestinians by Israel’s prison system, and to recognize the Israeli regime operating this system as an apartheid regime that must come to an end,” the report concludes.
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir recently confirmed that conditions inside Israeli prisons “have indeed worsened,” adding, “I am proud of that.”
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has also called on the United Nations to carry out an international investigation into the “systematic torture of Palestinian detainees” who are held in Israeli prisons and detention facilities.
One primary perpetrator is Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the prison system. Under Ben-Gvir’s direction, the report notes, “torturing Palestinians has become an integral part of Israel’s detention system.” Ben-Gvir himself has made no secret of these cruelties. He recently confirmed that conditions inside Israeli prisons “have indeed worsened,” adding, “I am proud of that.” Dismissing basic rights as “perks” for Palestinian detainees, he boasted that he “dramatically reduced” shower time and introduced a “minimal menu” for Palestinian prisoners. Ben-Gvir reportedly takes special sadistic pleasure in watching Palestinian prisoners being tortured. “We are live-streaming it for Ben-Gvir,” one soldier recalled. Ben-Gvir also supports a bill to execute Palestinian prisoners to solve overcrowding, stating, “They should be killed with a shot to the head, and the bill to execute Palestinian prisoners must be passed in the third reading in the Knesset.”
Israel holds nearly 10,000 Palestinian prisoners. These include some 1,500 hostages who have been kidnapped from Gaza since October and detained without charge or trial. Many of the captives are languishing in the Sde Teiman concentration camp, which was built in the Negev desert for Palestinian detainees from Gaza. Palestinian prisoners and legal observers have compared Sde Teiman to notorious torture camps like Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
“It’s more horrific than Abu Ghraib,” Palestinian lawyer Khaled Mahajneh, who had access to the camp, told Israel-based +972 Magazine in June. He continued:
“I have been in this profession for 15 years…. I never expected to hear about rape of prisoners or humiliations like that. And all this is not for the purpose of interrogation — since most prisoners are only interrogated after many days of detention — but as an act of revenge. To take revenge on whom? They are all citizens [civilians], young people, adults, and children.”
Mahajneh recounted to Al-Jazeera that Israeli soldiers gang-raped six Palestinian prisoners in front of the other prisoners at Sde Teiman.
Recently, Sde Teiman has been the subject of a political storm and civil unrest in Israel after Israeli police stormed into the camp and arrested nine soldiers accused of raping and torturing a Palestinian hostage so severely that he had to be hospitalized. The unnamed hostage was transferred to the hospital with gruesome injuries that required surgery. Israeli media outlets reported that the victim lost his ability to walk. On July 30, Israel’s Channel 12 released horrific footage showing a group of Israeli soldiers gang-raping the Palestinian hostage. Aware of the security cameras, the soldiers, who belong to a military unit known as Force 100, are seen raping the hostage while holding shields in an attempt to obscure their actions. The video shows dozens of other hostages laid on the floor, blindfolded and handcuffed. (One can only imagine the unspeakable horrors that unfold when the camera is off.)
“It was pretty horrifying. It’s just setting the bar so low that I don’t know how we can deteriorate more morally. I was aware things like that could happen but I’ve never witnessed anything like that,” an Israeli medical staffer told the Wall Street Journal. Yoel Donchin, a doctor at Sde Teiman who attended to the victim, said he “could not believe an Israeli prison guard could do such a thing. If the state and Knesset [parliament] members think there’s no limit to how much you can abuse prisoners, they should kill them themselves, like the Nazis did, or close the hospitals.… If they maintain a hospital only for the sake of defending ourselves at the Hague, that’s no good.”
These military prisons have been the site of unparalleled cruelty where some Palestinian detainees have attempted suicide due to the “brutality of jailers”
Despite the reported atrocities, Israeli politicians and journalists have rushed to defend the soldiers, hailing them as “heroes,” stating openly that it’s “legitimate” to rape Palestinian detainees, and arguing that torture and rape of Palestinians must be regulated and made official policy in Israel. In a panel discussion following the footage release, Israeli journalist Yehuda Schlesinger, of Israel Hayom newspaper, said: “The only thing that is a problem for me here is that there is no regulated policy by the state for abusing the detainees, because, first of all, they deserve it, and it’s great revenge, and should serve us as a deterrent.”
“Instead of absolute condemnation, some Israeli far-right leaders have rallied to support the suspects of abuse, which is emblematic of the root causes that enable such abuse to happen in the first place,” the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel stated. The group, which has condemned the rape of the Palestinian hostage, said: “Since the beginning of the war, we claimed that the Sde Teiman was operating as an ‘ex-territory’, and the soldiers stationed there were acting outside any law — first in their treatment of detainees, and now towards military law enforcement agents.” The Israeli group describes a culture of “revenge” and “pervasive violence” throughout Israeli military prisons, where soldiers and prison guards act with total impunity, enjoying the “backing of the policymakers, and the lack of accountability.”
Indeed, as this author has reported in Jacobin,
“Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, praised the soldiers as “heroic warriors,” demanding their immediate release. Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has hailed the soldiers as “our best heroes” and denounced their arrest as “nothing less than shameful.” Knesset members from the Likud ruling party are stating openly that it’s “legitimate” to rape Palestinian detainees.”
Despite being widely reported in the Israeli media, the story has been largely ignored by the U.S. mainstream media. Meanwhile, that same media continues to devote resources to long-form reports on what they call the “weaponization of sexual violence” by Hamas on October 7 — even as claims about systematic gender-based violence have been widely called into question.
Israel has a long history of torturing Palestinians. Human rights organizations in Israel describe Israeli military prisons as acting outside the law, in reference to Israel’s extrajudicial detentions and torture of Palestinians. These military prisons have been the site of unparalleled cruelty, including the Ofer military prison in the West Bank, where some Palestinian detainees have attempted suicide due to the “brutality of jailers” — an extreme measure given that suicide is strictly prohibited in Islam. Physicians for Human Rights Israel has documented the deaths of at least 13 Palestinian prisoners from the West Bank and Israel in Ofer military prison since October. In April, Adnan al-Bursh, a leading surgeon from Gaza, was tortured to death in the Ofer prison.
Palestinian human rights organizations like Addameer, an organization supporting Palestinians in Israeli jails, have reported countless cruelties against Palestinian prisoners, including humiliating and degrading conditions, routine torture with electricity, mock executions and rape with metal rods and fire extinguishers. “Most of the prisoners will come out with rectum injuries [caused by the sexual assault],” one former prisoner told the Middle East Eye. Released prisoners describe routine beatings, rape, assaults by dogs, sleep deprivation and forced starvation. Eyewitnesses claim that guards routinely raid the overcrowded cells, handcuff the Palestinians and beat them brutally. Some tortured detainees have suffered from paralysis, or lost their ability to speak, or their memory. Others had their legs amputated due to routine handcuff injuries. One prisoner “screamed for hours before dying.” These cruelties are part and parcel of the brutality of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and the reality of its apartheid system in the West Bank. The dehumanization of Palestinians has been normalized in Israel to the extent that Israeli lawmakers and military leaders are now pushing to legalize the torture of Palestinians, while using sham “investigations” to avoid ICC persecutions. In fact, a top Israeli military leader reportedly referred to the investigation of torture of Palestinian detainees as an “effort to shield them and the armed forces from international tribunals.”
As thousands of Israelis continue to riot for “the right to rape,” Israel’s Channel 14 invited a masked IDF solider accused of raping a Palestinian hostage at Sde Teiman to defend his actions live on TV, where the soldier hailed IDF as “the healthiest army.” He later removed his mask proudly and defiantly. These soldiers will likely escape justice, given Israel’s pathetic record of persecuting war crimes against Palestinians, according to Israeli rights group Yesh Din.
U.S. officials have expressed confidence in “the IDF’s investigation” into Sde Teiman. Meanwhile, Israeli officials demand a probe of the IDF rape video – but only to find out who leaked it.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has allowed Israel to act with unmatched brutality toward thousands of Palestinian prisoners, depriving them of human rights and stripping them of their basic humanity and dignity. This inhumanity reflects a growing culture of impunity in Israel marked by unhinged violence and desire for revenge.
The dehumanization of Palestinians has been normalized in Israel to the extent that Israeli lawmakers and military leaders are now pushing to legalize the torture of Palestinians, while using sham “investigations” to avoid ICC persecutions.
What we are witnessing is not merely impunity, but the U.S.-backed disintegration of the entire supposedly rules-based international order, which the U.S. itself helped establish in the post-war period. The continued existence of Sde Teiman, funded partly with U.S. tax dollars, defies basic, century-old principles of prisoner treatment.
The U.S. has allowed Israel to carry out these atrocities despite overwhelming evidence of “a preventable crime against humanity,” to cite UN experts. U.S. politicians have gone to unimaginable extremes to shield their genocidal allies from accountability, with some even threatening to dismantle the international legal system altogether. They passed laws to sanction the ICC over Israel, and even threatened to retaliate against the court’s chief prosecutor if he issues arrest warrants against Israeli leaders. As long as U.S. officials continue to undermine the international legal system to cover for Israel’s war crimes, it’s hard to see what will make Israel stop torturing Palestinians.
In his International Day in Support of Victims of Torture speech last year, Biden condemned Ukraine and North Korea for torturing prisoners. Meanwhile, the U.S. president had nothing to say about Israel’s decades-long torture and dehumanization of Palestinians. While Biden has said that he supports closing Guantánamo, he has refused to take meaningful steps to rein in Israel’s brutality, let alone pressure Israel to accept a ceasefire that would ensure the closing of “Israel’s Guantánamo” and the return of Palestinian captives unlawfully kidnapped and detained by Israel.
As the U.S. political class continues to overlook Israel’s sexual violence and torture of Palestinian prisoners, one wonders: What is the limit to the brutality and violence that U.S. politicians are willing to support?
The existence of Sde Teiman and other Israeli “torture camps,” with U.S. complicity, is a stain on humanity. To cite the B’Tselem report, “This reality is unacceptable and fills us, Israelis and Palestinians who believe in justice, freedom and human rights, with shame, anxiety and rage.”
Seraj Assi is a Palestinian writer living in Washington, D.C. and the author, most recently, of My Life as an Alien (Tartarus Press)
