Sharon Zhang
Truthout / July 31, 2024
Israeli forces are arbitrarily imprisoning at least 9,400 Palestinians, including children, the UN found.
Days after Israel was plunged into chaos over allegations of horrific sexual assault against a Palestinian detainee by Israeli soldiers, the UN has released a report detailing the many instances of systemic torture and abuse that Israeli soldiers and police have performed on Palestinians they are imprisoning arbitrarily just in the last 10 months of Israel’s genocide.
The 23-page report by the UN Human Rights Office finds that Israeli forces are holding at least 9,400 Palestinians, including many children, in prisons and military facilities, with conditions in military facilities like the infamous Sde Teiman being particularly brutal. Israeli officers relentlessly torture detainees, using all variety of methods, encompassing humiliation, deprivation of basic needs, and physical abuse. The report also includes numerous testimonies from survivors of rape by Israeli guards.
The abuse, rape and torture of Palestinians held prisoner, who include numerous journalists, health care workers and humanitarian staffers, are a blatant violation of a wide variety of international human rights laws, the UN office said.
“The testimonies gathered by my Office and other entities indicate a range of appalling acts, such as waterboarding and the release of dogs on detainees, amongst other acts, in flagrant violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said in a statement.
The report, released Wednesday, says it is “impossible” to ascertain the total number of people Israeli forces have killed in their prisons, but the UN is aware of at least 53 Palestinians who have died in Israeli custody since October. Israeli forces are holding at least 15 Palestinians’ bodies, the report found, refusing to release them to their families — which the UN said is possibly a form of collective punishment, a war crime.
The abuses survivors say they’ve experienced are almost too numerous to count. Food, sleep and water deprivation and being held in overcrowded facilities with little to no accommodations appear to be some of the most universal experiences. Many of these practices appear to be official policies of Israeli administrators.
Other methods include being exposed to cold temperatures for long periods of time; attacked by dogs; suspended from the ceiling; forced to hold uncomfortable positions for hours, days or weeks, causing injuries; and “systematic beatings, humiliation and threats,” as the report said; among many other atrocities. Whistleblowers and reports have said that Israeli forces regularly cause injuries so bad that Palestinians either die or are forced to go through medical procedures done by untrained Israelis, like medically unnecessary amputations.
“My hands were tied with handcuffs and I was kept blindfolded all the 55 days I stayed in this detention, you could imagine how difficult it will be to eat sleep or even move, the amount of pain I felt in my hands and back was unbearable,” one Palestinian who was imprisoned told the UN of their experience.
The assessment also details numerous, odious accounts of sexual violence, including physical abuse like electrocution to the genitals and anus, forced nudity and threats of rape. In some cases, Israeli guards recorded nude Palestinians as they sexually abused them.
These are the sorts of abuses that some Israeli lawmakers vehemently defended this week after nine Israeli soldiers were detained due to accusations that they raped a Palestinian in their custody, leaving him with injuries to his anus that were so bad he reportedly couldn’t walk and had to be hospitalized.
On Monday, a mob of Israeli militants broke into Sde Teiman and a military court in Israel to demand the soldiers’ release. Videos of the mobs show hectic scenes, where protesters, some armed, broke into these facilities and shoved up against police while there. But, despite the chaos and violence, none of the protesters were reportedly arrested.
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor
