Western politicians must act on the mounting evidence of sexual abuse and torture of Palestinian prisoners
Soldiers lock a gate at Sde Teiman detention facility after Israeli military police arrived as part of an investigation into the abuse of a Palestinian detainee, on 29 July 2024 (Amir Cohen/Reuters)
Lubna Masarwa and Peter Oborne write in Mondoweiss 9 August 2024
It’s been just over 20 years since CBS News published the sobering photographs that proved the US army was carrying out unspeakable crimes against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
Rape. Degradation. Homicide. Torture, both psychological and physical. Sexual humiliation.
The revelations of US barbarity were greeted with horror around the world and played a major role in turning opinion against the Iraq War.
In recent days, it has become all too clear that something comparable to Abu Ghraib – and very possibly worse – has been taking place in Israeli prisons since 7 October when the war on Gaza broke out.
This week, appalling leaked video footage captured Israeli soldiers sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee, just as a report from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem highlighted the state’s policy of systematic prisoner abuse and torture since the start of the war.
The report, based on interviews with 55 Palestinians detained since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October, is distressing to read. It provides evidence of degrading treatment, arbitrary beatings and sleep deprivation, as well as the “repeated use of sexual violence, in varying degrees of severity”.
Fadi Baker, 25, recollects that Israeli forces “put cigarettes out in my mouth and on my body. They put clamps on my testicles that were attached to something heavy. It went on like that for a full day. My testicles swelled up and my left ear bled.”
He said interrogators asked him about Hamas leaders and people he didn’t know and then beat him. “Then they put me back in the freezing room with the loud disco music, and again left me there, naked, for two days.”
B’Tselem headlined its report: “Welcome to hell.”
Normalising rape
While Israeli authorities have denied such accounts, the analysis comes just days after nine soldiers were arrested in relation to the rape of a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility. The victim reportedly suffered a severe injury to his anus, a ruptured bowel, lung damage, and broken ribs.
In addition, last month the United Nations Human Rights office published a report that found shocking abuses in Israeli military facilities and prisons, where at least 53 Palestinians have died since 7 October.
How have western politicians remained silent on these horrors? Where is the mass public outrage?
It seems Israeli leaders have been successful in their campaign to normalise rape and other abuses against Palestinian prisoners. After the arrest of the nine soldiers at Sde Teiman, far-right protesters who stormed the facility were joined by several Knesset members. Justice Minister Yariv Levin said he was “shocked to see harsh pictures of soldiers being arrested”, adding that it was “impossible to accept”.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir went even further: “I recommend the defence minister, the [Israeli army] chief and the military authorities to … learn from the prison service – light treatment of terrorists is over. Soldiers need to have our full support.”
Energy Minister Eli Cohen also came out in strong support of the “reservists who do holy work and guard the despicable Hamas terrorists”, adding: “We should all embrace them and salute them, certainly not interrogate them and humiliate them.”
These are the signs of a very sick society indeed – one that has passed through an invisible barrier into savagery. There are no red lines
The real goal of the arrests might simply have been to present the illusion that Israel is taking action internally against such horrors, in a bid to avoid international war crimes trials at The Hague. According to a recent report from Ynet, senior Israeli legal officials said: “It’s better that we investigate. Internal investigations save international external investigations.”
Such abuses are becoming mainstream. There is ample evidence. Where is the broad global condemnation?
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