How Israeli prison doctors assist in the torture of Palestinian detainees
Palestinian men who were arrested during the Israeli ground invasion of northern Gaza receive medical treatment after their release at Al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, 24 December 2023
Kanav Kathuria reports in Mondoweiss on 28 May 2024:
When chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan requested arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant on Monday, he remarkably chose not to include torture or sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners in his list of Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Khan’s omission of torture is exceptional. Over the past seven months, hundreds of reports, testimonies, and investigations have shed further light on Israel’s brutal torture of Palestinian detainees and prisoners held captive in Israeli occupation prisons.
As Palestinian civil society organizations such as Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, and others have extensively documented, prisoners are being viciously beaten and abused multiple times a day, caged in cells “not fit for human life,” kept blindfolded with their hands bound with plastic ties, isolated from the outside world, stripped of their clothing, collectively punished through starvation, attacked by dogs, sexually assaulted, and psychologically tortured. At least thirteen Palestinians have been martyred in prison since October 7 as a result of torture and being denied proper medical care. Countless more have been discovered in mass graves with clear evidence of having undergone torture, executions, and other crimes against humanity.
While treated as a recent or singular phenomenon by Western news outlets, as in CNN’s recent exposé on the horrors practiced at the infamous Sde Teiman detention center, Israeli torture long precedes October 7. The use of torture in Israel as a colonial tool to subjugate and exercise control over Palestinians is intertwined with its very inception as a state. As Palestinian revolutionary and literary icon Walid Daqqa wrote in 2010 from prison,
“what happens in [Israeli prisons] is not just detention and isolation of a people considered to be a security risk for Israel, but is part of a general, scientifically planned and calculated scheme to remold Palestinian consciousness.”
Israeli torture is thus institutionalized and systematic — carried out by the state’s vast “security” regime and sanctioned by its legal and judicial arms. On an international level, Israel’s use of torture continues unchecked despite the state being a signatory to the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Yet in uncovering the labyrinth of systems, laws, institutions, and people shaping how Israel practices torture, one crucial group of perpetrators tends to evade culpability: healthcare professionals in Israeli occupation prisons and detention centers.