Palestinian Released From Israeli Prison Describes Beatings, Sexual Abuse and Torture

There is no resemblance between the young man who sat with us this week for hours in his backyard, and the video of his release from prison last week. In the clip, the same young man – bearded, unkempt, pale and gaunt – is seen as barely able to walk; now he’s well groomed and sports a crimson jacket with a checkered handkerchief tucked into its pocket. For 192 days, he was forced to remain in the same clothes in prison – maybe that accounts for his extreme elegance now.

Nor is there any resemblance between what he relates in a never-ending cascade of words that’s hard to staunch – more and more shocking accounts, one after the other, backed up by dates, physical exemplifications and names – and what we knew until now about what’s been happening in Israeli detention facilities since the start of the war. Since his release, on Monday of last week, he hasn’t slept at night for fear of being arrested again. And seeing a dog in the street terrifies him.

The testimony of Amer Abu Halil, from the town of Dura, near Hebron, who was active in Hamas, about what is going on in Ketziot Prison in the Negev, is even more shocking than the grim account reported in this column a month ago, of another prisoner, Munther Amira, aged 53, who was incarcerated in Ofer Prison. Amira likened his prison to Guantanamo, Abu Halil calls his prison Abu Ghraib, evoking the notorious facility in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and later used by the Allies following Saddam’s overthrow.

Among candidates for U.S. sanctions, Israel’s Prison Service should be next on the list. This is apparently the realm where all the sadistic instincts of the minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, find their outlet.