Israel Abuse of Prisoners
Updated 2024-08-26
2024-08-08 Israeli guard says conditions for Palestinian prisoners ‘made his stomach turn’ | ITV News An Israeli detention guard turned whistleblower who leaked a photograph of a Palestinian prisoner forced to stand in a stress position has told ITV News that the things he saw “made his stomach turn”. The guard, who wishes to remain anonymous to protect his identity, said his experiences in the prison would shock “anyone with a conscience.” ITV News managed to speak to the prisoner in question, who was recently released and has returned to the southern Gaza strip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94Sg5vCHuZQ
2024-07-31 UN Probe Finds ‘Appalling Acts’ of Torture Against Palestinians Detained by Israel The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday released a report detailing torture and abuse of Palestinians at Israeli detention centers, including sexual violence, waterboarding, and the use of dogs.
Israeli security forces have also used electric shocks, burned detainees with cigarettes, and deprived them of food, water, sleep, and toilet access, according to the 23-page OHCHR report, based largely on interviews with released detainees. Some detainees said they were held with their arms suspended from the ceiling; were forced to be naked for prolonged periods, wearing only diapers; and were blindfolded for extended periods.
Israel security forces have arrested thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza since October, many of them arbitrarily; they held more than 9,400 “security detainees” as of the end of June, often in secret and incommunicado, without providing a reason for the detainment, the report says.
“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,” U.N. Human Rights chief Volker Türk said in a statement accompanying the report. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-detention-un-report
2024-07-23 Israeli Forces Post Pictures of Stripped Detained Palestinian Children Online Israeli forces have taken pictures of Palestinian children they have abducted into their torture camps and posted them online with humiliating captions, a report finds as Israel holds thousands of Palestinians in detention without charges.
A Human Rights Watch review of 37 posts on social media published Tuesday finds that Israeli soldiers regularly post pictures of Palestinians abducted from Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Most of the pictures are of men and boys, with many showing them stripped to their underwear or totally naked. The people pictured are often handcuffed, blindfolded and injured, the report says.
One post, published by an Israeli soldier in Gaza on December 8, depicts nearly two dozen detained people, including two who appear to be children. The people are all stripped to their underwear, and some of them are blindfolded. https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-forces-post-pictures-of-stripped-detained-palestinian-children-online/
2024-02-07 War on Gaza: Palestinians packed in intolerably overcrowded cells in Israeli prisons, says report The Israeli Public Defender’s Office published a report on Tuesday stating that some Israeli prisons have been declared to be in a state of emergency due to severe overcrowding. According to the report, since the start of the war on 7 October at least 3,400 people have been imprisoned. The overcrowding has resulted in the violation of the basic rights of people in prison, including many being forced to sleep on the floor. The report said that the overcrowding has caused people stress and anxiety, which can at times cause unnecessary friction in cells
During a visit by members of the Public Defender’s Office, squalid conditions were noted, including “intolerable overcrowding”, with less than three square metres of space per person; poor sanitary conditions; pest issues; inadequate ventilation, and a lack of basic necessities for the incarcerated. . https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-gaza-palestinians-packed-overcrowded-cells-israel-prisons
2023-12-26 Watchdog Submits Evidence of Israeli Executions of Gaza Civilians to UN, ICC A prominent European human rights group on Monday submitted a report to the International Criminal Court and United Nations special rapporteurs documenting “dozens of cases of field executions carried out by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.”
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based nonprofit, requested the ICC and U.N. immediately investigate “the widespread killing operations carried out by Israeli forces targeting Palestinian civilians, especially the field executions and physical liquidations in the Gaza Strip.”
In addition to ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, Euro-Med Monitor sent copies of its preliminary findings to Maurice Tydball Benz, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial or arbitrary executions; Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967; and Navanethem Pillay, head of the Investigative Committee on the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
“Nearly 10 days after the Israeli army began its ground attack in the Gaza Strip on October 27, the Israeli army carried out dozens of executions and direct physical liquidations against civilians as part of its all-out military campaign that started on October 7.
The group’s report lists nine separate instances in which it says Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops executed Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Victims include multiple elderly couples shot and left to bleed to death after being forced from their homes in Gaza City last week; a mentally ill man shot in his home in the Jabalia refugee camp; six members of the al-Khaldi family shot dead during an Israeli raid on their home; and nine forcibly displaced civilians including women and children who were massacred while seeking shelter in the Shadia Abu Ghazala School near Jabalia on December 13. “The Israeli soldiers came in and opened fire,” one unidentified witness said of the school attack. “They took all men, then entered classrooms and opened fire on a woman and all the children with her,” including “newborn children.” “The Israeli soldiers executed those innocent families point-blank,” she added.
In the case of the al-Khaldi family, surviving relative Fahed al-Khaldi toldMiddle East Eye that after an Israeli airstrike on a neighboring home killed several people and wounded Fatima al-Khaldi, his pregnant sister-in-law, IDF ground troops “lobbed two grenades into the house” where about 30 people were sheltering “without regard for women, children, or the elderly.” “They then opened fire directly at people and in an indiscriminate manner, without differentiating between young and old,” he said. Five people were killed instantly. Al-Khaldi said Israeli troops ordered the survivors out of the home, where they were stripped of their clothes. “The soldiers then returned to the room and executed all the injured,” he said. Fatima al-Khaldi was shot and left to bleed to death.
Last week, Euro-Med Monitor reported that more than 1,000 Palestinian elders have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, including dozens of people over the age of 60 who were executed. “These incidents included soldiers shooting elderly people immediately after ordering them to evacuate their homes, and in some cases, executing them just moments after their release from hours or days of arbitrary detention,” the group said.
More than 28,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israeli genocide campaign in the Gaza Strip, a number that includes those who remain trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings and are now presumed dead. Women and children make up 70% of the recorded victims. Thus, Palestinian deaths constitute the highest rate of civilian casualties worldwide in the 21st century.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Tuesday that the Palestinian death toll from 81 days of near-relentless Israeli attacks was approaching 21,000, with nearly 55,000 others wounded and thousands more missing. More than 1.9 million of the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million people have also been forcibly displaced and face increased risk of starvation, hypothermia, and disease. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-executions (also here)
2023-12-11 Displacement, Disease and Death Plague Gazans as Israel Continues Its Genocidal Assault Israel’s unrelenting assault on the Gaza Strip continues as the death toll has reached 18,000 Palestinians killed in just over two months. Airstrikes rocked the Nuseirat and Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza overnight. At least 23 people were killed in Maghazi. Airstrikes also struck at least two residential homes in Rafah. Meanwhile, the ground battle is pushing ahead in Khan Younis, which is under heavy bombardment.
Gazan women say Israeli soldiers forced them to leave their husbands and sons behind and flee their Gaza City homes. They spoke from the Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir al-Balah where they were taking refuge.
Amnah Abu Zor: “They made us go to the south. They did not let us wait for our husbands. They said, ‘Go to the south from here, and that is it,’ and they made us leave. They lied to us, saying the road is safe, but they were shooting us throughout the way.”
Dina Abu Zor: “We asked the Israeli interrogator, ‘Where are our male relatives?’ He said, ‘They are gone. No one is left.’ We asked about the children. He said all of them are gone. Palestine is gone. Gaza is gone.”
The mass displacement and war on the besieged territory has led to a public health disaster. The U.N.’s World Food Programme warns half of Gaza’s population of over 2 million people is starving and that nine out of 10 people are not able to eat every day. As clean water becomes more scarce, diarrhea, skin infections, acute viral hepatitis, scabies and measles are multiplying. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/11/headlines/displacement_disease_and_death_plague_gazans_as_israel_continues_its_genocidal_assault
2023-12-10 Humiliating pictures of Hamas terrorists may harm Israel – ex-official [MEK Note: Remember Israel calls every Palestinian, especially men, as a Hamas terrorist. Most of these men aren’t in Hamas, but they might want to in the future after their treatment and Israel’s genocide of their families and friends. Compare how Hamas treats prisoners to the way Israel does. Who are the real terrorists?]
The question of whether photos depicting Hamas terrorists in submissive positions contribute to Israel’s war objectives or hinder them intensifies with the increasing frequency of such images being released. As the IDF intensifies operations in the southern Gaza Strip, the security establishment must take a stance on this matter, which appears to divide opinions. While these photos may humiliate Hamas, a former senior security official suggests they may not truly serve our interests. “These photos are intended to resonate with the Israeli public, albeit within a specific demographic, but their effectiveness is uncertain,” the former official said.
The same official raises concerns about some events appearing staged. For instance, in a recently released video, an elderly man in his underwear can be seen moving to the front of the line and placing his weapon down. This particular photo raises numerous questions, according to the official. “Under what circumstances would someone undress before surrendering their weapon?” they pointed out. “Logically, the weapon should be surrendered first, followed by removing clothes.”
Additionally, the official points out that not everyone there is a terrorist. Some people are questioned in the field and released, while only a few undergo further investigation in Israel. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/humiliating-pictures-of-hamas-terrorists-may-harm-israel-ex-official/ar-AA1lhdDp
2023-12-03 I Am Renouncing My Israeli Citizenship. Here’s Why. By that time, the apartheid State of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and settlers in the West Bank had already committed countless atrocities in the prior several weeks alone, bombing hospitals, schools, and churches, killing and maiming thousands of Palestinians, and displacing thousands more. The genocide we have seen unfolding since Oct. 7 is just one horrifying chapter of the decades of sheer brutality and inhumanity of the Zionist project to colonize Palestine. This is a clear continuation of the Nakba, the theft of Palestinian land, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people since and before 1948.
In 2017, after Israeli forces arrested then-16-year-old Ahed Tamimi (the detention and physical, sexual, and mental abuse of Palestinian children by Israel is not uncommon; they since detained Tamimi again on Nov. 6, though she was freed Nov. 30 as part of a prisoner exchange), I started attending rallies by Within Our Lifetime, where I heard Nerdeen Kiswani talk about citizenship renunciation as a way forward for Israelis—and the idea was seeded in my head. I had been living in New York since 2012, but I was raised in an Israeli-Zionist household, and I cannot put into words the shame I have for my own family’s participation in Zionist violence. While I did not serve in the IDF for medical reasons, I cannot ignore my position as a settler. Like millions of Israelis, I was also kept ignorant by the state and its educational system on purpose. However, once you unlearn Zionist propaganda, there is no going back; the world makes so much more sense, and it feels similar to what I have heard of those who escaped a cult. https://truthout.org/articles/renouncing-israeli-citizenship/
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