Israel Accused of Running “Torture Camps” as Video Emerges of Soldiers Raping Palestinian Prisoner

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

Israel is facing growing condemnation over the torture and rape of Palestinian prisoners. Israel’s Channel 12 News aired shocking footage of Israeli soldiers sexually abusing a Palestinian prisoner. The video shows a group of blindfolded prisoners lying on the ground inside a prison at Sde Teiman army base, which critics have compared to Guantánamo. Israeli guards are then seen taking one man into a corner, where the soldiers encircled him and reportedly sexually assaulted him. Israel’s investigation of this incident is what led a group of far-right Israeli protesters and lawmakers to break into two military bases last week in an effort to prevent the soldiers from being questioned.

Meanwhile, a group of U.N. experts has warned Israel’s escalating use of torture of jailed Palestinians is a crime against humanity. The experts wrote, “Torture practices are irredeemably unlawful and constitute international crimes, yet form part of the modus operandi of Israel’s notorious detention and torture system,” unquote.

Meanwhile, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has published a major new report documenting how the Israeli prison system has become what B’Tselem calls a “network of torture camps.”

I want to turn to an interview conducted by B’Tselem of Ashraf al-Muhtaseb, a father of five from Hebron and a wedding band manager. While detained on the morning of November 18th last year, Ashraf had prison guards storm his cell he shared with other men, claiming they were looking for a radio.

ASHRAF AL-MUHTASEB: [translated] One morning at 6:00, they raided our cell, about 15 guards with a monstrous dog. Sometimes they made him attack sensitive body parts. They attacked us all, kicking us and hitting us with sticks. I was leaning against the wall behind others in the cell. They started kicking me in the neck and ear. Unfortunately, I got a very hard blow to my ear. I’ve completely lost my hearing on that side. I got four fractures in my back ribs, three in my chest, and fractures in my hands and other body parts.

AMY GOODMAN: In another interview conducted by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, 50-year-old Firas Hassan, an official in the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Youth and Sports, describes not only being beaten by prison guards while in detention, but hearing that their brutal attack is being live-streamed for Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security of Israel, to watch.

FIRAS HASSAN: [translated] On November 9th, 2023, two prison forces, the District Unit and the Initial Response Force, came into cell 14 we were in, on wing 28. We were 10 Palestinians in the cell. The forces came in masked and beat us for 50 minutes. They laughed while they hit us and live-streamed it all. I understand Hebrew, and I heard one say, “We’re live-streaming for Ben-Gvir, directly to Ben-Gvir.” They beat us in various ways, with their hands and feet, and then brought in police dogs, after they tied our hands behind our backs and blindfolded us.

AMY GOODMAN: B’Tselem also spoke to Sari Huriyyah. He’s a 53-year-old real estate lawyer and an Israeli citizen. He was arrested and detained over a Facebook post November 4th last year. In this clip, Sari describes ‘Abd a-Rahman Mar’i, a 23-year-old man in the isolation cell next to him, screaming in pain and later being brought out in a body bag.

SARI HURIYYAH: [translated] He screamed in pain constantly, begging for the doctor. The guard would come now and then and swear at him and tell him to shut up. In the morning, the guards came to count us. One said, “Get up, you animal. Get up, you dog.” They checked him, and the whole place went silent. Finally, the doctor said, “There’s nothing to be done.” One of the guards said to them, “My condolences.” And they all started laughing. They put him in a black body bag and carried him out like trash.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now by Sarit Michaeli, international advocacy lead for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. The group’s new report is titled “Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps.”

Sarit, thanks so much for being with us. Just as we listen to these horrifying accounts, please lay out your findings.

SARIT MICHAELI: I think on a very fundamental level, Amy, our findings look at the systemic, ongoing and state-sanctioned, government-sanctioned use of torture and abuse in the Israeli prison system vis-à-vis Palestinians, Palestinians who Israel considers to be — views as security prisoners.

Now, this is something that we have discussed in the past. I mean, torture and abuse of Palestinian detainees in detention and interrogations have occurred. They have been documented. But the level, the degree, the scope, the scale of this phenomenon since October 7th are simply unrelated to anything we’ve seen in the past.

And when we look at the way these people are treated — you showed some of the testimonies. Some of the — many more testimonies are actually available on our website, and we are sharing them online. You see that, clearly, this isn’t the actions of any sort of rogue element of the Israeli prison system. It’s a government-sanctioned and also government-supported, government-mandated policy. And that’s the central conclusion that we have from all of the information that we’ve collected in recent months.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about Firas, who was describing not only being beaten by the Israeli soldiers, but also the fact that this beating was being live-streamed for the national security minister of Israel, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to watch?

SARIT MICHAELI: So, I just want to clarify: We know that the police say — or, sorry, the prison guards were discussing this. Certainly, we have not — you know, we clarified in our communications that we don’t know whether this was indeed, like, literally live-streamed for Itamar Ben-Gvir or whether it was more about the spirit of Itamar Ben-Gvir, because a lot of the things we see on the ground today in the Israeli prison system are directly related to the influence, to the spirit of Minister Ben-Gvir.

I think it’s certainly not the case that Minister Ben-Gvir is the only person responsible. Absolutely, the prime minister, Prime Minister Netanyahu, who gave him all of his authority, is absolutely responsible and culpable for this reality. But the Israeli government and Ben-Gvir have shown again and again, since October 7th but also before October 7th, that they are hell-bent, that their intention is to cause this deterioration to increase the pressure on Palestinian prisoners.

And this was — this has been done, and we saw these kinds of developments even prior to October 7th. From the beginning of the tenure of Minister Ben-Gvir as minister of national security, he has been imposing his racist, his Kahanist agenda, both on the Israeli police, with great success, unfortunately, and also on the Israeli Prison Service. October 7th, the horror, the crimes committed against Israelis on October 7th, served as a golden opportunity for Ben-Gvir to continue to cynically manipulate the Israeli trauma, the Israeli fear and anger, in order to push forward this agenda that he has been promoting even beforehand.

So, I think one of the clear things that we’ve seen on the ground and in the system since October 7th was that much of this Israeli policy, at least the parts about starving prisoners, about cramping them all together in large numbers in cells, canceling any possibility for them to have any sort of sustenance, to buy additional food, for example, all of these policies have been declared. They’ve been stated by the Israeli government. They haven’t hid this. Ben-Gvir himself has been on the media promoting these policies and showing — you know, having these, like, show visits to visit prisoners that he claims are Nukhba — right? — are Palestinian, are Hamas fighters from Gaza.

But what we have seen again and again, based on the testimonies that we’ve taken, is that the Israeli policy wasn’t just applied Palestinian Hamas suspects. We would argue, by the way, that this is absolutely, categorically prohibited regardless of the crimes people have been — have committed. Torture and this type of treatment is absolutely prohibited. But Israel is claiming, and in some cases showing — right? — performing, in a way. And this is — I think the incident that was described in this testimony seems very much an example of this, not just the kind of actual violence and ill-treatment and humiliation, but making it very, very public. And this is something that is simply chilling and is part of the really deep moral abyss that this report exposes, I think, within our society today.

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli Supreme Court considered a petition yesterday to close a desert military prison where soldiers have been accused of abusing Palestinians, most recently this shocking video that aired on Israeli News 12, the Channel 12, showing Israeli soldiers sexually abusing a Palestinian prisoner. Talk about that video and what the Supreme Court is calling for or if they’ve had a ruling yet.

SARIT MICHAELI: Well, I think there’s a few things to unpack in this situation. I mean, again, regardless of the specifics of this individual case — B’Tselem hasn’t documented it; we’re not familiar enough with the details — I think this is a moment within Israeli society where the old way of doing things, which involved very often these sham investigations — right? — pretending that we’re holding soldiers accountable for violations of Palestinian rights and investigating suspected wrongdoing, this is rejected, is being rejected by a growing — maybe majority, certainly very large number of Israelis, who are simply not interested in any kind of accountability, because they do not believe that the Palestinians deserve any rights. And this is an interesting and quite disturbing and very, very depressing situation to experience, because the power and the violence released by the recent, for example, charging of far-right activists into the Sde Teiman military base and into the Beit Lid military base isn’t just going to harm, you know, the specific investigative bodies that we are very critical of. This is an action that is very concerted and coordinated by the Israeli far right in order to scare off any type of law enforcement in Israeli society.

And this is why I think it’s so deeply connected to what we’ve seen yesterday in the High Court. There is a High Court petition against Sde Teiman. It’s being — it was presented by the Israeli — by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. And the state has, as is its custom, denied that there is any wrongdoing in Sde Teiman. But there’s also another kind of parallel development, which is that a far-right mob has actually verbally charged the High Court justices yesterday in the Israeli High Court and also tried to assault the lawyers acting on behalf of ACRI. And I think this is an excellent example of what has been happening to the gatekeepers in Israel. This is an example of why these gatekeepers, who were meant to protect against the type of abuses that we describe in this report, they have been so scared off, they’ve been so weakened and paralyzed after many, many years of these types of far-right and even quite centrist assaults, that the type of reality that we exposed in the report is allowed to go pretty much on as Minister Ben-Gvir pleases, with very little resistance from the High Court, the other courts, from the attorney general. Now, certainly, we have had, and we’re still extremely critical of these institutions, of the Israeli court system, of the Israeli attorney general, but we do expect them to stand up to this type of abuse, to this type of official torture. And I think one of the reasons why Ben-Gvir has been so successful in imposing his own agenda, his racist, Kahanist agenda, is this weakness, the cowering of the gatekeepers that have been weakened for so many years.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the protests that took place in the last days trying to prevent the Israeli soldiers or police from being questioned about the sexual assault or the rape of a Palestinian prisoner?

SARIT MICHAELI: Yeah. I mean, I think I should also maybe open this with one point of light in the current reality, which is that since the publication of B’Tselem’s report, and also since the publication and the exposure of the story about these really horrific suspicions in Sde Teiman, there’s been a very strong voice coming from Israelis who categorically oppose this — not necessarily Israelis who are absolutely with B’Tselem on everything, mainstream Israelis who know, who understand that if you are a country that claims you’re a democracy — of course, we would take great issue with this — then you cannot simply abuse people because you suspect them or because you’ve accused them and even because you’ve convicted them of perpetrating the most horrific crimes. This is simply unacceptable. And people are saying this very openly in our society today. These might not be the majority of Israelis, but it’s very heartening to hear these voices again and again, as I said, also in response to B’Tselem’s report.

But the story itself, the reason it got such prominence is because it really is — it’s something that one did not expect to see up until, really, the recent period. And I’m saying that even though, you know, as I said, B’Tselem’s report also revealed additional cases of suspected sexual and gender-based abuse. The story of the suspicions of sexual abuse by soldiers in Sde Teiman has generated a mass public outcry, but it’s also generated a mass response by proponents of the far right, of the Kahanist movement in Israel, who simply do not want any kind of action by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians to be subject of any sort of accountability process. I mean, that’s the whole point. From their perspective, they would like to have a completely open field in terms of what they can do to Palestinians. And this is both for soldiers and settlers. And anyone who tries to impose any, even the most rudimentary, the most basic, level of accountability is attacked as an enemy of the state, as a traitor.

And this brings us into quite an absurd situation, where bodies that we, as I said, are extremely critical of — for example, the State Attorney’s Office and also the Military Advocate General’s Office — are now coming under fire, not for what we would argue is the correct reason, the fact that they have enabled Israel to allow the army and soldiers on the ground to use totally disproportionate force against Palestinians. They’ve enabled almost everything that Israel has been doing in Gaza in recent months — the mass killings, the starvation, the horrific things we have done in Gaza. This is not what the far right is criticizing these institutions for. The criticism is coming when — in the very, very rare cases where there is an occasional investigation when the Israeli investigative bodies simply don’t have any other choice, I’m assuming. I’m only speculating, right? But the fact that there is CCTV footage of this alleged assault and the fact that the story has become so prominent and the possibility of an internal whistleblower inside who reported this have left the authorities really with no option other than to conduct this investigation. Certainly, many other cases and the broad policy is not investigated, but they are still attacked by the right for this tiny foray into accountability.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to yesterday’s briefing at the U.S. State Department, where Matthew Miller is questioned about this issue. This is the reporter Rabia Iclal Turan.

RABIA ICLAL TURAN: Going back to Israel, Israeli media today released a video showing Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman detention camp. The footage was very disturbing. I know you have commented on the reports about this detention center before, but we have now — we now have a new evidence, which is video. Have you seen that video? And do you have anything to say on that and also the reports of, you know, rape —

MATTHEW MILLER: Yeah.

RABIA ICLAL TURAN: — in Israeli prisons?

MATTHEW MILLER: So, we have seen the video. And reports of sexual abuse of detainees are horrific. They ought to be investigated fully by the government of Israel, by the IDF. Prisoners need to be treated — prisoners’ human rights need to be respected in all cases. And when there are alleged violations, the government of Israel needs to take steps to investigate those who are alleged to have committed abuses and, if appropriate, hold them accountable.

RABIA ICLAL TURAN: And, actually, this is not the first rape incident we have been hearing about Israeli prisons. And Israeli human rights group B’Tselem on Monday released a report saying that Sde Teiman is only tip of the iceberg and that, you know, Israeli detention centers turned into a network of torture camps for Palestinian — Palestinians. Its report cited testimonies from 55 Palestinian detainees. So, I know the Israelis are investigating this, but would you support an independent investigation into those allegations?

MATTHEW MILLER: So, I would have to look at what the specific independent investigation people are calling for and pass judgment on the merits. But, look, there ought to be zero tolerance for sexual abuse, rape of any detainee, period.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller. Sarit Michaeli, if you could talk about the significance of what he is saying, and what you’re demanding at this point as the international advocacy lead for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem?

SARIT MICHAELI: Yes, Amy. Well, I think the most important thing to clarify in terms of our response to this is that Israel is not going to hold an investigation into the conduct and into the policies in its detention centers, for the pure reason, for the obvious reasons that these are policies. They’re not the actions of rogue elements, as I said. They’re not the actions of individuals who are going against the grain. They are dictated by the management of the Israeli prison system and by the government. They are supported by these bodies. And therefore, the only options for investigations are individual cases that are either so egregious that it would be impossible for the authorities to ignore them because of international pressure or in cases where there is some sort of documentation. And that is generally, I think — when you look at the Israeli investigations, that is generally the way the Israeli authorities work. The small, isolated, token investigations cover up for broader policies.

And in this specific case, I think, from our perspective, we have, A, not appealed — we have not requested Israeli investigations; B, we do not expect any Israeli investigations to fundamentally alter the situation. What we do expect is the international community to take action. And in the report, we’ve appealed to all nations and also to all relevant international institutions to look into the situation, to make it — to make it stop. Specifically, we’ve also appealed to the International Criminal Court, because these offenses that we list in our report are war crimes. They also, we would argue, reach the magnitude of crimes against humanity. And this is the responsibility of the international community, including the United States government, to address. It’s not just an intra-Israeli issue. Certainly, the Israeli government in its current standing — I mean, it’s pretty blatantly obvious that if the Israeli government is not able to hold an investigation into such serious allegations of horrific abuse without a mob of right-wing fanatics rushing, storming into two military bases, then it’s blatant that Israel isn’t going to be able — willing or able to address this broader policy of torture, you know, by order, essentially, against Palestinians since October 7th.

AMY GOODMAN: Sarit Michaeli, I want to thank you for being with us from Tel Aviv, international advocacy lead for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. We’ll link to your new report —

SARIT MICHAELI: Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: — “Welcome to Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps.”

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