By Shaimaa Eid | The Palestine Chronicle | August 3, 2026
With trembling hands, faltering words, an emaciated body, and a voice barely audible from the intensity of his pain, S.Th., 38, began recounting the brutal circumstances of his arrest.
What began as an attempt to flee Israeli bombardment through what Israel had designated a “safe corridor” during its ongoing genocide in Gaza ended with months of torture in Israeli interrogation facilities and the Negev Desert Prison.
“After nights of relentless bombardment around our home in Gaza City, my mother, my wife, and I decided to leave,” S.Th. told the Palestine Chronicle. “My wife was in critical condition after miscarrying because of the overwhelming fear and terror.”
The family walked toward Kuwait Roundabout before reaching the so-called safe corridor at the Netzarim checkpoint.
“What awaited us there,” he said, “was even more horrifying than the bombardment itself.”
“My mother leaned on my shoulder the entire way, and all of us held our ID cards high above our heads,” he recalled. “Without any warning, an Israeli officer emerged from behind a sand berm and called out in clear Arabic: ‘Hey, you with the ID who’s fanning your mother, come here.’”
At first, S.Th. was unsure the soldier was addressing him.
“I looked around to make sure he was talking to me,” he said. “Then the officer gestured for me to come behind the sand embankment.”
The moment he reached the soldiers, the man said, he was ordered to strip naked.
“They bound my hands and forced me to sit on sharp seashell-covered stones for three consecutive days.”
Used as Human Shields
For three days, S.Th. said he endured beatings with rifle butts and constant verbal abuse. He and a group of other young men were then forced to sit beneath the barrel of an Israeli tank, where they were used as human shields.
“The tank kept firing shells while we were directly beneath it,” he recalled. “After every single shot, we waited for our souls to leave our bodies, believing death had finally come.”
He never had the opportunity to say goodbye to his family.
“I never had the chance to say goodbye to my mother or my wife,” he said. “Anyone who stopped or even turned around risked being shot dead.”
As they walked in large groups, bodies lay scattered along both sides of the road.
“It was as if the occupation wanted to send us a clear message,” S.Th. said. “‘This is what happens to anyone who disobeys our orders.’”
His voice faltered as he described what happened next.
“They tied our hands and loaded us into the bucket of a bulldozer used to carry sand,” he said. “Then they covered us with a large tarpaulin. After driving only a short distance, they suddenly dumped us into a massive sand pit.”
The detainees believed they were about to be executed.
Instead, Israeli soldiers returned, gathered them again, and loaded them into a military vehicle. From conversations they overheard, they understood they were being transferred to an interrogation center.
“We had no idea where they were taking us,” S.Th. said. “When we arrived, I heard one of the soldiers say, ‘Zikim, Zikim,’ before signaling the driver to stop. At the time, we had no idea that a living hell awaited us there.”
‘A Living Hell’
Recalling his arrival at the facility, S.Th.’s hands began to shake.
“The moment we arrived, dozens of soldiers greeted us with savage beatings all over our bodies using metal batons and electric sticks,” he said. “They then forced us to remain kneeling for five consecutive days.”
During that period, he said, detainees survived on little more than a small piece of bread each day. “It was nowhere near enough to satisfy our hunger.”
According to S.Th., Israeli forces identify Palestinians attempting to cross the so-called “safe corridor” through an advanced facial-recognition system while they hold their identity cards above their heads.
“Those five days felt endless,” he recalled. “After that, they marched us away with our hands and feet shackled and our eyes blindfolded to a large barracks.”
The detainees, he said, were permitted to use the bathroom only once each day.
“They also deprived us of sleep by blasting deafening music through loudspeakers around the clock,” S.Th. said
Interrogation and Torture
Speaking quietly, S.Th. paused before describing the interrogations.
“All the way to the interrogation room, the soldiers kicked us repeatedly,” he said. “They dragged us along by our bound hands and forced us into painful stress positions until we were completely exhausted.”
Only then, he said, would the interrogating officer ask a single question: “Do you want to talk?”
According to S.Th., the interrogations focused largely on political affiliation.
“He accused me of things that had absolutely nothing to do with me,” he said. “When I denied them, he ordered that I be taken back to the torture room.”
There, he said, two soldiers subjected him to severe abuse. “They beat the most sensitive nerve centers in my body and struck my genitals.”
Sleep, S.Th. said, became almost impossible.
“Whenever I drifted off, a soldier standing behind me would repeatedly strike a metal sheet with a hammer while shouting, ‘Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.’”
Eventually, exhaustion overwhelmed him.
“I collapsed unconscious onto the ground,” he recalled. “A soldier lifted me from behind and immediately began kicking me with both feet to prevent me from resting or even taking a brief nap.”
Two weeks later, S.Th. was returned to the interrogating officer.
“He leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘How was your visit? Was it a long one? If you had confessed from the beginning, you could have spared yourself all this suffering,’” he said.
The officer then repeated the same accusations and questions.
When the interrogation concluded, S.Th. said the interrogator wrote words on his back that he could not understand before soldiers returned him to a barracks holding dozens of detainees from Gaza.
“There we sat with our hands tied, forced to kneel from morning until evening without moving or even turning our heads,” he said. “We were given only ten minutes to eat our meals.”
Negev Prison
S.Th. said he was later transferred with approximately 50 other detainees to the Negev Desert Prison.
“As soon as we arrived, a large group of soldiers was waiting for us,” he recalled. “They beat us mercilessly before throwing us into freezing cells without blankets while we were dressed only in light clothing.”
Soldiers deliberately targeted the prisoners’ shackled hands during the beatings: “They concentrated their blows on our hands, which were already tightly bound in iron shackles.”
After nearly two months of torture and starvation in interrogation centers and later in Negev Prison, Israeli authorities released S.Th. and a group of detainees through the Kerem Abu Salem crossing.
They were subsequently transferred to a hospital for medical examinations and treatment.
Reflecting on his imprisonment, S.Th. said he and the other detainees endured severe physical and psychological torture throughout their detention.
He stressed that they had been arbitrarily detained, held for an extended period without charge, and never brought before a court.
– Shaimaa Eid is a Gaza-based writer. She contributed this article to the Palestine Chronicle.
Press TV – July 16, 2026
Pro-Palestinian German journalist Anna Liedtke says Israeli prison guards rape detainees with the systemic intention to “break” their will.
Anna Liedtke, 25, who in September had set sail for the Gaza Strip with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition vessel Conscience, was raped by Israeli prison guards during detention.
“There is no reason for me to be ashamed,” Liedtke said, in her first interview about a legal case filed against the perpetrators.
“It’s clear they want to break our will and silence us, making this so traumatic that we will never talk about Palestine again,” she said in an interview with The Guardian. “Whenever we are silent, they will do it to another person.”
In the meantime, Liedtke’s lawyers have filed a complaint, demanding Israeli authorities investigate the case. Israeli law defines any kind of non-consensual penetration as rape.
Liedtke’s lawyer, Muna Haddad, said her client wanted justice, and that she also aims to raise awareness about the Israelis’ response.
“It is Anna’s wish to seek justice and exhaust all avenues to hold the perpetrators of these acts accountable. We also want to raise awareness and see how the Israeli system responds when faced with our demand to open an investigation,” Haddad said.
“Sexual violence and rape are recurring violations that have been perpetrated against Palestinian prisoners,” Haddad pointed out, noting that the West’s blind support for Tel Aviv has given the Israeli prison guards impunity for sexualized violence and rape against international solidarity activists, as well.
The complaint, sent to the Israeli attorney general, the Israel prison service’s legal adviser, the department for the investigation of prison guards, and the commander of Givon prison, was a challenge to a “culture of impunity” for abuse of prisoners by Israeli forces, Haddad said.
After Liedtke revealed the matter in late December, two other Freedom Flotilla members spoke of sexualized violence performed on them by Israeli prison guards.
Vincenzo Fullone, an Italian journalist, revealed that “on three separate occasions, I was ordered to enter a small, specially arranged room where I was completely stripped and subjected to invasive and painful anal searches… During the third search, the pain became unbearable and was compounded by mockery, verbal abuse – including the words, ‘Don’t you like it, Hamas whore?’ – and the photographing of my body.”
Australian activist Surya McEwen said he “was stripped naked and sexually assaulted by Israeli officers while being held hostage. One held a gun to my head, angrily threatening that he would kill me, while the other yanked and pulled on my genitals, perversely and almost gleefully.”
He said Israeli soldiers dislocated his arm, forcing him to kneel with other flotilla members while the notorious Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir verbally abused them.
According to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Israeli forces employ sexualized violence against Palestinians.
The Center said that increasing systemic violence against Palestinians has continued for decades and includes “organized and systematic practice of sexual torture, including rape, forced stripping, forced filming, sexual assault using objects and dogs, in addition to deliberate psychological humiliation aimed at crushing human dignity and erasing individual identity entirely.”
Al Mayadeen | July 7, 2026
The United Nations’ special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, has sharply denounced the BBC after the broadcaster aired Israeli regime claims against detained Palestinian paediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya without challenge.
Reacting to a Monday segment in which BBC News relayed Israeli allegations that Abu Safiya was held over “suspected involvement in Hamas activities,” Albanese called the coverage “scandalous”, pointing to 18 months of arbitrary detention without charge, evidence, or trial and to torture documented by his lawyer, with injuries visible on his body.
She accused the network of amplifying unsubstantiated Israeli accusations against a detained doctor rather than reporting on his condition, describing it as characteristic of BBC journalism “in the time of genocide.”
Karishma Patel, who resigned from the BBC last October over its Gaza coverage, echoed the criticism, saying the broadcaster must stop repeating Israeli claims without flagging the absence of supporting evidence given how precarious Abu Safiya’s life remains.
Edinburgh University’s Nicola Perugini went further, arguing that the segment presented the Israeli military’s framing that razing hospitals and abusing doctors is justified because medical facilities supposedly shielded fighters, without any pushback from the reporter reading it.
Abu Safiya’s deteriorating condition
Abu Safiya, former director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, has been detained since Israeli occupation forces stormed the facility on December 27, 2024, forcing it out of operation despite it being the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza at the time, a raid that came after his son Ibrahim was killed in a strike on the hospital grounds.
More than 555 days into his detention, rights groups confirm that his situation is critical. Amnesty International issued an urgent appeal on July 5, warning that his life is in grave danger and noting that he has been held in solitary confinement since June 3 and denied adequate care for chronic conditions.
Detention upheld despite no charges
“Israel’s” Supreme Court upheld his latest detention order on June 16, extending his imprisonment under the “unlawful combatant” designation until at least October.
A July 2 visit by his lawyer, Nasser Odeh, documented fresh bruising around his head, eyes, and neck, difficulty breathing, and episodes of lost consciousness; Abu Safiya reportedly told Odeh he believes prison authorities intend to kill him.
His son Elyas said in a video message that his father can barely speak and that his face has been disfigured.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel called it among the most disturbing testimonies it has received since the war began.
Abu Safiya is one of at least 737 Palestinian medical workers detained since October 2023, a period in which more than 1,722 health workers have been martyred and nearly all of Gaza’s hospitals damaged or destroyed.
A pattern of bias
The episode fits a broader record of scrutiny facing the BBC over its coverage of the genocide in Gaza. A Centre for Media Monitoring study reviewing over 35,000 pieces of BBC content found Israeli deaths received 33 times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian deaths, with the word “massacre” applied 18 times more often to Israeli casualties and “murder” used 220 times for Israelis against a single instance for Palestinians.
More than 100 BBC staff signed a letter last year accusing the corporation of functioning as a government “mouthpiece”, citing insufficient scrutiny of Israeli statements and content they said resembled military public relations.
The broadcaster also shelved the documentary “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” after initially approving it, a decision critics called emblematic of editorial self-censorship under political pressure, part of what commentators have termed the BBC’s deepening credibility crisis over its Gaza coverage.
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | July 2, 2026
Whether Israelis will ever comprehend the irreparable damage inflicted upon their country’s reputation by their UN Ambassador, Danny Danon, is a moot point. The damage Israel has done to itself through its barbaric practices in occupied Palestine is simply impossible to overcome.
Danon, however, utilises a peculiar approach to defending Israel within international institutions: he relies on bullying, intimidation, and an overt attempt to silence anyone who dares to challenge the official Israeli narrative—particularly women leaders.
Yet, what makes his behaviour most outrageous is his deployment of these abrasive tactics to suppress an issue that demands the utmost sensitivity: the systemic use of sexual violence and human rights abuses against Palestinians.
The confrontation took place during a UN General Assembly session convened to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. Senior UN officials were presenting harrowing findings documenting sexual violence against Palestinian detainees.
True to form, Danon refused to engage with the substance of the reports. For Israeli diplomacy, the enemy is never merely the armed adversary; it is the judge, the independent human rights observer, and the UN investigator whose sole mandate is to document violations of international law.
The immediate target of Danon’s wrath was Pramila Patten, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. Instead of reflecting on the grim findings, Danon demanded Patten’s resignation. He accused her and the broader international community of harbouring an “obsession” with targeting Israel.
When Vanessa Frazier, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, attempted to intervene on a point of order per established protocol, Danon unleashed a vitriolic verbal assault. Refusing to yield, he shouted over her, ordering her to “be quiet” and drowning out the chamber with his outbursts. “Shame on you. You are part of this obsession,” Danon bellowed.
While such unruly behaviour should have resulted in Danon’s immediate removal from the chamber, the diplomatic asymmetry of the UN prevailed. It was Frazier who found herself trying to de-escalate, politely clarifying that her procedural request was “not personal.” Danon shot back with typical defiance: “You will not be allowed to bully us.”
Herein lies the supreme irony of Israel’s diplomatic relationship with the UN and international law. Israel stands as one of the most egregious, serial violators of international law in modern history—a decades-long pattern of behaviour left unpunished by Western vetoes, which ultimately emboldened it to carry out an ongoing genocide in Gaza. Yet, Israeli officials persistently claim the mantle of the ultimate victim, alleging they are the targets of antisemitism, unfair bias, and now, “bullying” by the very institutions they defy.
But the mountain of evidence cannot be shouted away. According to an extensive report issued by Patten’s office, there are verified patterns of systemic abuse, sexual degradation, and psychological torture weaponised against Palestinian men, women, and children in Israeli detention camps like Sde Teiman.
The weight of this evidence reached such an undeniable threshold that the UN Secretary-General’s office formally added Israel to the global ‘List of Shame’—the blacklist of states committing grave violations against children in armed conflict.
None of this exposure is enough to convince Danon or the broader Israeli political establishment that Israel does not possess a sovereign right to violate international law. In their view, merely pointing out these crimes constitutes an act of aggression.
This systemic denial extends to every facet of the conflict. A comprehensive UN investigation recently concluded that Israel has deliberately targeted Palestinian children in Gaza as a core component of its military campaign.
The numbers are staggering: Between 7 October 2023, and 7 October 2025, an estimated 20,179 Palestinian children were killed—about 30 percent of all Palestinian deaths.
“The evidence shows that Palestinian children have been deliberately targeted and killed by the Israeli security forces,” stated commission chair Srinivasan Muralidhar, noting that Israeli authorities have systematically continued to commit the crime of genocide.
While these findings provide another layer of ironclad legal proof regarding genocidal intent, the true significance of the report lies in its exposure of the rationale behind targeting youth. Typically, the disproportionate slaughter of children and women is dismissed by Western apologists as “collateral damage”. The UN inquiry shattered this defense, offering a far more consequential conclusion: the targeting of Gaza’s children is part of a calculated strategy to destroy the biological continuity and future existence of the Palestinian people in Gaza.
As Muralidhar bluntly summarized: “By targeting children, Israel is attacking the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist.”
It remains a profound disappointment that the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice—often swift to indict war crimes committed elsewhere—continue to move at a glacial pace regarding Israel.
Tragically, the catastrophe continues unabated because there is still no meaningful international mechanism willing to enforce sanctions or employ genuine pressure to halt it.
This is precisely why Danny Danon wants the world to be quiet. His outbursts are not merely directed at UN diplomats; they are directed at global civil society, ordinary citizens, and anyone refusing to look away. Israel demands absolute silence while Palestinians are starved, raped, and murdered. According to its twisted logic, committing these atrocities is an inherent right, and objecting to them is an act of malice.
If this logic is allowed to prevail, it becomes the blueprint for every future aggressor who wishes to kill, rape, and starve a population for geopolitical gain. Palestinians and Lebanese are already forced to inhabit this dystopian reality. Our collective responsibility is clear: we must refuse to be quiet. We must speak out, ensuring our voices drown out the shouts of Danon and his peers, so that murder and systemic violence are never normalised as tools of military necessity.
Palestinian Information Center – June 9, 2026
GAZA – Gaza’s health ministry has denounced the arrest of seven Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics by the Israeli occupation forces on Tuesday morning while they were carrying out their humanitarian duties in the Gaza Strip.
The incident occurred as the medical team was passing through a military checkpoint set up by Israeli forces on Salahuddin road, the main artery connecting central and southern Gaza.
The health ministry explained that the arrests took place while the paramedics were carrying out their usual humanitarian duties of rescuing the wounded and transporting patients.
The ministry noted that the seven paramedics were detained and subjected to harsh on-site interrogations before five were later released, adding that two of them remain in custody at an undisclosed location.
The ministry called for immediate international intervention to secure the release of the remaining paramedics and guarantee their safety.
Your tax dollars at work
By Kevin Barrett | American Free Press | June 5, 2026
On May 18, Israeli commandos attacked 54 civilian boats carrying food and medical supplies to Gaza. The boats were near Cypress, nearly 300 miles from Gaza, in international waters.
The Israelis fired at the boats and kidnapped 428 unarmed humanitarian activists. Those people were never charged with any crime. How could they be? When kidnapped, they were exercising their right to sail in international waters. It was the Israelis who were committing the crime of maritime piracy, which carries a penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment.
But piracy and kidnapping were just the initial crimes. Sexual assault, rape, and torture followed. It began almost as soon as the Israeli pirates boarded the victims’ boats. According to Dropsite News, “The flotilla says at least 12 sexual assaults were documented aboard the vessel alone, including anal rape and forcible penetration with a handgun.”
The kidnapping victims were subjected to sadistic sexual abuse in the form of strip-searches accompanied by sexual taunting and groping. Many were raped. Participants described “rubber bullets fired at close range, tasers used on the face and upper body, stun grenades thrown into groups of detainees (and) prolonged stress positions under permanent bright light.” The activists were brutally beaten, emerging with “broken ribs (and) fractures to the torso, shoulders, and back.”
The kidnappers took their victims to the Israeli port of Ashdod for “further beatings, sexual humiliation, prolonged interrogations, and torture.” Israel responded to the media outcry and formal diplomatic protests from twelve governments, including Spain and Italy, by having extremist minister Itamar Ben-Gvir film himself participating in the abuse of the kidnapped civilians. After Ben-Gvir proudly posted his torture selfies on social media, even the US, UK, and Canada protested. Facing universal condemnation, the Israelis finally released their victims four days after the kidnapping, sending most of them on deportation flights to Turkey.
The kidnapped and tortured activists pointed out that the four days of hell they experienced were nothing compared to what Palestinian prisoners endure every single day. They called attention to the fact that Israel is currently imprisoning more than 400 Palestinian children, and that almost three-quarters of the children kidnapped by Israel report experiencing sexual violence or abuse.
Israel’s crimes against the flotilla activists were shocking but not surprising. Israel, after all, is a nation that trains dogs to rape prisoners, as reported by The New York Times. It is a nation with a “right to rape” movement that makes national heroes of prison guards who sodomize people to death. In his article “Israel Is the Global Rape Capital” Elias Akleh describes how “Sadistic sexual rape seems to be an endemic character of the whole Israeli society, making Israel the rape capital of the world, where sexual abuse and rape are not restricted against Palestinians only, but against Jewish Israeli girls in general.”
In 2011 psychologist Avigail Moor of Tel-Hai College conducted a scientific poll on whether it’s okay to rape your acquaintances. She found that 61% of Israeli men and 41% of women did not consider forced sex with an acquaintance to be rape.
All of this is just the proverbial tip of an iceberg of evidence that Israel is a nation of sadistic sex criminals. Depraved, violent, sadistic sexual abuse is even part of Israeli Orthodox Jewish religious rituals, as reported by the Jerusalem Post (6/3/2025). Social media is full of pictures posted by Israeli soldiers who murder Palestinian women, dress up in their victims’ bras and underwear, and take selfies.
In relatively normal societies, it is estimated that two per cent or less of the population consists of clinical psychopaths, while 98% are non-psychopathic. Among the Israeli Jewish population, it seems, that ratio is reversed. Polls show that the vast majority of Israeli Jews support the genocide of Gaza, which has featured the murders of tens of thousands of innocent women and children, most of whom have been slowly crushed to death beneath the rubble of their own houses.
None of these crimes could happen without the roughly ten trillion dollars of support Israel has received from American taxpayers. That money has been bestowed on the Dog Rape Nation by our politicians, who are bribed or blackmailed by Israeli agents like Jeffrey Epstein, himself a shining example of Jewish-Israeli sexual psychopathy.
Epstein described himself as “Donald (Trump’s) closest friend for ten years.” But it gets worse. In his 20s, Trump was the protegé of Jewish-Zionist gangster Roy Cohn, a sadistic homosexual pedophile who, according to journalist Anthony Summers, ran an Epstein-style blackmail operation that filmed powerful men, including J. Edgar Hoover, abusing little boys.
And it isn’t just Trump. Our whole political class is compromised. Just look at how they vote on Israel-related issues.
The USA desperately needs a serious, French Revolution style housecleaning.
See Also:
The Cradle | June 1, 2026
Australian activists who took part in the Global Sumud Flotilla for Gaza filed a formal submission with the International Criminal Court (ICC) on 30 May, accusing Israel of war crimes based on documented evidence of torture and sexual violence sustained during their abduction and imprisonment.
The legal filing, submitted by 11 Australian survivors of the Flotilla and their legal team, is supported by dozens of survivor testimonies, video evidence, medical records, and sworn statements.
This evidence details severe beatings and sexual abuse following the 18 May interception of an international aid mission carrying food and medicine to the besieged Gaza Strip in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade of the enclave.
One specific account included in the submission describes an Australian humanitarian worker being forcibly injected with an unidentified substance by Israeli captors.
The submission also incorporates video evidence, including footage posted to social media by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who boasted of the ill treatment and showed handcuffed activists on their knees being taunted by Israeli soldiers.
The Global Sumud Flotilla reports that at least 67 participants suffered injuries during their imprisonment that required medical evaluation, with 12 individuals requiring hospitalization.
One survivor, Australian filmmaker Juliet Lamont, in an interview with Double Down News, recounted being dragged into a shipping container she called a “torture tunnel” where she was placed in a stress position, hands restrained behind her back, and ankles shackled in the dark before being “vaginally raped by one of the male soldiers,” while “other people had guns inserted inside them.”
She added that a 70-year-old woman’s ribs had been broken as “howls of torture and pain” would emit from the same chamber she had been tortured in.
This legal action follows the UN adding Israel to a 2026 blacklist for parties guilty of committing sexual violence in conflict zones. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres cited documented “patterns of sexual violence” against detainees, leading to the designation of the Israeli Prison Service on the blacklist.
While Israel’s ambassador to Australia and other Israeli officials have denied these claims, asserting that participants were treated according to established procedures, the Australian government previously sanctioned Minister Ben Gvir for his “shocking and unacceptable” treatment of the detainees.
Returning survivors have expressed outrage at the Australian federal government, noting that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has declined multiple requests to meet with them.
Flotilla participant Isla Lamont highlighted the contrast of being granted a hearing at the ICC while being ignored by domestic leadership, stating that “If Australian survivors can be heard in The Hague but not in Canberra, something has gone badly wrong”.
The flotilla organizers are now calling for independent international investigations, arms embargoes, and the enforcement of arrest warrants for the officials responsible.
French activists are also pursuing their own separate legal complaint on the “humiliation, rape, and acts of torture” they endured, explicitly declining to cooperate with the French Foreign Ministry’s request for a criminal probe due to their government’s continued diplomatic support for Israel throughout the genocide in Gaza.
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | May 28, 2026
A revived attempt to scapegoat a handful of Israeli officials for the crimes of its entire regime structure has again taken off, especially in light of the recent diplomatic fallout over Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s public humiliation of Gaza aid flotilla activists. The idea behind this Hasbara campaign is to normalize Israel’s actions.
When Itamar Ben-Gvir posted the video of him mocking the brutal treatment that foreign activists were being subjected to – after being kidnapped in international waters – entitling it “welcome to Israel”, it understandably triggered a diplomatic firestorm. However, the Western leaders who summoned their envoys in response haven’t dared to address the treatment of the activists, including their own citizens, since.
All of this begs the question as to how much authenticity came along with these stances. One point of note is that even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined in with the chorus of condemnation, as did his Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and others. Since that time, at least 15 activists who were part of the latest Global Sumud Flotilla have accused the Israeli military of committing different forms of sexual assault against them, including rape.
The widespread weaponization of sexual violence by the Israeli military and security forces is no new phenomenon, yet it has occurred at a markedly higher frequency over the past few years, and it is something that has solely occurred to international peace activists. Instead, the Israelis have been proven to have implemented a systematic campaign of sexual violence against Palestinians, in particular those who are held hostage in military detention centers and civilians who have been detained in Gaza.
UN and human rights reports, eye witness testimonies, victim accounts, even video and photographic evidence, have all been presented to support the conclusion that sexual violence, including rape, has been used in unprecedented ways against the Palestinian civilian population. Despite all of this, the only mainstream corporate media outlet in the West that dared report on the issue was the New York Times, in a piece that addressed the issue years too late.
These same Western governments have not followed up the summoning of their envoys with any solid action, nor have they made a deal about the testimonies of sexual assault against activists who were kidnapped in international waters. Now, a coordinated media push, within which the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, has recently participated, seeks to play the “bad apples” public relations strategy.
Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have become popular scapegoats, used to hide a society behind them that supports almost everything they do, even if they seek to be more well hidden. The overwhelming majority of the Israeli public supported their military committing genocide.
In fact, things are so bad that the 10 Israeli soldiers who were accused of gang raping a Palestinian hostage have now become celebrities in their society. Israeli comedians make jokes about the rape of Palestinians with dogs, Israeli politicians openly defend such despicable behavior, and there were even the infamous “right to rape” protests when soldiers were temporarily detained for the acts they committed.
The gang rape incident was not just alleged; it was caught on film and leaked. In the end, all of the Israeli soldiers who committed the violent rape got off scot free. The Israeli military’s top lawyer, who had leaked the video of the incident, something that forced the arrest of the perpetrators, ended up getting arrested herself, resigning from her job, and then made at least two suicide attempts following a string of death threats.
Itamar Ben-Gvir did not sexually assault those 15 activists; it wasn’t Bezalel Smotrich who convinced Israeli society to turn gang rapists into heroes and place them on public television shows. Israel has a citizen army and is a society built around a military culture.
When others try to scapegoat Benjamin Netanyahu, something that you will hear from Western liberals and mainstream Democrats, this, too, is disingenuous. According to polling data, a plurality of Israelis dislike the current Premier, which means it isn’t him that is to blame for the vast majority of Israeli citizens supporting the genocide in Gaza, or even worse, advocating publicly for even harsher means of dealing with Palestinian civilians.
It’s also not only Netanyahu that has openly supported the notion of achieving the “Greater Israel” project, his so-called “moderate” opponent, Yair Lapid, has himself publicly advocated the exact same policy– the only difference is that the opposition leader seeks to be more strategic about stealing territory all the way up to and including Iraq.
The reality is, these Western leaders are fully complicit with the Israelis. They only withdrew their summoned diplomatic envoys because Ben-Gvir’s video embarrassed them, robbing them of the ability to lie and cover up Israel’s blatant crimes against the international activists. It took no courage and it would have been more genuine of them to have endorsed the Israeli Security Minister’s actions.
Why? Because many of these nations that summoned their envoys are openly part of the so-called “Civil Military Coordination Center” (CMCC) that was set up to enforce the Gaza ceasefire and prevent violations of it. Instead, these nations have joined a center that watches Israeli war crimes – including the mass murder of over 900 Palestinians during the ceasefire – in real time, refusing to even leave the center in protest, let alone take any action. They are all directly complicit in the genocide.
What this whole ordeal has proven is just how low Western governments and their stenographers in the media will go in order to cover up the crimes of the Israeli regime. No matter what, they refuse to take a stand. If they had grown a backbone, it could have deterred many of the horrors we see playing out today.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
The Dissident | May 22, 2026
Israel has mass raped and tortured detained activists with the Sumud Flotilla, who were attempting to bring aid to Palestinians in Gaza, multiple victims have revealed.
On Tuesday, Israel kidnapped “430 people onboard 50 ships in international waters”.
Israel’s National Security Minister Ben Gvir released a video showcasing Israeli abuse of the detainees, including by forcing them to kneel while the Israeli national anthem played.
Democracy Now noted , “The video shows dozens of men and women kneeling in rows, with their foreheads to the ground and their hands zip-tied behind their backs at the port in Ashdod”.
Now, released activists from around the world have detailed mass rape, sexual abuse, and torture that Israeli forces unleashed on them while in detention.
A Press release from the Global Sumud Flotilla documented that, “Participants from the Global Sumud Flotilla, now in Istanbul, have begun providing harrowing testimony about widespread abuse, assault and torture: rubber bullets fired at close range, tasers to the face and upper body, stun grenades thrown into groups of detainees, stress positions held for hours under permanent bright light, hijabs (Muslim religious headcovers) forcibly removed, as well as various forms of sexual violence including: humiliating strip searches, sexual taunting, groping and pulling of genitals, and multiple accounts of rape.”
It added, “Some of the most horrifying accounts centre on a single vessel that participants call the ‘torture boat.’ This specific israeli naval vessel with a makeshift prison constructed of barbed wire and metal shipping containers became the primary site of intense violence following the interception; this reflects a small fraction of the patterns of systemic violence and sexual abuse against the Palestinian people at the hands of the israeli regime for decades.”
The activist organization has documented “At least 15 cases of sexual assaults, including rape” along with activists “shot with rubber bullets at close range” and “tens of people’s bones broken”.
Adrien Jouan, one activist with Global Sumud Flotilla, showed evidence of brutal torture, with severe bruising all over his body.
Another activist on Instagram live showcased severe bruising on his leg.
Released Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila revealed that , “there is no easy way to say it, but I have to say it, people got raped at the Global Sumud Flotilla. These monstrous soldiers raped our participants. It was not one, not two, not three, it’s many cases of sexual violence against our participants on the prison boat on the way to the port of Ashdod, where they got once again beaten up, many people with broken ribs, many people with broken bones in the arms, the collar bone, the ribs”.
Independent journalist Alex Colston, who was part of the Sumud Flotilla, revealed , “I just got out of Israeli prison … I saw people shot point blank with rubber bullets, I myself, I can’t feel my hands because they are all scarred up because they would take the cuffs and they would yank my hand over and over again. When I would be tied or cuffed, they would step on my cuffs. They kicked me in the ribs more times than I can count. I passed out at least one time. … even if you plead for them to stop … Israeli guards were getting obvious pleasure from hurting us as much as they could”.
Another participant in the flotilla , testifying to the torture she went through, said:
Handcuffs on my hands and feet. Dragged me. When I couldn’t walk, they dragged me on the ground.
They hit us. Hurt all of us a lot. Handcuffs so tight my hands lost feeling
They laughed all the time. Super sadistic.
Took off my shirt. Took pictures. Mistreated us all night long
Another activist testified that , “I had my hands zip-tied behind my back for so long and it was so tight I almost started vomiting, they slammed my head into a table several times and degraded me as I was strip-searched. They had me in handcuffs for 19 hours to the point my skin had begun to swell around them.”
Australian activist Juliet Lamont revealed , “We had people who were tasered in the face. People were syringed with unknown sedatives. I was put down, cable tied. They put so much water under me for an hour that I thought I was going to drown. I was sexually assaulted in this kind of torture chamber. And five men were bashing me and smashing my face”.
Italian economist, Luca Poggi, who was with the Flotilla activists revealed that “We were stripped, thrown to the ground, kicked. Many of us were Tasered, some were sexually assaulted, and some were denied access to a lawyer”.
Another German activist with serious injuries revealed that , “Israel beat her daily”.
The barbaric torture of the Sumud Flotilla activists is just another example of the brutal torture, sexual violence, and rape that Israeli forces unleash on Palestinian detainees daily.
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By John Wear – Inconvenient History – 2019-01-15
Great Britain’s Blank Check to Poland
On March 21, 1939, while hosting French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain discussed a joint front with France, Russia and Poland to act together against German aggression. France agreed at once, and the Russians agreed on the condition that both France and Poland sign first. However, Polish Foreign Minister Józef Beck vetoed the agreement on March 24, 1939.[1] Polish statesmen feared Russia more than they did Germany. Polish Marshal Edward Śmigły-Rydz told the French ambassador, “With the Germans we risk losing our liberty; with the Russians we lose our soul.”[2]
Another complication arose in European diplomacy when a movement among the residents of Memel in Lithuania sought to join Germany. The Allied victors in the Versailles Treaty had detached Memel from East Prussia and placed it in a separate League of Nations protectorate. Lithuania then proceeded to seize Memel from the League of Nations shortly after World War I. Memel was historically a German city which in the seven centuries of its history had never separated from its East Prussian homeland. Germany was so weak after World War I that it could not prevent the tiny new-born nation of Lithuania from seizing Memel.[3]
Germany’s occupation of Prague in March 1939 had generated uncontrollable excitement among the mostly German population of Memel. The population of Memel was clamoring to return to Germany and could no longer be restrained. The Lithuanian foreign minister traveled to Berlin on March 22, 1939, where he agreed to the immediate transfer of Memel to Germany. The annexation of Memel into Germany went through the next day. The question of Memel exploded of itself without any deliberate German plan of annexation.[4] Polish leaders agreed that the return of Memel to Germany from Lithuania would not constitute an issue of conflict between Germany and Poland.[5]
What did cause conflict between Germany and Poland was the so-called Free City of Danzig. … continue
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