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Palestinian prisoner raped by Israeli guards at notorious facility

Press TV – July 30 2024

A Palestinian prisoner has reportedly been subjected to rape by Israeli guards at a notorious facility set up to hold Palestinians after the launch of the regime’s ongoing genocidal war against the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), a watchdog, and several Israeli media outlets reported the development on Monday.

“This is a new rape crime committed against a detainee at the Sde Teiman camp (in the Negev Desert) by a group of prison guards,” Abdullah Al-Zaghari, head of the PPC, told AFP.

The victim has suffered serious injury as a result of the abuse and is unable to walk, Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz and public broadcaster KAN reported.

Israeli facilities hold an estimated 9,700 Palestinian prisoners.

Inmates have consistently reported being subjected to torture and sexual abuse.

The regime, however, has significantly ramped up its detention spree in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since October 7, when it brought the coastal sliver under the war.

Ever since, human rights statements and prisoner accounts have been rife with reports of intensified acts of torture by the regime’s forces, including food and water deprivation, intimidation, electrical shocks, mock executions, and violent sexual abuse.

Subsequent to the Monday reports, the Israeli military police allegedly raided the Sde Teiman center as part of an investigation into the case, rounding up 10 troops stationed at the facility.

The police forces were met with resistance on the part of the troops, who barricaded themselves in and used pepper spray to avoid arrest.

The regime’s extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, however, described the suspects as “heroic warriors.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir, a similarly hard-right official, who oversees the prisons where Palestinians are detained, also called the Israeli troops the “best heroes” and described the arrests as “shameful.”

July 30, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Netanyahu prevents 150 sick Gaza children from seeking treatment abroad’

Press TV – July 29, 2024

A new report released by Israeli media says the regime’s prime minister has prevented more than 100 sick Gazan children from seeking medical treatment abroad.

The Sunday report by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster said Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to prevent about 150 sick and wounded Palestinian children from leaving Gaza for the United Arab Emirates to receive treatment.

The Kan report said the Palestinian kids were ready to be flown out to the United Arab Emirates on Monday afternoon.

The new development came after the Israeli premier had earlier opposed the establishment of a field hospital in the southern part of the occupied territories for the treatment of Gazan children whose health condition was deteriorating amid the regime’s genocidal war on the besieged territory.

Physicians for Human Rights, which is a US-based non-profit human rights nongovernmental organization, says Israel has consistently failed to fulfill its obligations in this regard in in previous experiences.

While plans had been made for 250 sick and wounded Palestinians to depart Gaza for the UAE during the current week, Palestinian sources in Gaza said those in need of treatment are at least 100 times this number, noting that there are at least 25,000 patients who need to travel abroad.

They added that the number of sick and wounded people who have left the blockaded Palestinian territory since the beginning of the Israeli aggression does not exceed 5,000.

Physicians for Human Rights and a number of other human rights organizations have filed a petition, demanding that patients and wounded people facing life-threatening conditions be allowed to leave Gaza to receive the necessary treatment.

July 29, 2024 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

UNRWA: UNRWA staff tortured in Israeli jails

Palestinian Information Center – July 12, 2024

GAZA – The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said on Friday that its staff who were detained by Israeli forces were subjected to “ill-treatment and torture.”

This came in a press conference held by the Agency’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, during a pledging conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Today, UNRWA is staggering under the weight of relentless attack, Lazzarini said.

“In Gaza, it has paid a terrible price, 195 of our colleagues were killed and nearly 190 installations were damaged or destroyed, killing over 500 people seeking United Nations protection.”

It comes at a critical time as UNRWA undergoes unprecedented attacks and systematic attempts to dismantle it, he added.

“It is a tribute to our staff working across the region, including on the humanitarian front lines in Gaza.”

“We are committed to continuing to deliver assistance and basic services, including education to Palestinian boys and girls.”

Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, also spoke at the UNWRA pledging conference at the UN headquarters in New York.

Guterres appealed to everyone to protect UNRWA and its employees, saying that “there is no alternative to it.”

July 13, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Christians in occupied Jerusalem see marked surge in Israeli settler attacks

The Cradle | July 12, 2024

Settler attacks on the Christian community in occupied Jerusalem have surged since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza, according to Hebrew reports.

Hebrew news outlet Channel 13 reported on 12 July that over the past three months, there have been at least 36 recorded incidents of violence or abuse against Christians.

This includes 17 incidents of Israeli settlers spitting on Christian worshippers, nine acts of vandalism, five assaults, and five cases of verbal abuse – all under police protection.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been imposing taxes on Churches and Church property. The Israeli government claims the taxes are routine financial matters, yet the Christian community has accused Tel Aviv of a “coordinated attack on the Christian presence in the Holy Land” and a violation of a centuries-old status quo.

“In this time, when the whole world, and the Christian world in particular, are constantly following the events in Israel, we find ourselves, once again, dealing with an attempt by authorities to drive the Christian presence out of the Holy Land,” wrote the heads of the major Christian denominations in a joint letter to Netanyahu late last month.

Earlier in June, a report released by Israeli NGO Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue reported a significant increase in Israelis attacking Christians throughout 2023.

“The ongoing shift towards the far-right, a growing sense of nationalism, and the emphasis on Israel primarily as a state for the Jewish population have collectively undermined both the legal and perceived sense of equality for any minority within the country,” the report read.

Attacks and restrictions against Christian worshippers by Israeli police are also common in the holy city.

While Christians face an uptick in abuse and oppression under Netanyahu’s far-right government, they have always suffered under occupation in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

In 2019, the head of the Sebastia Diocese of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Archbishop Atallah Hanna, accused Israeli forces of trying to kill him after he was hospitalized with poisoning following an Israeli tear gas attack on his church.

July 12, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024

Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.

On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown.

Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody – unarmed, injured, surrendering and/or bound – began circulating on social networks and Telegram channels. However, save for a single incident in April 2022, when Georgian Legion fighters gleefully filmed themselves surveying a scene near Bucha, where they ambushed and killed multiple fleeing VDV soldiers, Western journalists have either ignored these abuses, or outright denied Kiev endorses or engages in such activity.

Georgian Legion chief Mamuka Mamulashvili has nonetheless justified this conduct, openly boasting that his soldiers “tie [POWs’] hands and feet sometimes” before killing them, and “not a single [Russian] will be taken prisoner.” The New York Times probe strongly suggests this strategy is not confined to the Legion. Multiple Chosen Company fighters testified to witnessing sadistic executions of POWs, and their fellow soldiers proudly bragging about carrying them out. A US veteran posted to the unit claimed they were flatly told by their recruiter:

“[It] was OK to kill POWs if they didn’t surrender in the strictest Geneva Convention standards.”

It may be the case that the New York Times revelations are a means of distancing Kiev’s Western backers from the actions of Ukraine’s forces. Yet, as we shall see, the proxy war’s leading sponsors had strong grounds to know precisely the nature of the government, military, and security services they were arming, funding and training long before Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

‘Intentional Strategy’

As an Al Mayadeen investigation of July 2nd made clear, Ukraine’s eight-year-long “anti-terror operation” in Donbass was a savage assault on largely defenceless residents of the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. The grim reality of Kiev’s abuses throughout this time was largely shielded from Western public view. Occasionally though, damaging disclosures did emerge. In 2014, Amnesty International publicised horrendous crimes committed by fascist paramilitary group Aidar Battalion in Donbass.

Next year, the organisation reported on “overwhelming evidence” of fighters and civilians taken prisoner by the Ukrainian military and security services being tortured and killed. It branded the activities of Right Sector, an ultranationalist militia at the forefront of the Maidan coup, “especially disturbing”. The group had transformed an abandoned youth camp into “an ad hoc prison,” holding dozens of civilians there as hostages, “brutally torturing them and extorting large amounts of money from them and their families.”

These revelations received meagre mainstream attention, then were promptly ignored. But the abuses continued apace. As a grisly 2016 report submitted to the OSCE starkly concluded:

“Torture and inhumane treatment inflicted by the Security Forces of Ukraine (SBU), Ukrainian armed forces, National Guard and other formations within the Interior Ministry of Ukraine, as well as by illegal armed groups, such as Right Sector, have not only continued but are gaining in scale and are becoming systematic… the extent to which torture is being used and the fact that this is done systematically prove that torture is an intentional strategy of the said institutions, authorized by their leadership.”

The report contains a panoply of deeply disturbing, and frequently difficult-to-read, first-hand testimonies of torture by the SBU and its fascist paramilitary confederates. Many of the victims claimed to be innocent civilians violently snatched off the street by gangs of armed thugs, often associated with the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and Right Sector, while going about their daily business. Once in Kiev’s custody, they admitted separatist supporters and fighters were subjected to hideous abuse almost without pause.

Most prisoners were “electrocuted, beaten cruelly and for multiple days in a row with different objects.” This included “iron bars, baseball bats, sticks, rifle-butts, bayonet knives, rubber batons.” “An absolute majority” reported being subject to mock firing squads, and suffered “death and rape threats to their families.” Waterboarding, strangulation, and suffocation were common. Other methods included “bone-crushing, stabbing and cutting… branding with red-hot objects, shooting different body parts with small arms.” Captured women were “frequently raped”.

All along, detainees were kept for extended periods in “freezing temperatures, with no access to food or medical assistance.” Some inmates were reportedly killed by being made to march across minefields, and run over with military vehicles. Others were “forced to take psychotropic substances,” causing them “agony.” Several reported being handcuffed to “hex bars” – weightlifting devices – and hung from ceilings. One victim of that technique reported: “I thought my bones would fall out. My hands still won’t listen to me, here and here.”

‘Risk of Retribution’

The purpose of this, on top of brutalising rebel forces and instilling fear into the civilian population of Donbass, was to secure false testimonies from prisoners. Typically, they were forced to admit to being part of the DPR and LPR defence forces, and committing grave crimes in that capacity. Others signed declarations implicating themselves as Russian assets, and/or validating the fiction that the rebels were controlled and armed by Moscow.

This of course served to reinforce Kiev’s claims its “anti-terror operation” was a righteous, legitimate crusade against Russian invaders in disguise, who were committing perverse acts of “terrorism”. And moreover, that Ukraine was successful in crushing this criminal incursion by their hostile, belligerent adversary. Nonetheless, there was another malign purpose to detaining and abusing so many innocent civilians. They could be traded for Ukrainian soldiers captured by breakaway authorities.

In June 2020, in a case brought by two Ukrainian draft dodgers seeking asylum in London, a British immigration court ruled that Kiev’s frontline forces in the “anti-terror operation” routinely committed grave war crimes. This included “unlawful capture and detention” of a “large number of civilians “with no legal or military justification… motivated by the need for ‘currency’ for prisoner exchanges” with the breakaway republics. The judgment moreover noted “systemic mistreatment of those detained by the Ukrainian military”:

“This involves torture and other conduct that is cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment contrary to Article 3 of the [European Convention on Human Rights] … There is likely to be official indifference to the mistreatment they have received. There is an attitude and atmosphere of impunity for those involved in mistreating detainees. No one has been brought to justice. Pro-Kyiv militia have been rewarded for their work by formal incorporation into the military. Lawyers are afraid of taking on cases due to the risk of retribution.”

Elsewhere, the ruling recorded that Kiev’s “adherence to the principles of distinction, precaution and proportionality when engaging with civilian targets has been poor, despite that being a task which calls for surgical precision.” This included infrastructure such as water installations, “a particular and repeated target” despite enjoying “protected status” under international humanitarian law. It further observed a “widespread civilian loss of life and the extensive destruction of residential property” in Donbass, partially attributable to “poorly targeted and disproportionate attacks carried out by the Ukrainian military.”

We can only speculate whether Kiev was tutored in torture by Western experts in the art. A February New York Times investigation revealed the very first act of Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, appointed SBU chief immediately following the Maidan coup, was to telephone the local heads of CIA and MI6, asking “for help in rebuilding the agency from the ground up, and [proposing] a three-way partnership.” This dark handshake gave rise to Ukraine’s assassination program, which US officials fear could lead to targeted killings the world over.

July 11, 2024 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

A compound crime: Israeli army hits Gaza family, uses them as human shields, and runs over their mother

Euro-Med Monitor | June 30, 2024

Palestinian Territory – The Israeli army continues to use its tanks to deliberately run over live Palestinian civilians and crush their bodies, in addition to using civilians as human shields, in the ground operations of its crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip that has been ongoing since 7 October 2023.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor field team documented a compound and comprehensive crime against a civilian family comprising an elderly woman and her four children, including three young women and a one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter. The family was attacked with gunfire and bombs after Israeli forces stormed their house on Thursday evening, 27 June. They were later taken outside and detained for over three hours despite their injuries in their home, near Israeli tanks in a dangerous combat zone, where they were used as human shields. The 65-year-old mother, identified as Safiya Hassan Musa Al-Jamal, was run over by an Israeli tank and killed in front of her son.

In his testimony to the Euro-Med Monitor team, the elderly woman’s son, Muhannad Al-Jamal, 28, said: “We were living in Al-Nazaz Street in Al-Shuja’iya, east of Gaza, when at approximately 10 a.m. on Thursday we were surprised to hear the sound of shelling and explosions. We made an unsuccessful attempt to leave. All around us was chaos. We went inside, up to the first floor, and sat in a room in the center of the house. As we were sitting there, we noticed that Israeli tanks were moving closer to the area. Then the bombing started to get more intense, and I saw that many of the tanks had turned and were now positioned on the adjacent land of our neighbours, bulldozing and destroying it before raising the Israeli flag on the property. I was with my mother, my three sisters, and niece in the room. We were very careful not to make any noise. At the end of the afternoon or before sunset, the tanks began firing shells toward my brother’s ground floor flat in our home. I got my family together and we sat in one of the rooms, reciting the Shahada (a statement of belief that Muslims recite before death) and waiting to see what would happen to us.

“After sunset, we heard gunfire in the street, and then I realised that the soldiers had stormed the house after blowing up a wall. When they found us in the room, they started firing at the walls randomly and threw five bombs amid gunfire. They were shouting in Hebrew, and we did not understand what they were saying. I was hit by shrapnel in my back, along with my sisters. My mother was struck by a large piece of shrapnel in her chest while my sisters were screaming, “We are civilians.” The soldiers then moved forward one by one, yelling, “Shut up,” before dragging me away. They forced me to take off my clothes and put me against the wall. After my mother and sisters entered with a female soldier, the soldiers pointed their weapons at me for half an hour.

“They asked me to carry my mother on my back. After that, a different soldier ordered me to place her on a stretcher, so I did. I then carried her with another soldier out through the opening that the army attack had made. We then went to a nearby area and were placed in a tank, where I placed the stretcher in front of me before exiting. After that, they brought me back to the house. They later took me down and handcuffed me. My sisters were at the tank’s door when a soldier arrived at roughly 9:45 p.m. and asked them to wait before he removed the handcuffs and put shackles on my hands and a blindfold on my eyes. He stopped me on a sand hill, and he was shining a laser at me. I felt that they were going to execute me. Then he turned on the tank and ordered me to get into it. It was a different tank from the one my mother was in. Later, the tank shifted and swung around. After that, they dropped me in what appeared to be a set of stairs, and I had no idea where I was. I was asked to follow their directions as I moved. This went on for about 15 minutes while rude remarks were made. Then I was grabbed by the neck by one of the soldiers. After I moved fifty meters, they put me in yet another tank. I moved in, then they took me down and put me in a tank that contained the stretcher that we used to transport my mother. Later on, the tank moved.

“I had assumed that we would be taken to a medical facility so that my mother could be treated, but instead they tackled me and my mother, putting her on the ground. After a few minutes, I realised we had arrived at the Mushtaha Roundabout, at the end of Al-Nazzaz Street. I inquired as to my location. “Your mother will be taken by ambulance,” he said. My mom was on the ground, unconscious. There were two tanks on the right and left surrounding the roundabout. After the soldiers entered the tank, it started to move backward and ran over my mother.

“When I saw the scene, I thought I had gone insane and began to cry and scream… I fled, fearing for my life, as the tank on the right tried to run me over. However, the two tanks moved in another direction, and the tank on the left was trying to run my mother over once more, but that did not happen. Afterwards, the tanks pivoted and pointed their weapons towards me. Out of fear, I hid by taking cover. All I could hear as I started to scream was the sound of gunfire. Dogs were getting closer to my mother’s body and I shoved them away as they were going to eat her body. This was on Friday just after midnight, around 1 a.m. The soldier in the tank knew where he had placed her and was able to avoid her, but he deliberately ran over her. I could not bear the situation amid the heavy gunfire, and I could not carry my mother after the tank ran over her. I was shocked by what had happened, but I could hardly cover my mother and ran from the place, thinking if there had been an ‘ambulance,’ as he said, he would not run over her. I went looking for my sisters, as I did not know their fate. I kept crying as I walked through the intense gunfire until I came across someone on a balcony who offered me a bottle of water and directed me along a safe route that would get me to my friends’ location in a stairwell. I made every effort to get in touch with my sisters, and eventually I found out that they were receiving medical care at Baptist Hospital. They inquired about my mother, so I told them.”

His sister, Areeji, 30, added to the Euro-Med Monitor team: “When the soldiers stormed our house and started shooting and throwing bombs, we told them that my mother was injured and dying. We noticed that she had a large wound, and a female soldier arrived to provide first aid. We observed her attempting to treat her repeatedly, and I witnessed my mother on the verge of death. After they had taken my brother, they held us for a while before telling us to head to Salah al-Din Street. When we asked about my mother, they said they would take her to the hospital. Then, they gave us a green light (torch) and we started to move. We were injured and bleeding, and we had a one-and-a-half-year-old baby girl with us. When we got to the area before the Shuja’iya intersection at 11:30 p.m., there were tanks there, a lot of gunfire, and I waved the green light (torch) until we passed. No one was following us until we got to the Baptist Hospital.”

Euro-Med Monitor has previously documented many instances of the Israeli army killing Palestinian civilians by intentionally running over live civilians with military tanks.

Sixty-two-year-old Jamal Hamdi Hassan Ashour was one such victim. He was deliberately run over in Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighbourhood on 29 February after he was arrested. The father of five was subjected to harsh interrogation by members of the Israeli army, who bound his hands with plastic zip-tie handcuffs before running him over with a military vehicle from the bottom to the top of his body.

Ashour’s home was targeted by Israeli aircraft, killing his nephew, before the family had to evacuate it. The incident occurred on the main Salah al-Din Street in the Zaytoun neighbourhood, according to eyewitnesses who spoke to the Euro-Med Monitor team. Israeli forces besieged Ashour and his wife inside their home, before arresting him and transferring him to a building in the neighbourhood designated for interrogating detainees. Israeli soldiers restrained the victim’s hands with plastic shackles before they crushed him, and tramped on his body from the legs up, confirming that he was alive during the incident. To guarantee thorough and complete crushing, the victim was placed on asphalt rather than on an adjacent sandy area.

Another documented incident took place on 23 January, when an Israeli tank ran over members of the Ghannam family while they were sleeping in a shelter caravan in the Taiba Towers area of Khan Younis. As a result, a man and his eldest daughter were killed, and his remaining three children and wife were injured. Amina, his 13-year-old daughter, confirmed that her father and older sister were killed when an Israeli tank unexpectedly and repeatedly ran over the caravan, where the family had been sleeping. While her mother and two other siblings survived the attack, Amina experienced extreme pressure in her eyes, nearly losing her sight.

In another incident documented by Euro-Med Monitor, Israeli tanks and bulldozers ran over and crushed displaced people inside their tents in Beit Lahia’s Kamal Adwan Hospital courtyard on 16 December 2023. Several people were killed, including individuals who were initially injured and did not ultimately survive. The corpses of those who had been previously buried in the courtyard were also crushed in the 16 December incident.

Euro-Med Monitor has also documented numerous incidents of Israeli army tanks destroying civilian property, particularly cars, during Israel’s ground incursions into different parts of the Gaza Strip. Most of these tank attacks have targeted vehicles with no evident military connection, parked in the streets, demonstrating the Israeli army’s deliberate and systematic destruction of Palestinian property.

These violations are part of a larger Israeli effort to dehumanise every Palestinian in the Gaza Strip, apparently in an attempt to justify and normalise the crimes being committed against them. Crushing civilians with tanks is just one of the many brutal ways the Israeli army murders Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, denying their humanity, suffering, and dignity. These practices reflect the intention of Israel’s government and military to collectively punish the Palestinian people, with the aim of eliminating, intimidating, and/or harming them physically and psychologically. These crimes come in tandem with a public incitement campaign by Israeli officials, media figures, and settlers calling for the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza, and are committed with total impunity by the perpetrators—which is evident in the absence of any meaningful action by the Israeli government or military at any level to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Israeli military attacks continue in various parts of the Gaza Strip, with ongoing aerial and artillery bombardment targeting residential homes. The Israeli army has also escalated its targeted killings, and extrajudicial executions against Palestinian civilians since 7 October 2023 through direct targeting with snipers, drones, and continuing operations in various regions of the Gaza Strip. These actions against civilians amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute, and are all part of the Israeli crime of genocide that has been ongoing in the Gaza Strip since 7 October.

The widespread and indiscriminate destruction of property caused by the Israeli army, as observed in the Shujaiya neighbourhood east of Gaza City, Rafah, Khan Yunis, and Jabalia north of the Gaza Strip, affecting over 65% of the buildings, is also considered a war crime under the Rome Statute.

The international community must take immediate action to fulfil its international obligations to put an end to the crime of genocide that Israel has been committing against all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for nine months. Measures must be taken to ensure that Israel complies with its international obligations, the Security Council’s ceasefire resolutions, and the International Court of Justice’s rulings, and to ensure Israel is held accountable for the crimes it has committed against the Palestinian people.

July 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

Gaza hospital chief says he was severely tortured in Israeli prisons

Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya (2R)awaits to make a statement in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, July 1, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
Press TV – July 1, 2024

The director of Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, who had been detained by Israeli forces for more than seven months, says he was put through “severe torture” during his detention in Israeli prisons.

Mohammed Abu Salmiya was among more than 50 Palestinians released and returned to Gaza, according to a medical source in the besieged territory.

Salmiya told a press conference on Monday that detainees “are subjected to all kinds of torture,” in Israel’s prisons and detention centers.

“There was almost daily torture. Cells are broken into and prisoners are beaten.”

“Several inmates died in interrogation centers and were deprived of food and medicine,” the hospital chief said.

Salmiya said the regime’s prison guards “broke his finger and caused his head to bleed during beatings, in which they used batons and dogs.”

According to him, the Israeli regime’s medical staff at different detention facilities had also taken part “in violation of all laws.”

Some Palestinian detainees, he said, had limbs amputated because of poor medical care.

Salmiya said there are still thousands of detainees held by the regime’s forces.

According to the Gaza media office, the regime forces have kidnapped at least 5,000 Palestinians since October 2023, when the military launched its bloodiest-ever war in the besieged territory.

The fate of many of them or the conditions of their detention are still unknown, said the media office.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards, said previously that he received reports that Palestinians were being beaten, kept in cells blindfolded and handcuffed for excessive periods, deprived of sleep, and threatened with physical and sexual violence.

Other reports suggest detainees have been insulted and exposed to acts of humiliation, such as being photographed and filmed in degrading poses.

The UN expert urged the regime to allow immediate access to international human rights and humanitarian observers to all the places in which Palestinians have been detained since October.

Human rights groups have repeatedly raised the alarm about “unprecedented difficult conditions” in which all Palestinian detainees, including women, are being held. Around 80 female detainees are currently being held in the regime prisons.

July 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Euro-Med: Israel destroyed 75% of Gaza’s farmlands, uses starvation as weapon

Press TV – June 23, 2024

An international human rights organization says Israel has rendered over 75 percent of farmlands in Gaza unusable either by isolating them to annex those lands to its so-called buffer zone, or by bulldozing them.

Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor made the comment in a Sundy report, adding that the regime’s forces seek to destroy Gaza’s food basket of vegetables, fruits and meat, in addition to destroying its local food production system.

The organization noted that “in addition to destruction of all components of local food production,” Israel is also preventing the entry of food supplies and humanitarian aid in order to “perpetuate famine in the Gaza Strip and use starvation as a weapon of war as part of its ongoing crime of genocide, which continues for the ninth month in a row.”

Euro-Med added that its teams have documented evidence of the occupation army intentionally killing farmers who were either working or attempting to access their lands and farms.

In addition, Euro-Med said it has also documented extensive destruction of farms, greenhouses, water wells and tanks, and agricultural equipment by the regime’s forces.

Euro-Med urged the international community “to ensure the entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, including essential food and non-food items, in order to address the territory’s health and environmental disaster in an immediate, safe and effective manner.”

The organization’s report came after the Gaza media office decried the use of starvation as a tool by the United States and Israel to achieve their political goals in Gaza despite the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the besieged territory.

“We condemn the inhumane crime of starvation used by the occupation and the American administration in a gruesome manner to achieve political goals,” it said in a statement last Monday.

According to the statement, thousands of sick and wounded people have no access to food or medicine amid the continued closure of Gaza’s crossings by Israeli forces.

“The situation in the Gaza Strip is becoming increasingly catastrophic and difficult, with the humanitarian crisis significantly worsening, especially for children, the sick, and the wounded who lack food and treatment.”

Earlier, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, had said in a separate statement that more than 50,000 children in Gaza require immediate medical treatment for acute malnutrition.

June 24, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian doctor tortured to death during Israeli interrogation

The Cradle | June 18, 2024

A senior doctor from Gaza was killed in November while under interrogation by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, Haaretz reported on 18 June.

Dr Iyad Rantisi, 53, directed a women’s hospital that is part of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip.

Rantisi was detained on 11 November at an Israeli army checkpoint while seeking to flee south to escape Israeli bombing in northern Gaza. Rantisi’s family and hospital colleagues heard nothing more about him, leading them to worry he was killed in Israeli custody.

Rantisi was declared dead six days later at Shikma Prison, which is home to a Shin Bet interrogation facility.

It is unclear how Dr Rantisi died, but Israel has a long history of torturing Palestinian detainees.

His death has prompted a probe by the Justice Ministry department that investigates complaints against Shin Bet interrogators.

The Shin Bet claims Dr Rantisi was interrogated on suspicion of involvement in holding Israeli captives in Gaza.

Israel’s Justice Ministry said the department had concluded its investigation into the circumstances of Rantisi’s death and is reviewing its findings, Haaretz reported.

The liberal Israeli daily added that after Rantisi was killed, the Ashkelon Magistrate’s Court issued a six-month gag order prohibiting the publication of all details of the case, including the existence of the gag order. Haaretz is now able to report on the case because the court order expired in May.

Another Palestinian physician from Gaza, Dr Adnan al-Bursh, 53, was also killed while in Israeli custody.

Bursh led the orthopedic surgery department at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital and was detained by Israeli forces in Khan Yunis in December.

The father of six died four months later, on 19 April, at Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli authorities have not explained the circumstances of Bursh’s death.

Thirty-six Palestinians from Gaza detained at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility have also died, presumably under torture.

On 6 June, the New York Times published a report which included accounts of torture at Sde Teiman. Israeli guards used electric chairs to shock detainees and anally raped them with hot, electrified metal rods.

Two Palestinians have also died at the Anatot detention center, while two more died en route to a detention center.

These figures do not include Palestinians from Gaza who died in prisons operated by the Israel Prison Service. Thousands of Palestinians have been detained and held captive in Israel’s detention facilities and prisons since the start of the war on 7 October last year.

June 18, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Dozens of Gazan detainees released by Israel show ‘signs of torture’

MEMO | June 12, 2024

Israel released dozens of Palestinian detainees from the Gaza Strip yesterday, according to a local source, with many showing signs of torture and abuse.

“Around 50 detainees from Gaza City and northern Gaza were freed,” a Palestinian source told Anadolu.

The source said some 33 freed Gazans were taken to Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza for medical attention “due to difficult health conditions.”

“Some of the detainees had signs of torture on their bodies,” he added.

There are no available estimates about the number of Palestinians detained by the Israeli army in Gaza, but human rights groups estimate that thousands have been arrested.

In videos circulating on social media, released detainees are seen to be visibly weak, explaining that they were not allowed to sleep and were not provided food or clean water.

“No food, no water and no toilet. I swear we pooped on ourselves and they’d make us drink sewage water,” one of the men tells gathered reporters as he is reunited with his daughter. He had been held by occupation forces for eight months, reporters said.

Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since October.

Nearly 37,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and nearly 85,000 others injured, according to local health authorities.

Those who survive the bombing are struggling as a result of a “man-made famine” which Israel is imposing by blocking the entry of humanitarian aid.

June 12, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s use of rape against Palestinian detainees from Gaza exposed

MEMO | June 7, 2024

A shocking three-month investigation by the New York Times has revealed gruesome details of abuse, torture and mistreatment of Palestinians held at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility. The exposé, based on interviews with former detainees, Israeli military officers, doctors and soldiers who served at the site, paints a harrowing picture of the conditions endured by the roughly 4,000 Palestinian detainees who have passed through the facility since 7 October.

Sde Teiman, an army base in southern Israel, has become a makeshift interrogation site where most Gazans captured by the occupation army have been brought for initial questioning. Detainees, classified as “unlawful combatants” under Israeli legislation, can be held for up to 75 days without judicial permission and 90 days without access to a lawyer or a trial. Their location is withheld from rights groups and even the International Committee of the Red Cross, in what legal experts say contravenes international law.

Former detainees described a litany of abuses at the hands of their captors, including beatings, electric shocks, humiliating treatment and rape. Eight former detainees, whose detention at the site has been confirmed by the military, reported being punched, kicked, and beaten with batons, rifle butts, and a hand-held metal detector while in custody.

Two detainees said their ribs were broken as a result of the assaults, with one claiming he was kneed in the chest and another stating he was kicked and beaten with a rifle. Seven detainees said they were forced to wear only a diaper during interrogations, and three claimed to have received electric shocks.

The Times’ investigation also uncovered allegations of sexual abuse and torture. Muhammad Al-Hamlawi, a 39-year-old senior nurse, recounted a horrific ordeal in which a female officer ordered two soldiers to lift him up and press his rectum against a metal stick fixed to the ground. The stick penetrated his rectum for roughly five seconds, causing it to bleed and leaving him in “unbearable pain.”

A leaked draft of a report by UNRWA, the main UN agency for Palestinians, cited similar accounts, including one detainee who said interrogators “made me sit on something like a hot metal stick and it felt like fire.” Another detainee according to the UN “died after they put the electric stick up” his anus.

Detainees described the dehumanising conditions they were subjected to, including being blindfolded, handcuffed and stripped naked except for their underwear. They were crammed into military trucks and driven to Sde Teiman, where they were held in open-sided hangars, forced to sit handcuffed in silence on mats for up to 18 hours a day. Exhausted detainees who fell asleep were summoned by officers and beaten as punishment.

The interrogation process itself was a nightmarish ordeal. Detainees were brought to a separate enclosure they dubbed the “disco room,” where extremely loud music was played to prevent them from sleeping – a form of torture that caused one detainee’s ear to bleed. Wearing nothing but a diaper, they were questioned and accused of being members of Hamas, then beaten when they denied any connection to the group.

The Israeli military has denied allegations of “systematic abuse” at Sde Teiman, claiming that any abuse of detainees is strictly prohibited and thoroughly investigated. However, the sheer number of consistent accounts from former detainees, coupled with the testimony of Israeli personnel at the site, suggests a disturbing pattern of mistreatment and torture.

Perhaps most disturbingly, of the 4,000 detainees held at Sde Teiman since October, 35 have died either at the site or after being brought to nearby civilian hospitals.

The revelations of the Sde Teiman detention facility have attracted growing scrutiny from the media. In May, CNN exposed gruesome details of abuse, torture and mistreatment of Palestinians in Sde Teiman. Israel’s Supreme Court has also begun hearing a petition from rights groups to close the site. As a result, Israel has begun moving Palestinians held in Sde Teiman to military-run prisons in the occupied West Bank.

June 7, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinians detained by Israeli Occupation Forces in Gaza ‘disappearing into the unknown’

Al Mayadeen | May 25, 2024

The Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and ex-Detainees Affairs in Gaza warned that the vast majority of Palestinians detained from the Strip during the war by Israeli forces “disappear into the unknown” within the occupation’s prisons, camps, and detention centers.

In a press statement, the Ministry confirmed that the detainees are held in secret detention centers, such as the infamous Sde Teman detention center in the occupied Negev, where they are subjected to brutal and severe abuse and systematic torture, especially at the beginning of their detention.

It added that Israeli security agencies conduct investigation sessions using various forms of torture in order to “extract confessions and information by any means necessary.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation refuses to engage with any institution or entity,  especially the International Committee of the Red Cross, requesting information or visits to any detainee.

The interrogation of a large number of detainees has been concluded, but the occupation still refuses to release them, the statement continued.

The Ministry emphasized that what the detainees endure in the occupation’s prisons constitutes “an intended, deliberate crime and a compound crime against our people and prisoners.” It highlighted that the occupation practices “killing, execution, and sadism against the prisoners,” imposing extremely harsh conditions that violate all international and humanitarian norms and laws.

It condemned “the heinous crimes committed against the prisoners and detainees in Israeli prisons since October 7” and held the Israeli occupation and the US administration “responsible for the ongoing crimes against Palestinian detainees.”

As the situation of detainees continues to worsen, the Ministry called for a “serious international investigation into the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against defenseless detainees.”

The Ministry urged for “international pressure on the occupation to open the prisons and secret detention centers to international organizations, institutions, and lawyers” to conduct visits and assess the conditions of the detainees. It also called on the international community and all international human rights organizations and institutions to “assume their responsibilities towards this serious issue, which the world has never witnessed before.”

The statement concluded by calling on all Palestinian people and national factions to stand by the families of the detainees and offer them support.

1,000 Palestinians missing

Earlier this month, Palestinian human rights groups reported a lack of information regarding the whereabouts and status of hundreds of Palestinian workers from Gaza.

After the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza was launched last October, “approximately 6,441 workers were deported to the West Bank, and approximately 1,000 workers remain missing in light of the ongoing crime of forced disappearance against Gaza detainees,” the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, and the Ramallah-based Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association (Addameer) said in a joint statement.

The institutions stated that “Israel” has declined to reveal the location or provide any information regarding the well-being of these individuals. The only information provided by “Israel” is that there are two military camps for Gaza detainees: one near Beer al-Sabe and another near al-Quds.

New Guantanamo

Israeli media had repeatedly broadcast scenes showing dozens of Palestinian detainees of all ages in Gaza stripped naked and blindfolded before being led to an unknown location, sparking international outrage.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported last December that hundreds of Palestinians who were detained in Gaza and taken to the Sde Teman base near Beer al-Sabe’ were killed as a result of the harsh detention conditions.

It said that “the age group of the Palestinian detainees killed while under investigation ranges from minors to elderly individuals” and also described how “detainees are locked in fenced areas blindfolded and handcuffed for most of the day, with lights kept on throughout the night.”

Commenting on Haaretz’s report, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory later announced that the testimonies it collected were consistent with the Israeli outlet’s findings regarding the martyrdom of Palestinian detainees from Gaza due to torture in an Israeli center that the Observatory described as a “new Guantanamo”.

Among the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against civilians are forced displacement, field executions, random and arbitrary arrests, and harassment.

To this end, the Observatory called for “an impartial and urgent international investigation into the Israeli army’s field execution of Palestinian civilians after detaining them from various areas across the Gaza Strip.”

May 25, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

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