Torture (Israel)

Israeli torture during Iraq War - In 2004, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, a senior officer in charge of Abu Ghraib, testified at a military court hearing, that an Arabic-speaking Israeli interrogator came and spoke to her at an intelligence facility in Baghdad. Several individuals, including Eric Fair—a contract interrogator for the private firm CACI at Abu Ghraib—have alleged that U.S. interrogators were trained to use a torture device known as the "Palestinian chair" during joint training exercises. The chair is designed to immobilize prisoners in painful, restricted postures to break them down physically and psychologically. Human rights organizations have long pointed out striking similarities between the harsh interrogation techniques used at Abu Ghraib—such as sleep deprivation, stress positions, hooding, and sensory bombardment—and tactics that had previously been used by Israeli security services (such as the Shin Bet). The transfer of "creative" interrogation techniques from Guantanamo to Iraq by Major General Geoffrey Miller also fueled allegations that the U.S. military adopted modified Israeli interrogation methodologies.

2017 article - Torture, Israeli-style - as Described by the Interrogators Themselves'' (𓃠)

Investigation by B'Tselem and HaMoked - Report based on the testimonies of 73 Palestinian residents of the West Bank who were arrested between July 2005 and January 2006. 

The testimonies include the use of conditions of imprisonment as a means for weakening the body, such as preventing physical activity; inadequate food supply; shackling in the "shabah" position; (painful binding of the detainee's hands and feet to a chair) Sleep deprivation for over 24 hours (15 cases); "Dry" beatings (17 cases); Painful tightening of handcuffs, sometimes while cutting off blood flow (5 cases); Sudden pulling of the body while causing pain in the hand joints which are cuffed to the chair (6 cases); Sudden tilting of the head sideways or backwards (8 cases); The "frog" crouch (forcing the detainees to crouch on tiptoes) accompanied by shoving (3 cases); The "banana" position - bending the back of the interrogee in an arch while he is seated on a backless chair (5 cases).

Abu Ma'amar - In 2006, 24 hours before the abduction of Corporal Gilad Shalit, IDF soldiers broke into the home of Mustafa Abu Ma'amar in Rafah, arresting him and his brother in their respective homes. 

"One or two days later, three interrogators came to where I was held at 6 A.M. They didn't ask me anything, just started kicking and hitting me while an interrogator named Moti grabbed me by the neck and throttled me until I thought I was going to die. The other two grabbed me and forcibly removed me." The interrogators used the "exercise technique," as Abu Ma'amar calls it. "They forced me to hold my legs to the chair legs, with the back of the chair to my right and nothing supporting my back. They pushed my back backwards and told me to 'exercise.' It made my stomach muscles cramp up and caused unbearable pain,"

The interrogators asked about the tunnels that he had helped dig, "while cursing me and my mother and father and threatening to demolish my house if I didn't cooperate. They also told me they had arrested my brother and were torturing him."

The Shin Bet interrogators then told him to stand on his toes and then "bend my legs and bring the lower part of my body downward .... It's very difficult and painful. They forced me to stand like that for hours on end, and each time I brought my foot to the floor or moved up or down I got hit..." (𓃠)

Sde Teiman - The IDF released a third of Palestinians who had be detained after Oct. 7, realising they had no connection to Hamas, not before raping and torturing them though...

Dr. Yoel Donchin, a doctor at Sde Teiman, told the NYT, it was unclear why Israeli soldiers had detained many of the people he treated, some of whom were “highly unlikely to have been combatants involved in the war” based on pre-existing physical ailments or disabilities. Those present on the grounds of being Hamas included a paraplegic, and someone with a Tracheostomy since childhood.

Lawyer, Khaled Mahajneh: “I have been in this profession for 15 years … I never expected to hear about rape of prisoners or humiliations like that. And all this is not for the purpose of interrogation — since most prisoners are only interrogated after many days of detention — but as an act of revenge. To take revenge on whom? They are all citizens, young people, adults, and children. There are no Hamas members in Sde Teiman because they are in the hands of the Shabas [Israeli Prison Service].”

According to Haaretz, detainees 36 at Sde teiman have died since October. 7.

An Israeli working at Sde teiman snapped two photographs of a scene that he says continues to haunt him. Rows of men in gray tracksuits are seen sitting on paper-thin mattresses, ringfenced by barbed wire. All appear blindfolded, their heads hanging heavy under the glare of floodlights.

A putrid stench filled the air and the room hummed with the men’s murmurs, the Israeli who was at the facility told CNN. Forbidden from speaking to each other, the detainees mumbled to themselves. “We were told they were not allowed to move. They should sit upright. They’re not allowed to talk. Not allowed to peek under their blindfold.” Guards were instructed “to scream uskot” – shut up in Arabic – and told to “pick people out that were problematic and punish them,” the source added. They paint a picture of a facility where doctors sometimes amputated prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing; of medical procedures sometimes performed by underqualified medics earning it a reputation for being “a paradise for interns”; and where the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot.

"We were told they were not allowed to move. They should sit upright. They’re not allowed to talk. Not allowed to peek under their blindfold." “They stripped them down of anything that resembles human beings,” said one whistleblower, who worked as a medic at the facility’s field hospital.

“(The beatings) were not done to gather intelligence. They were done out of revenge,” said another whistleblower.

The testimonies of eight former detainees at Sde Teiman prison interviewed by the New York Times detail abuses including beating, being forced to wear only a diaper during interrogation, and electrocution torture. Being forced to sit handcuffed in silence on a mat for up to 18 hours a day in the rain, sleep and deprivation.

According to a whistleblower, procedures in Israeli military hospitals are “routinely” carried out without painkillers, causing “an unacceptable amount of pain” to detainees. Another whistle-blower said painkillers were used “selectively” and “in a very limited way” during an invasive medical procedure on a Gazan detainee in a public hospital. One detainee told the BBC his leg had to be amputated because he was denied treatment for an infected wound.

Patients at the Sde Teiman hospital are kept blindfolded and permanently shackled to their beds by all four limbs, according to several medics responsible for treating patients there. They are also made to wear daipers, rather than use a toilet. Witnesses, including the facility’s senior anaesthiologist, Yoel Donchin, say both the use of daipers and handcuffs are universal in the hospital ward. “The army create the patient to be 100% dependent, like a baby,” he said. “You are cuffed, you are with diapers, you need water, you need everything – it’s dehumanisation”. One doctor with knowledge of conditions there said prolonged cuffing to beds would cause “huge suffering, horrible suffering”, describing it as “torture” and saying patients would start to feel pain after a few hours. Others have spoken of the risk of long-term nerve-damage. Also, according to Dr Donchin, a prisoner was gang-raped by Israeli soldiers so much that he endured severe anal trauma, fractured ribs, and a ruptured bowel, necessitating immediate surgery. (𓃠)

A whistle-blower who worked at the Sde Teiman field hospital said a doctor once refused his request that an elderly patient be given painkillers while they were opening up a recent, infected amputation wound. “[The patient] started trembling from pain, and so I stop and say ‘we can’t go on, you need to give him analgesia’,” he said. The doctor told him it was too late to administer it. The witness said such procedures were “routinely done without analgesia” resulting in “an unacceptable amount of pain”. 

On another occasion, he was asked by a suspected Hamas fighter to intercede with the surgical team to increase the levels of morphine and anaesthetic during repeated surgeries. The message was passed on, but the suspect again regained consciousness during the next operation and was in a lot of pain. The witness said both he and other colleagues felt there was a sense in which it had been a deliberate act of revenge.

A second whistle-blower (Yoni) said the situation at Sde Teiman was only part of the problem, which extended into public hospitals. The BBC is calling him “Yoni” to protect his identity. “There were instances where I heard staff discuss whether detainees from Gaza should get painkillers. Or ways to perform certain procedures that can turn the treatment into punishment.” “I have knowledge of one case where painkillers were used selectively, in a very limited way, during a procedure,” he told the BBC. “The patient did not receive any explanation of what was going on. So, if you put together [that] someone is undergoing an invasive procedure, which involves even incisions, and doesn’t know about that, and is blindfolded, then the line between treatment and assault thins out.”

Haaretz published allegations made by a doctor at the Sde Teiman site that leg amputations had been carried out on two prisoners, because of cuffing injuries. The allegations were made, the paper said, in a private letter sent by the doctor to government ministers and the attorney-general, in which such amputations were described as “unfortunately a routine event”. “From the first days of the medical facility’s operation until today, I have faced serious ethical dilemmas,” said the letter addressed to Israel’s attorney general, and its health and defense ministries, according to Ha’aretz. “More than that, I am writing (this letter) to warn you that the facilities’ operations do not comply with a single section among those dealing with health in the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law.” (𓃠)

Whistleblower to CNN: “I was asked to learn how to do things on the patients, performing minor medical procedures that are totally outside my expertise,” he said, adding that this was frequently done without anesthesia. “If they complained about pain, they would be given paracetamol,” he said, using another name for acetaminophen. The same whistleblower also said he witnessed an amputation performed on a man who had sustained injuries caused by the constant zip-tying of his wrists. The account tallied with details of a letter authored by a doctor working at Sde Teiman published by Ha’aretz in April.

Journalist, Muhammad Arab treatment at Sde Teiman, according to lawyer, Khaled Mahajneh: Mahajneh told +972 that Arab was nearly unrecognizable after 100 days in the detention facility; his face, hair, and skin color had changed, and he was covered with dirt and pigeon droppings. The journalist had not been given new clothes for nearly two months, and was only allowed to change his pants for the first time that day because of the lawyer’s visit. According to Arab, detainees are continually blindfolded and tied up with their hands behind their backs, forced to sleep hunched over on the floor without any bedding. Their iron handcuffs are removed only during a weekly, minute-long shower. “But the prisoners began refusing to shower because they don’t have watches, and going beyond the allotted minute exposes prisoners to severe punishments, including hours outside in the heat or rain,” Mahajneh said. All detainees, Mahajneh noted, face deteriorating health conditions due to the poor quality of the daily prison diet: a small amount of labaneh and a piece of cucumber or tomato. They also suffer from severe constipation, and for every 100 prisoners, only one roll of toilet paper is provided per day. “The prisoners are prevented from talking to each other, even though more than 100 people are kept to a warehouse, some of them elderly and minors,” Mahajneh told +972. “They are not allowed to pray or even read the Qur’an.” Arab also testified to his lawyer that Israeli guards sexually assaulted six prisoners with a stick in front of the other detainees after they had violated prison orders. “When he talked about rapes, I asked him, ‘Muhammad, you’re a journalist, are you sure about this?’” Mahajneh recounted. “But he said he saw it with his own eyes, and that what he was telling me was only a small part of what was happening there.”

UN report - A UN report released on 19 February 2024 states: "We are particularly distressed by reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have also been subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers. At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence."

They also noted that photos of female detainees in degrading circumstances were also reportedly taken by the Israeli army and uploaded online.

“On at least one occasion, Palestinian women detained in Gaza were allegedly kept in a cage in the rain and cold, without food.” (𓃠)

Muazzaz Abayat - Bodybuilder, Muazzaz Abayat: ''My detention was cruel. They beat the prisoners. They kill the prisoners. They beat us with metal rods and chains and used all kinds of torture.''

Khalil Abayat - Boxer, Muazzam Khalil Abayat: "My brothers are dying in the Negev jail. Three thousand prisoners. They beat us every night. They don't give us food. There is no bathroom..."

Khalil al-Zamaira - 16 when he was detaineds; he said Palestinian prisoners are being mistreated and beaten in prison, and there is no different treatment for children. "They didn't differentiate between old and young... Two teens were transferred from Ofer prison with broken ribs. They were unable to move."

Omar al-Atshan - Palestinian teen, Omar al-Atshan: "The mistreatment was indescribable..." He told Al Jazeera during a live coverage of the arrival of released prisoners in the occupied West Bank on Sunday. He said that they were routinely beaten and humiliated in prison, and that water and food were scarce. During their release, Israeli soldiers ordered them to lower their heads, and then beat them, he said. "Our happiness is not complete because there are other captives still in detention," he said, adding that one captive, which he identified as Thaer Abu Assab, was beaten to death in custody. "He was subjected to too much beating. We cried for help, but doctors arrived after an hour and a half after he was already dead from torture... He was tortured because of a question; he asked the warden whether there was a truce. Then he got beaten to death."

Osama Marmash - 16; told Al Jazeera that four Palestinian captives were tortured to death in Megiddo,a and that he himself sustained wounds to his foot and back from beating. "My prison clothes were white but then turned red from blood stains," The food was very little, he said, and was often "inedible". "The road was difficult. They turned off the air conditioner on the bus. We were suffocating,"

Sufian Abu Salah Testimony - Sufian Abu Salah, a 43-year-old taxi driver from Khan Youis, was one of dozens of men detained during raids by Israel's army and taken to a military base for questioning. He said soldiers carried out severe beatings during the journey and also on arrival at the base, where he was denied treatment for a minor wound on his foot, which then became infected. “My leg got infected and turned blue, and as soft as a sponge,” he told the BBC. After a week, he said, the guards took him to hospital, beating him on his injured leg on the way. Two operations to clean his wound did not work, he told the BBC. “Afterwards, they took me to a public hospital, where the doctor gave me two options: my leg or my life.” He chose his life. After they amputated his leg, he was sent back to the military base, and later released back to Gaza. (𓃠)

Omar Abu Rios - National team goal keeper Omar Abu Rios was arrested at age 23 for allegedly being part of an attack on Israeli troops at the Amari Palestinian refugee camp near Ramallah.

Muhammad Nimr - National team striker Muhammad Nimr had his house destroyed by the IDF and was then jailed without charges being filed. 

Zakaria Issa - National team striker Zakaria Issa was jailed for sixteen years before being released in 2013 when he was struck with terminal cancer.

Mahmoud Sarsak - National team defender Mahmoud Sarsak was jailed without charges while trying to cross a checkpoint in order to join his teammates.

Jawad Abu Nassar - Eighteen-month-old, Jawad Abu Nassar was returned to his family in central Gaza by Israeli forces with injuries and circular burn marks on his legs consistent with cigarette torture.

Abu Foul - 28-year-old Abu Foul was arrested from Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in late December and imprisoned in Israeli detention facilities, where he says guards tortured and beat him so severely that he lost his sight.

Heba Morayef testimony - “Over the last month we have witnessed a significant spike in Israel’s use of administrative detention – detention without charge or trial that can be renewed indefinitely – which was already at a 20-year high before the latest escalation in hostilities on 7 October. Administrative detention is one of the key tools through which Israel has enforced its system of apartheid against Palestinians. Testimonies and video evidence also point to numerous incidents of torture and other ill-treatment by Israeli forces including severe beatings and deliberate humiliation of Palestinians who are detained in dire conditions,” said Heba Morayef, Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Video 1 - In a video first published on social media on 31 October and analysed by Amnesty International’s Crisis Evidence Lab, nine detained Palestinian men can be seen, some stripped naked and others half-naked, blindfolded and handcuffed, surrounded by at least 12 soldiers. One of the soldiers is seen kicking one of the detainees in the head. 

Video 2 - Another video analysed by Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab uploaded to platform X (formerly Twitter) on 31 October shows a blindfolded person, along with an Israeli army sergeant mocking the prisoner and dancing around him.  

Amnesty International - A recently released Palestinian detainee from occupied East Jerusalem, who spoke to Amnesty International on condition of anonymity, said how Israeli interrogators subjected him and other detainees at the Russian Compound (al-Maskoubiyeh), a detention center in Jerusalem, to severe beatings which left him with bruises and three broken ribs. He also highlighted how Israeli police interrogators beat them continuously on their heads yelling at them to always keep their heads down, while ordering them to “praise Israel and curse Hamas.”  He added: “even when one of the 12 detainees with us in the cell did that, the beating and humiliation did not stop.” Amnesty International also spoke to two women who were arbitrarily detained for 14 hours at a police station in occupied East Jerusalem where they were humiliated, strip-searched, mocked and asked to curse Hamas. They were later released without charges. 

Hassan Abadi testimony - Palestinian lawyer Hassan Abadi, who has been visiting at least four detainees every week since 7 October, told Amnesty International that Palestinian detainees have been denied their right to outdoor exercise and that one of the forms of humiliation to which they are subjected during inmate count is being forced to kneel on the floor. He added that Palestinians in detention have had all their personal belongings confiscated and at times burned, including books, diaries, letters, clothes, food and other items. Palestinian women prisoners in al-Damon prison have had their sanitary pads confiscated by prison authorities. According to Abadi, a client he is representing told him that when she was detained and blindfolded at Kiryat Arba police station near Hebron an officer threatened her with rape.

Dr. Mohammed al-Ran testimony - He was stripped down to his underwear, blindfolded and his wrists tied, then dumped in the back of a truck where, he said, the near-naked detainees were piled on top of one another as they were shuttled to a detention camp in the middle of the desert. A prisoner who committed an offense such as speaking to another would be ordered to raise his arms above his head for up to an hour. The prisoner’s hands would sometimes be zip-tied to a fence to ensure that he did not come out of the stress position. For those who repeatedly breached the prohibition on speaking and moving, the punishment became more severe. Israeli guards would sometimes take a prisoner to an area outside the enclosure and beat him aggressively, according to two whistleblowers and al-Ran. A whistleblower who worked as a guard said he saw a man emerge from a beating with his teeth, and some bones, apparently broken. That whistleblower and al-Ran also described a routine search when the guards would unleash large dogs on sleeping detainees, lobbing a sound grenade at the enclosure as troops barged in. Al-Ran called this “the nightly torture.” “While we were cabled, they unleashed the dogs that would move between us, and trample over us,” said al-Ran. “You’d be lying on your belly, your face pressed against the ground. You can’t move, and they’re moving above you.” The same whistleblower recounted the search in the same harrowing detail. “It was a special unit of the military police that did the so-called search,” said the source. “But really it was an excuse to hit them.

Salah Fateen Salah Testimony - On the morning of October 8, one day after Hamas’s attack, Israeli special forces units raided the cells of Gilboa prison and violently beat Palestinian prisoners held there. “They shouted through the speakers telling all the prisoners to get inside their rooms, kneel down on their knees, put their hands on their heads, and to face away from the door, so you have no idea what’s happening behind you when they open the door,” explained 23-year-old Salah. “Then they came in and started beating people, several rooms at once, with their hands, feet and batons, including metal ones,” he said. “They unleashed their dogs on us. “They beat a prisoner who has diabetes and takes three injections a day. He was throwing up so much blood … we were worried sick for two hours that he would be martyred from the amount of blood that he was throwing up,” said Salah. Israeli forces also “cut open the forehead of another man who was my cellmate,” he said, noting “there was blood all over the prison floors”. The beatings, said Salah, went on for days. “They have no humanity. Those who beat elderly and sick people have no humanity. The head of the prison himself was making death threats against us.”  (𓃠)