Israel is routinely raping Palestinians in its torture dungeons

"This is a vile place. A narrow cell where the prisoner is placed, tortured, and raped, away from the surveillance cameras."

A journalist, who was abducted from Tulkarem in the West Bank last year, has revealed the horrific abuse — including degrading assaults with hard objects amounting to rape and sexual torture — to which Palestinians in Israeli torture dungeons have been routinely subjected to, especially after October 7.

Journalist Sami Al‑Sa’i, who was abducted from the West Bank and spent 16 months in Israeli dungeons, recently recounted acts of horrific abuse that caused rectal bleeding for 22 days. Despite the severe injuries inflicted on Palestinian detainees, Israelis have denied them access to doctors and medicines. This leaves the detainees in excruciating pain. Al-Sa’i recollected: “I couldn’t even ask for a doctor or anything. You had to take care of yourself. So I asked the guys for tissues — whatever was available. I fashioned them into plugs and inserted them into my rectum to absorb the blood and prevent it from flowing out.”

Here is Sami recollecting his ordeal in the Israeli dungeons:

“They stripped me of my lower clothing and forced me into a prostration position on the ground. Then they began a form of indirect rape — which entailed bleeding and extreme psychological distress. This continued for about 22 days until the bleeding stopped. They then took me to another location, my hands tied behind my back. This started from the very first moment — all the beatings happened while I was handcuffed from behind, blindfolded. You couldn’t see anything; you didn’t know where the next blow would come from.

“Later, they took me to another place. I discovered that the cell was very small. They stripped me of my lower clothing again, forced me into the prostration position on the ground, and began another act of indirect rape — with sticks and other sharp or hard objects. This went on for about half an hour. I felt immense pain and psychological suffering. You don’t know what to do. You scream. You beg. You’re in agony. But no one responds.

“All of this happened amid their laughter, chuckling, and insults — all spoken fluently in Arabic. They spoke during the entire thirty minutes of this journey of torment, beatings, rape, and assault. And because I’m a journalist — from the moment I entered, they knew I was a journalist. They would say ‘You’re a journalist.’ Because I’m a journalist, the beatings intensified. The torture increased.

“After that, they transferred me to the Ma’bar section. I was fasting — it was the holy month of Ramadan, in March 2024. I entered the Ma’bar, and along the way I was dragged at times, carried at times, beaten at times. When I entered one of the rooms, the other prisoners welcomed me — they knew that anyone who arrived new would have been beaten. I rested a little. Then I went to the bathroom to shower.

“That’s when I discovered I was bleeding from the rectal area. There was no medical care — severe and widespread neglect. I couldn’t even ask for a doctor or anything. You had to take care of yourself. So I asked the guys for tissues — whatever was available. I fashioned them into plugs and inserted them into my rectum to absorb the blood and prevent it from flowing out.

“This went on for about twenty-two days — the bleeding and psychological trauma. After that, I began to recover, to regain my strength through my relationship with the other prisoners — talking to them, laughing with them.

“Later, I returned to the place where I had been raped. When I found the clothes I had lost, in the spot where I had been forced into prostration, they smelled of urine, blood, pus, and vomit. This is a filthy place. A place where torture is carried out. A place where abuse is inflicted on our prisoner brothers. A very harsh place, where torture is carried out, because it’s far away. But this place is away from the surveillance cameras installed inside the prison. No one sees them, they feel free to carry out their ‘hobbies’ of repression, abuse, and beatings as they please. This is a vile place. A narrow cell where the prisoner is placed, tortured, and raped, away from the surveillance cameras. And that’s where they acted, violating me from behind with hard objects like sticks. They tried to insert the inspection stick, I recognised it because it buzzes and makes a sound. They tried to insert it, but it was too large. It wouldn’t go in. This caused more injury. And they kept beating and beating and beating. Insults, abuse, targeting us, our wives, our sisters, and our mothers — all in Arabic.”

Sami is just the latest of the Palestinian abductees to reveal the sexual abuse Palestinians are being subjected to in the Israeli torture camps.

Ibrahim Salem, who was abducted from Gaza and sexually abused in the Israeli torture camps in the Negev desert last year, similarly testified that rape was a common humiliation tactic employed by the Israelis. “Nothing was more humiliating than when they made me take off my clothes, or when they inserted this object into mu butt, or when a young female soldier kept [touching my penis],” he told Middle East Eye last August. “There’s even more and more.”

In a 49-page March report titled “More than a human can bear”: Israel’s systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since 7 October 2023, a UN commission concluded that “sexual and gender-based violence was intended not only to humiliate, punish and intimidate the individual Palestinians but the civilian population as a whole, with the objective to subordinate, destroy and expel the Palestinian community.”

An August 2024 report by B’Tselem titled Welcome to Hell also detailed systemic abuse of the Palestinians in Israeli torture camps. The report devoted a section to sexual abuse. “We were taken to a room which had a lot of clothes, shoes, rings and watches scattered in it. We were stripped naked and even had to take off our underwear,” Sami Khalili, a 41-year-old detainee held since 2003, told B’Tselem. “We were searched with a hand-held metal detector. They forced us to spread our legs and then sit half crouching. Then they started hitting us on our private parts with the detector.”

The most notorious case, however, has been that of Islam al-Sarsawi. His case has also shone a bright light on the total moral bankruptcy of Israeli society.

Al-Sarsawi was abducted from Gaza and was subsequently anally raped with metal rods and other objects that left him with “torn rectum, broken ribs, ruptured bowels & damaged lungs” in the notorious Sde Teiman torture camp. Al-Sarsawi’s ordeal was captured on camera. He subsequently died.

In the aftermath of Al-Sarsawi’s rape, an Israeli politician stated in the Knesset that “everything is legitimate” regarding the treatment of Palestinians, while a journalist lamented that the rape of Palestinians inside Israeli dungeons was not official state policy. When there was an attempt to take the rapist Israelis in for questioning, countless Israelis laid siege on the Negev torture camp to prevent it. Subsequently, Israelis took to the streets to assert their “right to rape” the Palestinians at will. The leader of the rapists, Meir Ben-Shitrit, went on to become a celebrity, appearing on TV shows in Israel. Meir Mazuz, a top Israeli rabbi, blessed the soldiers who gang-raped Al-Sarsawi, telling the rapists: “You beat the enemy, so what? It’s all good… Don’t we have the right to do it?… In any other country, they’d get medals… Don’t fear the goyim.” In a poll that same month, a staggering 65 percent of Israeli Jews supported gang‑raping Palestinians.

Israeli society, which accused the Palestinian resistance of systemic rape on October 7 without ever producing a single credible piece of evidence or one victim, has a serious rape problem, with every stratum implicated in it.

Moreover, Israel is a safe haven for Jewish paedophiles from all over the world.

The complete dehumanisation of the Palestinians, in service of the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, has rendered their bodies and minds a free-for-all. Furthermore, the total moral bankruptcy of the Western press and other supposed “international institutions” has meant that hardly anyone is speaking out as besieged Palestinians are being routinely subjected to rampant sexual abuse and rape.

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