Palestinian journalist Sami al-Saai has testified to being subjected to horrific sexual abuse, which included rape with batons and the violent squeezing of his testicles to the point of unbearable pain, during his 17 months of incarceration in Israeli dungeons.
Sami was detained by the Israelis on February 23, 2024, and hauled into Megiddo Prison under administrative detention. He remained incarcerated without charge before being released in June 2025. During his detention, Sami endured horrific physical and psychological abuse. To compound his horrors, the Israelis threatened to subject his wife, mother, children, and siblings to the same treatment and worse.
Nevertheless, Sami described his unbearable treatment in the Israeli rape-and-torture dungeons as a mere “drop in the sea” compared with what some of his colleagues have had to endure. “My experience as Sami is a drop in the sea of other prisoners’ experiences,” he told Middle East Eye. “They were subjected to much worse, especially the ones from Gaza.”
This worked as a coping mechanism for Sami to divert his mind from his own suffering. “In this way, I got out of the psychological state that I was suffering from. I compared what I was subjected to with what the others were subjected to,” he said.
“They raped me with an object? This one was raped by a dog. They made a dog directly rape him. Another one was raped by a prison guard. You are talking about something that is very ugly and despicable. It does not make sense.”
Raping with dogs has been among the various forms of rape that the Israelis have been practicing on shackled and bound Palestinians. Many released detainees have testified to being subjected to this dehumanising Israeli practice, which has not drawn the global condemnation it deserves.
In testimonies published by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) last month, one 35-year-old male victim recounted:
We were stripped completely. Soldiers brought dogs that climbed on us and urinated on me. Then one of the dogs raped me—the dog did it deliberately, knowing exactly what it was doing, and inserted its penis into my anus, while the soldiers kept beating and torturing us and spraying pepper spray in our faces. The dog’s assault lasted about three minutes; the overall suppression lasted about three hours.
Soon after his release in June 2025, I published a report on Sami’s testimony, in which he recounted enduring extreme sexual abuse, including rape, at the hands of the Israelis. Sami described how the injuries sustained from the Israelis’ raping him with myriad objects left him bleeding from the rectum for 22 days. Moreover, he never received any medical attention despite his excruciating suffering.
“So I asked the guys for tissues — whatever was available,” Sami said back in July. “I fashioned them into plugs and inserted them into my rectum to absorb the blood and prevent it from flowing out.”
From Sami’s July testimony:
“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.”
There is mounting testimony from Palestinian detainees recounting humiliation, dehumanisation, and sexual abuse, including rape, in Israeli dungeons. Nearly 100 Palestinians have been killed in these dungeons, where Palestinians are treated as subhumans. A vast majority of these detainees are civilians, including women and children, who have never been charged with any crime.
Although nearly 100 killings have been documented in the Israeli dungeons, the real number is believed to be much higher, as hundreds of detainees from Gaza — who are subjected to the worst atrocities — remain unaccounted for. The Israelis have not revealed their whereabouts, indicating they have either been killed in detention or are incarcerated in unknown locations.
According to official figures released by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society last month, more than 9,250 Palestinians, including over 350 children and 49 women, remain incarcerated in Israeli rape-and-torture dungeons with no hope of release.
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