Experts said the OHCHR report served mainly to confirm previous findings on Israeli detention centers.
Palais des Nations, the seat of the U.N. in Geneva. (UN Photo/Violaine Martin)
By Edward Carver
Common Dreams
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Wednesday released a report detailing torture and abuse of Palestinians at Israeli detention centers, including sexual violence, waterboarding, and the use of dogs.
Israeli security forces have also used electric shocks, burned detainees with cigarettes, and deprived them of food, water, sleep, and toilet access, according to the 23-page OHCHR report, based largely on interviews with released detainees.
Some detainees said they were held with their arms suspended from the ceiling; were forced to be naked for prolonged periods, wearing only diapers; and were blindfolded for extended periods.
The OHCHR report comes as a highly controversial case involving detention abuse unfolds in Israel. The Israeli military is investigating nine soldiers for alleged “substantial abuse” of a Palestinian detainee who reportedly had to be hospitalized [after being sodomized] and could not walk after they attacked him. [Far-right Israeli groups stormed the jail trying to free the soldiers.]
[Historian Juan Cole reported:
“Rejecting these charges against the soldiers, a right wing mob that included members of the Parliament from the Likud and the Religious Zionist and Jewish Power blocs, then attempted several times to storm through the gates of the facility and finally succeeded in breaching the military barricades, attacking MPs and reaching the area where Palestinians are held. One soldier said that no one seemed to be in control.
The unruly crowd chanted its support for torture and even called for the summary execution of the Palestinian prisoners. Journalist Haggai Matar observed, “In essence, soldiers are in open rebellion for the right to rape prisoners, and more and more coalition politicians are joining them – from Likud, Jewish Power, and more.”
The mob, including the parliamentarians, then attempted but failed to storm the Beit Lid base, where the nine detainees were being held for interrogation.”]
More Than 9,000 Detained
Israel security forces have arrested thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza since October, many of them arbitrarily; they held more than 9,400 “security detainees” as of the end of June, often in secret and incommunicado, without providing a reason for the detainment, the OHCHR report says.
“The testimonies gathered by my office and other entities indicate a range of appalling acts, such as waterboarding and the release of dogs on detainees, amongst other acts, in flagrant violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law,” U.N. Human Rights chief Volker Türk said in a statement accompanying the report.
Türk addressing the General Assembly in December 2023. (UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe)
Most of the detainees have been men and adolescent boys, though some are also women and adolescent girls, and there are many reported instances of sexual and gender-based violence, the report says, including
“the forced nudity of both men and women; beatings while naked, including on the genitals; electrocution of the genitals and anus; being forced to undergo repeated humiliating strip searches; widespread sexual slurs and threats of rape; and the inappropriate touching of women by both male and female soldiers.”
OHCHR also said it had video evidence of detainees filmed in “deliberately humiliating positions” while handcuffed and blindfolded, and noted it received “consistent reports” of Israeli security forces “inserting objects into detainees’ anuses.”
Some detainees also reported “cage-like” facilities and overcrowding. The report says that 13 to 20 male detainees were kept in cells designed for five people, forcing many to sleep on the floor. There were “poor living, hygiene, and health conditions, with reports of water running only one hour per day over several weeks” and detainees faced “exposure to cold temperatures due to the confiscation of blankets and removal of windows panes in cold weather.”
53 Dead in Detention
At least 53 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli detention centers since October, according to the report, which suggests that the detention system appears “to constitute a collectively punitive measure against Palestinians,” citing the words of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security, who has said that “terrorists” deserve the most “stringent conditions.” Male detainees reported losing between about 55 and 120 pounds while in custody.
Ben-Gvir, on phone, and radical right political activist Bentzi Gopstein in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem in February 2022. (CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Concern about Israeli detentions of Palestinians has been high for many months. In January, a Palestinian watchdog group issued a report condemning the forced disappearance of Gazans, and The New York Times found evidence of detainees being stripped and beaten.
Not all of the alarms about the situation in Israeli detentions centers have come from abroad. In February, Israeli’s public defender’s office issued a report calling for improved prison conditions, including for Palestinians.
In April, local human rights groups called for a closure of the Sde Teiman military base detention center, due to its notorious conditions.
The calls were prompted in part by gruesome reports including amputations of detainees’ limbs due to handcuff injuries. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East then issued a damning report on detainee treatment, including of its own staff, some of whom had been detained and subjected to harsh interrogation.
Last week, Save the Children called for an end to the Israel’s arbitrary detainment of Palestinian minors, with a regional director saying that “these children are trapped, unable to move or see the sun, forced into crowded cells with appalling, unsanitary conditions, and subject to severe abuse and violence.”
Experts said Wednesday that the OHCHR report served mainly to confirm previous findings on Israeli detention centers.
Neil Sammonds, a campaigner at the U.K.-based progressive advocacy group War on Want, said on social media that leaders of the new U.K. government haven’t spoken up about abuses at Israeli detention centers. He also said that the report could be used as evidence by the International Criminal Court, which has sought arrest warrants for both Israeli and Hamas leaders.
The new report also addresses abuses of Israelis held by Hamas and affiliated groups. The Palestinian militants killed roughly 1,200 people in a horrific set of attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 and kidnapped about 250 Israelis, more than 100 of whom have since been released.
Like Palestinian detainees, the released Israelis reported “appalling” conditions, the report says, including beatings, receiving surgery without anesthetic, and sexual and gender-based violence. The Israeli government has reported that 44 of the remaining hostages in Gaza have died.
Both Israel and Hamas have refused to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit detainees or hostages. The OHCHR called for both sides to allow such independent monitoring.
Edward Carver is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
This ‘tribe’ nauseates me…
Is this where the ‘most moral army in the world’ gets its morality from???
These satanic jews would have made their NKVD forefathers proud.
Hamas does not have the power
to let the ICRC check on its captives. Israel’s policy prohibits all independent investigations. It will not allow a legitimately neutral team of any kind into any area it controls.
Released Palestinians also report surgeries without anesthesia. Israel has access to anesthesia. Palestinians do not (due to Israel’s actions) so their only alternative would be letting the captives die.
It is disingenuous to attribute equal responsibility when responsibility is beyond the power of one party.
One released Israeli described being watched by a guard as “sexual assault”. Using the same term to describe an anal broomstick gang rape that ruptured intestines and damaged lungs hardly seems accurate.
Torture is legal in Israel, and IDF members publish videos of actions considered inhumane (and criminal) by most of the world. Hamas says these actions are forbidden and thus far, no credible evidence proves it has engaged in them.
Evidence exists that shows Hamas did not kill all 1139 (not 1200) non-Palestinians who died on October 7th. This would not further its stated purpose. It is certain that Israeli forces killed many – possibly most – of them, considering their orders and available resources. This WOULD coincide with its stated goal at the time.
A report on a dispute that ignores critical facts and rejects logic can APPEAR to be objective only to an uninformed or partisan audience. In reality, such a perspective hinders objectivity.
People who kill anyone and everyone are capable, as proven in Gaza by the IDF, of the most despicable acts known to other humans.
As such the perpetrators should be given no quarter or expect none.
But what does the leadership of Israel contend? Pay F-ing attention. They deserve the right to eliminate “the other” any time any place for any reason contrived by them. Read the history.
On Project 2025 get yer butts over to PROPUBLICA daily digest Thursday Aug 1, 2024 for a great reveal.
“God’s Chosen People,” have done the most horrific things to innocent people since they invented him.
I’m with Holly Near on that one –
“I ain’t afraid of your Yahweh,
I ain’t afraid of your Allah,
I ain’t afraid of your Jesus,
I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your God.”
These people really believe their god sanctions this kind of behavior. That’s the sickest thing about it to me.
Oh, but he does. That’s why Jesus told them, “ye are of your father, the devil. (John 8:44)
I think god, if he/she really exists…should reconsider about ‘his chosen people’.
Right from the start, that chosen people rhetoric was propaganda. If indeed God exists, she doesn’t have a chosen people.
Nor I suspect, does she have a chosen species. If we continue with the crazy ideas of exceptionality that we’ve cottoned to for as long as I can remember, she’ll wipe us off the map. Our mean spirited and self loving ways threaten her creation……..or to improve upon an old poem: SHE MOTHERS FORTH WHO’S BEAUTY IS PAST CHANGE: PRAISE HER.
Honouring the creation might give us a slight chance. What we’ve been doing with our chosen people rhetoric is practising a Death Cult….on all our relations.
“The Palestinian militants killed roughly 1,200 people in a horrific set of attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 and kidnapped about 250 Israelis, more than 100 of whom have since been released.”
There is ample evidence, including in Israeli press, that many of those Israelis killed on 10/7 were killed by their own Israeli army. Google Hannibal Directive on Oct. 7.
Repetition of the charge that Hamas killed 1200 Israelis that day is Zionist propaganda.
I agree.
Thank you for calling that out. I noticed but . . . thought . . . There you go again (pace Reagan).
Apparently we have to keep repeating this correction.
I was shocked to see this propaganda data point repeated in this report/article.
I also question the phrase “horrific set of attacks.”
What does these writers think an attack by a tiny resistance force is going to be like?
A set battle with bugles blowing retreat?
Grow up!
It was a military operation.
Maybe the general success of the Hamas attack is what makes it “horrific,” as opposed to the stone throwing that Palestinians are generally limited to.
The targets were military personnel.
Virtually all Israeli “civilians” over 18 are military personnel, on one or another point of the spectrum of “active duty.”
As Hamas stated: It is very difficult to differentiate between military and civilians in Israel.
When has anyone in the MSM (or anywhere else) accused Israel, in its bloody 75 years, of “horrific attacks” and “atrocities”?
Never.
We must constantly monitor the language and the double-standard framing.
The oppressed have become the oppressors.
A very big error in this otherwise good article on the OHCHR torture report occurs in the 3rd to last paragraph covering abuses by Hamas and affiliated groups against Israelis. Either the UN authors of the report, or Mr. Carver, the Common Dreams writer of the article, perhaps both, are shamefully unaware of the work of independent journalists like Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate of the Grayzone have been showing from early on in the conflict, and now confirmed by an investigative report in the Israeli newspaper “Haaretz”, that the Israelis employed their disgraceful Hannibal Directive, whereby they killed approximately one-half, perhaps more of the 1.200 Israeli citizens on October 7th. Moreover, a large percentage of those killed by Hamas in the October 7th attack were Israeli soldiers, and such an attack against an illegal, occupying power, is recognized as justified under international law.
It’s hard not to compare the Israeli actions against the Palistinians with the actions of the German Nazis during WWII. If anything, the actions in Israel in relation to the Palestinians seem even more horrific. It’s hard to imagine what Israeli expects to have after this.
Sounds like Abu Graib stories. Modern warfare in this age is still barbaric and addicted to violence as strategic policy as if warfare isn’t still barbaric in its shock and awe.
So let’s be clear, Americans think a holocaust for Jews nearly a century ago matters but a holocaust today for Christians and Muslims in Palestine which has been going on for nearly 80 years does not matter? How does that work?
HYPOCRISY!!!
will man[un]kind ever [want to] learn
to R E S P E C T fellow human beings?
where did
“you shall love your neighbor as yourself”
come from?
hatred, animosity, desires for revenge, trauma, pain …
are AGAIN being perpetuated for generations to come.
who dares to care?
Maybe someone from Israel can say like President Barach Obama “we tortured some folks”.
That so many Americans find no problem with the Israeli conduct described in this article helps me understand how the Holocaust during the 1940’s occurred and why the phrase “never again” is utterly bereft of meaning. In the Global South, we find it appalling. Kmala Harris, like Biden and Trump, have no problem with foregoing, not does Robert F. Kenney, Jr. Jill Stein and Cornell West, PhD, on the other hand, object to auch conduct and to any aid to genocidal zionsits, as appalling.