Israeli Guys Gang Raped A Palestinian Man To Death

At the Sde Teiman concentration camp in the Negev desert

Israel arrests soldiers who stand accused of gang raping a Palestinian detainee

Despite recurrent calls by human rights organizations to shut down notorious Israeli clandestine prison Sde Teiman, violations against detainees have not stopped

July 30, 2024 by Aseel Saleh

Leaked photograph of Sde Teiman detention camp in Israel showing rows of blindfolded prisoners, obtained by CNN in May (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

The Israeli military police arrested 9 (some sources say 10) reservist soldiers from Sde Teiman prison in Negev desert, in occupied Palestine on Monday, July 29.

The soldiers were reportedly arrested and referred to investigation after a Palestinian detainee was hospitalized due to a severe injury in his rectum as a result of a rape incident. According to Israeli media reports, the injury has left the Palestinian detainee unable to walk. 

Clashes erupted between the investigators and soldiers from the accused unit in Sde Teiman military base, where the prison is located, after the suspected soldiers were arrested and refused to cooperate with military police.

In protest of the soldiers’ arrest, members of the Israeli Knesset, accompanied by dozens of Israeli residents, rioted outside Sde Teiman prison in an attempt to break in. Top officials, including Israeli president Isaac Herzog, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, criticized the protests, and called for calm.

“Breaking into a military base by civilians, and certainly when it is done with the encouragement and involvement of elected officials, is a serious, dangerous, illegal and irresponsible act, which first and foremost harms us as a people and as a country,” Herzog said in a statement. Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Netanyahu “strongly condemned” the incident and demanded that peace be restored “immediately.”

Nevertheless, protests against the arrest of the soldiers escalated on Monday evening as scores of Israelis broke into the Israeli military court building within the Israeli Occupation Forces’ base in Beit Lid.

The Israeli police managed to disperse the protesters at the Beit Lid base “within a matter of minutes.” Additionally, Israeli security forces were able to disperse protesters gathering out of the Sde Teiman base by late afternoon.

The gang rape incident is not the first abuse to be reported in Sde Teiman military base, where hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza have been held for several months without charge or legal representation. On May 2024, CNN published a report containing testimonies provided by three Israeli whistleblowers, who worked in Sde Teiman detention centre, including medics on the torture and mistreatment of Palestian detainees by Israeli soldiers there. 

Palestinian lawyer Khaled Mahajneh also provided further testimonies on what he witnessed during his visit to Sde Teiman in June 2024. Mahajneh then described the conditions that the Palestinian detainees have experienced there as more horrifying “than anything heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.”

Earlier this month, Mahajneh shared testimonies of two detainees in Sde Teiman about sexual abuses they witnessed or were subjected to. While one of the detainees witnessed rapes of detainees from Gaza inside the detention center, the other said he was stripped naked, electrocuted and subjected to sexual abuse.

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor issued a detailed report in June 2024 on the use of Israeli military dogs to rape, beat and intimidate Palestinian detainess in Israeli prisons. The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) have systematically used dogs to intimidate and maul civilians during their raids in Gaza as well.

Two incidents regarding the IOF’s use of dogs in killing and harming vulnerable Palestinian people went viral on social media recently. A Palestinian man with Down syndrome, 24-year-old Mohammad Bahar, died of wounds he sustained after being brutally attacked and mauled by an IOF dog in front of his family, in the Al-Shujayah neighborhood of Gaza City. Mohammad’s family were forced by the IOF to leave Mohammad behind, with Israeli forces claiming that Mohammad would be treated by a doctor for his wounds. After the siege imposed by the IOF on Al-Shujayah was lifted a few days later, Mohammad’s family returned home, finding Mohammad’s decaying remains. 

In June 2024, Al Jazeera broadcasted video footage of an Israeli army dog mauling elderly Palestinian woman, Dawlat Al-Tanani, in her home in Jabalia, northern Gaza. 

Human rights and international organizations including the United Nations have expressed their deep concerns about Israel’s blatant human rights violations against Palestinians, particularly in Sde Teiman. Even Israeli human rights organizations have called for the shut down of the detention facility. 

“Considering the numerous testimonies from both detainees and medical staff regarding the conditions at the facility, we conclude that the Sde Teiman facility must be immediately shut down, and detained Gazans in need of medical care should be transferred to a civilian medical facility that upholds ethical and professional medical standards,” the Israeli Physicians for Human Rights organization stated on its website in April 2024.

One commenter on the gang rape killing of this Palestinian man said of the Israeli perpertrators: ¨they´re monsters.¨

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2024/07/30/israel-arrests-soldiers-who-stand-accused-of-gang-raping-a-palestinian-detainee/