VIDEO OF SEXUAL ABUSE AT ISRAELI PRISON IS JUST LATEST EVIDENCE SDE TEIMAN IS A TORTURE SITE

There are many videos on the internet now of Israeli guys raping and gang raping Palestinian men

ISRAELI PRISON IS JUST LATEST EVIDENCE SDE TEIMAN IS A TORTURE SITE

Israeli abuse of Palestinians at the military prison has been reported for months. The U.S. is asking the Israeli military to investigate itself.

Jonah Valdez

August 9 2024

A screenshot from the video that shows sexual assault of a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman prison in Israel, as it aired on Israel’s Channel 12

AS EARLY AS the first month of Israel’s war on Gaza, Sde Teiman, a secretive Israeli military prison in the Negev desert, had been raising alarm bells for Israeli human rights attorney Roni Pelli and other rights advocates.

Pelli and her colleagues started to hear reports from whistleblowers about poor conditions for Palestinians imprisoned inside Sde Teiman. They heard of instances of violence committed by soldiers against detained Palestinians, and, in one case, a Palestinian who died there. 

Since then, media reports about the prison have mounted, quoting formerly detained Palestinians and Israeli whistleblowers, who spoke in more detail of the harrowing conditions inside the prison. A CNN investigation in May revealed that Palestinian detainees were restrained and blindfolded, forced to sit and sometimes stand throughout the night beneath flood lights; wounded Palestinians were strapped down onto beds, forced to wear diapers, and fed through straws; soldiers beat detainees motivated by revenge for the October 7 attacks; and prisoners’ limbs were amputated due to untreated wounds from restraints, and such operations took place without anesthesia. 

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Later in May, an Intercept investigation found that hundreds of Palestinian doctors have disappeared into Israeli detention, and included the testimony of one surgeon who was beaten and abused at Sde Teiman. A month later, a separate report from Haaretz revealed the Israel Defense Forces were investigating 48 deaths of Palestinians from Gaza who were in Israeli custody, among them 36 who were detained at Sde Teiman. Israeli media began to refer to the prison as “Israel’s Guantánamo Bay.” 

Prompted by the CNN report, Pelli, who represents the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, filed a petition to Israel’s Supreme Court, on behalf of five human rights organizations, for a government order to close Sde Teiman. They hope that, if successful, their petition could set precedent that leads to the closure of all Israeli military prisons.

“It was so extreme,” Pelli told The Intercept. “We couldn’t ignore it.” 

While rights groups inside Israel moved aggressively to protect the rights of Palestinians detained in both its military camps, as well as prisons within its official government prison system, the United States showed little urgency around the issue. 

The U.S. State Department only commented on Sde Teiman when pressed by reporters after the release of the CNN report. In May, Vedant Patel, deputy spokesperson for the department, said “we’re looking into these and other allegations of abuse against Palestinians in detention.” He added that the U.S. had been “clear and consistent with any country, including Israel, that it must treat all detainees humanely, with dignity, in accordance with international law, and it must respect detainees’ human rights.” He then claimed the U.S. had asked the Israeli government to investigate the claims itself.

After the Haaretz report of dozens of deaths, there was no new comment. Later that same week in June, the New York Times published an investigation into the conditions at Sde Teiman, which contained testimony from former prisoners that their Israeli jailors had tortured them with anal rape by a metal rod, among other abuses. These explosive findings were buried in the final portion of the nearly 4,000-word story, after an introduction that only mentioned “beatings and other abuses,” and a headline that described Sde Teiman as “the base where Israel has detained thousands of Gazans.” Again, the U.S. government had no words.

It wasn’t until a leaked surveillance video from Sde Teiman was broadcast on Tuesday on Israeli news network Channel 12, showing Israeli soldiers allegedly gang-raping a Palestinian man imprisoned there, and subsequent pressure from reporters, that U.S. officials commented again on Sde Teiman.

The State Department responded by calling on the Israeli military to investigate itself. 

Ten Israeli soldiers were arrested and face charges stemming from the alleged gang rape. Another soldier was arrested the following day on suspicion of beating detained Palestinians who were blindfolded and handcuffed. The soldier allegedly filmed himself during the incident. 

A new report from Israeli human rights group B’Tselem showed that Sde Teiman was not the only Israeli prison where Palestinians have been tortured, building on years of reports of Palestinians being abused in Israeli prisons.

Released this week, one day before the Channel 12 video leak broadcast, B’Tselem’s report argued that the majority of imprisoned Palestinians have faced abuse and torture within Israeli custody. The report calls on the International Criminal Court to “investigate and promote criminal proceedings against individuals suspected of planning, directing and committing these crimes.” It argued that “Israeli investigative bodies cannot be expected to” hold its government accountable for potential abuses since “all state systems, including the judiciary, have been mobilized in support of these torture camps.” 

When asked at a Wednesday press briefing whether the U.S. would call for an independent investigation, referring to the report, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller declined to address the possibility and said, “I would have to look at what the specific independent investigation people are calling for and pass judgment on the merits.” He maintained the Israeli military needs to investigate itself. 

A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces said that the Israeli military “rejects allegations of systemic abuse, including sexual abuse, in its detention facilities” and maintained it follows Israeli and international law. The military pointed to the arrest of the soldiers suspected in the Sde Teiman abuse case as evidence that they enforce such laws if broken.

The State Department did not respond to requests for comment. What a surprise.

EVIDENCE OF ABUSE at Sde Teiman and other prisons are only the latest revelations of abuses by the Israeli military, which includes allegations of war crimes leveled against its leaders by the International Criminal Court. Despite the evidence, the U.S. has continued to fund Israel’s war on Gaza, sending more than $15 billion since October 7. 

Eitay Mack, another Israeli human rights attorney, who has represented Palestinians incarcerated by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank, said the U.S should do more in preventing such human rights abuses such as those seen in Sde Teiman.

He pointed to its ability to issue sanctions, which could target specific individual military units. The 10 Israeli soldiers arrested in the alleged gang rape case at Sde Teiman are a part of the Israeli military’s Force 100 unit. The U.S. already has leveled sanctions against Israeli settlers who commit violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. Mack also mentioned the Leahy Law, a 1997 law that prohibits U.S. assistance to “any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”

President Joe Biden’s administration has shown a resistance to such conditioning of military aid, even in cases where they admitted to supplying Israel with weapons to commit possible violations of international law. 

“The U.S. should apply its rules of military aid — they should pressure Israel through it,” Mack said. “I don’t think the governments in the world are acting because of morals,” he added, “but the U.S. government should just follow the law, the Leahy Law, even if it’s just to do the procedure.”

Mack acknowledged that punishing individual units active in Sde Tieman abuses would not address the systemwide abuses in Israeli prisons.

Military prisons, such as Sde Teiman, are holding facilities constructed within Israeli military bases, where detainees are often held for interrogations. They exist separate from Israel Prison Service facilities, which are operated by civilian guards and officials. Long before October 7, prison guards in both have been known to abuse incarcerated Palestinians, and Palestinian prisoners taken from the occupied Palestinian territories are subject to military, rather than civil, courts — a fact that has contributed to findings from organizations like the International Court of Justice that the Israeli legal system is a form of apartheid. 

Mack said he has represented a Palestinian man from the occupied West Bank who experienced this abuse while in an IPS prison: An Israeli guard grabbed him by the neck, picked him up, and threw him on the floor of his cell, breaking a bone around his eye.

Even so, IPS facilities historically tended to have better living conditions compared to their military counterparts, such as more adequate beds, food and ability to move, compared to their military counterparts. Since the war in Gaza began, however, Mack and Pelli noted that IPS prisons have shut Palestinians off from the outside world. Detainees have been kept from communicating with their families or attorneys. IPS prisons were placed on lockdowns, restricting movement within the facilities.

Pelli, along with her group, ACRI, filed a separate petition to the Supreme Court that sought to allow the Red Cross into prisons and military camps to offer medical treatment to prisoners, which is required under Israeli and international law. The Red Cross has been denied access to all prisons since the start of the war. The petition cited the deaths of at least two detainees in military camps and another six in IPS prisons with two of them showing “signs of severe violence on their bodies.” The court has yet to rule on the issue as the government continues to ask for extensions in the case.

In April, Pelli filed yet another petition, for the Israel Prison Service to end “a policy of starvation towards Palestinian prisoners and detainees,” which it argued was a form of torture and violated international law. Since October 7, the petition said the policy has left prisoners to suffer from constant and extreme hunger and poor quality of food. The petition included testimony from formerly incarcerated Palestinians who lost dozens of pounds, and a diabetic prisoner who was forced to eat toothpaste to raise his blood sugar.

read more at

https://theintercept.com/2024/08/09/israel-prison-sde-teiman-palestinian-abuse-torture/