When the issue came to light, a government-encouraged crowd of Israelis moved to relieve the situation. Hundreds of protesters, including Knesset members, flocked to the Sde Teiman base.
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
Sexual violence against Palestinian women and Palestinians by Israeli soldiers and settlers is nothing new. In this regard, they are no less than the militants of Hamas. The latter, the UN report confirmed, committed rape and harassment both during the October 7 attack and later against the kidnapped. There is also no reason to believe that they stopped their sexual torture of hostages and hostage-takers.
However, Hamas is fully deservedly called a terrorist organization. In the case of Israel, we are talking about the army of a state that describes itself as "the only democracy in the Middle East." A state supported by Western democracies, and most fervently by the "guardian of international peace," the US.
All is allowed if the prisoner is Nukhba. If he is not too
According to recent reports, a Palestinian inmate at Sde Teiman prison, located in the Negev desert, was allegedly gang raped by Israeli reserve soldiers. As a result of injuries to his intimate parts - allegations include anal penetration with a baton and beatings - the man, who was taken to the hospital, was unable to walk and had to undergo surgery. Quoted by Israeli daily Haaretz, Yoel Donchin, a medical professor working at Sde Teiman who examined the victim, said: "If the state and Knesset members think there are no limits to the abuse of prisoners, they should kill them themselves, as the Nazis did, or close the hospitals."
On July 29, nine of the ten suspects in the gang rape (one was not at the scene) were arrested by military police. A tenth alleged perpetrator was also arrested shortly thereafter. When the case came to light, a government-encouraged crowd of Israelis moved to relieve the situation. Hundreds of protesters, including Knesset members, arrived outside the Sde Teiman base.
As a result, the Israeli military had to withdraw two battalions from Gaza to defend the prison. When it became apparent that the reservists were not there, the crowds headed to Beit Lid, the base where the military court, detention center and gendarmerie headquarters are located, in an attempt to free them. After preliminary hearings, two detainees were released from detention, while the remaining detainees were decided by the military court to extend their detention. Meanwhile, the right-wing legal organization Honenu, which represents the four (alleged) perpetrators of the rape and brutal beating, claims they acted... in an act of self-defense.
The arrest of the reservists and the launch of the investigation drew criticism from far-right members of the government, who considered it an insult to soldiers. Yuli Edelstein, chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, quoted by the Times of Israel, said: "A situation in which masked military men carry out a raid on an IDF base is unacceptable to me, and I will not allow it to happen again. Our soldiers are not criminals, and this contemptuous pursuit of them is unacceptable to me."
The heads of the Ministries of Finance and National Security - Becalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gwir of the Mafdal-Religious Zionism party - also spoke out in defense of the detainees. Hanoch Milwidsky, a Knesset member of the Likud party, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who was recently applauded in the U.S. Congress), when asked whether sticking a stick up a detainee's anus is legally justified, answered that "everything is justified if [the detainee] is Nukhba." The term "Nukhba" means an elite member of Hamas - with the raped man not having proven anything so far.
Sde Teiman is a military base, converted to a detention facility after October 7, where mainly civilians, including minors, are incarcerated. It serves a "filtration" function. According to an amendment to the Illegal Combatants Law passed by the Knesset in December 2023, those accused of ties to Hamas are transferred to regular IPS (Israel Prison Service) prisons.
According to a three-month New York Times investigation, whose results were published at the end of June 2024, by then more than 4,000 Palestinians and Palestinian women had passed through Sde Teiman, held without trial for up to three months. Approx. 70 percent of them were then transferred to IPS facilities, where they were subjected to further interrogation, and at least 1,200 were released after it was determined that they had nothing to do with Hamas: "no charges, no apologies, no reparations."
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees Israel's prisons, had already encouraged the IPS commissioner in October to "treat harshly" detainees after the Hamas attack. During his visit to one detention center, Israel's national anthem was played while detainees were handcuffed and led with their heads bowed, before being placed in cells with their hands and feet bound.
On July 28, "The Telegraph" reported that Ben-Gvir had received a video from Hamas showing Israeli hostages being tortured, warning that worsening the conditions under which Palestinian prisoners are held threatens the welfare of the former. The minister publicly stated that no such recording had been given to him, while declaring that "the situation of terrorists in prisons has indeed deteriorated, the summer camps have been stopped," and assured that he was proud of this.
It should be noted that in the mouths of members of the Israeli government, "terrorist" means any Palestinian detainee, even if no charges have been filed against him.
Sde Teiman - hell in the desert
Conditions at Sde Teiman have been criticized not long ago by human rights organizations, which have raised alarms about the numerous cases of torture and medical neglect suffered by Palestinian detainees. Israel's Supreme Court is currently considering a petition whose signatories are calling for the closure of the facility due to reports of inhumane treatment. The prison is sometimes referred to as a "second Guantanamo" or "hell in the desert."
As said to Turkey's Anadolu Ajansi news agency by Israeli analyst Shaiel Ben-Ephraim, there is "virtually no law" at Sde Teiman, pointing to numerous cases of sexual assault, electrocution, abysmal sanitation and other types of torture, and also calling for the facility's closure. According to Ben-Ephraim, who served in the Israeli army in the past, the situation is no different in many other detention centers where Palestinians are held. He admitted that he is aware of "two other detainees who have had objects inserted in their rectums."
The analyst also reported that Palestinians are held blindfolded and in a crouching position for up to 18 hours a day, and are allowed to straighten up "for maybe 4 to 6 hours." The practice has led to the need to amputate some prisoners' limbs. "If they try to look around or stand up straight, they are sometimes subjected to beatings and, in situations where they are trying to extract information, even electrocuted," - Ben-Ephraim said.
Even more frightening is the account of Mohammad Saber Arab, a 42-year-old correspondent for Palestinian TV station Alaraby, who has been in Sde Teiman since March (it is currently unknown what is happening to him). The Arab told his lawyer Khaled Mahajneh about the killings, torture, rape and various forms of humiliation he claims to have witnessed. Until his meeting with his defense attorney, he did not know where he was. According to him, inmates are allowed to change their clothes every two months, shower for one minute every week, are threatened with beatings for talking or praying, and the bullets they are sent to prison with are removed without anesthesia. Like Ben-Ephraim, he spoke of limb amputations that are supposed to be the result of being tied up and forced to be stuck for several hours, or even round the clock, in certain positions. He also testified that he and other prisoners watched soldiers rape with a baton six inmates who were alleged to have broken prison rules. The IDF has denied all these accusations.
Mahajneh, who has been visiting Israeli prisons for 15 years, told +972 magazine that "Sde Teiman was something he had never seen before," and described the conditions there as "more horrific than what he had heard about Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo."
CNN TV reached three former Sde Teiman employees who also recounted amputations and other medical procedures often carried out by trainees. According to their accounts, the prison is filled with "the smell of neglected, rotting wounds." One whistleblower said that inmates "are not beaten for information, but out of revenge." Another said he saw a Palestinian man returning from interrogation with his teeth knocked out and bones broken. The CNN article also includes testimony from former detainees - there are repeated descriptions of brutal beatings, starvation and other forms of torture and humiliation.
On Tuesday, July 30, an indictment was filed against the guard, including allegations of five incidents of beating inmates between February and June. He was alleged to have used a baton and firearms and committed other forms of humiliation, as witnessed by other guards, and on at least one occasion participated in the beatings. They recorded everything with their phones.
In contrast, a UN report released Tuesday, July 30, detailed allegations of electrocution, waterboarding, burning with cigarettes, starvation and prolonged deprivation of water to Sde Teiman detainees, dogs pissed on them, sleep deprivation and denial of access to lawyers. The UN collected testimonies from former detainees - men, women and children - who say they were kept in cage-like rooms and stripped naked. They wore only diapers.
The report also included testimony about sexual violence. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said: "A staggering number of men, women, children, doctors, journalists and human rights defenders detained after October 7, most without charge or trial, are being held in deplorable conditions. Reports of ill-treatment and torture and violations of due process guarantees raise serious concerns about the arbitrary and essentially criminal nature of such arrests and detentions."
Not the only such prison
As early as last November, a month after the full-scale attack on Gaza Strip began, Amnesty International reported that Israeli security forces were using "inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees [detained after Oct. 7] and failing to investigate torture and death in custody." As Heba Morayef, Amnesty International's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in early November 2023: "Over the past month, we have witnessed a significant increase in Israel's use of administrative detention - without charge or trial - which can be renewed indefinitely and which had already reached its highest level in 20 years before the escalation of hostilities."
That same month, the Haaretz daily published photos and videos - shared, by the way, by the soldiers themselves - showing them beating and humiliating bound Palestinians, including spitting on them. At least 5 of the 15 videos were taken after October 7 (such practices by the Israeli army were already known).
According to the findings of "Haaretz," some of the perpetrators were punished by the IDF, but the daily does not specify how, and the army has not made this information public. According to the daily, at least 27 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli military facilities in Gaza since the start of the full-scale invasion, some of them in Sde Teiman (the information is from March). In April, Adnan al-Bursh, a doctor who was allegedly arrested in December at al-Awda hospital in northern Gaza, died at the Ofer detention facility, located in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli authorities declined to provide details about the circumstances of his death.
In February 2024, UN experts investigating such cases said there were "credible allegations" of harassment and rape against female residents of Gaza and the West Bank. The organization's website reads: "We are particularly concerned about reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have been subjected to various forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by men in Israeli army uniforms. It was reported that at least two Palestinian female detainees were raped, while others were threatened with rape and [other types of] sexual violence."
Israel's public broadcaster KAN reported that General Ilan Schiff, a retired judge appointed to investigate the circumstances of the detention of Palestinians in Sde Teiman after the latest high-profile rape, presented his findings to army chief Herze Haleve. Schiff confirmed the "harsh conditions" of the prison and recommended that the detainees be transferred to other detention facilities.
The IDF stated as recently as May that it was investigating reports of abuse and torture at Sde Teiman, but so far no verdict has been reached. However, as informs The Times of Israel, the gradual transfer of detainees to other prisons had already begun. Now, in the face of foreign pressure, the process is likely to be accelerated, with the most recent mass rape case becoming an opportunity to show that the Israeli justice system cares about upholding the law, so there is no reason for cases of alleged crimes to be handled by international bodies.
