Israeli army brought groups to watch Palestinians tortured: monitor

The Israeli army brought groups of Israeli civilians into prisons to watch Palestinian prisoners getting tortured, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor revealed on Monday. 

Palestinian detainees released from two Israeli detention centres told the human rights group that they were stripped naked, beaten with metal batons and electric sticks, and verbally brutalised under the watch of civilian visitors.  

The visitors came to watch the torture sessions in groups of “ten to twenty”, seemingly organised by the Israeli army. In many cases, they were allowed to film the torture sessions on their phones. 

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“This is the first time that these illegal practices have come to the attention of Euro-Med Monitor,” the monitor stated. “It adds a new crime to the list of those committed by the Israeli army against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and specifically against prisoners and detainees who are subjected to cruel torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, and denials of a fair trial, among other atrocities.” 

Testimonies collected by Euro-Med show the Israeli army organised visits to at least two detention centres : one located in the Zikim area on the northern border of the Gaza Strip, and another affiliated with the Naqab prison in southern Israel.  

“The Israeli army brought a number of Israeli civilians into our detention centres while beating us and telling them, ‘These are Hamas terrorists who killed you and raped your women on 7 October,’” Omar Abu Mudallala, a Palestinian man who was held for 53 days in these centres, told Euro-Med. He added: “The Israeli civilians were filming us being beaten, abused, and tortured while making fun of us.” 

The men who were held and tortured in these centres had been arrested in the Gaza strip by Israeli soldiers during ground incursions. They were subsequently held without trial for several weeks for ‘questioning’. 

The torture and degrading treatments inflicted on Palestinian detainees are illegal under the Rome Statute and may constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes, the human rights monitor said. The revelations add to a long list of alleged war crimes carried out by the Israeli army since the launch of its offensive on Gaza.  

Numerous reports of torture, field executions and humiliation of detainees have emerged from Gaza since Israel's army began its ground offensive. In January, the Gaza bureau chief for The New Arab's Arabic-language sister site attested to some of the torture methods used, after he was detained at gunpoint by Israeli forces along with dozens of other Palestinian civilians.

Diaa al-Kahlout was held by the Israeli army for 33 days, 25 of which he was forced to remain kneeling as a form of torture.