RAMALLAH, (PIC)
On Friday evening, Al Jazeera broadcasted a documentary film revealing the types of systematic sexual violence committed by the Israeli occupation army against Palestinian prisoners and detainees in prisons and detention centers, and presenting live testimonies of these victims.
The film, which is titled “Witnessing bodies”, documents the sexual violations committed against Palestinian prisoners and detainees in the period extending between the years 2023 and 2025, which are acts that amount, according to the film, to war crimes and crimes against humanity under international humanitarian law.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, says that Israeli brutality escalated to an unprecedented level after October 7, 2023, rather it became retaliatory and an integral part of detention practices, noting that the testimonies they gathered throughout the occupied Palestinian territories do not relate to fighters, but rather to civilians.
The documentary uses the testimonies of human rights and legal experts, who confirmed that Israel’s use of the body as a battlefield, and sexual violence as a tool of war, represents a series of acts of the crime of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. They said that these acts aim to push the Palestinian people to leave their land.
The film presents horrific stories of victims of sexual violence practiced by occupation soldiers against Palestinian detainees, including the story of the activist Kifaya Khreim, who was taken to Sde Teiman prison, stripped of her clothes to be searched repeatedly, and filmed, then she was raped twice by Israeli soldiers.
Mohammed Zaki Al-Bakri, who was detained for 20 months in the occupation prisons, recounts that before March 4, 2024, he was residing in Hamad City in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip, before the occupation army entered and randomly bombed the homes of civilians.
He continues that he was arrested along with his wife and children, and the occupation soldiers handcuffed his hands, blindfolded his eyes, and gave him a number (42), to tell him that this number is his name, with repeated beating on his chest.
He says that since his first day in Sde Teiman, they attacked them with dogs and hand grenades within a system they call “the welcoming party” or “intimidation”, noting that they were filming them with their mobile phones when they raped them.
He continues, describing the crimes of the occupation, “They force you to sleep on your stomach, your hands are tied behind your back, and your eyes are tightly blindfolded. They unleash fierce dogs on you, then they kick you relentlessly.”
In another testimony to the crimes of the occupation, Ayoub (a pseudonym), who was arrested on October 20, 2024, says that the most difficult moment he saw in his entire life was not the beating, or the humiliation, or the electric shocks, but it was the rape.
He describes the tragic scene, saying, “While I was lying down with iron handcuffs on my hands behind my back, two female soldiers wearing sex toys entered, and one of them began raping me publicly. They were two. And the soldiers surrounding them were clapping and filming.”
In turn, the activist Shirin (a pseudonym) was subjected to bad treatment by the occupation soldiers, and she told Al Jazeera within the documentary, “Then they took me to the bedroom and ordered me to take off all my clothes,” and they also asked her to stand and sit in a squatting position 14 times. She says that she spat in the face of a soldier when he removed her blindfold, but she was later subjected to repeated rape.
The activist Kifaya Khreim, who is the international advocacy coordinator at the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counselling, confirms that they documented many cases in refugee camps, where women revealed that they were forced to undergo naked searches in front of their family members in humiliating and degrading situations under the threat of large dogs and weapons.
She confirmed that one of them was beaten on her face and lost her left eye simply for asking to be searched with the door closed.
Palestinian children were not excluded from humiliation, which was confirmed by Ayed Abu Eqtaish, who is the director of the accountability program at Defense for Children International, by saying that “all the children we interviewed said that they were repeatedly searched naked, even when there was no reason.”
The Israeli violations against Palestinians vary between severe beating, slapping, burning, breaking bones, breaking teeth, sexual violence, sexual assault using tools, and rape.
Albanese confirms that the use of metal rods, sharp metal pieces, such as knives, metal detectors, bottles, and similar tools is repeated, noting that torture is usually for the purpose of extracting information, and obtaining confessions, but Israeli torture this time went far beyond that.
She believes that the Israeli violations of Palestinian detainees are intended to kill and annihilate the idea that the Palestinians embody, this idea, according to her words, is not just resistance, but rather it is their steadfastness.
It is noteworthy that these violations are carried out with legal and political cover from the Israeli authorities for their perpetrators, as evidenced by the fact that all charges against five soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee in Sde Teiman military prison in July 2024 were dropped.