A video has emerged of a Palestinian female prisoner being gang-raped by guards at the Sde Teiman detention centre in the Negev desert in southern Israel.
The video, which has been verified by Al Jazeera, shows the prisoner being selected from a larger group lying tied on the ground. The victim is then escorted to a wall, where guards, using their shields to hide their identity from the camera, proceed to rape her.
The attack is believed to have been so brutal that after being taken to hospital, Israeli media reported the victim was unable to walk.
On July 29, ten soldiers were arrested for the rape, in a case that has shaken Israeli society. The soldiers belong to a unit known as Force 100, which is tasked with protecting the Sde Teiman facility, according to Haaretz.
Military prosecutors released three of the arrested soldiers on August 4, joining two previously released by investigators following a hearing in a military court in Kfar Yona on July 30, where protesters gathered in support of the arrested soldiers.
The video has shocked many in Israeli society. Some observers, including a local human rights group and two United Nations agencies, have expressed concern about the treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
But for some, including the country's far-right finance minister, outrage has focused on the “crime” of filming the video, rather than the alleged rape itself.
On Thursday evening, on X, former Twitter, Bezalel Smotrich demanded “an immediate criminal investigation to track down the leakers of the popular video that was intended to harm reservists and caused tremendous damage to Israel in the world and to exhaust the full force of the law against them.”
טוא יותה של הממשלה הנבחרת בכל נושא תתחיל למלא את תפקידה ולעשות סדר במערכת אכיפת החוק שתחת אחריותה ופשטה רגל ואיבדה כל מצפן ומצפון. ראשית, חקירה פלילית מיידית לאיתור מדליפי הסרטון המגמתי שנועד בלוחמים…
— בצלאל סמוטריץ' (@bezalelsm) August 7, 2024
Others, including far-right and ultra-nationalist politicians such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir within Israel, have argued that any action, even gang rape, is permissible if carried out for state security.
Defending the indefensible
Following the arrest of the reservists on July 29, far-right mobs, some of which included government ministers, stormed the Sde Teiman facility in southern Israel later that day.
Unable to find and free the captured soldiers, they headed to the Beit Lid base, 60 kilometers away, where the soldiers were being held for interrogation, to demand their release.
Unrest continued during a Supreme Court hearing on Wednesday to hear petitions by Sde Teiman prisoners who were allegedly tortured. The proceedings were disrupted by protesters, including victims of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, who shouted “Disgrace” and “We are sovereign.”
The Israeli lobby group Guarding the Soldiers – a new organisation formed in defence of soldiers accused of rape – was quoted in Israeli media as saying: “The hearing in the high court this morning is absurd and a gift to [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar and murderers.”
Israeli politicians, including cabinet members, have also defended the defendants. Ben-Gvir, head of the prison service, told Israeli media on the day of the reservists’ arrest that it was “shameful” that Israel was detaining “our greatest heroes.” On the same day, Smotrich, who had been among the right-wing mob that stormed the prison, released a video message saying that “IDF soldiers deserve respect” and should not be treated like “criminals.”
Live Update: 'IDF soldiers deserve respect': Smotrich denounces detention of military suspected of abusing prisoners
— TOI ALERTS (@TOIAlerts) July 29, 2024
When asked last week by Ahmad Tibi, one of Israel's Arab Knesset members, whether it was legitimate to “insert a stick into a person's rectum,” Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud party, replied: “If it is a Nukhba [Hamas militant]“Everything is permissible! Everything!”
'Just the tip of the iceberg'
The video of the alleged gang rape in Sde Teiman is the latest piece in a growing body of evidence of abuse, sexual assault and systematic withholding of food and medical care suffered by Palestinians within the Israeli prison system.
A report titled “Welcome to Hell,” released this week by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, includes interviews with 55 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli detention centers since Oct. 7. In firsthand accounts, the prisoners — most of whom were later released without charge at locations spread across the occupied Palestinian territory, Gaza and inside Israel — recount being attacked, insulted and sexually abused by guards.
“The conditions at Sde Teiman are not unique. They are just the tip of the iceberg,” the organisation’s spokesman, Shai Parnes, told Al Jazeera by phone from Jerusalem.
“We heard similar accounts of sexual abuse, starvation and assault from prisoners separated in 16 different locations in Israel. It was depressing. As we gathered the testimonies, we realized that all the witness accounts were almost identical, regardless of their age, gender or location. There is no doubt. This kind of abuse is systematic,” she said.
'In disagreement with international law'
Allegations of systematic abuse of prisoners within a justice system that critics say is fundamentally at odds with international law have also been detailed in a separate report released on Monday by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR), and in an unpublished report (seen by Al Jazeera in March) by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Responding to warnings about prison overcrowding issued by the Shin Bet security agency in early July, Ben-Gvir reiterated his call for Palestinian prisoners to be executed, tweeting that one of his main goals since coming to office had been to “worsen the conditions of terrorists in prisons and reduce their rights to the minimum required by law.”
He said: “Everything published about the abominable conditions” of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails “was true.”
Human rights in debate
The United States, Israel's main ally, has called allegations of sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners “horrible” and said Israel must investigate them “swiftly” and “fully.”
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters on Wednesday: “There should be zero tolerance for sexual abuse and rape of any detainee. Period. That is a core belief of the United States.”
On Thursday, the European Union also expressed its dismay. Peter Stano, spokesman for the EU’s diplomatic service, told Politico: “The EU is deeply concerned by allegations of human rights violations and abuses, including torture and sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees at the Sde Teiman military facility in Israel and elsewhere.”
However, many in Israel continue to defend the conditions in which Palestinian prisoners are held, as well as the rapes allegedly committed by soldiers at Sde Teiman.
“Look, the issue is not really rape,” Ori Goldberg, a Tel Aviv-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera. “The question is: can you blame Israel, or Israelis, for anything they do in defence of the state?”
In the view of some, Goldberg explained, no act, no matter how immoral it may appear to the outside world, is prohibited if it is carried out to promote Israel's security.
“We even had a reporter on the morning TV show criticizing not the rape but the ‘disorganized’ way it was carried out,” Goldberg added.
That view remains a minority one, he warned. However, even among Israeli liberals who oppose that view of their country and its actions, there is little thought given to the Palestinian victims.
“It has nothing to do with the victims,” Goldberg said. “This is all about Israel.”
