Reports of Palestinian victims of Israeli sexual violence continue to grow.
ISRAELIS have used sexual humiliation, including repeated rapes by soldiers and dogs, against Palestinian detainees in their rape and torture dungeons since the start of the genocide in the Gaza Strip, a new report has revealed, adding that the relentless brutality against Palestinians is “systematic and widely practised as part of an organised state policy, which receives full protection from the highest political, military, and judicial authorities.”
The report by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor published last week is based on testimonies from Palestinian former detainees and details horrific abuse that constitutes the “fundamental pillar of a strategy aimed at the moral and physical destruction of detainees, deliberately engineered to inflict pain, destroy individual identity and collective consciousness, and keep victims in a state of helplessness and constant stigmatisation, preventing them from reclaiming their life or social role even after release.”
43-year-old Wajdi repeatedly raped by soldiers and a dog
“During interrogation, they tied me naked to a metal bed, and one of the soldiers asked me how many Israeli women I had raped in Israel. I denied that I had even entered Israel. Then a soldier raped me. I felt severe pain in my anus and screamed, but every time I screamed, I was beaten. This continued for several minutes, while soldiers filmed and mocked me. The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding. Later, they untied me and brought a dog, which also raped me. On the same day, I was raped at least twice more after being tied to the bed. One of the soldiers put his penis in my mouth and then urinated on me. The rape was repeated two days later by three soldiers. I was in very poor physical and mental health.”
Hassan details being raped with a wooden stick by female soldiers
I was taken to a detention camp, which I later found out was Sde Teiman. About a month and a half after my arrest, I was raped by female soldiers. I was completely stripped naked and not blindfolded. There were four female soldiers dressed in Israeli army uniforms. After stripping me, they mockingly laughed at me while I was handcuffed and shackled. Then, one of them pushed me, and I fell to the ground. Another grabbed a stick and inserted it into my anus. I cried out in pain as they laughed. This continued for roughly two minutes before they left, spitting on me and shouting obscenities. I was in pain for over two weeks after the incident.
42-year-old woman repeatedly raped and filmed during assault
She is a 42-year-old woman from North Gaza, who was arrested in late October 2024 during her forced displacement from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. She reported that abuse started at the moment of her arrest, involving deliberate humiliation such as forcibly removing her hijab and leaving her exposed in freezing conditions, while being the only woman among dozens of male detainees.
The woman recounted that she was later transferred to the Sde Teiman camp, where she was forced at gunpoint to strip completely. Soldiers deliberately uncovered her eyes for brief moments so she could witness two soldiers photographing her naked with their phones, combining humiliation with coerced documentation and the attendant risks of public shaming and blackmail. She added that the abuse peaked on the third day of detention, when four masked soldiers took her to a small room containing a metal table fixed to the floor and equipped with surveillance cameras. There, she was shackled to the table and stripped, while two soldiers took turns violently raping her, and the other two documented the assault on film.
The rape and sexual violence were repeated. The detainee stated that she was left bound, naked, and bleeding throughout the night, before the soldiers returned the following day and repeated the assault. She confirmed that she was raped four times over two consecutive days, twice on each day, before being left completely naked in the room, still watched and filmed through the door.
Palestinian detainees released from Israeli dungeons.
She further testified that the torture later intensified, involving humiliation, coercion, and blackmail. She was moved to another interrogation room, suspended by her hands, and subjected to repeated electric shocks until she lost consciousness, while being shown photos of her rapes and nude images, and threatened with their publication if she did not “cooperate” with Israeli intelligence. This account from the victim suggests that sexual violence was employed as a means to subjugate and break her spirit. Nonconsensual recordings were used for blackmail and threats of exposure, aiming to silence her, deter reporting or seeking justice, and create fear both within and outside the detention setting.
Describing the systematic terror she faced, the victim explained that she used to scream unheard, wished for death rather than remaining bound within their reach, and called her experience “another genocide behind walls.” She mentioned losing track of time in prison, recognising only the number “101,” given by the soldiers instead of her name, symbolising the erasure of identity and the dehumanisation within the detention system.
Her abuse was previously documented by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) last November.
37-year-old Hamada raped with an ‘artificial penis’
During one of the interrogation sessions, I was completely naked, and they removed my blindfold. They forced me to sit on an artificial penis fixed to the ground until it penetrated my anus. I felt terrible pain and screamed loudly, after which I was severely beaten.
35-year-old Amir urinated upon and raped by a trained dog
I was detained in Sde Teiman. They took a group of detainees and me to a corridor between the sections and forced us to strip completely naked. The soldiers brought in several dogs. One of them urinated on me. One of the dogs then raped me, penetrated my anus in a trained manner while I was being beaten. This continued for several minutes. I felt profoundly humiliated and violated.
35-year-old A.S. urinated upon by dogs and raped by them
We heard dogs barking in the area, and from time to time, the dogs would urinate on us while we were detained in the metal cages. The shock came when they forced me to lie down, and a dog climbed on top of me and tried to insert its penis into me. At first, I did not understand what was happening, but then I realised that I was being raped.
I was completely naked, with no clothes on. I felt the dog’s fluids on my body. I tried to resist, but I was handcuffed, and the space was so small that I could not move. Two of them were holding me down tightly. This went on for three to four minutes.
Stripping the detained Palestinians naked and assaulting their genitals have been regularly documented as favoured Israeli practices in a bid to humiliate the detainees.
Assault on genitals and removal of testicles of a 48-year-old
During my interrogation, I was beaten, including on my testicles. When I answered questions with ‘I don’t know’, the interrogator pressed hard on my testicles and attempted to insert an object into my penis. I experienced intense pain. On one occasion, when he pressed on my testicles, I lost consciousness. When I regained consciousness, I found myself in a hospital, handcuffed. I later learned that my testicles had been removed, leaving me in a severe psychological state.
Genital mutilation of a 35-year-old
In another incident at Ofer Prison, I was completely stripped naked. I was not blindfolded. Two black men with muscular builds beat me severely. One of them then restrained me while the other gripped my penis and made a cut in it with a ‘scalpel.’ I suffered from this wound for more than two months.
The report is replete with such harrowing first-hand testimonies. The devastating details of the abuse made it “overwhelming” for the field researchers who conducted interviews with the victims. “The details the survivors described and the way they relived the emotions and events were overwhelming,” Khaled Ahmed told Middle East Eye.
“He described how some interviewees broke down in crying fits while recounting their stories, noting that the participants’ fear of reprisals and social stigmas around sexual abuse stopped some of them from speaking altogether,” the MEE report added.
“But what we noticed was that all of them spoke about what happened as if they were seeing it in front of them,” Ahmed said. “They remembered every detail, as though the scene had been etched into their memory and could never leave it.”
Culture of impunity
Throughout the course of the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, reports of sexual abuse, including violent rape, and torture — which does not even spare children — have been consistently published by humanitarian organisations, including Israeli ones. Nevertheless, the Israelis have continued to carry out their egregious assaults with total impunity safe in the knowledge that they enjoy the full protection of the genocidal Israeli state and remain beyond the reach of complicit international institutions.
The aftermath of the notorious Sde Teiman case of a Palestinian detainee — who was violently gang-raped to the extent that he suffered a torn rectum, broken ribs, ruptured bowels, and damaged lungs — highlights the culture of impunity prevalent in Israeli society. The Israeli state recently dropped all charges against the rapists, whose crime was caught on camera, due to “exceptional circumstances, evidentiary complications, and procedural obstacles.” All five gang rapists have now returned to active duty. One of the rapists went on to become a mini-celebrity on Israeli national TV.
The genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip was launched under the false pretext of the Palestinian resistance personnel committing systematic rape on October 7. To this day, Israel has not produced a single victim of rape. Meanwhile, reports of Palestinian victims of Israeli sexual violence continue to grow.
Source: Palestine Will Be Free
