It’s been just over 20 years since CBS News published the sobering photographs that proved the US army was carrying out unspeakable crimes against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
Rape. Degradation. Homicide. Torture, both psychological and physical. Sexual humiliation.
The revelations of US barbarity were greeted with horror around the world and played a major role in turning opinion against the Iraq War.
In recent days, it has become all too clear that something comparable to Abu Ghraib – and very possibly worse – has been taking place in Israeli prisons since 7 October when the war on Gaza broke out.
This week, appalling leaked video footage captured Israeli soldiers sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee, just as a report from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem highlighted the state’s policy of systematic prisoner abuse and torture since the start of the war.
The report, based on interviews with 55 Palestinians detained since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October, is distressing to read. It provides evidence of degrading treatment, arbitrary beatings and sleep deprivation, as well as the “repeated use of sexual violence, in varying degrees of severity”.
Fadi Baker, 25, recollects that Israeli forces “put cigarettes out in my mouth and on my body. They put clamps on my testicles that were attached to something heavy. It went on like that for a full day. My testicles swelled up and my left ear bled.”
He said interrogators asked him about Hamas leaders and people he didn’t know and then beat him. “Then they put me back in the freezing room with the loud disco music, and again left me there, naked, for two days.”
B’Tselem headlined its report: “Welcome to hell.”
Normalising rape
While Israeli authorities have denied such accounts, the analysis comes just days after nine soldiers were arrested in relation to the rape of a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman detention facility. The victim reportedly suffered a severe injury to his anus, a ruptured bowel, lung damage, and broken ribs.
In addition, last month the United Nations Human Rights office published a report that found shocking abuses in Israeli military facilities and prisons, where at least 53 Palestinians have died since 7 October.
How have western politicians remained silent on these horrors? Where is the mass public outrage?
It seems Israeli leaders have been successful in their campaign to normalise rape and other abuses against Palestinian prisoners. After the arrest of the nine soldiers at Sde Teiman, far-right protesters who stormed the facility were joined by several Knesset members. Justice Minister Yariv Levin said he was “shocked to see harsh pictures of soldiers being arrested”, adding that it was “impossible to accept”.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir went even further: “I recommend the defence minister, the [Israeli army] chief and the military authorities to … learn from the prison service – light treatment of terrorists is over. Soldiers need to have our full support.”
Energy Minister Eli Cohen also came out in strong support of the “reservists who do holy work and guard the despicable Hamas terrorists”, adding: “We should all embrace them and salute them, certainly not interrogate them and humiliate them.”
These are the signs of a very sick society indeed – one that has passed through an invisible barrier into savagery. There are no red lines
The real goal of the arrests might simply have been to present the illusion that Israel is taking action internally against such horrors, in a bid to avoid international war crimes trials at The Hague. According to a recent report from Ynet, senior Israeli legal officials said: “It’s better that we investigate. Internal investigations save international external investigations.”
In a Haaretz article late last month, law professor Orit Kamir referenced legislation that was passed a year ago to allow for increased punishment in cases of Palestinians who sexually assault Jewish women. One year on, portions of the Israeli establishment “are no longer satisfied with doubling punishment … The state law amendment a year ago was only the trailer, when they were still hesitant and restrained,” she wrote.
“Now the sting is out of the bag, and they renounce the rule of law of the country altogether, and demand to apply the ancient law of revenge: an eye for an eye and rape for rape. Those who were arrested by the [Israeli army] as a suspect in connection with the 7 October atrocities were, according to their opinion, to be raped in custody by Jewish Israeli soldiers.”
Such abuses are becoming mainstream. There is ample evidence. Where is the broad global condemnation?
Western complicity
The accounts cited by B’Tselem are consistent with many other reports that have filtered out from Israeli prisons over the last 10 months.
Four weeks ago, we interviewed Muazzaz Abayat in his hospital bed in Bethlehem after his release from jail, following nine months of administrative detention. Abayat, who had lost more than half his body weight in jail, told us that throughout his imprisonment, he was beaten, abused, tortured, starved, and deprived of water.
He said that his case was not exceptional – every other Palestinian prisoner faces the same treatment. His unimaginable suffering was sculpted in his face. Abayat compared the Negev prison where he had been held to the notorious US facilities at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
He was never charged with any crime. Looking terrified as he spoke, he told us of his disbelief that “peaceful people with no power can be starved, tortured and killed” in the 21st century, with no protection, legal representation or international outrage.
There is still no international outcry. Incredibly, there has not even been comment. Despite the tsunami of evidence in recent days, there has been nothing from western leaders. Nothing from US President Joe Biden or his vice president, Kamala Harris. Silence from Keir Starmer, the British prime minister who threw his weight behind Israel’s policy of collective punishment in Gaza.
Nor have we heard from the former prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who had previously pledged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “unequivocal” support. The British media – with the honourable exception of The Guardian, which gave full coverage to the B’Tselem report – has been largely silent.
This collective omerta from politicians and the media about Israel’s monstrous conduct is hard to comprehend, given that we are talking about systematic war crimes committed on a horrifying scale by a country already under investigation at the International Court of Justice for potential genocide.
Their silence amounts to complicity. As for Israel, the majority of the political and media classes do not appear to think there is much wrong in the torture and abuse of prisoners, with some ministers actively defending the abusers.
During a recent televised debate, one of the panellists suggested it should be legal to use rape as a form of torture. In any other country, such vile comments would be major news.
These are the signs of a very sick society indeed – one that has passed through an invisible barrier into savagery. There are no red lines, no respect for international law, and no accountability. The silence of the West shows that we, too, have entered the same nightmare universe as Ben Gvir and Netanyahu.
