New testimonies collected by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) confirm the widespread and systematic nature of sexual abuse of Palestinian captives by Israeli forces. In a statement published on November 10, the PCHR detailed several cases of rape and other sexual assaults against both female and male prisoners, emphasizing that such violence constitutes a purposeful method within Israel’s occupation forces.
“These accounts reveal an organized and systematic practice of sexual torture, including rape, forced stripping, forced filming, sexual assault using objects and dogs, in addition to deliberate psychological humiliation aimed at crushing human dignity and erasing individual identity entirely,” the PCHR wrote.
The organization’s most recent findings reinforce what earlier publications had already documented: sexual harassment, groping, and the sexualized nature of strip searches through which Israeli soldiers routinely objectify and dehumanize Palestinian prisoners. According to the PCHR, these acts of sexual violence must be understood as part of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians, representing an attempt to inflict destruction, both physical and psychological, upon an entire people.
Read more: Over 1 million years of children’s lives lost in Gaza during genocide, study finds
One of the captives interviewed by the organization, a 42-year-old woman, recounted being raped multiple times during detention, alongside relentless humiliation, beatings, and threats. “On the first day I was raped twice; on the second day I was raped twice; on the third day I remained without clothes while they looked at me through the door slit and filmed me,” she described. “I cannot describe what I felt; I wished for death every moment.”
Over the past months, the PCHR and other human rights groups have documented dozens of similar testimonies from survivors of sexual violence in Israeli prisons and camps. However, the numbers reported certainly represent only a fraction of the true scale of the crimes. Prisoners who have suffered this kind of abuse often remain silent due to the stigma still associated with sexual abuse. At the same time, restrictions imposed by occupation forces on legal visits limit the ability to collect detailed testimonies.
Even with this in mind, evidence of sexual assaults, including video recordings, has further corroborated the organization’s findings. One such video, originally broadcast by Israeli media in August 2024, showed Israeli soldiers in Sde Teiman camp raping a male prisoner with an object. The new report includes similar testimonies. An 18-year-old Gazan prisoner described being raped anally with a bottle along with other detainees. “I saw what they were doing to the others while they did it to me, and I realized it was a bottle,” he said. “There was also a dog behind us, as if the dog was raping us. They violated our dignity and destroyed our spirits and our hope for life.”
Read more: Two years of savagery: how Israel normalized mass slaughter
The physical and psychological toll of these assaults runs deep. Prisoners interviewed by PCHR spoke of overwhelming shame, trauma, and a sense of dehumanization. One of them, a 35-year-old man abducted from Al-Shifa Hospital in March 2024, told PCHR that he and others were collectively beaten and pepper-sprayed while he was also sexually assaulted, again involving a dog. “I suffered a severe psychological breakdown and deep humiliation,” he said. “I lost control because I could never have imagined experiencing such a thing.”
In light of the mounting testimonies of rape, sexual assault, and other forms of torture, alongside recent moves in the Knesset to expand the death penalty for Palestinians, the PCHR is calling for urgent international action to stop further Israeli crimes and to hold occupation authorities accountable.
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