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Breaking

at Sde Teiman military prison in July 2024 have been dropped.

Soldiers committing acts
of sexual violence against Palestinians

They were raped, often more than once...

Including minors

Simply the lives of Palestinian children, it's worthless.

The use of animals, the use of dogs.

I never thought we would come to this.

There is a policy.

It approves rape, it approves torture.

She was take to Sde Teiman and she was nude searched
over and over again and filmed.

And then she was raped twice by Israeli
male soldiers, two of them at a time.

They don't want to be controlled
by a justice system.

Every mechanism is failing.

It's so incredible what Israel
has done in the dark.

Deliberately, intentionally to be part of the genocide.

Brutality has escalated to an unprecidented level after October 7th.

It has become vindictive.

It has become really part of the staple menu
of the custodial practices.

If you were detained, you would be...
God knows what's going to happen to you.

Mental physical torture and sexual violence,
including rape and threats of rape.

Ill treating and torturing Palestinian children
is not the exception, it's the rule.

There's only one verdict
for the Palestinians

you go to prison, you don't get acquitted.

You're always guilty.

The first, second, third,

fourth affidavit we managed to get.

When I read it, I didn't believe it,

and I asked our lawyers to re-investigate.

And what I would like to underscore is that
the testimonies that have been collected

across the occupied Palestinian territory,
we are not talking of combatants,

we are talking of civilians.

We have also documented
such instances in many refugee camps.

Women said the same things
that they were forced to be nude searched,

in front of their family members
in degrading and humiliating positions

under the threats of large dogs,
under the threats of weapons,

one of them
who actually got beaten on her face

and lost her left eye for asking to be
searched for the door closed

So you're not talking about when they're
getting admitted into prison one time thing?

No, it's like multiple times a day.

All children that we interviewed revealed to that
they were exposed to strip search repeatedly

even when there is no purpose.

The infliction of humiliation and torture is quite common
in colonial systems.

The main purpose of the system is not reaching justice,
but to suppress and control.

During the British Mandate in Palestine, it's documented
that the British administration used

practices of torture or law enforcement

that had already been used against Irish insurgency
as part of counterinsurgency measures.

These practices were also taught to Zionist militias in Palestine.

These things are documented.

I believe there is a list of different force used - permissions -
that are very, very hurting.

It is done by many interrogators.

This is the report
we get from our clients.

When I was in prison, I went through the normal procedure,

what's called physical and psychological pressure,

that means you wish to die 20 times a day.

And I was lucky.

We are used to think of torture,

so infliction of pain and suffering, in order
to extract information

in order to obtain a confession,

but this time is really more than that.

The pattern that we have seen between
the testimonies was the systematic use

of sexual violence to humiliate,
to torture, to punish these women

for acts that they haven't committed,

for acts that they have been accused of committing,

and they were not even accused
of anything.

This is administrative detention.

During the last two years,
there was a spike in the number

of Palestinian children placed under
administrative detention orders,

which is detention without charge,
without court proceedings.

It's important to understand that ill treatment
and torture in the Israeli military legal system

is widespread, systematic and institutionalised.

And the main purpose of this practice
is to extract confession from Palestinian children.

And confession extracted by force
will be used by the Israeli military

legal system as a primary evidence before the military courts.

Here, it's important to note that it's not easy for a child
to report about the sexual abuse.

As an organisation, we do not think that the information that we have

about the magnitude, of sexual abuse

reflect the factual situation in the
Israeli military legal system.

While it had occurred in the past, Palestinians
were not so open to talk about it.

While this time,

it was like reporting
or an epidemic.

The general feeling of Israel is that “we have to show them”
and “we have to” also, it's very, very strong nowadays,

the feeling of revenge.

“We have to revenge what happened in Gaza.
We have to revenge the 7th of October”

Between the 7th of October 2023 and April 2024,

when I saw my client for the first time
after the 7th of October,

I saw a skeleton.

I really saw a skeleton, and I did
the menu of the food they were getting.

They were getting about 800 calories
per day in that period,

so they all looked like prisoners
from the Holocaust movies.

Other than that they get beaten.

They get beaten all the time.

Regular practices have been: severe beating,
slapping, burning

broken bones, broken teeth, sexual violence,

sexual penetration through objects and rape.

Also, I saw bruises all over the body
and I saw not just one,

I saw three prisoners walking down the corridor
as if they were just raped.

All of them were just raped,

and then my client actually told me yes,
just before they brought me here,

they raped me with a mop stick.

Something that is recurrent is the use of:
metal rods, cutting metal (that might be knives),

metal detectors, bottles, this kind of tools.

They don't let the Red Cross in since October 2023,

and if you don't get the Red Cross
and you don't get family visits,

so who can report about what is going on in the prison?

Only me, only the the lawyer that goes in the prison

he’s the only person that can report on what is going on.

But every time I come, they rape him.

So then the client asked me not to come anymore himself.

Now that I can’t say anything to the court,
the court is cannot help me with this.

If the client tells me himself not to come, what can the court do?

The court can't do anything.

So I think it's on purpose.

I think it's a system of the IPS (Israel Prison Service)

to rape him every time and to torture him.
It’s not just rape it’s all of the torture:

the stress positions, the beatings,
the securing of the handcuffs very strong,

and also the rape.

All of these together are forms of torture
that they do in order to limit the lawyer’s visits.

They don't like the long visits.

I've also used statements by whistleblowers
that have been collected in Israel.

When you put together...
I mean, they totally corroborate

what Palestinian former detainees
and their lawyers say.

But also aren't something more.

It's that the sense of the incredulity

in the face of the absolute power that anyone
in the Israeli security system

or in the Israeli military systemas afforded vis-a-vis Palestinians,

they say “we could do them whatever we wanted.”

This is a degree that we haven't
known before.

Not to that degree.

I'm in this profession more than 40 years,

and believe me,

I’m every day in shock.

When you see soldiers really taking pride
and making fun of mistreating

another human being, it's a portrayal
of the moral decay of that society.

This is why I think that the Israelis
might not realise it yet,

but this is the end of their society
as it was, because they've always

discriminated against the Palestinians,
but there wasn't value system.

That value system is completely lost.

Men and women,

being raped

systematically,

not by human beings but by animals.

I, I never thought we would come to this.

Settlers and citizens alike
have been taken to detention centres

to observe, to watch,

or to even partake in the humiliation
inflicted on Palestinians,

the use of animals,
the use of dogs.

Zionists see Palestinians

and especially Palestinian prisoners
as animals.

So if they see them as animals,
they can treat them as animals,

and that's what they do,
because they can.

Basically since the International Committee of the Red Cross
is not allowed to be in detention centres,

we don't have many evidence beyond testimonies,

But we have the video that was leaked by an Israeli soldier
in Sde Teiman prison

The footage appears to show soldiers
taking a Palestinian detainee aside

at the Sde Teiman detention centre
in July last year

and using their riot gear to hide them,
allegedly sexually abusing the man.

The only case of rape that was caught on
camera has resulted

not only in non-prosecution
of those involved,

who have been glorified by various segments
of the Israeli society,

they have been hosted by TV channels

and they have been giving speeches,

while the person in the Israeli military system
who had authorised the leaking of the video,

she's the one who was punished.

The former top lawyer of the Israeli
military has been arrested

over a leaked video showing Israeli soldiers brutally
assaulting a Palestinian prisoner.

Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned last week

saying she took full responsibility for the leak.

She's now been detained on suspicion
of obstruction of justice and breach of trust.

Those who practice rape

are the heroes of Israel,

and they are hosted in TV programmes

with their faces, with their names.

There has been not a real uproar among the Israeli society.

Today the racism is not something to be ashamed of,

on the contrary, we hear so many,
even Parliament members proud of it.

Such widespread torture is not being done
by some one guard, or this guard or that guard

It’s something systematic is something
that the whole system is aware of.

So the Sde Teiman story

was the tip of the iceberg.

B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights in Israel

have documented the existence of a torture network.

I didn't see such things
in such messes before.

No.

Maybe it was done
during a war by a secret,

maybe it was done by soldiers, I don’t know,

but I hadn't seen it like professionally.

There is so, so many

males and females.

We have instances of rape being documented

by Israeli female soldiers
using inspection devices against women.

We have also documented the case of rape
against a woman Gaza by male soldiers

who gang raped her and filmed it.

I started reading and putting everything
together and what came out of these reports

that I realised that it was a pattern,
that it was widespread, systemic.

It was the norm rather than the exception.

There is a significant difference,
in legal terms at least,

between isolated and sporadic
acts of sexual violence

and when the same acts are
part of institutionalised policies,

in other words, they are systematic and widespread.

The ICC deals with international crimes,

international crimes are genocide,

the crime of aggression, crimes
against humanity, and war crimes.

These four are the international crimes.

So an individual acts of sexual violence
against a Palestinian detainee

is a war crime because committed within
the context of a belligerent occupation.

and this is true in relation both to the West Bank,
including East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip.

But when these individual acts
are part of a wider policy,

in other words, they are organised
and they are widespread,

they amount to crimes against humanity according to the law
of the International Criminal Court,

Jurisdiction of the court is not an exclusive one,
but it's a complementary one,

meaning that the court steps in only
if the relevant country

who has the primary jurisdiction over
such crimes, is not willing

or is not able to prosecute and judge
these crimes.

Two district judges that I complained
about the torture, about the rape,

both of them told me
“we will not discuss these issues.”

And now a third judge also,
a third judge also told me this yesterday.

Impunity is

somehow the defeat of the rule of law

and the victory of criminality.

The Israeli legal system provided full legal cover for

organised, systematic war crimes,
crimes against humanity,

persecution, apartheid, land
confiscation, torture, name it.

All kinds of crimes we appealed against

and they just covered up.

Many of the reasons why women don't want
to talk about the sexual violence they endure,

and they don’t want to even seek accountability,
is because there’s no accountability.

There has never been an Israeli national
convicted despite all the evidence.

Even when they initiate investigations into alleged,
let's say, sexual violence acts in prisons

the soldiers acquitted, they're being celebrated on
national Israeli TVs and dubbed as heroes.

So you can imagine what it does to people
who are trying to seek accountability.

The Israeli military justice
system is unwilling, and most likely,

even unable, to put in place
any proceedings against Israeli nationals,

in particular soldiers, committing acts
of sexual violence against Palestinians.

So if it's not the state, it should be
the International Criminal Court.

In Israel, there is only one unit

that can investigate crimes
perpetrated by prison guards.

It's a unit of the police.

The police and the prison system
both are under the minister Ben-Gvir.

So the International Criminal Court,
first of all, looked

at the responsibility of the so-called
and the most senior responsible,

so political and military leaders.

The orders come from very high up.

And, you know, Ben-Gvir is proud of it.

He makes all these, videos

of him torturing the prisoners,

He’s not ashamed of it, he's not trying to hide it.

That's what I liked about Ben-Gvir,
he’s showing you everything he's doing,

he’s showing you, he's not hiding it, so
the whole world can see what he's doing.

Don't ask me.

Go to Ben-Gvir's Facebook page or Twitter page

and look at the videos
that Ben-Gvir is posting.

It's better than my testimony.

So every item of evidence showing
that there is a pattern

in the commission
of these acts of sexual violence

is valid and can be brought before
the International Criminal Court.

We have the crimes.

We have the evidence.

We have the chain of command.

The Israeli political system, including

the Israeli legal system,

should be held accountable.

This is not mistreatment.

This is not torture.

They want to spread all over the place

terror, fear, anxiety.

It's part of genocide.

Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide,
warned us that there are preparatory stages.

The mass killing of members of the group
or arbitrary arrests and detention,

rape against members of the group and other
forms of oppression or repression

that would target
the group as such, should be taken

as a signal or an indicator
that genocide might happen.

I believe that sexual violence is being
used to ethnically cleansed Palestinians.

The way they terrorise the communities
is a way of forced displacement.

And it happened before, it happened in 1948.

There are many examples in the books
that were written on the

what we call an independence war in 1948,

of... there were enough rapes,
done by the Israeli soldiers,

in different places,

and it's well known to any historian.

And it was systematic and it was used to terrorise
the communities and the villages

to get them to flee the areas
and to ethnically cleansed Palestinians.

So we know this is not new.

It's textbook colonialism.

They would use sexual violence
to dominate, to humiliate communities.

Sadly, if you're next to settlements,

you're most likely to be verbally sexually harassed by settlers on a daily basis.

Settlers in many instances
also take part in this sexual violence.

They have targeted boys
genitals in Gaza with snipers.

We have documented that in many instances
that women were beaten on their genitals.

In Gaza, the West Bank, in Jerusalem as well.

So they are targeting everything
that is related to reproduction.

The intent to destroy the person as such,

to destroy the universe of that person,
including the sexual sphere,

it's pretty evident.

The violence used against the genitals of the persons,
I mean, some had their testicles

smashed repeatedly to the point
that is might become imparing to procreate.

If you attack someone's genitals or you try to prevent birth in a group, that's genocide.

When you read altogether
the statements of the current politicians

in the context of what has been said
and done to the Palestinians for the past decades,

you can see that the aim is really use
this acceleration of history

and these extreme of violence
to force Palestinians to go,

to pressure Palestinians to move out of Palestine

Sexual violence,

I believe they use it to terrorise
because they know of the stigma.

They know what it means
for the Palestinian community.

Many women and many men are terrified

of being sexually violated
at a checkpoint, in detention centres,

if they get their home
invaded by Israeli soldiers.

So they have managed to instil this terrorism,
sexual terrorism in a way.

You can see how many Palestinians
have gone out of detention

looking like, emptied of life.

Someone who's been raped repeatedly
will carry the wound forever

and requires healing.

Now, think of the people who have been freed after torture,

many of them were sent back to Gaza.

In Gaza, there is no possibility
to receive psychosocial support.

Justice is not just what is delivered in a court of law.

Justice equips the person to continue to live,

no without wounds, despite the wounds.

This is a war crime and this is a crime against
humanity in the Rome Statute.

Sexual violence in conflict is strictly prohibited
under international law.

ICC was a legitimate dream for us,
to be the court for a no man's court.

The court was created as a tool
in the long term to end impunity,

but then it's the political will
that makes it effective.

International law in this moment is completely ignored
by some powerful countries.

America is strong.

America supports Israel.

Israel and America do whatever they want.

All the rules adopted
by the international community

at the end of the second World War,
to prevent the commission

of international crimes of atrocities,
are systematically violated.

Many women, when we go talk to them, and we tell them who
we are, what we're doing with the documentation,

the UN mechanisms,
international investigation mechanisms,

they'd be like... they would laugh at us to be honest.

And they'd be saying that really, after Gaza
what are you going to do?

I have the feeling that we are not in the
best moment for international justice,

in the sense that whoever has tried to seek accountability
for the Palestinian has been punished.

In an unprecedented move,
the Trump administration has sanctioned

four judges of the International Criminal Court

The issuance of an arrest warrant against Putin is good,

and the issuance of an arrest warrant
against Netanyahu is not good.

I think it’s really something
which is unacceptable.

Sanctions continue to ensure
that the Israeli authority enjoy impunity,

but at the same time, they are an attempt to
destroy the entire international justice system,

which was supposed to put all states on the same level.

And this is really hard to say,
but the court is has weakened.

Working for rule of law and human rights
under criminal occupation,

that means by definition you will pay for it.

We communicated this case, where
the 15 year old child revealed

that he was exposed to rape by an object,

to the US Foreign Department.

We examine these allegations.

We believe they were credible.

We put them to the government of Israel.

And you know what happened the next day?

The IDF went into the DCIP offices and
removed all their computers

and declared them a terrorist entity.

I have two complaints against me
in the bar association,

one by right wing activists
and one by the IPS.

I am dealing with it.

I filed my replies to their complaints
and I'm waiting to see what will happen,

I don't know.

Even if they take my license, I will not shut up.

We have been imprisoned.

We have been tortured.

In this war my personal
assistant was assassinated

with his wife and two children,

two fantastic young girls.

While they were sleeping,

they were targeted and killed.

We lost two of the most wonderful young lawyers

with their families they were erased.

I was targeted and bombed with 985 kilo bomb.

And luckily I survived, me, my wife and my son.

It's a miracle.

Otherwise, I'd be one of those
who has been buried under the rubble.

They...

They think we will give up.

We will not give up.

Erm, no.

There was never a moment that I thought,
I can't keep doing this, to be honest,

because it's part of my responsibility
to honour these women in a way,

and to give back to my community
and to my society.

Following October 7th we had many women,

courageous women go out to the media, talk
about what they have endured in prisons.

And this has paved the way for other women
following them to talk more.

They felt like they were not alone.

There's more acceptance in the community.

The community is trying to help them
and support them.

Yeah and this didn’t exist before.

Sexual violence has served a specific purpose,

it's brutal if it's used against women
and men, it doesn't differentiate,

but the way it’s being used against men
really gives the idea

of wanting to break the spirit of this people.

And we will overcome this,

We cannot be hostage for thugs,
genociders and criminals.

Their collective spirit of steadfastness

ignites that sense of humanity, solidarity and resistance,

it asks to apply international law and applying it ethically.

Erm... rage.

Complete rage.

I feel complete rage
when we document these testimonies.

As long as there's no pressure,

Israel will continue its violation
against Palestinian children.

Unfortunately the international community
allows Israel to act with impunity.

I would like to see those indicted
by the ICC arrested.

Unfortunately, the international community
does not impose sanctions.

Why BDS is not the Bible
in every person's house.

They all buy Israeli weapons,
which is the main industry here in Israel

is selling weapons to all countries.

I would like to see states
halting the arms transfer to Israel,

stopping to buy weapons
and surveillance services from Israel.

I would like to see
the profiteers investigated

and hopefully prosecuted
for what they have done.

Some would say that international
advocacy, international law is useless.

We haven't seen anything that has failed,
it was buried under the rubble of Gaza.

But sometimes I think that maybe we can
achieve something by documenting this,

and maybe this is a way for me to channel
all the rage that I have

and all the feeling of injustice
that these women go through.

We have a lot of power.

It's just that we don't use it
and so yes, there is a lot to do.

Let them bring people from the outside
like they did with the Nazis.

Right?

Then we will see.

Using law, this civilised tool,

the most civilised tool on Earth,

bringing the fourth dimension to the conflict,

which is very clear:

never ever can occupation be just or fair,

occupation, colonisation, racism should end.

I hope the majority of my people

will wake up and understand.

You want to be here?

You want to live here?

Equality is the name of the game.

So I'm always against torture
and I will always be against torture,

and I will not play the game
of hiding the reality from the world.

I think everything should be out in the open

like Ben-Gvir is doing, telling the truth.

Like Ben-Gvir is telling the truth,
I'm also telling the truth.

And if I pay some price about it,
so be it.

You are defending people facing genocide,

facing ethnic cleansing,
and you will be terrified.

Don't be there.

You should be strong enough.

You are not the victim

and you are hurting them.

You put the real face on them
as the criminals and thugs.

We have seen something really
unprecedented personally in my lifetime.

Seeing member states, governments,
coming together

in defence of the perpetrator

repressing one people.

And it seems to me that what is to be

killed, annihilated here is the very idea
that the Palestinians embody

this idea of, it’s not even resistance,
but it's their resilience.

It's really that concept of “Sumud”

that is to be silenced,
that is to be crushed,

because this is igniting
a global revolution

an anti-systemic, an anti-imperialist
revolution.

It's a threat?