Private Chats From Israeli Guards Detail 'Horrifying' Abuse, Killings of Palestinian Prisoners

Newly uncovered text messages sent by guards at Israel's Ketziot Prison reveal a pattern of appalling abuse against Palestinian prisoners, with some guards boasting of beating detainees to death.

As reported by Haaretz on Tuesday, WhatsApp messages sent in November 2023 showed guards at the prison gleefully recounting violent assaults on prisoners, openly hoping their actions would deliver fatal injuries.

"They're doing CPR in the clinic right now, baby!" wrote one guard after describing the beating delivered to a detainee. "God willing, that son of a thousand whores will die."

Another guard excitedly wrote that "they're doing CPR on a prisoner because we beat him," then relayed news that the prisoner had passed away.

"He's dead," wrote the guard. "Listen, it's funny how it all happened in an instant: Boom, count. Boom, dead prisoner."

A third guard gloated in a message that "we fucked them up so bad."

The texts were uncovered by Israeli prosecutors as part of an indictment filed last week against a dozen prison guards for their alleged roles in the deaths of nine Palestinian prisoners.

Haaretz noted that prosecuting guards for alleged abuses against Palestinians is normally difficult due to guards' unwillingness to speak out, which is why prosecutors' ability to obtain the text messages was so crucial.

"The investigation files now coming to light offer a rare glimpse into the guards' routine use of severe violence against Palestinian prisoners," Haaretz explained. "They also reveal evidence of senior officials suppressing accounts and turning a blind eye, if not taking part themselves. At least one witness alleged that Ketziot Prison commander Yosef Knipes was involved. He denied it."

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who earlier this year published interviews with Palestinian prisoners detailing the sexual abuse they allegedly suffered at the hands of Israeli forces, wrote in a social media post that the unearthed texts offer a "horrifying account" of "how Israeli prison guards brutalized Palestinian prisoners, sometimes killing them, even as the US supplied endless weapons and diplomatic support."

Israeli rights group Breaking the Silence argued that the texts uncovered by investigators represent only a small part of the total abuse carried out in Israeli prisons.

"Since October 2023, more than 100 Palestinians have entered Israeli custody alive and later left in body bags," the organization wrote. "Israeli detention centers have essentially become torture camps. Torture is Israel's policy."