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sde teiman
'Free Them All': One Year After Dr. Abu Safiya Abducted, Israel Urged to Release Gaza Health Workers
"We won't forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023," said CodePink.
Dec 26, 2025
Ahead of Saturday's one-year anniversary of Israel abducting Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya from the Gaza hospital he ran, advocates demanded the release the scores of health workers still imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces.
"One year ago, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the Israeli military along with dozens of other medical staff during a horrific raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza," Dr. Yipeng Ge, a member of Doctors Against Genocide, said Friday on social media. "Free Hussam Abu Safiya. Free them all."
Activist Petra Schurenhofer said on X: "It's been a year since Israel abducted and illegally detained Dr Hussam Abu Safiya. And since then he has been languishing in an Israeli jail, being subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment. Don't forget him. And don't stop calling for his release."
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the IOF from Kamal Adwan Hospital one year ago this week.Israel has detained & tortured Dr. Abu Safiya for one whole year.We won't forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023.
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— CODEPINK (@codepink.bsky.social) December 24, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Abu Safiya, the 52-year-old director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was seized on December 27, 2024 as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops continued their yearlong siege and raids on the facility in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. The IDF claimed without evidence that Kamal Adwan—the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza at the time—was a Hamas command center.
During a previous Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan, Abu Safiya's 15-year-old son was killed in a drone strike. Abu Safiya was seriously wounded in a separate drone attack that left six pieces of shrapnel in his leg.
After his capture, Abu Safiya was first jailed at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in Israel's Negev Desert—where dozens of detainees have died and where torture, rape, and other abuses have been reported—and then Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Abu Safiya said he has endured torture by his captors—including beatings with batons and electric shocks—and suffered severe weight loss, broken ribs, and other injuries, for which he was allegedly denied adequate medical care.
Israeli authorities deny these accusations. However, there have been many documented and otherwise credible reports of health and medical workers being tortured by Israeli forces—sometimes fatally, as in the case of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who headed the orthopedic department at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
According to Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, al-Bursh was "likely raped to death," a fate allegedly suffered by multiple Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Abu Safiya remains in Israeli custody, despite having not been charged with any crimes. Israeli courts have extended his detention multiple times under so-called “unlawful combatant” legal provisions.
In January, Abu Safiya’s mother died of a heart attack that MedGlobal, the Illinois-based nonprofit for which Abu Safiya worked as lead Gaza physician, attributed to “severe sadness” over her son’s plight.
According to United Nations agencies and other experts, Israeli forces have destroyed or damaged nearly all of Gaza's hospitals in hundreds of attacks since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. More than 1,500 Palestinian health workers have been killed.
Last year, an independent United Nations commission found that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
Israel is currently facing an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation.
Albina Abu Safiya, the imprisoned doctor's wife, pleaded last week: “Save my husband before it is too late. His only ‘crime’ was saving the wounded and tending to the wounds of children.”
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Ex-IDF Legal Chief Who Leaked Sde Teiman Rape Video Arrested After Going Missing
"Meanwhile, the soldiers seen sexually assaulting and abusing Palestinian detainees are still free," said one Palestinian observer.
Nov 03, 2025
Israel's former top military lawyer, who admitted to leaking a video apparently showing Israeli reserve soldiers gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman torture prison, was arrested late on Sunday following her disappearance most of the day.
After being reported missing Sunday morning, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Advocate General Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, 51, was found "safe and in good health" that evening following a massive search in the coastal area of Herzliya, Israeli police said. She was subsequently arrested and on Monday faced charges of fraud and breach of trust, abuse of office, obstruction of justice, and disclosure of information as a public servant.
Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned Friday and admitted that she "authorized the release" of video footage showing IDF reservists at Sde Teiman from a unit called Force 100 brutally attacking a Palestinian prisoner, who was allegedly sodomized with a metal baton while other soldiers held up shields to conceal the assault.
"I bear full responsibility for any material that was released to the media," Tomer-Yerushalmi wrote in her resignation letter, in which she explained that her motivation for leaking the footage was "to counter false propaganda" against her office by far-right figures who denied the torture as a "blood libel"—a common Israeli tactic used to falsely smear criticism as "antisemitic."
Citing fears that Tomer-Yerushalmi may have tried to kill herself during her disappearance on Sunday—which were matched by concerns that she could be in danger of assassination—Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Israel Prison Service (IPS) Chief Commissioner Kobi Yaakobi said they ordered her placed under increased prison supervision.
According to The Jerusalem Post, this means that Tomer-Yerushalmi will be forced to remain in her cell under the supervision of additional IPS guards and security cameras.
Former military prosecutor Matan Solomesh was also arrested Sunday night in connection with the leaked video.
"Meanwhile," Palestinian human rights activist Ihab Hassan noted on X, "the soldiers seen sexually assaulting and abusing Palestinian detainees are still free."
On July 4, 2024, members of Force 100 attacked the Palestinian prisoner for approximately 15 minutes behind riot shields so cameras could not see, leaving him hospitalized with a severe anal injury, ruptured bowel, broken ribs, and lung damage, according to Dr. Yoel Donchin, an Israeli physician at the facility.
Footage of the assault was aired on Israeli television following Tomer-Yerushalmi's leak. While human rights groups called for an investigation into the attack, Israeli leaders including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich furiously demanded a probe not to seek justice for the victim, but rather to find and punish whoever leaked the video.
After a group of alleged participants in the attack were subsequently arrested, a mob of far-right Israelis including senior government officials stormed a pair of military bases in an attempt to free the suspects. While many Israelis condemned the alleged rape, others rallied around the accused reservists.
Ben-Gvir called suspects "our best heroes" and slammed their arrest. Smotrich lauded them as "heroic warriors."
Many right-wing Israeli politicians, pundits, and others publicly argued that IDF troops should have free reign to rape, torture, and murder Palestinians as revenge for the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Former Palestinian prisoners, IDF soldiers, and Israeli medical professionals have all said they witnessed torture and other abuse of detainees at Sde Teiman and other facilities. Victims ranged in age from children to octogenarians.
Israeli physicians who served at Sde Teiman have described widespread severe injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations. Palestinians taken by Israeli forces have recounted rape and sexually assault by male and female soldiers, electrocution, maulings by dogs, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, and other torture.
At least scores of detainees have died or been killed in Israeli custody, including one who expired after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton. Many bodies of former Palestinian prisoners returned by Israel have shown signs of torture, execution, and mutilation.
The IDF said in February that it had filed charges against five reservists suspected of abusing Sde Teiman prisoners.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation in Gaza—was among those who condemned Tomer-Yerushalmi for exposing IDF abuse.
“This is perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment," the prime minister said Sunday, a statement that came amid ongoing deadly attacks against Palestinians during a 759-day genocide that's left at least 249,000 Gazans dead, maimed, or missing and many more forcibly displaced, sick, and starving, according to local officials and international rights groups.
While some observers believe that Tomer-Yerushalmi is a heroic whistleblower for leaking the Sde Teiman video, others noted that she has approved and supports Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza, pointing to her resignation letter's claim that "the IDF is a moral and law-abiding army."
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Palestinian Boys Allege Sexual Assault, Torture by Israeli Jailers
"We are children," said one teen. "What have we done?"
Aug 24, 2025
Palestinian teenagers kidnapped and imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces during the genocidal war on Gaza accused their jailers of torturing and sexually assaulting them in a report published Saturday by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
"They took me from the aid distribution site and transferred me to a hospital in Rafah, where I was interrogated for an hour," one 16-year-old boy identified by his first name Sami, who was abducted on June 29, told ABC. "They stripped me and conducted a body search. Then, they loaded me into a jeep and transported me to a prison in Israel."
"During the interrogations, they tortured us—handcuffing us, beating us with sticks, and using electric shocks," the teen continued. "They did countless things to break us."
"I was tortured for a week until I lost all sense of time and awareness," Sami said. "They put me in a one-square-meter cell, where I spent the entire week. I never saw daylight, never stepped outside. They only came to deliver food."
"They asked if I knew anyone from Hamas, and whether I had crossed over on October 7," Sami recounted. "They kept pressing me about who I knew and who I had seen. I told them I was just walking down the street—I didn't know anything."
"They would beat me. Each person that talked to me would beat me," the teen alleged. "I was handcuffed, blindfolded, and they put electricity in my legs."
Mahmoud, age 17, said that his Israeli abductors "began hurling insults, cursing at us, and accusing us of being with Hamas."
"They stripped us of our clothes and took us to Kerem Shalom, completely naked, with nothing," he continued. "There, the beatings and torture began."
"The Israeli women soldiers beat us. They stripped us and 'played' here, and here, and there," Mahmoud said, indicating his genitals. "They beat us with sticks. Got on us while we were lying on the ground. We were handcuffed like that and naked."
Mahmoud said his captors wanted to humiliate him and other teenage boys in custody, accusing the troops of taking nude photos of them and sending female soldiers to mock and touch his body—an especially shameful ordeal for Muslims.
"When I was released from prison, I had a breakdown," Mahmoud said. "I felt mentally exhausted and deeply disgusted. What I witnessed—no one should ever have to see."
"I was tortured, we are children," he added. "What have we done?"
ABC published photographs showing signs of torture on the teens' bodies, including from shackling.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) categorically rejected the teens' accusations, saying that "this includes allegations of electric shocks during interrogations, strip-searching detainees for humiliation purposes, or sexual assaults."
However, there have been numerous documented cases of such abuse, most notably at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison. Israeli physicians who served at Sde Teiman have described widespread severe injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations.
Palestinians taken by Israeli forces have described being raped and sexually assaulted by male and female soldiers, electrocuted, mauled by dogs, soaked with cold water, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, and blasted with loud music. Dozens of detainees have died in Israeli custody, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
Last year, nine IDF reservists were arrested for allegedly gang-raping a Sde Teiman prisoner, who suffered severe internal injuries in the attack, which was caught on video. Far-right Israelis including government officials subsequently stormed the facility in a bid to free the reservists, and Israeli leaders including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded a probe of the video—not to seek justice for the victim, but rather to find and punish whoever leaked it.
Survivors of Israeli abuse have also accused their jailers of bringing Israeli civilians into detention centers and allowing them to watch and record prisoners being tortured.
Gazan doctor Khaled al-Sir told ABC that Sami and Mahmoud's accounts mirrored his own abuse at the hands of Israeli soldiers who imprisoned him for six months last year.
"I witnessed many prisoners who were sexually assaulted using batons in their buttholes and also using the pepper spray over their private parts," al-Sir alleged, adding that there was an area of Sde Teiman that guards called the "hell section," where abuse was particularly severe.
A pair of recent United Nations reports detailed sexual violence, including reproductive and gender-based crimes, perpetrated by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians. The UN has also reported rape and other sexual violence committed by Hamas militants against Israelis during the October 7, 2023 attack and against hostages kidnapped that day.
In January, Israel blocked a request from UN sex crimes experts to probe alleged sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas fighters during the October 7, 2023 attack, reportedly to avoid scrutiny of rapes and other abuses allegedly committed by Israeli forces against imprisoned Palestinians.
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