Palestinian Boys Allege Sexual Assault, Torture by Israeli Jailers
"We are children," said one teen. "What have we done?"
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.
