{"id":316111,"date":"2026-05-18T12:00:54","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=316111"},"modified":"2026-05-13T07:38:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T06:38:40","slug":"the-silence-that-meets-the-rape-of-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/05\/the-silence-that-meets-the-rape-of-palestinians\/","title":{"rendered":"The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Suhaib Abualkebash. (photo: Samar Hazboun\/NYT)<\/p><\/div>\n

11\u00a0May 2026 –\u00a0Male and female Palestinians describe brutal sexual abuse at the hands of Israel\u2019s prison guards, soldiers, settlers and interrogators.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a simple proposition: Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape.<\/p>\n

Supporters of Israel made that point after the brutal sexual assaults against Israeli women during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu and many U.S. senators, including Marco Rubio, condemned that sexual violence, and Netanyahu rightly called on \u201call civilized leaders\u201d to \u201cspeak up.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet in wrenching interviews, Palestinians have recounted to me a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children \u2014 by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.<\/p>\n

There is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes. But in recent years they have built a security apparatus where sexual violence has become, as a United Nations report put it last year<\/a>, one of Israel\u2019s \u201cstandard operating procedures\u201d and \u201ca major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians.\u201d A report out last month<\/a>, from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based advocacy group often critical of Israel, concludes that Israel employs \u201csystematic sexual violence\u201d that is \u201cwidely practiced as part of an organized state policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sami al-Sai
\nCredit…Samar Hazboun for The New York Times<\/center> <\/p>\n

What does this standard operating procedure look like? Sami al-Sai, 46, a freelance journalist, says that as he was being taken to a prison cell after his detention in 2024, a group of guards threw him to the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were all hitting me, and one stepped on my head and neck,\u201d he said. \u201cSomeone pulled my pants down. They pulled down my boxers.\u201d And then one of the guards pulled out a rubber baton used to beat prisoners.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were trying to force it into my rectum, and I was bracing myself to prevent it, but I couldn\u2019t,\u201d he said, speaking with increasing anxiety. \u201cIt was so painful.\u201d The guards were laughing at him, he said. \u201cThen I heard someone say, \u2018Give me the carrots,\u2019\u201d he recalled, adding that they then used a carrot. \u201cIt was extremely painful,\u201d he said. \u201cI was praying for death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Al-Sai was blindfolded, he said, and heard someone say in Hebrew, which he understands, \u201cdon\u2019t take photos.\u201d That suggested to him that someone had pulled out a camera. One of the guards was a woman who, he said, grabbed him by the penis and testicles, and joked, \u201cthese are mine,\u201d and then squeezed until he screamed from pain.<\/p>\n

The guards left him handcuffed on the ground, and he smelled cigarette smoke. \u201cI realized it was their smoking break,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After he was dumped into his cell, he concluded that the spot where he had been raped had been used before, for he found other people\u2019s vomit, blood and broken teeth crushed into his skin.<\/p>\n

Al-Sai said that he had been asked to become an informant for Israeli intelligence, and he believes that the purpose of his arrest and imprisonment under the administrative detention system was to pressure him to agree. Because he prided himself on his journalistic professionalism, he said, he refused.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a career covering war, genocide and atrocities including rape, sometimes in places where the scale of sexual violence is far greater than anything committed by either Hamas militants or Israeli guards or settlers. In the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia a few years ago, 100,000 women<\/a> may have been raped. Mass rape is now unfolding in Sudan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet our American tax dollars subsidize the Israeli security establishment, so this is sexual violence in which the United States is complicit.<\/p>\n

I became interested in reporting on sexual assaults against Palestinian prisoners after Issa Amro, a nonviolent activist sometimes called \u201cthe Palestinian Gandhi,\u201d told me<\/a> when I previously visited that he had been sexually assaulted by Israeli soldiers and that he believed this was common but underreported because of shame.<\/p>\n

By one count, Israel has detained 20,000<\/a> people in the West Bank alone since the Oct. 7 attacks, and more than 9,000<\/a> Palestinians were still being held as of this month. Many have not been charged but were detained under ill-defined security grounds, and since 2023, most have been denied visits from the Red Cross<\/a> and lawyers.<\/p>\n


\nIssa Amro, photographed in 2024
\nCredit…Samar Hazboun for The New York Times<\/center> <\/p>\n

\u201cIsraeli forces systematically employ rape and sexual torture to humiliate Palestinian female detainees,\u201d the Euro-Med report said. It cited a 42-year-old woman who said she had been shackled naked to a metal table as Israeli soldiers forcibly had sex with her over two days while other soldiers filmed the attacks. Afterward, she said, she was shown photos of her being raped and told they would be published if she did not cooperate with Israeli intelligence.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s impossible to know how common sexual assaults against Palestinians are. My reporting for this article is based on conversations with 14 men and women who said they had been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers or members of the security forces. I also spoke to family members, investigators, officials and others.<\/p>\n

I found these victims by asking around among lawyers, human rights groups, aid workers and ordinary Palestinians themselves. In many cases it was possible to corroborate the victims\u2019 stories in part by talking to witnesses or, more commonly, to those whom the victims had confided in, such as family members, lawyers and social workers; in other cases it was not possible, perhaps because shame left people reluctant to acknowledge abuse even to loved ones.<\/p>\n

Save the Children commissioned a survey<\/a> last year of children ages 12 to 17 who had been in Israeli detention; more than half reported witnessing or experiencing sexual violence. Save the Children said that the true figure was probably higher because stigma left some unwilling to acknowledge what had happened to them.<\/p>\n

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a respected American organization, surveyed 59 Palestinian journalists who had been released by Israeli authorities after the Oct. 7 attacks. Three percent<\/a> said they had been raped, and 29 percent<\/a> said they had endured other forms of sexual violence.<\/p>\n

The Israeli government rejects suggestions that it sexually abuses Palestinians, just as Hamas denied raping Israeli women. Israel welcomed a United Nations report documenting<\/a> sexual assaults against Israeli women by Palestinians but rejected<\/a> the report\u2019s call to investigate Israeli assaults against Palestinians. Netanyahu has denounced<\/a> \u201cbaseless accusations of sexual violence\u201d made against Israel.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s Ministry of National Security declined to comment for this article. The prison service \u201ccategorically rejects the allegations\u201d of sexual abuse, said a spokesman who declined to be named, adding that complaints are \u201cexamined by the competent authorities.\u201d The spokesman declined to say whether any prison staff member had ever been fired or prosecuted for sexual assaults.<\/p>\n

The Palestinians I interviewed recounted various kinds of abuse beyond rape. Many reported that they often had their genitals yanked or were beaten on the testicles. Hand-held metal detectors were used to probe between men\u2019s naked legs and then smashed into their private parts; some men had to have their testicles amputated by doctors after beatings, according to the Euro-Med monitor.<\/p>\n

One reason these abuses don\u2019t receive more attention is threats by Israeli authorities, who periodically warn prisoners on release to keep quiet, according to Palestinians who have been freed. Another reason, Palestinian survivors told me, is that Arab society discourages discussing the topic for fear of hurting the morale of prisoners\u2019 families and undermining the Palestinian narrative of defiant and heroic detainees.<\/p>\n

Conservative social norms also inhibit discussion: Two victims told me that a prisoner who acknowledges being raped would harm the ability of his sisters and daughters to find husbands.<\/p>\n

One farmer initially agreed to let me use his name in this article. Released early this year after months in administrative detention \u2014 with no charges filed \u2014 he related what he said happened one day last year: A half-dozen guards immobilized him by holding his arms and legs while pulling down his pants and underwear and inserting a metal baton into his anus. The rapists were laughing and cheering, he said.<\/p>\n

Several hours later, he said, he fainted and was taken to the prison clinic. After he woke up, he said, he was raped once more, again with the metal baton.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was bleeding,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI broke down completely. I was crying.\u201d<\/p>\n

After being returned to his cell, he said, he asked a guard for pen and paper to write a complaint about the assaults. The request was denied. And that evening, a group of guards came to the cell.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho is the one who wants to file a complaint?\u201d one guard jeered, he said, and another guard pointed him out. \u201cThe beating started immediately,\u201d he recalled. And then they raped him with the baton for a third time that day, he said.<\/p>\n

He recalled one saying, \u201cNow you have even more to put in your complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few days after I interviewed him, the farmer called to say that he didn\u2019t want his name used after all. He had just been visited by Shin Bet and warned not to cause trouble, and he also feared that his family would react badly to the attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cRampant sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners is a thing; it\u2019s been normalized,\u201d said Sari Bashi<\/a>, an Israeli American human rights lawyer who is the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t see evidence that it has been ordered. But there\u2019s persistent evidence that the authorities know it\u2019s happening and are not stopping it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another Israeli lawyer, Ben Marmarelli<\/a>, told me that based on the experiences of the Palestinian detainees he has represented, rape of Palestinian prisoners with objects \u201cis going on across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe farmer who asked not to be named, with his daughter.
\nCredit…Samar Hazboun for The New York Times<\/center> <\/p>\n

Bashi said her organization has filed hundreds of complaints detailing horrific abuse against Palestinian detainees \u2014 and not in a single case did these lead to charges filed. Impunity, she said, creates a \u201cgreen light\u201d for abusers.<\/p>\n

One Palestinian prisoner from Gaza reportedly was hospitalized<\/a> in July 2024 with a tear in his rectum, cracked ribs and a punctured lung. Investigators obtained a prison video purportedly showing the abuse. The authorities detained nine reservist soldiers \u2014 but Israel\u2019s right-wingers erupted in outrage, with a mob of furious protesters, including politicians, breaking into the prison<\/a> to show support for the guards. The last charges against the soldiers were dropped<\/a> in March, and last month the military approved<\/a> the soldiers\u2019 return to duty.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu hailed the dropping of charges as the end of a \u201cblood libel.\u201d \u201cThe State of Israel must hunt down its enemies \u2014 not its heroic fighters,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bashi described the outcome this way: \u201cI would say that dropping the charges \u2014 that\u2019s giving permission to rape.\u201d<\/p>\n

That prisoner, who afterward reportedly required<\/a> a stoma bag to collect his waste, was returned to Gaza, and an acquaintance of his said that he spent months in a hospital recovering from his internal injuries. The acquaintance said that the former prisoner declined to be interviewed.<\/p>\n

Prosecutions and public attention can curb such violence. In 1997, police officers in New York City raped a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima<\/a>, with a stick so brutally that he required hospitalization and surgeries. New Yorkers were outraged, Mayor Rudy Giuliani visited Louima in the hospital and police officers were prosecuted in a landmark case. That sent a powerful message throughout the police force: Those who assault detainees may be punished. And that\u2019s the message that must be sent throughout the Israeli security forces.<\/p>\n

If the Trump administration insisted on a resumption of Red Cross visits to prisoners, if the U.S. ambassador visited rape survivors with cameras in tow, if we conditioned arms transfers on an end to sexual assault, we could send a moral and practical message that sexual violence is unacceptable no matter the identity of the victim. For starters, the ambassador could ensure that those Palestinians who dared to speak for this article are not brutalized again for their courage.<\/p>\n

How does this kind of violence happen? Decades of covering conflict has taught me that a combination of dehumanization and impunity can propel people into a Hobbesian state of nature. I\u2019ve encountered this drift toward savagery in killing fields from Congo to Sudan to Myanmar, and I think it also roughly explains how American soldiers came to sexually abuse prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.<\/p>\n

The blunt reality is that when there are no consequences, we humans are capable of immense depravity toward those we are taught to scorn as subhuman.<\/p>\n


\nThe Jordan Valley in the West Bank.
\nCredit…Samar Hazboun for The New York Times<\/center> <\/p>\n

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel\u2019s national security minister, called<\/a> detainees \u201cscum\u201d and \u201cNazis\u201d and boasted<\/a> of making prison conditions harsher<\/a> for Palestinians. When such attitudes prevail, sexual abuse can become one more tool to inflict pain and humiliation on Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Ben-Gvir declined, through a spokeswoman, to comment on sexual assaults by security services.<\/p>\n

B\u2019Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, documented<\/a> \u201ca grave pattern of sexual violence\u201d toward Palestinians. It cited the account of a Gaza prisoner, Tamer Qarmut, who said he had been raped with a stick. Torture, B\u2019Tselem said, \u201chas become an accepted norm.\u201d<\/p>\n

A former Israeli officer in a prison infirmary described<\/a> in testimony to the Israeli group Breaking the Silence<\/a> what that kind of acceptance means in practice: \u201cYou see normal, pretty ordinary people reaching a point where they abuse people for their own amusement, not even for an interrogation or anything. For fun, to have something to tell the guys, or revenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of the rape and other sexual violence has been directed at men, if only because Palestinian prisoners are more than 90 percent<\/a> male. But I spoke to one Palestinian woman who was arrested at the age of 23 after the Hamas attack in October 2023. She said that the soldiers who arrested her threatened to rape her, her mother and her young niece. Her prison ordeal began with a strip-search conducted by female guards, \u201cbut then a male soldier came in, when I was completely naked,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

For the next few days, she said, she was repeatedly stripped naked, beaten and searched by teams of male and female guards alike. The pattern was always the same: Several guards, men and women together, would come to her cell, forcibly strip her naked, handcuff her hands behind her back and bend her forward at the waist, sometimes forcing her head into the toilet. In this position, she would be beaten and groped all over, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey had their hands all over my body,\u201d she said. \u201cTo be honest, I don\u2019t know if they raped me,\u201d she said, because she sometimes lost consciousness from the beatings.<\/p>\n

The aim of the abuse was twofold, she thinks: to crush her spirit and also to let Israeli men molest a naked Palestinian woman with impunity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be stripped and beaten several times a day,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was as if they were introducing me to everyone who worked there. At the beginning of each shift, they would bring the guys to strip me.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she was about to be released from prison, she said, she was called into a room with six officials and given a stern warning never to give interviews.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey threatened that if I spoke up, they would rape me, kill me and kill my father,\u201d she said. Not surprisingly, she declined to be named in this article.<\/p>\n

Some of the worst sexual abuse appears to have been directed at prisoners from Gaza. A Gaza journalist shared with me his account of the abuse he suffered after he was detained in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one escaped sexual assaults,\u201d he said. \u201cNot all were raped, I would say, but everyone went through humiliating, filthy sexual assaults.\u201d On one occasion, he said, the guards zip-tied his testicles and penis for hours while beating his genitals. For days afterward, he said, he urinated blood.<\/p>\n

On one occasion, he said, he was held down, stripped naked, and as he was blindfolded and handcuffed, a dog was summoned. With encouragement from a handler in Hebrew, he said, the dog mounted him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were using cameras to take photos, and I heard their laughs and giggles,\u201d he said. He tried to dislodge the dog, he said, but it penetrated him.<\/p>\n

Other<\/a> Palestinian<\/a> prisoners<\/a> and human rights monitors have also cited reports<\/a> of police dogs<\/a> being coached to rape prisoners. The journalist said that when he was released, an Israeli official warned him: \u201cIf you want to stay alive when you return, do not speak to the media.\u201d<\/p>\n

So why was he willing to speak?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are moments when remembering feels unbearable,\u201d he said. \u201cMy heart felt it might stop while talking to you about it just now. But I remember there are people still in there. So I speak up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multiple accounts indicate that sexual violence has been directed even at Palestinian children, who are typically imprisoned for throwing stones. I located and interviewed three boys who had been detained, and all described being sexually abused.<\/p>\n

One, a shy boy in a Hilfiger shirt who was 15 years old at the time of his arrest, declined to say whether he had also witnessed actual rapes. But he said threats were routine: \u201cThey\u2019d say, \u2018Do this or we\u2019ll put this stick up your butt.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The other boys told very similar stories of sexual violence as part of beatings and noted that the threats of rape were directed not only at them but also at their mothers and siblings.<\/p>\n

Israeli settlers are not an official arm of the state in the same way that the prison system is, but the Israel Defense Forces increasingly protect settlers as they attack Palestinian villagers and use sexual violence to drive Palestinians to flee. \u201cSexualized violence is used to pressure communities\u201d to leave their land, according to a new report<\/a> by the West Bank Protection Consortium, a coalition of international aid groups led by the Norwegian Refugee Council.<\/p>\n

The consortium surveyed Palestinian farmers and found that more than 70 percent of households that had been displaced reported that threats to women and children, particularly of sexual violence, were the decisive reason for leaving. \u201cSexual violence,\u201d said Allegra Pacheco of the coalition, \u201cis one of the mechanisms driving people from their land.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nMr. Abualkebash\u2019s wife and child.
\nCredit…Samar Hazboun for The New York Times<\/center> <\/p>\n

In a remote Jordan Valley hamlet of Bedouin farmers, I met a 29-year-old farmer, Suhaib Abualkebash, who recounted how a gang of about 20 settlers rampaged through the homes of his family, beating adults and children alike, stealing jewelry and 400 sheep \u2014 and also cut off his clothes with a hunting knife and then tightly zip-tied his penis<\/a> and yanked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was afraid they would cut off my penis,\u201d Abualkebash told me. \u201cI thought this was the end for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some may wonder whether Palestinians fabricated accusations of sexual assaults to defame Israel. To me that seems far-fetched, because none of those I interviewed sought me out or knew who else I was speaking to, and they were reluctant to speak. Yet there is some evidence that Israel\u2019s sexual abuse has become so frequent that norms are changing and Palestinian victims are becoming a bit more willing to speak out.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor six months I couldn\u2019t speak about it, even to my family,\u201d said Mohammad Matar, a Palestinian official who told me that settlers stripped him, beat him and poked him with a stick in the buttocks while talking about raping him. During the attack, the assailants posted a photograph on social media of him blindfolded and stripped to his underpants.<\/p>\n

With time, Matar decided to speak out to try to break the stigma. He now keeps a blown-up print of the settlers\u2019 photo of him on the wall of his office.<\/p>\n

To try to make sense of what I found, I called up Ehud Olmert, who was prime minister from 2006 to 2009. Olmert told me he didn\u2019t know much about sexual violence against Palestinians but was not surprised by the accounts I had heard.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo I believe it happens?\u201d he asked. \u201cDefinitely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are war crimes committed every day in the territories,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

So we return to the point I noted at the beginning of this column: Supporters of Israel were right in 2023 that whatever our views about the Middle East, we should be able to repudiate rape.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere the hell are you?\u201d Netanyahu asked<\/a> the international community then, demanding that it condemn sexual violence committed by what the Israeli government has called<\/a> the \u201cHamas rapist regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamas has indeed brutally violated human rights. Israeli officials should look to their own violations as well \u2014 in particular at what a 49-page United Nations report<\/a> last year called Israel\u2019s \u201csystematically\u201d subjecting Palestinians to \u201csexualized torture\u201d committed with at least \u201can implicit encouragement by the top civilian and military leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Think of it this way: The horrific abuse inflicted on Israeli women on Oct. 7 now happens to Palestinians day after day. It persists because of silence, indifference and the failure of American and Israeli officials alike to answer Netanyahu\u2019s query: Where the hell are you?<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original – rsn.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11\u00a0May 2026 –\u00a0Male and female Palestinians describe brutal sexual abuse at the hands of Israel\u2019s prison guards, soldiers, settlers and interrogators. It\u2019s a simple proposition: Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":316112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[3287,3729,1559,532,405,1854,101,100,1199,2242,87,865,1029,1966,88,2416,427,3534,2897,880,99,70,965,1025],"class_list":["post-316111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-anti-zionism","tag-ceasefire","tag-collective-punishment","tag-colonialism","tag-colonization","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-cultural-violence","tag-direct-violence","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-famine","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-hamas","tag-hunger","tag-israel","tag-israeli-occupation","tag-palestine","tag-palestinian-holocaust","tag-sociocide","tag-state-terrorism","tag-structural-violence","tag-usa","tag-war-crimes","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316111"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316115,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316111\/revisions\/316115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}