I Spoke To Palestinians Tortured By Israel. What They Endured Is Unimaginable
"I just returned from hell."
“This call is being recorded,” an automated Hebrew voice recording recited when I recently tried to reach Abu Hamza, a friend in Gaza. He had just been released from Israel’s now notorious Sde Teiman prison. He heard the voice recording too. “Every time I speak on the phone, the recording comes on. But I don’t care,” he said.
“How are you?” I asked, painfully aware of how coldly formulaic my query sounded given what I already knew of the unspeakable ordeal he had been through. What do you ask someone somehow surviving amid a genocide? How do you ‘check in’ on someone twice displaced, whose home is destroyed, who now lives in a tent, and who has witnessed massacre after massacre, including the killing of his own family members?
“Glad to be alive,” he answered. “I just returned from hell.”
It strains my imagination to conjure what could be worse than what he already has endured, but he began to describe his monthslong detention in the Israeli army base turned torture camp.
Abu Hamza was picked up by the Israeli army after he fled with his wife, children, and grandchildren from the northern Gaza Strip to the south, crossing through what Israel cynically designated a “safe passage.” Far from being safe, he found the road riddled with dead Palestinians. At one “checkpoint” – set up in early November – soldiers ordered him into a ditch at gunpoint and, from there, later transported him, blindfolded and shackled, to the prison camp in Naqab (Negev).
Abu Hamza told me about months of torture, of being blindfolded, with his body folded – knees and head to the ground for days on end; of being forced to drink urine and salt water whenever he requested water; of being denied food only to be then forced to eat food with maggots (he lost 30 kg – about 66 lbs) during his three-month abduction; of only being permitted to shower once every 50 days; of being forced to wear the same clothes for three straight months; of being beaten with a baton to the point of unconsciousness several times; and of Israeli soldiers breaking his hands and then making him crawl on all fours.
“They enjoyed it,” he said. “I could hear them laughing and howling as they beat us.” He could hear my voice crack as I tried to hold back my tears while speaking with him. “It’s ok,” he told me. “I was lucky. I got out. Others were killed while there.” Throughout our call, the recorded Hebrew warning message repeated again and again.
“Engineered Torture Methods”
Days later, I navigated various new and old checkpoints scattered across the occupied West Bank to visit a friend whose cousin was recently released by Israel from Sde Teiman. Because I am a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, I am among the privileged few who can travel in and out of Israeli checkpoints. The vast majority of Palestinians are denied the Israeli permits required to exit the West Bank. While traveling, I noticed that Israeli settlers had set up a new checkpoint, stopping Palestinian cars (those with green license plates) while letting those with yellow license plates (like mine) pass.
My friend’s cousin, a young man named Bilal, had, by October 2023, been imprisoned for months. Locked up by Israel repeatedly as a young teen, Bilal, by 19, had spent more than three years of his life in Israeli prisons, always without being charged with any crime. In November 2023, he was “randomly selected” to be sent to the Sde Teiman prison camp, where he, too, endured months of torture. His account is eerily similar to what Abu Hamza told me. Bilal was tortured so severely that his captors offered medical treatment. “The doctor told me he could give me something to ease the pain but then added that it may be the last thing I ever ingest. I knew what he meant, so [I] decided to tolerate the pain of broken ribs and vomiting blood.”
Bilal said some Palestinians had been injected with foreign substances. He then described what he called the “engineered torture methods” designed to break Palestinians. “What they did to us was methodically studied. They tortured us in ways to demonstrate their superiority and control over us; they were not seeking information. They want to show us that they have the power to determine our lives. At one point, I realized they were counting our daily calorie consumption (1,706 calories) to make sure we had enough.” Israel has similarly counted calories in Gaza, too – and still does. Bilal, too, lost over 30 kg after five months in prison.
“Of Course Israelis See It”
Abu Hamza and Bilal are just two of the thousands of Palestinians Israel has abducted and tortured in Sde Teiman and other prisons.
Far from being a secret, Israeli soldiers have boasted proudly about these prisons and their mistreatment of Palestinians, often posting images and videos of tortured Palestinians on social media.
During my visit with Bilal, a European international NGO worker also visited to inquire about prison conditions. Clearly appalled and stunned by what she heard, she said: “I am not sure the Israeli public is seeing what is happening.”
“Not see?” Bilal replied. “Of course they see it. They were joking about whose videos got more views and likes. They want Israelis to see what they are doing to us. They want to show how tough they are with us, how superior they are. That’s the whole point.”
I cannot help but agree with Bilal. Day after day, well-intentioned people ask me whether Israelis see the endless stream of torture videos displayed on TikTok and Instagram. The assumption behind these inquiries appears to be that if Israelis knew, they would be outraged and would act to halt it. But Israelis do see the videos; they know what is happening, and there is precious little evidence of outrage beyond baseless, boilerplate claims that Israel will “investigate” any wrongdoings. In fact, many Israelis appear proud of this conduct. Indeed, the videos and evident celebration of abuse serve to make many feel superior, even though they are, in fact, losing on all fronts.
After nearly nine genocidal months, Israel has lost much of global public opinion and, on the ground, has demonstrated its inability to achieve any of its stated “goals.” Despite dropping more bombs on Gaza – and at a faster pace – than have been dropped anywhere in modern history (reportedly three times the explosive power that was dropped on Hiroshima), Palestinian resistance (not just Hamas) persists.
It shocks the Israeli public to see that small groups of guerrilla fighters continue to blow up Israeli tanks and not surrender despite being starved and bombed and the fact that Gaza’s health system has collapsed. Israeli leaders are now slowly trying to acclimate Israelis to the reality that they will never “win,” with military officials such as national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi coming out to say that Hamas cannot be defeated. Faced with this knowledge – and knowing that they have lost – Israelis shroud themselves in the false narrative that they remain strong and superior, an illusion evidently fed by torturing kids like Bilal and older men like Abu Hamza.
‘Blacklisted’
Late last month, in Breach Media, former CBC producer Molly Schumann (who happens to be the child of a Holocaust survivor) penned an explosive piece on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s deliberate silencing of Palestinian voices. The asserted silencing took different forms, ranging from “verifying the deaths” of on-air Palestinian guests’ family members or qualifying with disclaimers in their interviews that the CBC could not independently verify interviewees’ claims. Other methods included allowing Israeli apologists to assert false claims without CBC journalists ever challenging them while conveniently editing out and not airing statements by Palestinians speaking about genocide or starvation.
A blacklist – with my name included among others – also was alleged to have circulated among CBC managers and staff to ensure that bookers did not contact us for interviews. In the piece, Schumann asserts that commotion ensued in the newsroom after I was interviewed for a news piece and that my contact details were deleted from the CBC database.
I was not surprised when this piece was published. Yes, Canadians are friendly and polite, but Canadian media is, at times and in my decades of experience, even more Zionist-leaning than U.S. media. When I saw the article, I contacted the CBC, who assured me that there was no such "blacklist.” But I checked my calendar to see when my last CBC television interview was and whether the timeline sketched in Schumann’s account was correct. Sure enough, it seemed to; my last CBC television interview coincided precisely with the dates Schumann cited.
In rapid response to Schumann’s piece, Brodie Fenlon, CBC News editor-in-chief, claimed in a statement that the article was false, that there is no blacklist, and wrote: “We’ve received hundreds of public complaints through our ombudsman and standards office about our reporting on this conflict since Oct. 7. About 55 per cent of complainants thought CBC was unfair to Israel, and about 45 per cent thought CBC was unfair to Palestinians.” But if that is the CBC “test,” all it demonstrates is that one side is more vocal in voicing complaints, not that there is any bias or other problem with coverage.
To understand what is happening in Gaza is to speak to those affected by the bombs – Palestinians. It is to cover what it means to try to stay alive as the world’s remaining superpower backs the raining down of bombs on the most densely populated place on Earth. It means listening to Palestinians as they describe the sheer hell and impossibility of trying to protect and feed their kids, all while being engaged like combatants and blockaded, with no water, electricity, food, fuel, and medicine. It means to listen to what it means to have a collapsed medical system and the country that seeks your destruction in charge of what meager supplies are allowed in. It means listening to refugees and children whom the world has abandoned.
As I have watched this genocide unfold for the past eight months, I often find myself thinking about the Nakba in 1948. The Nakba was not televised; genocides are generally not broadcast, and there has always been an excuse that “we didn’t know.” Here, of course, this genocide is being broadcast live, and there is no way that one can say they “didn’t know” – unless one is consuming news media like the CBC, which appears to be trying to make sure that you “don’t know” by suppressing the ugly truth of genocide. History is not going to look favorably on media outlets that chose to hide the truth and give Israel a pass while using the percentage of complaints as a litmus test for fair coverage.
Seen in Israel
Look out for my ‘Diary from a Palestinian in Israel’ every month.
I don't really know what to say anymore!
I'm so ashamed that my country is not only not saying anything to all of this, but supports the Israeli state as if there's no tomorrow. And I feel every time, these things like the torture sites come out and are reported on the support grows even stronger.
The western media and most western governments look away, although we know there are horrors occurring in Gaza and the West Bank. I cannot fathom the depravity of those that are complicit in these horrors, actively support it (such as the US government), or refuse to cover it (most western media). This behavior exposes the cynicism and hypocrisy of the West's human rights "values".