![\"Mohammed](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mohammed-Zaki-Al-Bakri-copy-1780484598.jpg\")
Mohammed Zaki al-Bakri [Al Jazeera]<\/p>\n
No soldiers or guards have been convicted of sexual abuse of Palestinians. Israel detained 10 security officers after a video of the rape of a prisoner was leaked<\/a> from the Sde Teiman detention camp in the Negev desert in July 2024. But gangs of right-wing protesters, including legislators, attempted to storm the facility where the guards were being held in a bid to free them.<\/p>\n Last July, Israel\u00a0dropped all charges<\/a> against the guards. The female officer who allegedly leaked the video of the attack, Major-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, was subsequently arrested<\/a>. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed her \u201ccrime\u201d \u2013 sharing footage of the rape by Israeli soldiers \u2013 as the \u201cmost severe public relations attack\u201d on the country since its founding.<\/p>\n UN rapporteur Albanese said the intention behind the sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners was clear: not simply to inflict pain, but to destroy the victim and their sense of self-worth.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is something deeper in the sense that torture, especially rape and other forms of sexual torture, destroys the mind of the person, especially in the capacity to rebuild or enjoy his or her intimacy,\u201d she told Al Jazeera, recounting interviews with two survivors of rape.<\/p>\n Asked in the Knesset, Israel\u2019s parliament, in July 2024 whether it was ever legitimate to rape a prisoner, Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Netanyahu\u2019s Likud party, shouted: \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf he is a Nukhba [Hamas fighter], everything is legitimate to do, everything.\u201d<\/p>\n Casual labourer Job, which is how Al Jazeera has chosen to credit him, never thought there was anything particularly noteworthy about his life.<\/p>\n Like al-Bakri, Job thought he was an everyday middle-aged family man from Gaza. Both placed their children\u2019s future above their own. Both prioritised their families\u2019 safety since Israel launched its genocidal war in October 2023. Both had become accustomed to shepherding their families through the checkpoints, bombings and forced displacements that defined daily life in the besieged enclave.<\/p>\n That changed when both were taken prisoner, tortured and repeatedly raped by Israeli soldiers and guard dogs.<\/p>\n As with al-Bakri, Job\u2019s memory of his rape is equally clear. \u201cFemale soldiers entered my room,\u201d he told Al Jazeera. \u201cThey put iron handcuffs on my hands behind me. They untied the handcuffs from my legs and put on more handcuffs. Then they stripped me of my clothes.\u201d<\/p>\n He was pinned to the ground with boots on his back and neck, while the female soldiers raped him using artificial objects.<\/p>\n \u201cThe soldiers around them were applauding and filming the scene. They were filming the rape scene.\u201d<\/p>\n Job\u2019s rape and sexual torture continued, all while being questioned for any knowledge of the Hamas-led attack of which he knew nothing.<\/p>\n The attack of October 7, 2023, during which 1,139 people were killed and about 250<\/a> abducted, ruptured much of Israeli society and assumptions about the relationship with Palestinians in the occupied territory.<\/p>\n Through endless loops on rolling news, the trauma of the attacks echoed throughout Israeli society, as the political class sought to amplify the harm inflicted upon Israel that day.<\/p>\n Recalling the events of his capture, Job recalled being blindfolded, tortured, trampled upon and beaten, all the while being questioned on the events of October 7, despite having no connection to what unfolded that day.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were telling us: \u2018You know God and the Quranic verse, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. As you sow, so shall you reap,\u2019\u201d he recalled. Israeli soldiers told him: \u201cYou entered our lands, the Israeli lands, and invaded them. You raped and you did this and you did that\u201d.<\/p>\n Al-Bakri was given a number for a name and described being beaten when he attempted to identify himself in any other way. \u201cYou are here as a prisoner of war,\u201d he recalled being told. \u201cYou came here because of the destruction you caused.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to rape, al-Bakri said, he and other prisoners were attacked with dogs, and what he described as sound bombs intended to cause disorientation.<\/p>\n \u201cYou had to sleep on your stomach, hands tied and eyes blindfolded, while they walked dogs over you and kicked you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Albanese told Al Jazeera that similar accounts of mistreatment and torture in the wake of the October 7 attack are common. \u201cBrutality has escalated to an unprecedented level,\u201d she said. \u201cIt became vindictive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRegular practices have been severe beating, slapping, burning, broken bones, broken teeth, sexual violence, and rape,\u201d she said. \u201cSexual penetration through objects, both bodily and other objects, like something that is recurrent, is the use of metal rods, cutting metal that might be knives, metal detectors, bottles.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of the Israeli soldiers accused of taking part in the torture, sexual abuse and rape of Palestinian prisoners were raised in societies described by observers within Israel as having been conditioned to see Palestinians as somehow undeserving of human respect.<\/p>\n Organisations such as B\u2019Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel have described how many Israelis spend their entire lives without ever encountering Palestinians, a people destined by state policy to attend separate education systems.<\/p>\n Notions of Palestinians<\/a> as being somehow outside the category of a recognisable people run deep in Israeli political culture, said sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani. That reaches back from the present to even the British Mandate for Palestine, when officials described it as a \u201cland without a people\u201d to the present, where they can be killed, raped and tortured with apparent impunity.<\/p>\n \u201cBy depicting the entire population as human animals and terrorists, and invoking the notion of human shields to justify massacres, Israel has effectively painted a target on the back of an entire civilian population as such,\u201d Albanese told Al Jazeera. \u201cEven children portrayed as terrorists in the making describe an overwhelming fear of imminent death.\u201d<\/p>\n Israeli President Isaac Herzog had no issue with \u201cunequivocally\u201d blaming all Palestinians for the Hamas-led attack on October 7, telling reporters: \u201cIt is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It\u2019s not true [that] this rhetoric about civilians not [being] aware, not involved. It\u2019s absolutely not true.\u201d<\/p>\n In the wake of the attack, former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel was fighting what he called \u201chuman animals\u201d and ordered a \u201ccomplete siege\u201d on the men, women and children there. Others, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have been consistent offenders, routinely referring to Palestinians as terrorists or framing large segments of Palestinian society in broadly criminal or extremist terms, particularly in relation to Gaza and the occupied West Bank.<\/p>\n \u201cDehumanising language plays a key role in enterprises like a genocide or other forms of collective punishment and abuse,\u201d Albanese said, \u201cbecause, in order to treat the other as a subhuman, you need to see him or her as a subhuman.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite what analysts have described as an established pattern of rape and sexual abuse against Palestinians, Israel has yet to receive legal censure from any multinational body or face sanctions for its actions in Gaza or the occupied West Bank. Attempts by international bodies, including the UN\u2019s bid to investigate the allegations of sexual abuse in January 2025, were actively blocked\u00a0by Israel.<\/p>\n Specific abuses \u2013 from forced nudity and threats of rape to assaults targeting genitals \u2013 have become standard practice for the Israeli forces, the UN has found, carried out with explicit or implicit approval from senior officials. Ben-Gvir, for instance, has decried investigations<\/a> into the rape at Sde Teiman as \u201cshameful\u201d, while Defence Minister Israel Katz has described attempts to hold soldiers accountable for rape as a \u201cblood libel\u201d.<\/p>\n The torture of Palestinians has been glorified in Israel, Albanese remarked. \u201cYou have had not only Israeli officials and leaders boasting about how badly Palestinians were treated \u2026 Settlers and citizens alike have been taken to detention centres to observe, to watch, or to even [take part] in the humiliation inflicted on Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n Triestino Mariniello, a professor at Liverpool John Moores University and part of the legal team representing Gaza\u2019s victims at the ICC, pointed out what he described as a \u201cvery important difference under international criminal law between isolated acts of sexual violence and acts that are part of a systematic pattern against civilians\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe former may constitute war crimes. When the same acts are organised and widespread, they amount to crimes against humanity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThese crimes take place in state detention centres and military detention centres. The fact that perpetrators are not tried, prosecuted, or convicted shows an institutional policy behind their commission,\u201d Mariniello added.<\/p>\n To be sure, Palestinians continue to resist, Albanese said. \u201cThe Palestinians are still fighting not to be erased, not to be made extinct as a people with a capacity to determine themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Right-wing](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/2024-07-29T140941Z_1302201514_RC2159ATGNAF_RTRMADP_3_ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS-MILITARY-INVESTIGATION-1722.jpeg\")
Right-wing protesters at the Sde Teiman detention facility after Israeli military police arrived as part of an investigation into the suspected rape of a Palestinian detainee in July 2024 [Jill Gralow\/Reuters]<\/p>\n![\"Francesca](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Francesca-Albanese_03-copy-1780484589.jpg\")
Francesca Albanese [Al Jazeera]Surviving genocide and rape<\/p>\n![\"Ayoub\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Job_02-copy-1780484595.jpg\")
Job [Al Jazeera]Rage<\/p>\n![\"One](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1E3A0175-2-1702307496.jpg\")
One of the Palestinian men arrested and tortured for days by Israeli soldiers shows the number he was marked by, and his hand swollen from handcuffs [Abdelhakim Abu Riash\/Al Jazeera]Dehumanisation<\/p>\n![\"Itamar](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AFP__20221026__32M84FX__v1__HighRes__IsraelVoteCampaign-1718629643.jpg\")
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have been accused of consistently deploying racist language to dehumanise Palestinians [File: Gil Cohen-Magen\/AFP]Impunity<\/p>\n