Zein Khalil and Rania Abushamala<\/p>\n
01 August 2026\u2022Update: 01 August 2026<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s extremist national security minister taunted a Palestinian woman prisoner after she complained about harsh detention conditions and a lack of basic necessities, telling her that \u201cprison is not a hotel.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exchange, posted by Itamar Ben-Gvir himself on Telegram on Friday, appeared in a video filmed inside an Israeli prison.<\/p>\n
Speaking through an interpreter, Itamar Ben-Gvir asked the prisoner about her well-being. She said she was not doing well and that she had developed depression and suffered psychological harm.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow are the detention conditions here?\u201d Ben-Gvir then asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no good food, no clean water, nothing,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe food should not be good. This is not a hotel,\u201d Ben-Gvir said. \u201cThose who do things should consider the consequences. Anyone who commits a crime must learn, especially if it is against the people of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a hotel. It used to be, but it no longer is. You should think about what you did,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Ben-Gvir has become notorious for racist, belittling remarks on Palestinians, such as saying in 2023: \u201cThe right of me, my wife, and kids to travel around the West Bank is more important than that of the Arabs.\u201d<\/p>\n
This May, his office released a video of him taunting participants in a humanitarian aid flotilla to Gaza which was illegally attacked in international waters. While forcing the humanitarian detainees to kneel with their hands tied while listening to the Israeli national anthem, Ben-Gvir told them: \u201cWelcome to Israel. We are the landlords here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since taking office in late 2022, Ben-Gvir has tightened conditions for Palestinian prisoners, including measures involving food deprivation, medical neglect, torture, and solitary confinement.<\/p>\n
He recently proposed putting crocodiles outside prisons holding Palestinians as a security measure.<\/p>\n
Israel holds around 9,500 Palestinian prisoners, including 94 women and more than 350 children, who face starvation, torture, and medical neglect, according to Palestinian and Israeli rights groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zein Khalil and Rania Abushamala 01 August 2026\u2022Update: 01 August 2026 Israel\u2019s extremist national security minister taunted a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":570126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43,180804],"class_list":["post-570125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-sitekeywords"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=570125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/570126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=570125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=570125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=570125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}