Thread by @m7mdkurd

“[The Israeli soldier] secured my legs and tried to rape me with a stick.”

THREAD: Systemic weaponization of sexual violence against Palestinian political prisoners is not an aberration—the Zionist regime has long used rape, torture as a means to forcibly extract confessions.

“[the most difficult moment] was when they stripped me naked and brought my father [into the interrogation room] and tried to force him to sleep with me”

This is a courageous testimony from Rasmea Odeh who, like Aisha Odeh (in the above clip), was incarcerated in the 1960s.

“She [the Israeli soldier] was worse than the men. She was wearing a thin, high-heeled shoe… She stomped in my stomach while I was thrown on the floor… She said, ‘I am preparing you so that a [soldier] can come sleep with you.’”

“I became temporarily paralyzed to [due to the torture] … the first question that my sister asked me, before even greeting me, was ‘did they really dishonor [violate] you?’”

I sourced these clips from two documentaries* where various Palestinian female revolutionaries and former political prisoners courageously recount the abject horror they confronted in Zionist dungeons.

*“Women in Struggle” (2004, dir. Buthina Canaan Khoury, available on ) and “Sing Your Tale, Little Bird” (shot in 1993, released in 2007, dir. Arab Loutfi, available on YouTube …)cultureunplugged.com

I hesitated to share these testimonials, even though they are publicly available, because these stories are serious, sensitive and heartbreaking—to retell them is to relive them. I do not want to share them as a “rebuttal.” It takes unimaginable strength to not only survive such a brutal act of violence but to share your story, despite the social stigma, the racism and smear campaigns, and despite the risk of getting rearrested. These women recognized that they have an obligation to the truth, and so do we.