Thread by @HediViterbo

Palestinians are reportedly being raped in Israeli custody.

Israeli forces have a long record of sexually abusing #Palestinians (and others).

A thread 🧵

(Content warning: severe rape & sexual assault)

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#Palestine #Gaza #WestBank

During a massacre in 1948, Israeli forces raped several #Palestinians.

Documents that were previously available in the Israeli state archive mention "3 rapes", including one of a "14-year-old girl".

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But Israel has hidden some of these previously public documents.

In an interview with @haaretzcom, officials admitted that they deliberately concealed documents to protect Israel’s reputation, discredit critics, and prevent Palestinian unrest:



3/30 haaretz.com/israel-news/20…

As a result, most instancesof sexual abuse by Israeli forces are probably hidden from the public:



The cases we do know about are extremely distressing.

4/30 haaretz.com/israel-news/20…

For example, in 1949, an Israeli army unit captured a Palestinian girl and forced her to shower naked in front of them.

Over the next three days, they gang-raped her. Then, they killed her:



5/30 theguardian.com/world/2003/nov…

More recently, in 2000, Mustafa Dirani (the former head of the Lebanese Amal movement) was raped by his Israeli captors while being imprisoned without trial or charge:



6/30 jpost.com/israel/report-…

In 2000, Dirani filed a lawsuit to the Israeli Supreme Court, seeking compensation for his rape.

15 years later, the Israeli court dismissed his lawsuit.

The court cited a legal rule against examining an enemy's claim during wartime:



7/30 ynetnews.com/articles/0,734…

In 2010, @DCIPalestine reports that Israeli forces sexually assaulted, or threatened of sexaul assault, 14 Palestinian children:



In 2015, a study describes how Israeli forces sexually harassed / abused 60 Palestinian men:



8/30 reliefweb.int/report/occupie…
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26718999

In 2016, Israel secretly convicted an officer of raping and sexually harassing a Palestinian woman on multiple occasions.

The details of the case were only revealed 5 years later:



9/30 haaretz.com/israel-news/20…

In 2017, an Israeli prison officer was convicted of raping and sexually harassing an imprisoned Palestinian man.

The Palestinian couldn’t resist, because he was medicated:



10/30 nevo.co.il/psika_html/mec…

In 2018, two Israeli soldiers were detained on suspicion of sexually assaulting Palestinian women:



11/30 haaretz.com/israel-news/20…

In 2021, @DCIPalestine publishes a report describing how Israeli interrogators had blindfolded, kicked, beaten, and raped a 15-year-old Palestinian boy using an object:



12/30 dci-palestine.org/israeli_interr…

According to this former U.S. official, @DCIPalestine told the State Department about the rape.

Then, the U.S. asked Israel about these allegations.

The next day, Israel broke into the NGO’s office, confiscated its computers, and outlawed it:



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https://x.com/amanpour/status/1731745533474074663

In July 2023, @save_children finds that some Palestinian children "report violence of a sexual nature" while in Israeli military detention:



14/30 savethechildren.net/news/stripped-…

Then, in November 2023, an @amnesty report describes how a Palestinian woman in the #WestBank was detained, blindfolded, and threatened with rape by Israeli forces:



15/30 amnesty.org/en/latest/news…

And then, in December 2023, Israeli online magazine @972mag reports that Israeli prison officers are torturing, humiliating, and threatening #Palestinians with rape.

Many of those Palestinians were in prison without trial or charge:



16/30 972mag.com/palestinians-a…

One Palestinian woman tells @BBCNews at the time:

"I was handcuffed and blindfolded. They threatened to rape me ... It was clear the goal was to intimidate me".



17/30 bbc.co.uk/news/world-mid…

In January 2024, @Addameer reports that detained Palestinian women are often sexually harassed, threatened with rape, and strip-searched.

An 18-year-old Palestinian guy also tells the NGO that the Israeli prison staff photographed him naked:



18/30 addameer.org/sites/default/…

In February 2024, UN experts describe these allegations as "credible".

They add: "Palestinian women and girls ... have also been subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault … At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped":



19/30 ohchr.org/en/press-relea…

That same month, both @PHRIsrael & @save_children publish reports, describing more cases of #Palestinians (men, women, and children) who were raped, sexually harassed, or threatened with sexual violence in Israeli custody:





20/30 phr.org.il/wp-content/upl…
savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-cen…

Then, in March 2024, @UNRWA publishes a report on Israel's widespread abuse of detained #Palestinians from #Gaza, including sexual assault, torture, and beatings:



21/30 theguardian.com/world/2024/mar…

The following month, @haaretzcom interviews a Palestinian who was jailed without a trial or charge.

He describes how Israeli prison guards abused and assaulted him and other #Palestinians, including by repeatedly kicking their testicles:



22/30 haaretz.com/israel-news/tw…

In May & June 2024, @CNN & @nytimes publish reports on abuse at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility:





A @972mag report specifically mentions instances of rape and sexual assault at the facility:



23/30 edition.cnn.com/2024/05/10/mid…
web.archive.org/web/2024060604…
972mag.com/sde-teiman-pri…

A human rights lawyer who visited the Sde Teiman detention facility says:

"The situation there is more horrific than anything [the Americans did at] … Abu Ghraib [prison in Iraq] and [the U.S.] Guantánamo [detention camp in Cuba]".

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In fact, there are many important similarities and links between Israeli & U.S. torture, as discussed in these two articles:





25/30 eprints.soas.ac.uk/18371/1/Viterb…
repository.essex.ac.uk/19541/8/Viterb…

Now, Israeli soldiers are suspected of brutally raping a Palestinian man using sharp objects:



One Israeli minister has called them "heroic warriors". Another says they "should get full backing":





26/30 addameer.org/news/5382
ynetnews.com/article/hkfcjm…
aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/29…

The Israeli military also has a long record of soldiers sexually abusing their comrades, as part of their hazing rituals.

Since soldiers sexually abuse each other, it's not hard to believe that they're also sexually abusing #Palestinians, sometimes in very similar ways.

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Hazing practices in the Israeli military reportedly include blindfolding, handcuffing, beating, requiring soldiers to insert objects into their anuses, and calling them derogatory sexual names:



Sounds familiar?

28/30 cambridge.org/core/books/abs…

Israel and its allies often try to deny, downplay, or discredit Palestinian allegations, as detailed here:



Also, the Israeli military has a long record of lying, as documented in this thread:



29/30cambridge.org/core/books/abs…

https://x.com/HediViterbo/status/1721468176892850589

But if the requirement to believe rape victims truly applies, then it should apply across the board, regardless of the victims' nationality and race.

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