Yossi Schwartz ISL (RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine) 11.01.2025
“Since the establishment of “Israel’s” notorious Sde Teiman concentration camp, filled with thousands of Palestinian civilians from Gaza, rounded up and abducted from cities, refugee camps, schools and hospitals by the invading Zionist army as part and parcel of their genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza, those who are released have spoken about the horror of their experiences at the hands of the occupation soldiers. Palestinian survivors have testified about rape and sexual assault, starvation and denial of food, people being handcuffed 24/7, forced amputations of limbs due to torture, denial of medical care, beatings, noise and sound torture, “hooding” and binding of detainees, attacks by trained dogs, and all other forms of abuse and torture”[i]
“Palestinian survivor after survivor have spoken on the record about their experiences. At least 38 Palestinian detainees from Gaza held at Sde Teiman have been martyred under torture and denied medical treatment, even though the full scope of the crimes are not yet visible due to the secrecy surrounding the torture camp. Palestinian lawyer Khaled Mahajneh, the first lawyer to speak to detainees held at Sde Teiman recounted multiple instances of rape and sexual assault, electric shock torture, dangerous hygiene conditions (the journalist he visited was “covered in dirt and bird droppings”) and brutal beatings. Even CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, imperialist outlets that have eagerly promoted Zionist propaganda about its genocide in Gaza, have covered the horror that is Sde Teiman — and, indeed, the entire Zionist prison system.”[ii]
On July 29, 2024, “Dozens of Israeli protesters, including far-right members of the Knesset, clashed with military police after at least nine soldiers suspected of abusing a Palestinian prisoner were detained for questioning from the Sde Teiman detention facility in southern Israel.
The protesters waved Israeli flags and stormed through the facility’s gate on Monday to try to prevent the soldiers’ detention as they chanted “shame”. They defended the soldiers, saying they were doing their duty” [iii]
“A poll published on August 18 2024 by the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies surveys attitudes concerning various aspects of what Israel calls “Swords of Iron” — the genocide of the last ten months and counting.
The poll asks, among else, how people would want to handle the soldiers suspected of gang-raping Palestinian detainees at the Sde Teiman torture facility if it turned out that the suspicions were strong. 65%, almost two out of three Jewish Israelis, opposed criminal prosecution, and would prefer them be “handled in a disciplinary manner, by the commanding level only.” [iv]
“Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report on Monday, August 26 on the torture and abuse of healthcare workers in Israeli prisons. In the report, HRW stated that “Israeli forces have arbitrarily detained Palestinian healthcare workers in Gaza since October 2023, deported them to detention facilities in Israel, and tortured and ill-treated them.”
This latest report comes following a long series of accounts, testimonies, and investigations into Israeli torture and human rights abuses inside its detention facilities, both before and after the events of October 7.
“If the Israeli institutions truly intended to respect the law in good faith, they would have put an end to all the violations occurring in the prisons since the beginning of the war on Gaza. However, the Israeli prosecution and the Supreme Court refrained from intervening to stop the ongoing torture, even after reports surfaced of prisoners dying under brutal torture.”
“On August 13, 2024 the Israeli military prosecution and the military public defense decided to transfer five soldiers, suspected of raping a Palestinian prisoner at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention center, to home detention. The soldiers were placed under house arrest for 10 days after paying a bail of 5 thousand shekels (approximately 1,350 USD).
A statement from the Israeli army spokesperson noted that the soldiers would be interrogated next week, once the investigation is complete, and before charges are formally filed against them.
The prosecution argued that “these soldiers have families and do not pose a danger to the public, hence they should be released to their homes.”
This allegation coincides with similar arguments made by defense attorneys, stating that “there are difficulties in the course of the investigation to prove the charges.”
On August 13, the Israeli military prosecution and the military public defense decided to transfer five soldiers, suspected of raping a Palestinian prisoner at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention center, to home detention for 10 days. The prosecution argued that “these soldiers have families and do not pose a danger to the public, hence they should be released to their homes.”
This Israeli “sympathy” for the soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner—who was subsequently hospitalized with a ruptured bowel, lung damage, and broken ribs—culminated in a protest at the military facility. Dozens of Israelis stormed the Sde Teiman detention center on July 29 in protest of the Israeli military police’s arrest of the reserve soldiers accused of the gang rape.
The sympathy may have reached the point of “normalizing” the issue of raping Palestinian prisoners and even legitimizing it, even after Hebrew newspapers published a leaked video from the detention center. The footage shows reserve soldiers dragging a restrained prisoner, hiding him from the cameras behind riot shields, and then raping him”[v]
The rapist Zionist soldiers denied that they did any illegal act and claimed that the Palestinians are the rapists, but by then a picture showing the rape of the Palestinian prisoners was liked somehow to the press and it as published. So, the big question in Israel became not the rape and the torture but who is responsible for leaking the picture.
“The police are in possession of a correspondence in which Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi instructs the officer suspected of transferring the footage of the abuse of the Palestinian detainee from Sde Yemen to leak evidence from the interrogation of the suspects, including two videos from security cameras allegedly documenting the abuse of him, Haaretz learned on Friday. The correspondence was found on the officer’s mobile phone, which was detained this week for questioning.
In the correspondence between the two, which took place on August 6 last year, the MAG wrote to the officer to contact Channel 12 News reporter Guy Peleg. Later in the correspondence, the officer instructed the officer on how to deal with the reporter. According to a source involved in the details of the investigation, the MAG explained to the officer that the decision to contact Peleg was made in light of the widespread circulation of Channel 12 News. The conversation between the two is the main evidence the police have against Tomer-Yerushalmi.
The Military Police opened an investigation into the attack on its members during the arrest of suspects of abuse in the Yemeni field of Yehoshua (Josh) Breiner
After the conversation, the officer gave Peleg evidence from the investigation of the detainee’s abuse, including the suspects’ polygraph test, findings regarding the identity of the Palestinian, and later the two videos, which, according to the source, were compiled by Channel 12 News. The source added that the MAG decision was made after harsh criticism of her as a result of the investigation. “The MAG knew all along that she was the one who ordered the video to be leaked, and did not say a word,” the source said” [vi]
“The decision to leak the video documenting the abuse of the Palestinian detainee by members of Force 100 was made after a discussion held at the MAG Corps with the participation of Tomer-Yerushalmi’s representatives and representatives of the Military Prosecution. The participants examined whether the publication of the video would harm the investigation of the suspected soldiers, while the MAG Corps’ position needed to publish the matter in light of the allegations that files were being fabricated against the suspects. In the end, it was decided that the leak would not harm the investigation and that it would not cause harm to national security. The conclusion was forwarded to the MAG who ordered the transfer Clip. According to a source familiar with the details, the person who did not participate in the hearing was the deputy military advocate general, who said he did not know about the intention to publish the video.” [vii]
Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi, the Military Advocate General, is a Zionist and a general. From this point of view, we should ostensibly have a position that we have no interest in defending her. However, our position is to call for her defense to be made aware that by ordering the publication of the video footage incriminating Israeli soldiers and proving that they are abusing and raping the Palestinian prisoners, she has helped expose a big lie of Israel that condemns the Zionist army and proves who is really raping.
There is an analogy between her case and the case of Alfred Dreyfus
Alfred Dreyfus was a French army officer whose trial for treason began a 12-year controversy, known as the Dreyfus Affair, that deeply marked the political and social history of the French Third Republic[ys2] . The facts of the case are no longer in dispute. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jew and a captain in the French army, was falsely accused of spying for Germany, convicted by a military court, publicly degraded, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. The general staff, all too willing to convict Dreyfus, ignored the paucity of evidence and adamantly insisted on his guilt, even when the real culprit, the unscrupulous Major Esterhazy, was exposed. The case became a cause célèbre, with enduring political consequences.
The prominent socialist leader Jean Jaurès argued passionately that the affair was a matter of justice and human rights, issues no socialist could ignore. He recognized that the anti-Dreyfusard camp (composed of monarchists, the military, and the Catholic Church) represented a threat to the Republic itself and that the fight for Dreyfus’s innocence was also a fight for republican values against antisemitism and nationalism. Jaurès actively campaigned for Dreyfus’s cause through his speeches and writings, helping ensure a large part of the left aligned with republican ideals.
Jules Guesde (The Anti-Dreyfus, initially): In contrast, Jules Guesde and his followers initially believed the case was a conflict strictly within the ruling class and that socialists should not take sides. They held a distorted orthodox Marxist view that the working class should focus solely on the class struggle and not be distracted by the plight of a wealthy Jewish army captain.
Jean Jaurès opposed WWI, while Jules Guesde supported France in World War I. He joined the national unity government (known as the Union sacrée or “Sacred Union”) in August 1914 as a Minister without Portfolio and served as Minister of State until the end of 1916.
Without supporting the opportunism of Jean Jaurès who approved of Alexandre Millerand, and the socialist’s inclusion in the René Waldeck-Rousseau cabinet a popular Front, he was right on the Dreyfus affair. The wrong argument was that the case is an internal matter of the ruling class, and not as a problem that involves the working class.
[i] https://samidoun.net/2024/07/sde-teiman-the-true-face-of-the-zionist-project/
[ii] Ibid
[iii] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/29/israeli-far-right-politicians-protest-arrest-of-soldiers-suspected-of-abuse
[iv] https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/65-of-israeli-jews-oppose-criminal-prosecution-for-soldiers-suspected-of-raping-palestinian-detainees/
[v] https://raseef22.net/english/article/1098222-ten-days-of-house-arrest-for-soldiers-whers-who-raped-a-palestinian-prisoner-how
[vi] Joshua (Josh) Breinrell in Haaretz newspaper October 31, 2025Updated at 19:16
[vii] Ibid