Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) stated that the crimes committed by Israeli occupation authorities against Palestinian prisoners have reached an unprecedented level of brutality, following a stream of documented testimonies revealing systematic rape and sexual torture in Israeli prisons and detention centres, in flagrant violation of all international norms and conventions, and constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity.
AOHR UK affirmed that the victims’ testimonies provide irrefutable evidence that these atrocities are not single incidents but part of a deliberate, institutional policy implemented under orders from senior officials within Israel’s security and military establishment. It added that the aim is the physical and psychological destruction of Palestinian detainees.
AOHR UK stressed that the testimonies from released prisoners, women, children, and men, contain harrowing accounts of rape inside interrogation facilities, the use of objects and solid instruments in assaults, and the involvement of trained police dogs in acts of sexual violence. Victims also described being filmed during assaults for the purposes of humiliation and blackmail.
One released female prisoner recounted being raped repeatedly, filmed, and threatened with the release of the footage; another detainee described being raped by a police dog inside Sde Teiman detention centre, while another was assaulted with a wooden stick and later forced to lick it. Others also spoke of being raped with bottles or subjected to group assaults, some of which resulted in the victims’ deaths.
AOHR UK highlighted the disturbing absence of moral outrage within Israeli society regarding these atrocities. The leaked footage from Sde Teiman showing soldiers raping a Palestinian detainee exposed the depth of moral decay within Israel’s institutions. Public discussion focused not on the horror of the crime but on how the footage had been leaked. Instead of condemning and prosecuting the perpetrators, Israeli authorities pursued the whistleblower, while the soldiers involved received sympathy and support from broad sectors of Israeli society, which reflects a serious moral and societal complicity in war crimes.
This collective and official complicity was further underscored when Israel sent a delegation of 28 experts and lawyers to Geneva to defend its record before the UN Committee Against Torture. The world watched as the delegation denied all accusations, attempting to peddle a false narrative portraying Israel as a state that “respects the rule of law and human rights.” AOHR UK stated that such coordinated denial lays bare the institutionalised criminality entrenched within Israel’s state and society.
AOHR UK further stressed that these appalling acts, some captured in leaked footage from inside prisons, confirm that rape and sexual violence have become official instruments of repression employed by the occupation as part of its collective punishment of Palestinians. This comes alongside increasingly draconian legislation, most recently the proposed law to execute Palestinian prisoners, which forms part of the same systematic policy of physical and moral extermination.
AOHR UK lamented that international and UN responses remain woefully inadequate despite the gravity of these crimes. Previous statements by UN Special Rapporteurs on torture and sexual violence have explicitly described what occurs in Israeli prisons as “sexually-based torture prohibited under international law,” demanding accountability, yet these condemnations have never translated into concrete measures, such as opening prisons to international inspection or prosecuting those responsible.
AOHR UK asserted that the paralysis of UN and Security Council mechanisms in the face of Israel’s crimes has rendered international statements little more than verbal cover for political impotence, particularly as the United States continues to wield its veto to shield Israel from accountability or sanctions. This, it added, has emboldened Israel to persist in its crimes, bolstered by extensive local and Western media campaigns aimed at denial and distortion.
AOHR UK warned that continued international silence over rape and sexual torture, now coupled with the legalisation of executions, entrenches Israel’s bloody course and normalises such crimes under a regime of total impunity.
It called for the establishment of a specialised committee including doctors and social workers to support victims and encourage all survivors of torture, especially sexual violence, to testify despite the threats they have received from the occupation. AOHR UK also urged the formation of an independent international commission of inquiry into rape and sexual violence in Israeli prisons, with all evidence submitted to the International Criminal Court as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Finally, AOHR UK appealed to the states party to the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture to uphold their legal obligations by pursuing the perpetrators wherever they may be and by taking decisive action to save more than 9,000 prisoners enduring horrifying forms of torture daily.
It also called on international media institutions, many of which habitually echo Israeli propaganda, to demonstrate basic standards of professionalism and humanity by treating victims’ testimonies as human, not political, accounts, and by giving them due prominence in global discourse. Ignoring these crimes, the organisation warned, constitutes complicity that paves the way for further atrocities, as Israel’s crimes grow ever more horrific while the world remains silent and inert.
