“I Wished for Death”: New evidence of torture by Israel as recently freed Palestinian women (and men) recount being raped by Israeli soldiers.

“At dawn I heard the soldiers shouting, saying that morning prayers were forbidden, and I think it was the fourth day after my arrest from Gaza. The soldiers moved me to a place I didn’t know because my eyes were blindfolded, and they ordered me to take off my clothes. I did so. They put me on a metal table, pressed my chest and head against it, cuffed my hands to the end of the bed, and pulled my legs apart forcefully. I felt a penis penetrating my anus and a man raping me. I started screaming, and they beat me on my back and head while I was blindfolded. I felt the man who was raping me ejaculate inside my anus. I kept screaming and being beaten, and I could hear a camera—so I believe they were filming me. The rape lasted about 10 minutes. After that, they left me for an hour in the same position, with my hands cuffed to the bed with metal handcuffs, my face on the bed, my feet on the floor, and I was completely naked.

Again, after an hour, I was raped fully in the same position, with penetration into my vagina, and I was beaten while I screamed. There were several soldiers; I heard them laughing and the camera clicking as it took pictures. This rape was very quick and there was no ejaculation. During the rape they beat me with their hands on my head and back.

I cannot describe what I felt; I wished for death every moment. After they raped me, I was left alone in the same room, hands still cuffed to the bed and without clothes for many hours. I could hear the soldiers outside speaking Hebrew and laughing. Later, I was raped again vaginally. I screamed, but they beat me whenever I tried to resist. After more than an hour, I’m not sure about the time, a masked soldier entered, removed my blindfold, lifted his face covering; he had white skin and was tall. He asked if I spoke English; I said no. He said he was Russian and ordered me to masturbate his penis. I refused, and he hit me in the face after raping me.

That day I was raped twice. I was left naked the whole day in the room where I spent three days. On the first day I was raped twice; on the second day I was raped twice; on the third day I remained without clothes while they looked at me through the door slit and filmed me. One soldier said they would post my photos on social media. While I was in the room, my period started; then they told me to put on clothes and transferred me to another room.”

In another incident, A.A., a 35-year-old Palestinian man and father, was arrested while at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in March 2024. He told PCHR’s field researcher about the brutal torture he endured during 19 months of detention, including forced stripping, obscene insults, threats of rape against him and his family, culminating in his rape by a trained dog inside the Sde Teiman military camp. He stated:

“I was moved to a section I didn’t know inside Sde Teiman. During the first weeks there, amid repeated suppression operations, I was taken with a group of detainees in a degrading manner to a place far from the cameras—a passage between sections. We were stripped completely. Soldiers brought dogs that climbed on us and urinated on me. Then one of the dogs raped me—the dog did it deliberately, knowing exactly what it was doing, and inserted its penis into my anus, while the soldiers kept beating and torturing us and spraying pepper spray in our faces. The dog’s assault lasted about three minutes; the overall suppression lasted about three hours. Because of the severe beating, all of us sustained injuries across our bodies. I suffered a severe psychological breakdown and deep humiliation; I lost control because I could never have imagined experiencing such a thing. Afterward, a doctor stitched a wound in my head caused by the torture—seven stitches without anesthesia. I also suffered bruises, fractures in my limbs, and a rib fracture.”