Israel’s Prisoners: Rape as Policy
Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons have been raped, castrated, and in some cases tortured to death, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor says in a new report. Others suffered permanent loss of reproductive or excretory function. These are not isolated acts. They are systematic policy.
“Another Genocide Behind Walls” draws on firsthand testimonies from Gaza detainees released in recent weeks and months. It documents what the organization calls an unprecedented escalation in sexual violence since October 7, 2023. After that date, every prior restraint on violence inside detention facilities fell away.
Released detainees gave consistent accounts: direct rape, assault with objects, and sustained torture directed at prisoners’ genitals. All aimed at breaking resistance.
Torture sessions were filmed. Groups of security personnel attended.
The organized, performative nature of the abuse confirms its institutional character, the report says. Men and boys endured extreme sexual abuse that destroyed their physical integrity. Euro-Med Monitor says the violence deliberately targeted detainees’ reproductive capacity and amounted to systematic humiliation, made worse by detention conditions that caused lasting harm.
Israel’s justice system has failed to provide any real path to accountability, the organization says. It entrenches impunity rather than challenging it. These crimes cannot be separated from the broader Israeli assault on Gaza. Some documented patterns of sexual violence, the report adds, go beyond conventional legal categories and may constitute prohibited acts under the crime of genocide in international law.
Euro-Med Monitor called on the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to treat the file on torture and sexual violence in detention as an urgent operational priority. These crimes, the organization says, are central to establishing criminal intent in the broader case.
The pattern of violations, set against the wider assault on Gaza, points to the use of sexual violence as a tool to destroy the Palestinian group and inflict severe bodily and psychological harm on its members. The organization says immediate international action is needed to end impunity.
