Torture allegations burst Israeli moral bubble

With almost no one noticing, Israel passed a law on May 12 establishing a special court to try about 400 Palestinians from Gaza accused of involvement in the Oct. 7 attack on the Gaza envelope. The new judicial structure is devoid of the normal checks and balances that a fair system of justice is expected to provide to persons presumed innocent until proven guilty. This decision would implement yet another racist and controversial discriminatory law that applies capital punishment only to Palestinians. The law does not apply retroactively, and Israel has refused to try those detained to date, so as to apply capital punishment en masse.

Israeli human rights groups have spoken out against the new law, opposing the principle of capital punishment, but also warning against “show trials” based on confessions allegedly extracted under torture. The law would relax legal procedures, lowering the bar of military courts, which have a conviction rate over 99 percent of the cases almost all based on confessions derived under torture.

Human rights groups have said that the law does not allow for basic legal procedures designed to protect defendants’ rights. They expect some hearings to be held without the defendants being physically present. “Government coalition members have made it clear that they expect mass executions to result from this court that they’ve established,” said Sari Bashi, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.

Human rights groups have spoken out against the law

Daoud Kuttab

The extreme one-sided Israeli legal procedure is taking place amid an international media controversy. A New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, has accused the Israeli government of turning a blind eye to cases of extreme sexual torture of Palestinian prisoners. Video evidence of Israeli guards sexually abusing and raping Palestinian prisoners at the Sde Teiman detention facility in southern Israel aired on Israeli media in August 2024, appearing to show Israeli soldiers sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee. The Israeli military dropped the charges against five soldiers and said the indictments were withdrawn, in part due to “exceptional circumstances that negatively affected the ability to prosecute the case while also preserving the right to a fair trial of the defendants.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the decision.

But while the Israeli government swept that case and other torture accusations under the rug, a leading journalistic expert on prison treatment — New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof — blew the lid off the cases of rape against Palestinians. In a column titled “The Horror of Sexual Assault in Israeli Prisons,” he argues that sexual violence by Israeli forces against Palestinians is widespread. The columnist details a pattern of systemic abuse and “unrestrained power” within Israeli detention centers that challenges the international community’s moral silence. Kristof interviewed Palestinians who gave detailed testimony of what happened to them. He spoke to Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights organizations that confirmed the existence of widespread rape. Kristof concluded his column by saying: “We’re anti-rape. The horrific abuse inflicted on Israeli women on Oct. 7 now happens to Palestinians day after day.”

The columnist details a pattern of systemic abuse

Daoud Kuttab

Instead of shock or anger at Israel, the award-winning American reporter was maligned and fiercely attacked as peddling “blood libel,” and an entire PR campaign was launched against him without anyone suggesting that such things are carried out by Israelis, or anyone calling for a serious investigation.

Kristof responded with a short reply that those questioning his conclusions should urge Israel to allow the Red Cross to visit the 9,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, at least one-third of whom have not been charged or tried.

For its part, The New York Times stood by its reporter and described him as “drawing on on-the-record accounts and citing several analyzes documenting the practice of sexual violence and abuse conducted by various parts of Israel’s security forces and settlers.”

The newspaper’s description of the piece as “deeply reported” begins with the proposition: “Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to condemn rape.” Its statement added: “The accounts of the 14 men and women he interviewed were corroborated with other witnesses, whenever possible, and with people the victims confided in — that includes family members and lawyers. Details were extensively fact-checked, with accounts cross-referenced with news reporting, independent research from human-rights groups, surveys, and, in one case, with UN testimony.”

In reality, Kristof’s article has shattered the myth that Israel and its army are the world’s most moral force. It debunks the narrative of a cherished democratic utopia, painting it as a colonial US-backed military power bent on grabbing Palestinian land and using extreme violence to do so. By challenging the self-defense narrative, it exposes that Israel’s occupation is illegal and marked by the torture of Palestinians, casting Israel as an apartheid state that is neither democratic nor moral.

• Daoud Kuttab is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He is the author of “State of Palestine Now: Practical and Logical Arguments for the Best Way to Bring Peace to the Middle East.”

X: @daoudkuttab