https://arab.news/vbm62
- Physicians for Human Rights Israel’s Oneg Ben For said that abusive treatment of detainees can constitute war crimes, image confirms testimonies
- Image shared from a now-deleted soldier’s personal social media account shows unidentified man lying on his stomach, naked and tied to a bed
LONDON: Rights groups said that a photograph showing a blindfolded Palestinian detainee bound and posed for the camera by Israeli soldiers on social media corroborates extensive reporting on abuse in Israeli detention and may itself be a war crime.
“Both abusive treatment of detainees and the public sharing of humiliating or degrading images of them can constitute war crimes,” Oneg Ben Dror, of the prisoner and detainees department at Physicians for Human Rights Israel, told The Guardian.
She said that the photo “confirms what thousands of testimonies from Palestinian detainees have exposed, and what we and other organizations have been reporting for nearly three years now.”
Ben Dror described Israeli detention facilities as “torture camps” for Palestinians.
The image, shared on a now-deleted personal social media account, shows a Palestinian man lying on his stomach, apparently naked and tied to a bed in a stress position, with Hebrew text overlaid reading “good morning.”
It spread widely after Palestinian writer and activist Tamer Qaddoumi posted it on X, attributing it to soldiers from the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, an all-male ultra-Orthodox unit within the Kfir Brigade that has repeatedly faced allegations of human rights abuses.
The unit has previously been linked to the death of 78-year-old Palestinian-American Omar Assad after he died of stress‑induced heart attack following rough treatment by soldiers.
More recently, its reservist battalion was suspended from operations in the West Bank after members assaulted and detained a CNN news crew.
Qaddoumi said that he could not identify the detainee but believed the incident took place in northern Gaza.
On July 2, the Israeli military confirmed the authenticity of the photo and said that the episode took place in Gaza.
A spokesperson said that the incident “does not align with IDF values and regulations” and added that the army had launched an inquiry.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said that the image was not an isolated case but part of an “entrenched pattern of abuse.”
“The image published by Israel’s Netzah Yehuda battalion is yet another manifestation of the systematic dehumanization of Palestinian prisoners and detainees,” it said.
Sari Bashi, executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, said that the incident breached international law.
“There is no security justification for holding a detainee in his underwear,” she said.
“Forced nudity followed by capturing and sharing sexualized images on social media is a form of sexual violence and also a war crime.”
She said that at least two mothers had claimed the bound man as their son, underscoring the distress faced by Palestinian families searching for relatives detained by Israeli forces.
The Israeli military did not comment on whether the detainee had been identified or received medical care, or whether his family in Gaza had been notified.
For months at the start of the war, the Israeli military refused to provide basic information about the status of people detained in Gaza, effectively enforcing a policy of forced disappearance, rights groups say.
In May 2024, Israel provided an email address for inquiries about Palestinians from Gaza, but rights groups said that this only partially improved access to information.
HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization, said earlier this year that Israeli authorities had denied holding hundreds of missing Palestinians whose arrests were confirmed by witness testimony.
According to Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups, about 9,500 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, where detainees face torture, starvation and medical neglect, leading to the deaths of dozens of prisoners.