‘Torture isn’t new to Palestinians’: How Israel learned from colonialism

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Warning: This communicative includes descriptions of intersexual battle that immoderate readers volition find disturbing.

A companion effort to Al Jazeera’s Bodies of Evidence: Israel’s Darkest Weapon, directed and enforcement produced by Awad Joumaa.

He was successful the adjacent room. The walls were thin. The doorway betwixt the rooms was open. He could perceive everything.

In 1969, Abdel Latif Ghaith, who would aboriginal go manager of the Palestinian prisoner-rights organisation Addameer, was being held successful a Jerusalem detention artifact when, successful a contiguous cell, different Israeli interrogators were trying to interruption different young Palestinian. Her sanction was Rasmea Odeh.

“I saw Rasmea successful the interrogation room,” Ghaith recounts. “And she was naked.”

His dependable was dilatory and exact, arsenic helium relived a representation helium has carried for much than fractional a century.

Rasmea’s begetter was brought to the room, Ghaith said. Seeing his girl successful that condition, the begetter toppled her: “If you person thing oregon don’t person something, accidental thing truthful they tin get retired of this situation.” The begetter cried. Rasmea said: “I don’t person anything, I didn’t bash anything.”

The begetter left, but Rasmea’s ordeal did not end. “And I saw her during the interrogations erstwhile again, wherever she was severely tortured,” Ghaith recalled.

Ten years later, successful 1979, aft a captive exchange, Rasmea Odeh stood earlier a United Nations committee successful Geneva and described what had been done to her assemblage successful that Jerusalem cell: rape with a stick. Electric shocks to her rima and genitals. Threats that her begetter would beryllium forced to rape her. Her grounds entered the UN grounds years earlier the Convention Against Torture was adopted.

But Rasmea was not, arsenic Ghaith puts it, “the first”.

“In Palestine, we person seen galore situations similar this,” helium says. And Rasmea would not beryllium the last.

‘Torture is not caller to the Palestinians’

“Torture is, really, the trademark of this past 2 years of oppression of the Palestinian people,” Francesca Albanese, the UN peculiar rapporteur connected the occupied Palestinian territories, tells Al Jazeera successful the movie Bodies of Evidence.

But, she insists, it is not new. “Torture is not caller to the Palestinians. Israel has practised torture against the Palestinians since the precise opening of its existence.”

Then she names the lineage that polite planetary statement prefers not to notation to.

“During the British Mandate successful Palestine, it is documented that the British medication utilized practices of torture, oregon instrumentality enforcement, that had already been utilized against the Irish insurgency arsenic portion of counterinsurgency measures. These practices were [applied in] Palestine. It is besides documented that the British exigency regulations were incorporated [into the Israeli ineligible system].”

They were not adapted. Not translated. Not modernised. They were, successful Albanese’s words, “immediately received and ingrained successful the Israeli system”.

Simply put, intersexual unit wrong Israeli detention contiguous is not an accident. It is the inheritance of an imperial method that Britain rehearsed successful Ireland, exported to Palestine, and repeated successful Kenya; that France industrialised successful Algeria; and that apartheid South Africa systematised against Black South Africans. And that Israel, the European settler-colonial task Britain itself ushered into being, past took arsenic its own. The cells change. The uniforms change. The process does not.

“Torture is rather communal successful assemblage systems oregon racially ordered regimes,” Albanese adds, “because the infliction of humiliation and erasure is seen arsenic a signifier to control.”

Notes connected Imperial Policing (1934), The National Archives, Kew, London [War Office, Armed Forces]

What intersexual torture really is

Under planetary instrumentality – including the UN Convention Against Torture, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the rulings of the tribunals for the erstwhile Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the International Committee of the Red Cross’s customary humanitarian instrumentality – intersexual unit successful custody includes rape, the insertion of objects, intersexual mutilation, forced nudity, strip-searches conducted arsenic humiliation, threats to rape detainees oregon their relatives, sexualised beatings, attacks connected genitals, the usage of dogs and the filming and circulation of intimate images. When immoderate of these verbal oregon carnal acts of maltreatment are carried retired successful the beingness of household members, that excessively is considered intersexual violence.

All of it tin beryllium prosecuted arsenic torture, arsenic a warfare crime, arsenic a transgression against humanity. Cuno Tarfusser, the erstwhile Italian justice astatine the ICC, states the constituent starkly successful Bodies of Evidence: “Sexual unit becomes much than transgression … intersexual crimes go a method to combat the war.”

Kifaya Khraim, planetary advocacy coordinator astatine the Ramallah-based Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling (WCLAC), says Israeli forces cognize precisely what they are doing, arsenic she describes however galore women archer groups similar hers of devices inserted wrong them “without being capable to place that arsenic rape oregon intersexual violence”.

“Israeli forces cognize of [the societal stigma], and they usage it and they exploit it.”

Duties successful Aid of the Civil Power (1929), The National Archives, Kew, London [War Office, Armed Forces]

Ireland: wherever the empire learned to interruption a people

To recognize what Britain did successful Palestine, you person to recognize what it had conscionable finished doing successful Ireland.

Between 1920 and 1922, arsenic the Irish War of Independence reached its peak, Britain deployed a paramilitary unit successful Ireland that became a byword for assemblage terror: the Black and Tans and their serviceman counterparts, the Auxiliaries. When the Irish warfare ended, the empire did not discontinue its Black and Tans. It redeployed them. Approximately 650 erstwhile Black and Tans were sent to Mandate Palestine successful April 1922 to signifier the caller British Palestine Gendarmerie. By 1923, according to Richard A Cahill’s survey Going Berserk: “Black and Tans” successful Palestine, erstwhile Black and Tans made up betwixt 75 and 95 percent of that force.

They brought their methods with them. One of the men associated with the slang word “duffing up”, Douglas V Duff, was aboriginal recovered blameworthy successful 1931 of getting a subordinate serviceman to inflict ill-treatment and bodily distress connected a prisoner.

This is the concatenation Albanese points to. It is not a metaphor. It is personnel. It is payroll. It is the aforesaid men, connected a antithetic shore, doing the aforesaid things to a antithetic colonised people, protected by the aforesaid exigency law.

Combined Military and Police Action (1947), [Desmond Morton Collection, the Middle East Centre Archive, St Anthony's College, Oxford]

Palestine, 1936: The empire goes to work

By the 1930s, Britain was nary longer experimenting successful Palestine. It was governing it arsenic a settler-colonial task of its ain design. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 had committed Britain to “the constitution successful Palestine of a nationalist location for the Jewish people”. The Mandate, awarded successful 1922, made Britain the assemblage midwife of the Zionist project.

In 1936, Palestinians answered with a six-month wide strike. It became the Great Arab Revolt, 3 years of equipped uprising against British regularisation and the Zionist task it was building.

A run of authorities panic followed: Britain deployed much than 20,000 troops to Palestine, imposed curfews and corporate fines, dynamited homes, demolished overmuch of aged Jaffa, and utilized Palestinian civilians arsenic quality shields. Matthew Hughes traces the displacement “from instrumentality and bid to pacification” successful his landmark survey of Britain’s suppression of the Arab Revolt.

The Mandate’s constabulary manuals did not request to bid rape. They built the rooms successful which it could beryllium denied: apprehension without warrant, forced entry, hunt by force, associated police-military raids and indemnity for officers acting “in bully faith”.

It was besides from the Mandate that Israel inherited the signifier of administrative detention, nether which Palestinians are held indefinitely successful situation without charges, seasoned Israeli lawyer Leah Tsemel pointed out.

The aforesaid logic would outlive the Mandate itself. Britain did not conscionable constitute the manual for the Nakba of 1948 and the ongoing Nakba ever since. It cleared the field.

Palestine Police Constable’s Manual (1941, 2nd ed.), [Desmond Morton Collection, the Middle East Centre Archive, St Anthony's College, Oxford]

Kenya: What the empire does erstwhile it thinks nary 1 is watching

In the 1950s, the aforesaid imperial authorities that had governed Palestine ran a web of detention camps successful Kenya known arsenic the Pipeline, designed to interruption the Mau Mau uprising against British rule.

Survivors described castration, rape with bottles and breached glass, the insertion of objects into the rectum and vagina, forced nudity during interrogation and intersexual humiliation arsenic methods of breaking governmental will. In 2013, aft years of ineligible conflict by Mau Mau survivors represented by British instrumentality steadfast Leigh Day, the UK authorities settled the case.

Algeria: France turns torture into doctrine

If Britain built the architecture, France wrote the doctrine.

During the Algerian war, the French service raped Algerian women successful detention and successful their homes. Algerian men were stripped, electrocuted and threatened with the rape of their relatives.

The lawsuit of Djamila Boupacha, tortured and raped with a vessel by French paratroopers, became an planetary ungraded due to the fact that French-Tunisian lawyer and activistic Gisele Halimi and French philosopher and activistic Simone de Beauvoir took it up, and refused to fto it disappear.

In Blida, immoderate 45km from superior Algiers, the French psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon treated Algerian victims of French torture successful the aforesaid infirmary wherever helium treated French unit who carried it out.

Torture, Fanon understood, was not an excess of war. It was the essence of the assemblage relationship. As Albanese puts it, “Frantz Fanon was curing the victims of torture and the perpetrators.”

Israel and France: An confederation forged successful Algerian blood

Israel did not inherit lone the British architecture of intersexual unit and torture. It besides bound itself, astir instantly aft its commencement successful 1948, to the French one. In October 1956, Britain, France and Israel signed the Protocol of Sevres, a concealed conspiracy to invade Egypt and topple Gamal Abdel Nasser.

It was France that helped Israel physique the atomic works successful Dimona. French scientists and engineers played a cardinal relation successful designing the reactor and reprocessing infrastructure that gave Israel the bomb.

But the weaponry was not each Israel learned from France. It learned to dainty an anti-colonial colonisation itself arsenic the enemy, and that the assemblage of the colonised, its sleep, its sexuality, its family, its shame are each morganatic terrains of war. The Israeli government’s 1987 Landau Commission would telephone this “moderate carnal pressure”. The 1999 Israeli High Court would barroom immoderate methods portion leaving the doorway unfastened for the usage of specified practices erstwhile “necessity” demands it.

And who decides what’s “necessary”? The aforesaid Israeli information authorities that the High Court bid was expected to restrain.

‘Since the precise founding of Israel’

None of this is simply a surprise.

“Sexual unit is thing that’s been happening historically against each Palestinians by Israel since the precise founding of Israel,” Khraim of the WLAC says. “It is good known that successful 1948, during the taste [cleansing], intersexual unit was utilized arsenic a means to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.”

Israeli historiographer Benny Morris, drafting connected declassified archives, acknowledged astatine slightest a twelve documented rapes by Israeli forces successful 1948, a fig helium called “just the extremity of the iceberg”.

By the 1970s and 1980s, adjacent Israeli insiders present concede that unit was utilized successful interrogations. Human Rights Watch documented the methods successful 1994.

Across that arc, the names change, Rasmea Odeh successful 1969; Mohammed Zaki Al-Bakri successful 2024, but the methods bash not.

A bare body. A bound body. A begetter brought into the room. A canine brought into the room. A camera. A laugh. A record with a fig connected it.

The survivors speaking now

The humanities archive matters due to the fact that it sounds similar the present.

In Bodies of Evidence: Israel’s Darkest Weapon, 1 erstwhile detainee from Jenin describes a pistillate defender making a intersexual menace astir his sister during a assemblage search. “I volition ne'er hide that moment,” helium says. “My tears fell. I was 18 years old.”

Mohammed Zaki Al-Bakri describes the assemblage nether battle successful simpler terms: “You are nary longer a quality being. You are conscionable a assemblage nether their control.” That is the mechanics Kifaya Khraim describes: the weaponisation of family, stigma and shame.

Sde Teiman: The present-tense nexus successful the chain

If anyone needs a azygous code wherever the assemblage concatenation reaches its contiguous link, it is Sde Teiman. A subject basal successful the Negev desert, repurposed aft October 7 into a detention tract for Palestinians from Gaza, Sde Teiman has go – done the grounds of released detainees, Israeli whistleblowers, B’Tselem, the Public Committee Against Torture successful Israel, and leaked footage – the awesome of what Israel’s detention strategy became aft its ceremonial restraints collapsed.

As the film’s ain opening quality enactment states: “All charges against 5 soldiers accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee astatine the Sde Teiman subject situation successful July 2024 have been dropped.” Detainees person described being held shackled and blindfolded for weeks, denied aesculapian care, beaten, starved, kept successful nappies and sexually abused. In March 2026, the Israeli military’s apical ineligible serviceman dropped the charges successful the cardinal intersexual maltreatment case. Amnesty International called the determination “disgraceful”.

One bonzer nationalist exchange, aft the ungraded broke, distilled the doctrine beneath it all. In a July 2024 Knesset discussion, Palestinian person Ahmad Tibi asked whether it could ever beryllium morganatic “to insert a instrumentality into a person’s rectum.” Hanoch Milwidsky, a subordinate of the Knesset from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, answered: “If helium is simply a Nukhba [Hamas fighter], everything is morganatic to do. Everything.” It was a chilling moment: not a denial of abuse, but a defence of it nether the connection of necessity. In that sentence, the logic of objection was made explicit – that erstwhile a detainee is marked arsenic an enemy, the instrumentality tin beryllium suspended, the assemblage tin beryllium violated, and cruelty tin beryllium recast arsenic security.

In 2025, the UN Secretary-General’s yearly study connected conflict-related intersexual unit listed Israel and the State of Palestine successful its situations of concern, citing patterns of intersexual unit by Israeli forces against Palestinian detainees.

‘A torturous environment’

Albanese calls it “a torturous environment”: a spot wherever the infliction of symptom is deliberate and constant. That repression besides extends to those trying to papers it. Tahseen Elayyan of Al-Haq, the Palestinian quality rights organisation, says his organisation was targeted due to the fact that of its work. In October 2021, Israel’s Ministry of Defense, nether then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz, designated Al-Haq and 5 different Palestinian civilian nine groups arsenic “terrorist organisations”, a determination UN experts condemned arsenic an battle connected Palestinian quality rights defenders.

The seasoned Israeli lawyer Leah Tsemel describes the ambiance aft October 7 arsenic 1 of “pure harassment”.

“The humiliation of Palestinians and the cognition to them arsenic non-human beings does not disturb.”

Sexual unit is the astir intimate instrumentality wrong that landscape. It works due to the fact that it produces silence.

That is what Ghaith witnessed successful 1969 erstwhile Rasmea Odeh’s begetter was brought to her cell. That is what survivors picture contiguous erstwhile soldiers movie the maltreatment and endanger to nonstop it to families. The soundlessness is the weapon. Breaking the soundlessness is the resistance.

Why the bodies remember

In 1969, an Israeli interrogator made Rasmea Odeh’s begetter weep successful a corridor successful Jerusalem. In 1979, Rasmea stood earlier a UN committee successful Geneva and told the satellite what had been done to her body. The satellite heard her. It did precise little.

In 2026, the survivors sharing testimonies successful Bodies of Evidence: Israel’s Darkest Weapon are doing the aforesaid thing, astatine the aforesaid cost, wrong a strategy designed to marque their code impossible. Raji Sourani, laminitis and manager of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, says simply: “We don’t privation Gaza to beryllium the graveyard of planetary law, and we privation the Gazans to person justness and dignity.”

Chantal Meloni, an Italian transgression lawyer, prof of planetary transgression instrumentality astatine the University of Milan, and elder ineligible advisor connected planetary crimes and accountability astatine the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, calls this infinitesimal “the archetypal factual cracks successful the partition of a longstanding impunity”.

That impunity, similar the intersexual unit it shields, has besides travelled from Ireland to Palestine, from Palestine to Kenya, from Algiers to Pretoria, and from determination to Hebron. When their ain emblem comes down, empires manus implicit their architecture of maltreatment to the adjacent authorities consenting to usage it. Then they importune it ne'er happened.

The Palestinian survivors speaking contiguous are not asking the satellite to judge an unprecedented horror. They are asking the satellite to recognise an aged 1 and, this time, to act. The uniforms change. The ineligible vocabulary changes. The exigency is renamed. But the assemblage keeps the record.

Watch Bodies of Evidence connected Al Jazeera English’s YouTube channel.

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