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Rabat – This week, Palestinians who have suffered beatings, sexual abuse, physical and psychological torture at the hands of Israeli settlers and security agents presented their harrowing testimonies at the latest round of public hearings of the United Nations’ Independent Commission of Inquiry (COI) on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Mohamed Hassan Matar, activist and West Bank resident, gave a terrifying testimony of what happened to him on October 12, 2023. Matar and other Palestinian activists moved to the rescue of a Bedouin community, which was undergoing intense violence from illegal Israeli settlers that was on the rise just days after the incidents on October 7.
The activists were then chased by a group of settlers who were joined by members of an Israeli security agency. Upon being caught, they were blindfolded, tied up, and stripped down to their underwear.
Matar goes on to detail a slew of deplorable acts of torture that the Israeli settlers committed across 12 hours, which included forcing the Palestinian group to eat sheep excrements, urinating on them, beating them, and raping them with a stick.
The activist said he cried out for his captors to shoot him to end the torture, and that “I didn’t think there were people on Earth with such a level of ugliness, sadism and cruelty.”
Matar’s testimony, coupled with photos of him being naked, tied up and blindfolded, bear a striking resemblance to those that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) widely and proudly shared of their Palestinians captives in Gaza.
Said Abdel Fattah, a 28-year-old nurse who was detained from his place of work at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza in November 2023, also gave his testimony at the COI via video-link.
Fattah described being stripped in the cold, beaten severely and threatened with rape over almost two months in several overcrowded detention facilities. He also recalled one particular account of torture from January 2024, when he says he was treated like a “punching bag.”
Fattah said felt his soul leave his body as his Israeli captor kept smashing his genitals: “I was bleeding everywhere, I was bleeding from my penis, I was bleeding from my anus.”
Palestinian human rights lawyer Sahar Francis, who has been working with Palestinian political prisoners for over 27 years, also gave her testimony at the UN hearing, which this week focuses on sexual and reproductive violence.
Francis stressed that Israel’s use of rape and physical assault against detainees and prisoners are nothing new since she witnessed this in previous years, although these practices have become “wide-spread policy” since October 7.
Israeli ambassador and permanent representative of Israel to the UN in Geneva, Daniel Meron, reportedly dismissed the hearing and deemed it a waste of time, claiming that Israel has already investigated and prosecuted any allegations of wrongdoings.
Ironically, as part of his mission to the UN, Meron had previously made the pledge to “bring to Geneva the voices of victims and survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, including those in armed conflict.”
