Palestinian Healthcare Workers Chained, Starved, Sexually Abused: New HRW Report on Israeli Prisons

[Uncle Joe]

We speak with Human Rights Watch researcher Milena Ansari about the organization's new report detailing the torture of Palestinian medical workers in Israeli prisons. HRW spoke with eight doctors, paramedics and nurses who were picked up in Gaza before being transferred to the notorious Sde Teiman camp and other facilities, where they say they suffered beatings, starvation, humiliation, electric shocks and other forms of abuse. The men also describe threats of sexual violence during brutal interrogations and seeing another prisoner bleeding after being gang-raped with an M16 rifle by three soldiers. The findings track with other reports from researchers and survivors, and HRW has called on the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for its attacks on healthcare workers. "We're really ringing the alarm about the situation inside the Israeli custody and detention facilities," says Ansari, who says evidence is mounting of a "systematic pattern of ill-treatment and abuse."

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[Bayard]

1. Doctors, paramedics and nurses

What is the purpose for torturing them?

[Gaugamela]

3. The cruelty is the point.

[ColinC]

4. Cease. Fire. Now.

[jimfields33]

5. Hamas refuses. Until they change, there will be no

ceasefire.

[ColinC]

6. If anybody is fighting, they are against a ceasefire

Israel cannot blame Hamas if they keep fighting and Hamas cannot blame Israel if they keep attacking them.

As I said: Cease. Fire. Now.