CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Rape and Torture in Palestine

On Tuesday, Judge Napolitano asked me to respond to Nicholas Kristof’s reporting on the systemic rape and sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners and hostages. Here is what I had to say:

Napolitano: Let’s go to another article, which is of some controversy. It’ll be in The New York Times tomorrow, so the only way you could see it today is in the digital version, and that’s Nick Kristof’s article about the prison rapes in Israeli prisons, which is very difficult to read, but which evoked a firestorm from the Israeli foreign ministry. Kristof, who almost apologized for writing this thing, feels intellectually bound to do so. He interviewed everybody — prison guards, interrogators, senior people, prisoners, Israeli prisoners, Palestinian prisoners. The picture he paints is so reprehensible, so clear, so consistent, so profound that Israeli leadership must know what’s going on, of horrific tortures of Palestinians, and every one of these tortures involves the forcible entry into someone’s body, male or female, including the use of dogs especially trained to do so.

Hoh: I will say for me it’s quite personal. Behind me is a photo, I’m with Issa Amro, who was interviewed in the story, and Issa was raped along with his colleagues. They are in Hebron, they oppose the occupation. Issa has been a major problem for the occupation for years. Ray McGovern is in that photo as well, is from Hebron in 2017. We’re being fired at by tear gas canisters. The Israeli border police actually fire them level. One hit Ray right in the arm. If you could see the photo, you could see Ray walking away holding his arm because he’d been shot in the arm by the tear gas canister.

Napolitano: They don’t shoot tear gas canisters up in the air the way they do in the U.S.?

Hoh: Some do, but a lot of them fire level. And if that tear gas canister had been up eight inches, it would have hit Ray right in the face. Ray was, I think, 80 years old at that time when he was there with us in the West Bank. But when I saw Issa again, and in that photo I’m locked arms with Issa as we approach that line of border police who are firing at us, when I was there in 2024 in the West Bank in Palestine and I saw Issa in Hebron, Issa told me then that he had been raped. He told me what they had done to him, what [the Israelis] do to them. And it wasn’t just Issa. His colleagues, his compatriots, have been raped as well.

With Issa and Omar in Hebron, Occupied West Bank, Palestine, November 2024. Both of these men are heroes and idols to me. Both of these men have endured apartheid, occupation and cruelty. They have sacrificed so much and risk even more for their families, their communities, their people and their land. These may be the bravest, strongest and most honorable men I have known. (Photo belongs to author.)

The documentation of this is clear. This existed before October 7th. I think that’s one thing I’m upset with Kristof about, Kristof did not make that clear in his column. You could read it almost as if this is a recent development. It’s not. The systematic torture, including rape and sexual assault on Palestinian prisoners, Palestinian hostages is a better term, has been evident and documented for decades, including on children.

One of the things that’s buried in that story is the report from Save the Children that documents 69% of Palestinian children [arrested by the Israelis are sexually assaulted]…the Israelis just come in the middle of the night and they........

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