The New Dark Age

Palestinian journalists in Israeli detention have testified to being subjected to harrowing physical abuse, medical neglect, starvation, threats against their family members, and sexual violence, including rape, according to a new report published on February 19.

The report, titled We returned from hell, has been published by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and draws on the testimonies of 59 Palestinian journalists detained by the Israelis — from Gaza, the West Bank, and the occupied 1948 territories — since the start of the genocide in the Gaza Strip in October 2023.

The CPJ report comes in a long line of similar reports detailing the extensive abuse of Palestinian detainees, the vast majority of whom are never charged, in the Israeli rape and torture dungeons, where more than 100 Palestinians have been killed over the past 29 months alone. The victims of Israeli barbarism include at least one child, who was beaten and starved to death.

Of the 59 journalists interviewed for the report, 58 testified to “torture, abuse or other forms of violence.” The detainees were routinely beaten, subjected to electric shocks, forced into prolonged stress positions, starved, and at least two were raped by the Israelis.

The testimonies make for harrowing reading:

Mustafa Khawaja, a journalist from the West Bank, said a beating on March 14, 2024, in Shatta prison left him with fractured ribs, meniscus tears, and spinal injuries later diagnosed as herniated discs. In Ktzi’ot prison, another detained journalist, Mohammed Badr, said he was struck so hard his tongue was cut. For two weeks, he could barely speak or eat.

At Ofer prison, radio journalist Mohammad al-Atrash described a coordinated assault in November 2023 that he and other detainees called “a Shin Bet party” or a “Ben-Gvir party” — a mass punishment involving dozens of prisoners.

Al-Atrash stated that trained dogs were ordered to attack the detainees, and metal instruments were used to create long-lasting bleeding and scars. Gazan journalists Islam Ahmed and Osama al-Sayed recounted the intermittent use of electroshocking and pepper spray between beatings.

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Journalist Mohammed Nafez Qaoud said repeated beatings during intake left deep wounds on his feet. Without treatment, he said, they became infected with “worms feeding on them.”

“Eleven cited the use of a method known as strappado,” the report said, “in which a person is hung, suspended by their arms, bound behind the back, and then pulled upward. Others said they were made to kneel or lay face forward for hours, as well as restrained under rain, direct sun, and sewage water.”

The Israelis subjected the detainees to loud music for long hours, “resulting in sleep deprivation and sensory disorientation.” “Additional testimonies described round-the-clock dog barking that they said exacerbated their psychological distress,” the report added.

“At least seven, including [Ahmed] Abdel Aal, reported that they were held for days in what they called ‘disco rooms,’ where speakers blasted music at such intensity that sleep became impossible.”

Medical neglect

After administering severe beatings that often leave Palestinian detainees with broken bones, deep gashes, and in a state of disorientation, the Israelis prevent any medical treatment. Israel dungeons. It serves to exacerbate their suffering. Dozens of detainees have died as a result of severe beatings and subsequent denial of medical treatment.

Moreover, in the Israeli dungeons, even medical personnel join in on the torture regime. “CPJ documented 27 accounts of medical neglect and, in several cases, the complicity of health workers in violence against detainees,” the report revealed.

Several said they avoided medical staff altogether, saying doctors themselves inflicted or condoned abuse. Abdul Mohsen Shalaldeh told CPJ and the Tadamon Centre that he was burned by lit cigarettes extinguished on his bare body. When he reported the abuse to an attending physician in detention, the physician responded, “It’s okay, no problem.” Another journalist who was detained recalled a doctor responding to a serious injury by saying, “Why did you call me if he isn’t dead yet?”

Amid such pervasive depravity, the detainees themselves serve as makeshift medics, attempting to alleviate the suffering of fellow Palestinians through “improvised procedures” in the absence of medical supplies.

“Journalist Yousef Sharaf said wounds from repeated beatings became infected in the poor sanitary conditions of the prisons, forming abscesses across his body,” the report documented. “He said that after going without medical care from prison authorities, another detainee, Dr. Nahed Abu Taima, an imprisoned surgeon from Nasser Medical Complex, performed improvised procedures using what detainees believed was cleaning bleach.”

Due to unsanitary conditions in the Israeli dungeons, scabies has become a scourge. The bodies of scores of released Palestinian detainees have borne marks of the ravages of scabies and other untreated skin infections.

Starvation

“Fifty-five of the 59 journalists interviewed reported extreme hunger or malnutrition,” the report added, revealing “an average weight loss of 23.5 kilograms (54 pounds)” among the journalists, “displaying gaunt faces, protruding ribs, and hollowed cheeks.”

Israeli prisons minister Ben-Gvir has repeatedly boasted about making the lives of prisoners hell, including by reducing their food provisions. In July 2025, he openly bragged: “I am here to ensure that the ‘terrorists’ receive the minimum of the minimum [of food].”

In Israeli discourse, every Palestinian is a terrorist fit for inhuman treatment and even slaughter.

Sexual violence

Sexual violence, including rape, has been a pervasive Israeli practice in its dungeons, with previously reported harrowing testimonies of rape by Israeli security personnel. As I have reported in these pages, the Israelis have used dogs, batons, and other objects to systematically rape Palestinians in captivity.

Journalist Sami al-Sai said he was taken to a small cell in Megiddo prison, and soldiers removed his trousers and underwear, and penetrated him with batons and other objects.

Sami has previously detailed his account of being horrifically raped by the Israelis in their torture dungeons.

Another journalist, Osama al-Sayed, said he and other detainees were stripped naked and attacked by trained dogs in Sde Teiman. He described the incident as rape, adding that soldiers laughed while filming the assault.

In total, CPJ documented 17 journalist testimonies involving sexual violence and 19 more describing humiliating strip searches. The alleged acts included assaults on the journalists’ genitals, attempted forced penetration with objects, forced nudity and recording, threats of rape, and other methods of sexualized coercion.

Not just Palestinians, the Israelis have not even spared international activists from rape. At least three flotilla activists have said that they were raped by the Israelis after their boats were intercepted and they were taken into Israeli custody last year.

At the start of their genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip in October 2023, the Israelis churned out evidence-free allegations of widespread rape by Palestinian fighters. Those claims were amplified by the media and politicians on their payroll. Nearly two and a half years later, they have yet to name a single Israeli victim of rape. Meanwhile, the number of Palestinian victims of Israeli brutality keeps mounting. Every Israeli accusation is a confession.

Threats

The detainees revealed that they were specifically targeted due to their profession.

One journalist said that the Israelis deliberately killed several members of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh’s family for his refusal to stop reporting and leave the Gaza Strip.

Amin Baraka said that he was repeatedly interrogated for his work with Qatar-affiliated Al Jazeera and threatened with violence against his family.

“An Israeli soldier told me, word for word in Arabic, that Al Jazeera correspondent Wael Al-Dahdouh defied us and stayed in the Gaza Strip, so we killed his family, and we will kill yours too,” he said.

The Israelis killed Wael’s wife and three of his children — one of whom, Hamza, was also a journalist with Al Jazeera. Wael was eventually evacuated from the Strip after suffering grievous injuries.

Although the CPJ report is important in highlighting the torture of Palestinian journalists in Israeli dungeons in a mainstream publication, there is much that the report keeps quiet about. It does not mention once, for example, the wholesale systematic slaughter of Palestinian journalists and media workers during the course of the genocide. Many of the victims were specifically targeted due to the impact their reporting was making in highlighting Israeli depravity in the besieged enclave.

Throughout the genocide, the Israelis have slaughtered nearly 300 media professionals in the Gaza Strip — and dozens more in Lebanon and Yemen — many of whom were wiped out with their entire families.

They have also systematically targeted reporters, famously killing Anas Al-Sharif, Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal, and Moamen Aliwa in a strike on a journalists’ tent inside a hospital last August. Two weeks later, they killed five more journalists, including Mariam Abu Daqqa, in another targeted strike on a hospital in the Gaza Strip. As journalist Hassan Aslih was recovering from an Israeli strike, they struck his hospital room again, instantly killing him last May. Ismail al-Ghoul was targeted with a missile strike so severe that its impact melted his head on his press vest in July 2024.

The Electronic Intifada has reported how the CPJ has been captured by Jewish supremacist interests, so much so that it has scrapped its annual Impunity Index because it would show Israel among the world’s leading murderers of journalists for years to come.

“Published since 2008, the annual report is designed to highlight countries that allow those who deliberately target journalists to get away with their crimes,” EI reported earlier this month. “The ranking measures the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population, covering a rolling 10-year period.”

“Since the Impunity Index usually covers a timeframe of 10 years, Israel would have been ranked near the top, if not number one, for many years to come,” CPJ whistleblowers told EI. The drastic decision was made because the CPJ’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg “simply couldn’t afford the heat she would get every year from the board, the pro-Israel donors and from Israel itself and its allies.”

It speaks to the sheer scale of the horrors inflicted on Palestinian journalists that even a thoroughly compromised institution felt compelled to produce a report.