Palestinian Hostage at an Israeli torture camp
He was just released from the Israeli torture camp.
He had just gotten off the bus that drove them from Israel to Gaza when I called my sister-in-law’s husband, who was there with many other people, waiting for the kidnapped Palestinians to be released. I asked to speak to him.
“Thank God for your safety.”
“I lost… I lost a lot. I lost everything.”
“What matters is that you came out safely.”
The call ended. That was all he said: “I lost a lot. I lost everything.”
After a few days, he began to speak and share some of what had happened to him.
He didn’t speak all at once. Instead, from time to time, he would mention something, then fall silent, only to return hours or a day later to say something else. Some of what happened to him, he didn’t share with everyone. He only told my wife, and she told me. He was ashamed, but he had no reason to be.
“When they took me from the street in mid-December 2023, they forced me to strip off all my clothes except my underwear. Before anything else, a soldier reached out, took my glasses from my face, threw them on the ground, and crushed them under his military boot. My glasses, without which I can barely see. They tied my hands behind my back with plastic rope. They led me, half-naked, to a side street where there was a large transport truck, the kind used to carry sand, stones, and goods.
Inside the truck were a large number of men, piled on top of each other, barely able to move. They blindfolded me with a piece of cloth, and then I felt hands grabbing me, lifting me up, and throwing me onto other bodies. I fell, landing on top of others, in pain, hearing screams and groans of agony around me.
We stayed in the truck for hours, and from time to time, a new person would be thrown on top of us. The truck moved. I can’t tell you for how long, an hour or hours. It stopped, and suddenly it began to tilt, and we started rolling over each other. The truck was tipping, and we began to fall, hitting the ground and each other. I fell on my left side, feeling a sharp pain in my left arm and the left side of my face. I had fallen on rough, uneven ground, full of stones and gravel. I felt every part of my body screaming in pain.”
He couldn’t continue. He fell silent, and everyone respected his silence. Beside him were his mother, father, wife, his young daughters Helen (8 years old) and Rovan (4 years old), his siblings, and his brother-in-law. Everyone respected his silence. He got up and went to the bathroom. He stayed there for more than half an hour. It wasn’t hard to guess that he was crying, as the sound of his intermittent sobs reached everyone.
“ Over the course of more than three months, the torture was continuous and unrelenting.
They put my left hand in a cast on the third day of my abduction. They broke it three times during my captivity. They inserted a needle into the joint of my elbow, between the bones, more than once. Each time, I would lose consciousness from the intensity of the pain.
How many times did they take me from the cell for a torture session? I don’t remember. But every time, they forced me to strip completely naked. Some of the soldiers would extinguish their cigarettes on my buttocks, in my anus. I don’t know how a human can endure this level of torment. I don’t know. I couldn’t endure it. I would either lose consciousness or scream madly until I lost the ability to scream. Electric shock torture was part of every interrogation session. Their favourite spot was my genitals, which they would electrocute.
Three continuous months, and I had no answers for what they wanted. Three months of relentless torture. The worst form of torture was sleeping deprivation. I only slept during the hours I lost consciousness. There was classical music with a single tone blaring loudly in the cell all the time. Every hour or two, a soldier would come in with a water hose and spray me violently.
Every now and then, a soldier would enter and kick me anywhere on my body, then leave. All of that is nothing. Yes, nothing. When someone comes from time to time carrying a picture of my wife and 2 daughters to tell me, ‘Here, we’ve reached your wife and children. They’ve been eliminated. We’re easing your burden, so you don’t have to worry about their food or drink anymore. They’re dead now.’
And after two or three months, someone else comes with a picture of my family’s home and asks me, ‘Do you recognize this house?’Then they show me another picture of a destroyed house and say, ‘We bombed your family’s home. Your mother, father and sisters are dead under the rubble. Now you can enjoy your prison time without worrying about anyone from your family. None of them are left.’
Now, I can’t move my left arm properly. My left eye can barely see, even after I bought glasses.
I limp on my left leg. I walk with my legs apart. I can’t walk like a normal human.
I’m amazed that I’m still alive. But am I really alive?