On August 5th, B’Tselem—The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories—released a report titled, Welcome to Hell, the Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps. B’Tselem describes itself as working “for a future in which human rights, liberty and equality are guaranteed to all people, Palestinian and Jewish alike, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Such a future will only be possible when the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime end. That is the future we are working towards.”

Revcom.us correspondent Alan Goodman interviewed B’Tselem spokesperson Shai Parnes about the report. The interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

Interviewer’s notes: Kamala Harris’ spokesperson stated that this and other “reports of abuse in Israeli prisons are deeply troubling and require swift and credible investigation.” I asked Shai about this, and you will read his response. But speaking for myself (and as I argued in a previous article at revcom.us), this kind of dismissal of rigorously documented exposures of Israeli crimes against humanity is standard talk from representatives of the U.S. government for "we're just going to say some bullshit while we wait for this to blow over."

Also, I want to highlight something striking in the B’Tselem report, and in this interview: torture is always a crime against humanity, but the network of torture chambers you will learn about in this interview subjects vast numbers of Palestinian people, not just or even mostly people accused of any crime, to the most depraved torture. And as such, it is intended to terrorize–and break–the entire population.

Alan Goodman: Shai, thanks for taking time to talk from where you are in Israel. Can you paint a broad strokes picture of what the report “Welcome to Hell…” reveals?

Shai Parnes: Good morning, Alan. Thank you for interviewing me. The report “Welcome to Hell” contains 55 testimonies, all of released Palestinian detainees. They were Gazans, West Bankers, from East Jerusalem, and even Israeli-Palestinian citizens. They were held in 16 Israeli prison facilities, 13 of them by the Israeli prison system, and three of them by the military. The survivors of these torture camps that we interviewed included both genders. The youngest person we interviewed is 16, the oldest is 65. 

So, we're talking about people from different backgrounds, who were in different facilities at different times. But what was remarkable is that they're all told us pretty much the same story. They all said there was constant beating and violence in the facility they were in. There was lack of medical treatment, or even mistreatment—that is, medical personnel contributing to the effect of torture.

The people who were interviewed even described being fed same amounts of non-food they were given in different facilities. They all had similar accounts of starvation, about lack of sanitation or hygienic supplies. They repeated accounts of only having one set of underwear or one shirt for weeks or even months. They all described overcrowding in the cells, sometimes having up to 14 people in a cell that that only had mattresses for six people.

Some accounts describe even harsher torture, all the way to sexual assault. And that included the entire spectrum of sexual assault, all the way to rape and inserting objects into people's body parts.

And the testimony included that of inmates who witnessed the torture to death of fellow inmates. 

AG: How many deaths in detention were you able to document?

SP: So, if you will zoom out just for a second, 60 Palestinian detainees died while being held by Israeli authorities from October 2023 through February 2024 (the time the interviewees were in prison). ¹ Some of them were murdered during transfers from one facility to other. Some of them died from violence and beatings while they were taken from Gaza to the prison. Some of them were killed in prison, beaten to death. Some died from lack of medical treatment. 

In the report, there are three cases that we followed and investigated. One was a prisoner who was even beaten harder than other prisoners, and he was crying for help the whole night while the person telling us about it was in the next cell. And when the guards came in the morning for the routine count, and they yelled his name, and nobody answered. So, the guards said, are you fooling with us? And still nobody answered. So, they entered the cell, still trying to wake him up and kicking him, but he was already dead.

The medical team came pretty quick, tried to do what they could, but he was already dead. And then they just said, “Put him in a body bag.” 

AG: Can you talk about just how pervasive and how brutal the beatings are in these centers?

SP: It’s pretty much constant. They beat whenever they want. In the past, usually Israeli authorities use torture during interrogations to get something from the detainee, or to affect him in some way, for some reason. But what we've seen here is that the authorities don't even interrogate those people. The vast majority of the detainees we spoke with were released without any legal procedure. They weren't charged with anything, and they were released. So even according to Israeli authorities, the vast majority of them did nothing. But they were still beaten. That's what the Israeli prison system has become, become a network of torture camps. 

AG: Can you describe some of the incidents in the report where prisoners had “hearings”? 

SP: Yeah, there were a few testimonies about that. First of all, in the first days of the war, there was this mass detention. In Israel, detention is not done by a law. It's an order by the government. They can do that during times of war. They call it a special or emergency jailing period. 

Many detainees say they sometimes didn't see a judge for weeks. If they did, it was sometimes by Zoom over one of the guards' cell phones. Sometimes detainees were beaten just minutes before the hearing and threatened not to say anything about it in the hearing. 

In some cases, people who testified for our investigation said the judge knew exactly what was going on, because he saw how the person looked. But the judge just said, “Well, yeah.” 

AG: U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said, “The government of Israel and the Israeli military need to fully investigate these actions.” Can you respond to that?

SP: I wouldn't say funny, but the problem is the government cannot investigate its own policy. What this report shows is that torture happened in almost every place where Palestinian detainees are held. It's not just the isolated incident where the government can say, oh, we didn't know what's going on there. They cannot say this torture was carried out by untrained soldiers dealing with Hamas terrorists. No, that’s not the case.

In previous years, B'Tselem showed in many cases, Israel is unwilling and unable to investigate itself. It doesn't matter if it's the military police, or all the way up to the Supreme Court. But now it's not even that B'Tselem says this torture is going on. It's the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.²

AG: I want to ask you to respond to this, from the spokesperson for Kamala Harris, who said, “Reports of abuse in Israeli prisons are deeply troubling and require swift and credible investigation.” 

SP: Okay. So, let's do an independent investigation of the case. But Israel cannot investigate itself for years because that's the policy. The policy is to torture people. The policy is to expel Palestinians and take their land. And again, even though B'Tselem said that for years, now it's the most respected legal tribunals in the world saying that. So, okay, let's do a fully independent investigation. And if we find what we have found, let's bring those responsible to justice.

About the methodology used in this investigation: In response to early testimonies about what's going on in the Israeli facilities that we got in late November, we said, oh, the torture is going on is because of the anxiety and emotions of the Israeli public after the October 7th. We didn't pay a lot of attention to it in a systematic framework. 

But as weeks went by and more and more Palestinians, administrative detainees, were released, we started to hear the same stories. And it didn't matter if that was a male or female, how old he or she was, if she's from Gaza; or the West Bank from Nablus, East Jerusalem, Jenin up north or Hebron down south. We see the testimony is pretty repetitive about the deprivation of sleep and food, about constant beating. And testimony collected by a field researcher was being investigated by our information center.

And through this process, kind of a ping pong between the researcher and the field researcher, we were able to see what was going on. From time to time, we interviewed two prisoners who were held at the same facility at the same time. There's been some instances of those, and comparing their testimony was part of the process.

But there is other evidence as well. There is evidence in postings in social media and articles in international mainstream media. We have all seen pictures of how these people entered jail and how they look when they are released, they lose dozens of kilos [one kilo equals 2.2 pounds] of their body weight. They look ill. They look wounded. We ask people giving testimony for the details in medical reports, for pictures. That's why writing and processing this report took five months.

AG: Your report says that since 1967, Israel has imprisoned over 800,000 Palestinian men and women from all parts of historic Palestine. This amounts to 20 percent of the total population, 40 percent of all Palestinian men. Can you talk about the implications of that? 

SP: Yes. So first of all, it's an estimate of 800,000 because it's somewhat of an average between the lower estimation, which is 600,000 and the higher estimation, which is 1 million. Israel doesn't give exact numbers, but that estimation is made by human rights researchers and academic researchers. So yeah, we call that the incarceration project because of what was going on in those numbers.

The jailing or imprisoning of an individual, of course, affects an individual detainee’s life. But it also affects the family life because sometimes the detainee is the only or the main provider. So, it affects the family economically, even putting aside everything else this causes.

In those numbers, the detention of Palestinians by Israel affects the entire community. And in those very large numbers, what this is doing is pretty much ripping apart the Palestinian society. 

And let's come back to the individual. The impact of being tortured does not end when you are released from Israeli prison. Because of how Israel’s apartheid regime works, the entire economic situation of a Palestinian is dependent on the Israelis. If they have been detained, they lose the right for work permit in Israel. Even if they are treated OK, and they are OK mentally after being in prison, they have to work in harsher conditions. And with what's going on in the West Bank with the curfews, it's very hard to keep any job.³

AG: Your report concludes with, “This reality is unacceptable and fills us Israelis and Palestinians who believe in justice, freedom, and human rights with shame, anxiety, and rage.” Can you discuss that?

SP: Obviously torture is prohibited and forbidden under any circumstances in international humanitarian law. Every human being, no matter of his actions, is entitled to be treated as a human being, no matter his race, gender, and his action.

That's a principle in international law, and Israel is a part of this anti-torture pact. But as we've seen, torture is still happening around the world and also in Israel. If we speak about the B’Tselem staff, who are a joint staff Jewish-Israeli and Palestinians, it's anxiety because who knows who's going to be next. For the Palestinians, there is what was said in the report. And even for Jewish people, with full rights, when these tools and this procedure is part of the system, you might be next. That's how the prison facilities of Israel are now handling prisoners. It's going to be the same procedure, the same staff for even the Jewish population. 

AG: In that light, I want to thank you for the time to do this interview, and also for the important and courageous work that you and your organization are doing. How can our readers at revcom.us find this report and learn more about B'Tselem?

SP: At btselem.org. All investigations and reports are published in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, visit our YouTube channel and help us protect human rights in the area.