Mohammed Zaki al-Bakri says he witnessed Israel’s genocide in Gaza with his own eyes. He once lived in Khan Younis, the largest city in southern Gaza. He was held in Israeli prisons for nearly 20 months, during which he says he was moved between five Israeli facilities.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, al-Bakri said: “They stripped us naked. We were handcuffed… our hands were tied behind our backs, our legs were bound, and our eyes were blindfolded.”
Al-Bakri then made allegations of horrific violence he said Israeli soldiers inflicted on him, accounts he said were almost impossible to put into words. Al Jazeera was unable to publish those descriptions in full.
Al-Bakri said: “After our clothes were taken off, I was raped using a large dog.”
In another part of the interview, al-Bakri said: “Seven of us were subjected to sexual abuse by that dog.”
He was not the only one to make such allegations of sexual abuse. Similar accounts came from many others.
Al Jazeera’s documentary team spent months gathering accounts from Palestinians who had been held in Israeli prisons. Their testimony describes dogs being used not only to instill fear but also as part of a process of humiliation through sexual abuse, according to the documentary.
Detainees, the testimony says, were stripped, blindfolded, handcuffed, forced to lie face down, beaten, threatened, filmed and assaulted.
Al Jazeera’s investigative documentary, “Badge of Evidence: Israel’s Darkest Weapon,” depicts the abuse of Gaza Palestinians held by Israel and of Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank at the hands of Israeli settlers, according to the program.
Another Palestinian from Gaza held in an Israeli prison did not reveal his name; the documentary refers to him by a pseudonym. He said he was moved between eight Israeli detention centers.
The Gaza resident said that while held at Israel’s notorious Sde Teiman facility, dogs were set on detainees in the same planned manner.
Another Palestinian from Gaza also described being attacked by a dog while in detention.
Beyond the use of dogs in sexual abuse, another former detainee and rights worker, identified by the pseudonym Shireen, described being repeatedly stripped and subjected to humiliating body searches.
Adnan Hassan, a resident of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, was held as a teenager. He said he was detained for five months after his arrest.
Mais Abu Ghosh, a resident of Jerusalem, was held at the notorious Sde Teiman facility. She described it as a place where humiliation was a daily occurrence.
In their accounts, such incidents were not described as confined to a single prison, a single guard, or an isolated case; rather, they described it as a systematic process of detainee abuse.
Stripping, beatings and filming
According to Palestinian official sources, Israel has detained more than 750,000 Palestinians since 1967. According to United Nations figures, more than 800,000 Palestinians were imprisoned between 1967 and 2006.
For Palestinians, imprisonment is not an isolated experience but one that runs continuously from one generation to the next. A Palestinian may be arrested at home, at a checkpoint, inside a hospital, at a shelter, or during a military operation.
That Palestinian may then be moved from place to place among soldiers, intelligence officers, military detention centers, police custody, military courts and prisons run by the Israel Prison Service.
Only the names of the facilities change: Sde Teiman, Ofer, Negev, Ashkelon, interrogation centers, checkpoints and military camps.
But the descriptions of their experiences are repeated again and again. A name becomes a number. Clothes are removed. Eyes are blindfolded. Hands and feet are bound. Detainees are not given enough food or allowed to sleep. Dogs are brought in. Detainees are threatened with rape. Many are raped.
Some say they were filmed during the abuse. Many say their complaints go nowhere.
In al-Bakri’s case too, the dog was not merely present during the incident. He said: “It was part of the assault. They brought dogs toward us, then began kicking. They would attack us from behind with dogs… they set the dogs on us like madmen.”
Al Jazeera was unable to publish in detail the account this Palestinian gave of the abuse he suffered.
But one pattern was clear in his testimony: in descriptions of nakedness, restraint, sexual violence and humiliating treatment, the presence of dogs came up again and again.
Al-Bakri said: “We are helpless, we have no power to do anything. They are laughing. And of course they filmed us.”
A second Palestinian, identified by the pseudonym Job, said the dogs began attacking the moment the soldiers gave the order. To him, they seemed less like dogs than men.
Job said: “They release the dogs. There is no way to avoid it, the dog will come. They will either rape you, or strike your head with the metal rod in their mouths. They do exactly what they are ordered to do.”
Mahmoud Abu Foul was abused so severely in an Israeli prison that he lost his sight.
The recent reports of sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons have sparked wide international debate.
After these reports, Israeli officials and some media figures who support them denied the allegations, calling them a “blood libel” or a historically false slander, particularly the allegation of sexual abuse using dogs.
But according to Palestinians and organizations that document detainee abuse, these allegations did not arise suddenly.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, said in an interview for the documentary that Palestinians had long faced “being attacked with dogs, being tortured and even sexually abused.”
Albanese added: “These are realities that everyone knows.”
Drawing on accounts from detainees, Albanese described a broad pattern of abuse. Describing examples, she said: “Being bound hand and foot until they bleed, beatings, being dragged, starvation, exposure to cold, denial of medical care, attacks with dogs, solitary confinement, sexual abuse, being forcibly stripped, and threats to rape and kill family members.”
Khraim, an advocacy partner at the Palestinian women’s rights organization the Women’s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC), said sexual harassment and threats are used to silence people. Because of social stigma, men and boys often do not speak about it. Women fear social punishment, and children carry a shame they have no language to express.
Sde Teiman and the architecture of abuse
Sde Teiman is an Israeli military detention center in the Naqab/Negev desert. The notorious center has become a symbol of Israel’s abuse of detainees since October 7, 2023.
Various reports have emerged of Palestinian detainees there being blindfolded and bound hand and foot, of medical neglect, and of allegations of abuse and sexual abuse.
Earlier, five Israeli soldiers had been accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman. In March 2026, Israeli authorities withdrew those charges.
Palestinian detainees may pass through various Israeli systems, including military detention, intelligence interrogation, police custody, military courts and regular prisons.
The Israel Prison Service and the police operate under the Ministry of National Security. That ministry is headed by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right figure controversial for inflammatory remarks.
Military detention centers such as Sde Teiman are run under the Israeli army’s command structure.
Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, operates under the prime minister’s office. The Ministry of Justice oversees state legal policy, the conduct of cases and the government’s legal defense. In this way, responsibility is scattered and divided.
A detainee might be arrested by Israeli soldiers, interrogated by intelligence officers, held by prison guards, brought before a military court and tried through the civilian legal system.
If questions are raised about the treatment of a detainee, each institution can shift the blame onto another, even though all of it is part of the Israeli state’s detention system.
For this reason, Raji Sourani, founder and director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, said the problem is not confined to any single prison.
Sourani added: “We have evidence of crimes. We have testimony and proof. What happened at Sde Teiman is only a very small part of the real picture.”
Sexual violence used as a weapon
Sexual violence in detention can include rape, threats of rape, forced stripping, body searches and sexual harassment.
Under international law, depending on the circumstances and intent, this may amount to a war crime, a crime against humanity, or genocide.
Those interviewed for the documentary described different forms of such violence. Job, from northern Gaza, said he was gang-raped by Israeli soldiers and that the act was filmed.
Job said a female soldier even sexually abused him using an artificial device while others clapped.
A woman whose identity was withheld for security reasons said she was repeatedly forced to strip. She said: “They took me to a room. They told me to take off my clothes.”
She then described how she was abused in an aggressive and terrifying manner. It could not be put into words.
Adnan, the pseudonym of a 17-year-old Palestinian schoolboy, said he was caught up in an Israeli military operation on his way to school. Soldiers threw an explosive at him. The blast badly injured his right hand, part of which later had to be amputated.
About a week later, while he was still unwell, the same forces returned and arrested him. He was held for five months.
He said that during that time he was beaten on sensitive parts of his body and repeatedly forced to strip for searches. The wound from his amputated hand had not yet healed.
Mohammed Abu Kabash, a resident of the occupied West Bank, first heard the sound of dogs. It was a Friday, around 1 a.m., and his family was asleep in the Khirbet Hamsa al-Fauqa area of the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank.
Abu Kabash went outside with a torch to see what was happening. He said he shone the torch toward the hills and was startled to see a group of people walking along the hillside from different directions.
Abu Kabash tried to stay calm. He said: “Fear and panic took hold of me completely. I tried to control myself, but I could not.”
Within moments, illegal Israeli settlers attacked him. Describing the settlers’ assault, he said: “Four attackers set upon me. They held me and tied my hands. They stabbed my hand and beat me on different parts of my body.”
His brother Suhaib Abu Kabash said: “While the settlers were moving through the camp, everyone was still asleep. They entered every house here, about 20 settlers per house. One was handcuffing us, another was beating us.”
Suhaib alleged that the settlers took all the families’ sheep, beat the children, handcuffed him, forcibly stripped him and bound his genitals.
Suhaib said: “They dragged me about 100 meters and threw water and dirt on me.”
Suhaib said he saw several settlers surround his brother.
He added that many of them attacked him. “I do not know exactly how many there were, 10, nine or eight… a lot of people. They stripped him and beat him.”
Suhaib then fell silent for a while. He seemed to want to say something but could not find a way to say it.
Suhaib asked, “Can I say this?…” They brought a plastic zip tie and bound it around his genitals.
Suhaib later showed the marks left by that plastic zip tie on his body, still clearly visible. Abu Kabash said that after the settlers left, Suhaib came to him.
Abu Kabash added: “He was in such a state that he could not even walk. I did not know what to do. I was very confused about what I should do in such a situation. It is a very sensitive area; how would I handle it?”
It was dark all around. He called Suhaib’s wife and asked her to hold a flashlight. He then began cutting the plastic zip ties bound to his brother Mohammed’s body with a knife. He said: “Blood was running down his body.”
The two brothers told Al Jazeera that the attack was not only on Suhaib.
In another interview, Suhaib said the settlers drove the women out of their homes, herded people into a tent and made threats. They had called for help, but help came too late. Suhaib said: “We called the police… then an army vehicle came. But too late; by then we had already been beaten.”
The Israeli army and police said they were investigating the incident. So far it does not appear that anyone has been punished. None of the victims who spoke to Al Jazeera has yet received any compensation.
Israel, as ever, has denied the allegations of systematic abuse. According to reports in the Israeli media, the Israel Prison Service said it is a security agency that operates “in accordance with the law” and “under strict supervision.” Detainees, it said, are held while “protecting their basic rights.”
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, made similar remarks after the recent reports of sexual abuse.
Leiter said: “If there is any complaint of unlawful conduct against Israeli authorities, it must be submitted to the investigating body, and those complaints will be reviewed in detail. In a democratic society, that is the norm.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report