Report: Israel Torturing Palestinian Healthcare Workers

I’m writing to provide an excerpt from a recent report from Human Rights Watch with the express intention to convince my elected officials to strongly advocate for an arms embargo on Israel: (https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/08/26/israel-palestinian-healthcare-workers-tortured) Israeli forces have arbitrarily detained Palestinian healthcare workers in Gaza since hostilities began in October 2023, deported them to detention facilities in Israel, and allegedly tortured and ill-treated them, Human Rights Watch said today. The detention of healthcare workers in the context of the Israeli military’s repea ted attacks on hospitals in Gaza has contributed to the catastrophic degradation of the besieged territory’s healthcare system. From March to June 2024, Human Rights Watch interviewed eight Palestinian healthcare workers who were taken by the Israeli military from Gaza between November and December 2023 and detained without charge for between seven days and five months.  One paramedic said (https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/08/26/palestinian-paramedics-ordeal-israeli-detention) that at the Sde Teiman detention facility he was suspended from a chain attached to handcuffs, electroshocked, denied medical care for broken ribs caused by beatings, and administered what he believed was a psychoactive drug before interrogations. “It was so degrading, it was unbelievable,” he said. “I was helping people as a paramedic, I never expected something like this.”  Healthcare workers also reported being punished in detention for moving or speaking, and collectively punished if other detainees spoke. “Sometimes if one spoke, they [soldiers] punished the whole warehouse [at Naqab prison], collectively,” one healthcare worker said. The healthcare workers’ accounts are consistent with independent reports, including by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Israeli news media, and  rights groups, documenting dozens of detainee accounts of incommunicado detention, beatings, sexual violence, forced confessions, electrocution, and other torture and abuses of Palestinians in Israeli detention. Expecting and relying on unbiased and fair results from an Israeli investigation into its own crimes is both irresponsible and is arguably a crime in and of itself. Force Israel to comply with independent, international investigations. Enact an arms embargo on Israel now.