Testimonies from Palestinian women prisoners have revealed new details about the abuse and repression they faced after Israeli Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir raided their section in Israeli prisons, accompanied by members of his family, filmed the raid and issued threats against them.
اضافة اعلان
The testimonies indicate that the raid was not an isolated incident. It was followed by an escalation in measures of repression and humiliation, including depriving the prisoners of their personal belongings, denying them access to showers and outdoor exercise for several days, restraining and blindfolding them, and deliberately filming the abuse.
The Palestinian Prisoners' Club said Ben-Gvir's visit to the women's prison section went beyond the raid itself, describing it as a stark example of turning the prison and the women prisoners into material for political spectacle and propaganda, and of exploiting the violence inflicted on them to serve a political narrative based on incitement and extremism.
It said Ben-Gvir entered the women's section accompanied by members of his family, went into two rooms, personally documented the raid and published a video in which he was seen issuing threats against the prisoners.
According to the Prisoners' Club, the incident reveals an unprecedented level of treating the prison as an open space for political spectacle and demonstrates the direct intersection between political authority and instruments of repression inside detention facilities. The presence of an Israeli minister and his family inside the women's section, filming the scene and publishing it, turns the prisoners from rights-bearing detainees held under occupation into participants in a political and propaganda spectacle, making humiliation itself a deliberate act of public display.
The club said the most concerning aspect was that the visit came as the women prisoners were already facing repeated raids and acts of repression, making it part of a broader environment in which threats, punishments, isolation and raids are used to reinforce a sense of insecurity and strip prisoners of any feeling of privacy or protection.
According to the prisoners' testimonies, the visit was followed by a dangerous escalation in abuse and repression. The women remained for three days without their personal belongings and were denied access to showers or outdoor exercise.
The prisoners said: “During the latest repression operations, our hands are tied behind our backs and we are blindfolded. We are then taken out violently with our heads lowered and forced to lie on the ground. This is accompanied by shouting, insults and obscene language. We live in a constant state of anxiety and alertness, fearing a sudden raid on our rooms. The same forms of abuse are repeated during every repression operation, along with repeated isolation and detention under extremely harsh and degrading conditions, as well as the deliberate filming of the repression operations.”
The testimony confirms that filming is not a marginal detail in these acts of repression, but an additional tool of humiliation and control in itself. It turns moments of violence against the women prisoners into material that can be documented and used outside the prison, constituting a further violation of their human dignity.
