Cuffed and blindfolded 24 hours a day. Confined to animal pens. Attacked by dogs. This is reportedly the treatment of Palestinian detainees at Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base in the Naqab desert. While claims of torture and abuse at the facility began circulating in December, the Israeli military did not open an investigation into the allegations until July 29, when 10 Israeli soldiers were detained on suspicion of sexually abusing a detainee.

In response to the soldiers’ detention, a mob of right-wing extremists stormed Sde Teiman and later broke into the Beit Lid military base, where the detained soldiers were being held. Among those detained were soldiers from the Force 100 unit, which was resurrected at the onset of the war and has been responsible for guarding the detainees at Sde Teiman. Masked soldiers, wearing black shirts emblazoned with the unit’s logo—a snake inside the Jewish Star of David—were seen participating in the protests.

Several Israeli lawmakers took part in the riots, including Otzma Yehudit’s (Jewish Power) Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, Religious Zionism member of parliament, Zvi Sukkot, and parliamentary members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Nissim Vaturi and Tally Gotliv.

Protests have continued to erupt in support of the soldiers, including, most recently, outside an Israeli High Court hearing on the case on August 7, 2024.

As allegations of torture and sexual abuse at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility escalate and Israeli Military Police prepare to conclude their investigation and file indictments against the suspects, MintPress uncovers the financial and political infrastructure, including from the U.S. and Canada, backing these soldiers through tax-exempt organizations and crowdfunding platforms. This marks a disturbing shift in global support for human rights violations, now extending even to those implicated in the Israeli military’s acts of sexual violence.

 

Donors and supporters of Sde Teiman suspects

The Israeli soldiers at the center of the investigation are suspected of sodomizing a detainee, a Hamas police officer, with an object. After the alleged abuse, the man was rushed to the hospital, where he was found to have signs of rape, including a ruptured bowel and broken ribs.

The case has deeply divided Israeli society, with many, including political leaders, defending the accused soldiers. Notably, much of this defense does not dispute the sexual abuse allegations but argues that the soldiers should be granted immunity.

“It doesn’t matter what happened,” Tally Gotliv said during the riots. “The moment it is about the soldiers and fighters who are guarding the Nukhba terrorists, no one may arrest them.”

During a parliamentary discussion on the case, Likud MP Hanoch Milwidsky remarked, “When it comes to a Nukhba terrorist, every deed is legitimate.”

The detainee was initially believed to be a member of the Nukhba forces, a unit of Hamas’ military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, but this was later proven false. He reportedly did not participate in Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel either.

In addition to Israeli lawmakers, several right-wing organizations have joined recent protests in support of the accused soldiers. Soldiers from Force 100, the unit to which the detained reservists belong, have also protested their detention. Formed during the First Intifada in the 1990s to guard the influx of military prisoners, Force 100 was disbanded in the early 2000s when the responsibility for military prisoners was transferred to the Israel Prison Service (IPS). However, the unit was re-established following the October 7 attacks to manage the mass arrests of Palestinians suspected of terrorism.

Israeli right-wing non-profit Btsalmo, along with pro-military activist groups “Victory Generation” Reserves Movement and “Guarding the Soldiers,” have actively participated in the demonstrations. According to the Israeli fact-checking organization FakeReporter, the settler-run Telegram channel “Fighting for Life” called on its followers to protest at Sde Teiman.

Additionally, activists from the pro-military group “Until Victory” joined the August 7, 2024, protest, which disrupted a Supreme Court hearing on petitions submitted by human rights groups regarding the abuse at the Sde Teiman facility.

While Btsalmo, the Victory Generation Reserves Movement, and Until Victory all accept tax-deductible donations within Israel, MintPress News found no connections between these groups and organizations outside of Israel. Similarly, Guarding the Soldiers and Fighting for Life do not appear to have any international links.

However, other protest groups involved in the demonstrations are affiliated with organizations based in the U.S. and Canada.

Video footage of the protests shows demonstrators wearing shirts from Im Tirtzu and Torat Lechima, and according to The Times of Israel, the anti-assimilation Jewish supremacist group Lehava is also involved in the movement. Honenu, a Zionist legal aid organization, is providing legal defense for the accused soldiers. All four groups receive backing from entities outside of Israel.

Both Im Tirtzu and Honenu receive donations from the Central Fund of Israel (CFI), a U.S. tax-exempt nonprofit. One of CFI’s largest donors is the foundation of the late American billionaire Irving I. Moskowitz. Along with Torat Lechima, Im Tirtzu and Honenu also accept donations from the U.S., U.K., and Canada via JGive, a U.S.-Israeli crowdfunding platform. Im Tirtzu further links to the Zionist group Mizrachi Organization of Canada for tax-deductible donations in Canada. Other notable donors to Im Tirtzu include the Kingjay Foundation Trust and The Snider Foundation.

Shmuel Meidad, the founder of Honenu, is also involved with the Tikva Forum, a right-wing alternative to Israel’s main hostage advocacy group, the Hostage and Missing Families Forum. In December 2023, Meidad participated in an internal Zoom call organized by the Tikva Forum. The Tikva Forum is further connected to Israeli Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, one of the protesters supporting the Sde Teiman suspects, through the Association of Community Rabbis—a nonprofit founded by Eliyahu and headed by his brother, Rabbi Ariel Eliyahu. The association funnels money to the Tikva Forum and is also fundraising on JGive, where it has raised just over NIS 12,700 (approximately $3,440) for the forum.

The Associated Press revealed in July that Torat Lechima raised funds for the Mother’s March, one of the groups blocking aid to Gaza. The campaign, which has since ended, raised NIS 48,242 (nearly $13,000) on JGive. Torat Lechima also sponsored a Gaza resettlement conference held earlier this year in Jerusalem. Im Tirtzu has similarly been involved in blocking aid trucks to Gaza and has advocated for banning the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the only UN agency solely dedicated to Palestinian refugees, from operating in Israeli territory.

In recent months, the U.S., European Union, and the U.K. have all sanctioned Lehava for its violent activities against Palestinians. As a result, Lehava can no longer accept donations through its nonprofit, the Foundation for the Salvation of the People of Israel, or HaKeren LeHazalat Am Israel (HLAI) in Hebrew. As previously reported by MintPress News, the organization is run by Ben Tzion Gopstein, a notorious follower of Meir Kahane, whose extremist, anti-Arab ideology became known as Kahanism. Additionally, Kahanist lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir’s spouse, Ayala Ben Gvir, is also listed as a founder of HLAI.

Lehava appears to be supported by the American tax-exempt organization Tomchei Tzedaka. Lehava’s U.S. wing links to Tomchei Tzedaka’s website through its donation button. When contacted by MintPress News regarding its relationship with Lehava and why its website links to the sanctioned group, Tomchei Tzedaka stated that they “don’t have any connection to them.” However, when asked to clarify why their organization is linked to Lehava online, Tomchei Tzedaka did not respond.

 

Not just Sde Teiman

After months of reports detailing the torture and inhumane treatment of detainees at Sde Teiman, a coalition of human rights groups petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to permanently shut down the facility. While approximately 700 detainees were previously held at Sde Teiman, they have since been transferred to other prisons. Currently, the facility is holding 28 detainees.

“According to all testimonies, these detainees regularly endure severe violence, resulting in fractures, internal bleeding, and even death,” wrote the Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights in Israel (PHRI) in its report on Sde Teiman. PHRI, one of the organizations petitioning the Supreme Court for the facility’s closure, has called for immediate action to end the abuse.

Speaking to MintPress News, Naji Abbas, director of the prisoners and detainees department at Physicians for Human Rights in Israel (PHRI), described the harsh conditions faced by detainees at Sde Teiman:

We understand that all the detainees in this facility are being cuffed the whole time — 24 hours — for weeks and for months. In a lot of cases, these cuffs caused injuries and infections and forced the medical staff to cut people’s hands and legs because of the infection. Their eyes were covered the whole time — 24 hours — for weeks and months. The field hospital is providing treatment just to people who got injured through combat. But if someone gets arrested and he’s a patient with a chronic disease, he won’t get treatment.”

In December 2023, PHRI submitted a request to the Israeli military seeking information on the number of detainees who had died in their custody. The military finally responded in July, stating that 44 Palestinians had died in custody but did not specify where the deaths occurred.

“They refused to say if all of them died at Sde Teiman, but we believe most of them did,” Abbas told MintPress.

The soldiers at Sde Teiman are accused of sexually abusing a detainee by inserting an object into his rectum, but according to Naji Abbas, this is not an isolated incident. In August, PHRI spoke with a doctor from Gaza who had been detained at Sde Teiman for three months.

“The doctor told our lawyer that he met at least ten other [detainees] — before the current allegations were made public — who had experienced sexual assault in the same way,” Abbas said.

Furthermore, Abbas noted that accusations of sexual assault are not limited to detainees in military custody but are also emerging from prisons across Israel. In July, PHRI sent a letter to the director of the Israel Prison Service (IPS) regarding the abuse occurring within Israeli prisons. The letter included 15 testimonies, one of which described a similar instance of sexual assault to the one alleged at Sde Teiman. PHRI has yet to receive a response from the IPS. Right-wing lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir, who currently heads the Ministry of National Security, oversees Israel’s prison system.

In August, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem published a report on the treatment of Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli prisons and detention centers since October 7, 2023. The report, titled “Welcome to Hell,” contains testimonies from residents of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and Israel, who were interviewed by B’Tselem after their release. The vast majority of these detainees were held in administrative detention, meaning they were incarcerated without trial.

The testimonies detailed “[f]requent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation; deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; prohibition of, and punitive measures for, religious worship; confiscation of communal and personal belongings; and denial of adequate medical treatment.”

Several accounts mentioned sexual violence by prison guards and soldiers, with one testimony describing an attempted anal rape using a foreign object by prison guards.

In its report, B’Tselem concluded that Israel is committing acts of torture amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“When we got off the bus, a soldier said to us, ‘Welcome to hell,’” recounted Fouad Hassan, a 45-year-old Nablus resident who was held in Megiddo Prison, in his testimony to B’Tselem.

Allegations of abuse and torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons are not new. The Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer has long documented these issues. However, the situation escalated after October 7.

“While the policy of violence has been ongoing,” Addameer wrote in a press release, “the Prison Service launched an unprecedented attack on prisoners in all Israeli prisons after October 7, implementing several policies that turned prisons into death traps for Palestinian prisoners.”

Feature photo | This undated photo from Winter 2023 provided by Breaking The Silence, a whistleblower group of former Israeli soldiers, shows Palestinian prisoners captured in the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces at a detention facility on the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel. Photo | Breaking The Silence via AP

Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist for MintPress News covering Palestine, Israel, and Syria. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Gulf News.

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