The voice of Dr. Khaled Alderr was tense when he remembers how the Israeli soldiers tortured and humiliated him as well as other doctors.
Their treatment “was designed to humiliate us,” said the 33 -year -old surgeon on an unstable online call. “They forced us to make the sound of a donkey.”
Dr. Alserr had been arrested with other health workers at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in March of last year – they remained in charge despite their Israeli assault at the hospital in February.
Rights defense groups claim that arrests are part of the target of health workers by Israel, highlighting the arrests of more than 250 Palestinian health workers.
In his report, the torture of medical workers in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights, Israel (PHRI), cataloged arbitrary detention and abuse of health workers in Gaza.
Among the doctors interviewed for the report, there was an alserr, whose return to tears to his father in Gaza was filmed below.
“We are going to cut your fingers because you are a dentist”
On an unequal telephone line in Gaza, the sound of a neighborhood demanding behind him, Dr Alserr is specific to his detention.
He describes to be forced from the hospital with other doctors, nurses and staff, and made us undressing “in public and in front of soldiers and neighboring houses” on March 25 of last year.
“They then let us put our underwear and attached our wrists with plastic links.”
Dr. Alserr was questioned three times, twice by soldiers and once by people who said they were Israeli security services, BET Shin.
The interrogations, Najji Abbas de Phri, said, to know if the doctors came on information that could help Israel in his assault against Gaza – a striking violation of the Geneva Convention, which protects medical workers.
The questions were always the same.
“(They) asked questions about my identity and my work and what I was doing on October 7. Where was I, who did I treat? Nothing of me, ”he said.
Of the more than 250 Palestinian health workers – doctors, nurses, paramedical paramedics and other essential medical staff – held by Israel throughout the war, more than 150 remain in detention, said Phri.
Of the 24 health workers interviewed for the NGO report, all said they had not been officially charged or presented with credible evidence against them.
Instead, they were threatened, beaten and humiliated, while questioning the captives taken in Israel, the tunnels and everything they have heard of Hamas’ movements.
A doctor, Dr. KJ, recalled that he had been informed during an assault: “We will cut your fingers to you because you are a dentist.”
Another senior surgeon Dr. Mt told the NGO that the military dogs were in detrue while the soldiers watched and laughed. “They made us bark like dogs,” he said.
Many health workers have testified to be sexually and psychologically abused by Israeli soldiers, in particular by being stripped, left in stress positions for hours, receiving threats against their families and being forced to play ” games »or to face other blows.
“On March 28, the soldiers called me and two other civil prisoners, aged about 16 and 17,” recalls Dr. ALSER.
“It was at night. They attached us very closely to the wrists and ankles and put us in a military car. No one told us anything. We led for about two hours in the hills. Throughout this time, they beat us, kicked us and humiliates us.
“They laughed. I was trying to explain in English that the links on my wrist were too tight, but they just said that I was a doctor, so I would go well.
“Around 4 am, I heard one in Arabic:” These three must be hanged. »»
“I … thought it was the end,” said the surgeon. “I was in pain. They broke my ribs. Even when they said I was going to be hanged, I didn’t care. I just wanted it to end, “he said.
Dr. Alserr was only released at the end of September, bringing him together with his parents, for whom he is the only care provider.
Overall, he endured more than six months in Israeli detention without indictment. Half of this time was devoted to a stranger, under the illegal law of Israel.
Illegal activity
“It’s illegal on many charges,” Abbas told Phri in Tel Aviv Tribune.
“It is illegal, first of all, because you cannot simply stop someone on what is clearly a fishing mission and, secondly, health workers are a protected category under international humanitarian law. »»
The abuse and the famine that Israel has inflicted on health workers is “a moral and legal indignation”, but seemed a question of politics.
“None of the (health workers) has been accused of anything or officially charged,” he said. “Others have received a person who identifies themselves as a judge – sometimes in military uniform, or at the other end of a telephone line – who told them that they had to stay in detention until the end of War.
“We have no idea who these people were,” he said.
“Many people we have spoken about have spoken of being the victim of sexual violence and humiliation,” recalls Abbas, “the use of dogs to attack or pee on prisoners seemed to reproduce a lot.
“The idea is that soldiers steal Palestinian men – and doctors specifically – of their dignity. This kind of torture also leaves scars; Those who take a long time to heal. »»
A story of violence
Israeli forces torture health workers for intelligence are for a long time and, according to legal representatives of the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, who was taken by the Israeli army in December, in progress.
The case of Dr. Abu Safia resembles the arbitrary detention of Dr Adnan al-Bursh, 49, who was “likely to be raped to death” when he was in police custody, as the special rapporteur of special rapporteur The UN, Francesca Albanese, said in a social media position in November.
In August of last year, a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Gaza health workers and torture of Gaza health workers said that the case deserved by the International Criminal Court.
HRW interviewed several health workers held by Israel during the forced evacuation of health establishments, noting repeated bodies of humiliation, blows and forcing prisoners to maintain stress positions. They also reported torture, including rape and sexual abuse by Israeli forces.
“Their status as health workers has not stopped abuse,” said Milena Ansari, HRW lawyer who worked on the report.
Probably violated to death.
A doctor. A stellar surgeon. The incarnation of Palestinian ethics.
Probably violated to death.Western media racism that does not cover this, and Western politicians who do not denounce this, with the thousand other testimonies and … pic.twitter.com/irpcsi9nvz
– Francesca Albanese, an OPT special rapporteur (@franceskalbs) November 18, 2024
“Surgeons, paramedical paramedics, doctors and nurses were all subjected to abuse. A surgeon told me that he had been questioned when he was still in his scrubs … The soldiers got on. »»
A report last year by the United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHC) said it was “clear” the wholesale detention of health workers in the midst of a blockade that has, to this Day, killed some 60,000 Palestinians also contributed to the collapse of a health system which desperately tries to imatigne the impact of the assault of Israel against the people of Gaza.
Dr. Alserr took a break for five minutes, there was a crisis in his neighborhood that needed his attention.
“I hurt deeply,” he said when he returned to the phone.
“I know that I will not heal completely. I just hide it with work. And keeping busy.
