CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

TORTURE AND INHUMAN TREATMENT OF PALESTINIAN PRISONERS

Part 1 of 2

Most death penalty sentences imposed on war criminals in World War II were for crimes of torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners of war and civilian populations under Axis occupation. The judgment handed down in the High Command Trial regarded as declaratory of customary law the part of Article 46 of the Geneva Convention that states: "All forms of corporal punishment, confinement in premises not lighted by daylight and, in general, all forms of cruelty, whatsoever, are prohibited.'' (1)

The Zionists are guilty of many of the the same kinds of heinous acts that were committed by the Nazis. While it is true that Palestinian and Lebanese inmates of Israeli prisons have not been murdered en masse as the Jews were by the Nazis, nonetheless the detailed evidence that has been gathered on the treatment of Palestinian prisoners by their Israeli captors reveals shocking parallels between Germany's treatment of Jews and Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Responsibility does not only rest with the sadists who actually perpetrate the acts of torture or who establish and administer the prisons where inhuman conditions exist. Responsibility rests with the entire Zionist structure. In confirming the death penalty for Japanese General Yamashita, the Supreme Court of the United States said that the General had a duty to "take such measures as were within his power and appropriate in the circumstances to protect prisoners of war and the civilian population," that is to say, to prevent offences against them from being committed. (2)

The torture and murder of prisoners generally resulted in the death penalty for those responsible. The Israeli record of war crimes parallels that of the Axis war criminals. On July 22, 1980, Palestinian prisoner Ali Shehadeh a1 Jeferi died at Ramie prison hospital, where, on July 24th, another Palestinian prisoner, Bassam Halawa, also died, it was claimed, of pneumonia. On July 21st they had been transferred from the notorious Nafha prison. "In reality, they had been beaten to death, and a probe pushed up their noses had enabled salt water to be forced into their stomachs." (3)

In the courtyard of a school in Sidon, Lebanese and Norwegian witnesses saw a 60 year old man being beaten up savagely for ten minutes and kicked on all parts of his body, until he fainted and collapsed. The same witnesses saw Palestinian physician Dr. Nabeel being dragged by Israeli soldiers with a rope strung around his neck, while other Israeli soldiers beat him with sticks. Dr. Francis Capet, a French physician, saw three unconscious men lying in the sun, on the earth. Israeli soldiers kicked them in order to awaken them, but in vain. They didn't move. Dr. Christo Giannou of Canada witnessed four detainees being beaten to death. An Israeli soldier called him to examine the corpses. (4)

Dr. Shafique Islam, a physician from Bangladesh, witnessed an Egyptian who was suffocating and asking for water and air. Israeli soldiers warned him to keep quiet or he would be killed. When he asked again for air and water they simply shot him.

The Bangladeshi doctor further testified:

Dr. Nabih Soeb, a Palestinian doctor who graduated in Spain in 1980, had been my neighbour and had worked in the same hospital. IDF soldiers fractured his lower jaw. Dr. Mohamn~ad Anwar hadeleven ribs broken on his right side, and suffered a cerebral concussion; he had cared for patients with health insurance in Sidon in a wing belonging to the PRCS.

Dr. Mohammad Anwar had eleven ribs broken on his right side, and suffered a cerebral concussion; he had cared for patients with health insurance in Sidon in a wing belonging to the PRCS.

Rafique Ahmen Tapan, from Bangladesh, was subjected to electric shocks resulting in severe fractures and an open wound over one wrist.

A Palestinian boy named Mohammad Ahmad Bakri became insane following torture; he was refused psychiatric treatment despite several requests through the International Committee of the Red Cross. (5)

The report of the War Crimes Branch of the Judge Advocate's section of the 3rd U.S. Army, dated 2 1 June 1945, described the conditions at the Nazis' Flossenberg concentration camp: "Hunger and starvation rations, sadism, inadequate clothing, medical neglect, disease, beatings, hangings, freezing, forced suicides, shootings, etc., all played a major role. Prisoners were murdered at random." (6)

The Zionists are guilty of the same crimes. All one would have to do is to change the names of their victims from Arabic to Polish, or Greek or Yiddish names and the torture and inhuman conditions described would be the same.

The court in the Einsatzgruppen Case (U.S. v. Ohlendorf) declared that "the defence of military necessity could certainly not apply to the killing of civilians, e.g. Jews." (7) The Israelis cannot claim any alleged military necessity, either, in their killing of civilian Palestinians and Lebanese.

Torture and inhuman conditions perpetrated by the Israelis multiplied with the invasionof Lebanon. But they didnot start with the invasion of Lebanon. For example, in 1981 students from Beit Sahour and Bethlehem were tortured by the Zionists:

1. Walid George Qumsieh:

Walid, 16, was in very serious condition and was taken to the hospital. He has been savagely beaten and abused by his interrogators who have continued beating him since his arrest on November 15.

Walid had injuries in his back from repeated kicks from the soldiers. The wounds were bleeding and he could not sleep on his back oreven sit. He had to spend all his time lying on his abdomen.

Walid was in need of immediate and urgent medical treatment but was denied a doctor by the authorities of the prisons until November 23. The prison authorities gave him two pills after two days of torture and nobody could tell what kind of pills they were.

Walid was forced outdoors during cold rain. Soldiers and guards, two of whom were named Amos and Robert, hit him with their feet and fists whenever they passed him in the courtyard of the prison. He showed his lawyer marks caused by the handcuffs fixed to his hands by his interrogators, mainly by a security man code-named Abu Nidal. The interrogators put a black nylon bag on his head and kept on beating him savagely to force him to confess to "security offenses."

2. Bassem Abdul WahedMusa Aslini:

Bassem, 17, was brutally beaten and abused by the interrogators who hit him repeatedly on his back causing more inflammation and swelling of his wounds. He asked for a doctor to visit him but the authorities denied him treatment. The constant abuse caused him to faint. Two days after his arrest, a doctor came to visit him and gave him two pills of an unknown kind.

After he was "checked" by the doctor, he was forced to kneel before the interrogators who beat him and abused him severely into confessing to membership inan illegal organization and to writing graffiti on walls against the Israeli occupation. Bassem denied the charges to his lawyer and stressed that he is innocent.

3. Abdul Nasser Abdui Wahed Musa Aslini:

Abdul Nasser, Bassem's brother, 15, was also brutally beaten after he was arrested. He was forced to lay down on the floor of the military vehicle which took him from Beit Sahour to Bethlehem. The soldiers squeezed his hands with hand-cuffs and caused serious injuries. He fell from a height of 12 steps at the Russian Compound while he was subjected to savage torture and interrogation.

4. Amjad Abu Aita:

Amjad, 16, was also brutally beaten up by his interrogators and was left outdoors, in cold and under rain for 36 consecutive hours. The beatings were concentrated on his stomach. Ventilation in his cell was so bad that he had trouble breathing. His lawyer saw marks of severe beating on his body. He was forced to confess to throwing a bottle which hit a place 50 meters away from a military vehicle.

5. Ayman Abu Aira:

Ayman, 16, was beaten at the site of an operation conducted by doctor Ahmed Hamzeh Natshe, some time before he was arrested. His condition was also very serious. He was suffering from severe pain in the place of his operation. Under torture he was forced to confess to a two year membership in an illegal organization, that is, when he was 14 years old.

6. Raja Qumsieh:

Raja, 17, is the cousin of Walid. He was beaten on various places of his body, but mainly on his genitals. He was left for a long time in the courtyard of the prison, and was forced to confess to membership in an illegal organization since the time he was only 14 years old. His uncle's house had been demolished before the confession was extracted from him.

7. Tarik Skomali:

Tarik is 18 years old. His lawyer said that she had told the soldiers and interrogators that the health of Tarik was at stake, especially because he had only recently left the hospital after several operations and a long convalescence for injuries inflicted on him during his previous arrest. Interrogators tortured him by pushing metal rods into his urethra, rupturing it.

Despite his delicate condition, soldiers and interrogators beat him severely and left him for two nights outdoors. He was forced to confess to two-year membership in an illegal organization.

 

These seven Palestinian boys were tortured in the same manner as youths throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. A son of Mr. Soich, the representative of Royal Dutch Shell in Yugoslavia before World War 11, was tortured by the Nazis exactly in the same way as these Palestinian boys. He was only in his teenage years. So were they. He was Slavic "Untermensch" to his Nazi torturers. They were Arab "Untermensch" to their Zionist torturers.

Father Edward Dillon, an American Priest of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, New York, collected evidence from different eyewitnesses regarding Zionist war crimes. He observed: "The racist character of the assault against the Palestinians is betrayed in the Israeli treatment of prisoners. They were held, hands bound, in the stifling heat, without food or water, and subjected to savage beatings."

Sometimes prisoners were beaten to death, murdered in cold blood. Father Dillon reports: "Dr. Giannou witnessed four prisoners who were beaten to death. He was called upon by an Israeli soldier to examine two of the cadavers. His Norwegian colleague, Dr. Berge, examined another two cadavers and saw five or six piled into the ambulance. "Dr. Giannou saw Israeli officers, including Colonel Arnon Amozer, the military governor of Sidon, witnessing these beatings and doing nothing about it." (8)

In international law those such as Colonel Amozer who permit murders to take place without trying to prevent them are just as guilty as the culprit who physically beats the victim to death, and command responsibility to prevent war crimes so heinous as torture and murder goes to the very top of the Zionist structure.

Israeli journalist Amnon Dankner quotes a nameless Israeli soldier who witnessed a Zionist military police officer opening fire on defenseless Palestinian prisoners. The nameless soldier "standing outside the fences, watched how the bullets cut into the flesh of those who were hit." (9)

This Zionist military police officer is no different from SS officer Fritz Knochlein, who was tried by a British military court in 1948 and sentenced to death for shooting captured British prisoners of the Norfolk Regiment. (10)

International law did not allow Nazis to kill unarmed British prisoners with impunity. Equally, international law does not allow Zionists to kill unarmed Palestinians with impunity. There is no statute of limitation on the war crimes of murder and torture. Jews still demand that Nazi war criminals be brought to justice. So the Palestinians demand that the Zionist war criminals be brought to justice.

Jean-Pierre Metral of Switzerland quotes Said Mohamed Abu Mujahid who had been held prisoner by the Zionists:

"We were violently beaten. I received a blow on the head. I received a blow on my upper lip. I received blows on all the other parts of my body. I can show you the scars." Under torture one of his comrades cried "Allahu Akbar" (God is great). The Israeli officer insulted their religious feelings by saying to them: "Fuck your Allah!" (11)

Japanese officer Tanaka Chuichi and two others were found guilty by an Australian military court that cited Article 18 of the Hague Convention and Article 16 of the Geneva Prisoners of War Convention concerning the religious rights of prisoners of war. The Zionists, who falsely claim that the Almighty gave them the land of the Palestinians, do not shrink from violating the Ten Commandments and breaking the part of international law prohibiting the infringement of the religious rights of prisoners of war. (12)

The Japanese militarists had imbued their soldiers with contempt for non-Japanese soldiers and civilians. The Israeli soldiers, imbued with Zionist ideology, act with similar barbarism. A Lebanese prisoner of the Israelis testified: "Certainly you heard us screaming. Besides the interrogating officer there are three Israeli soldiers in the room, armed with huge clubs. You hardly exchange a won! with the officer and these clubs knock you down." (13)

At the infamous Japanese concentration camp of Los Banos in the Philippines, American prisoner Les Yard was beaten in the same manner by a Japanese officer: "Two guards stood with bayonets on either side of the officer as he struck Yard repeatedly across the face. The American staggered against the wall but did not go down, though blood poured from his nose and mouth." What had the American done to deserve such treatment? "He had not bowed when he entered the Japanese commandant's office." (14)

One of the survivors of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, Dora KJein, wrote: "I had the feeling that I was in a place which was half hell and half lunatic asylum." (15) She could have been describing Al Ansar, or any other Zionist prison. According to eyewitness testimonies:

There was a dark-room in Al-Ansar and it seems it was difficult to visit it. According to the testimonies I obtained, the International Red Cross never found out where this room was. Here is what the testimony says: "When the representatives of the Red Cross came, we told them about the dark-room. They then wanted to see it, but nobody knew where it was. When the Israelis wanted to punish someone, they made him go into this room. It is a kind of zinc construction, 50 cm wide and 2 meters long. Of course, it is in the sun and it is very hot in this zinc container. Inside there are nails. When a prisoner came out of there, he was finished. He suffered terribly from the heat and from the pressure. There was nearly no oxygen; he couldn't breathe anymore, and after having spent three or four hours in this place, aprisoner would be immobilized in his tent for about a week. Some prisoners who had been in this room had bouts of hysteria, especially when the Israeli soldiers amused themselves by banging on this metal construction:

"One of the prisoners who went hysterical is called Ahmed Al-Barjaoui, another is called Ali; I don't remember his last name. A third is called Abu Hani. This man had worms come out of his foot after it had become injured. because the wound got infected. The Israelis wanted to mutilate his foot because there seemed to be nothing else left to do for him." The same witness told me: "One day, the Israelis came to take away a prisoner. We found out later that he was left paralyzed after the tortures he had to suffer and that he has now returned to his home in Bourj Al-Shemali. His name is Yussef Mafleh.

"Among the detainees, there were men who had lost an eye, there were elderly men, there were men who had become half crazy, there were boys not older than eight or nine years, there were people who were paralyzed." The witness continued: "During this time, our sufferings were boundless. It was unimaginable. After cross-examination, special soldiers came to hit us on the ears with theirpalms. Thus many people lost their hearing because both ears were hit at the same time. I was beaten in this way each time I came back from crossexamination. To torture us, they hit us on the genitals, on the stomach, on the head, on the sides. For example, they gripped our testicles and twisted them; sometimes they crushed them. After this treatment, some of my comrades complained that they could not urinate." (16)

Rudolf Hoess, the Nazi Commandant of Auschwitz, was tried, convicted and hanged on April 7, 1947 for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The Zionist counterparts of Hoess are deserving of no less a penalty for their crimes.

Testimony of survivors of the Nazi torturers helped to convict those rabid war criminals. Testimony of the survivors of the Zionist torturers will help to convict the Zionist war criminals as well. A Palestinian prisoner testifies:

The interrogation lasted from ten minutes to hours up to a half day. Each day they interrogated at the most ten or twelve people.

At night the earth was our bed, the sky our blanket. At the worst times we suffered from the cold of the morning dew, which covered our bodies hours before sunrise. We froze, as if it was the middle of winter. We all got diarrhea from sleeping on the bare ground.

Late in the afternoon of the third day the Israeli soldiers built a sort of wall out of empty fruit crates, behind which the informants stood watch. We had to file past them.

An Israeli officer wrote something in Hebrew on the backs of those prisoners who were to be sent to Israel. I belonged to lucky ones who were going to be set free. And so early the next morning I would see my family once again.

But this is not what happened. On the next morning the Israeli officers pulled me and others from the group and sent us to those who were to be transported to Israel.

Why? What had happened? We never learned.

The first Israeli station that we reached was Naharija. As the bus stopped, a few Israeli women got on and began to swear at us, to beat us, and to spit at us.

They carried on hysterically and were out of control. They took their shoes off and hit us over the head. Our Israeli guards looked on and laughed. Our hands were bound. We couldn't protect ourselves.

After a while we drove on another three and a half hours and came to the Dschura Camp, where we were welcomed with clubs. We learned from the prisoners that a special unit of the Israeli army was stationed at Dschura and that interrogation specialists were waiting for us.

After the evening meal on this first day - for each man there was some flat bread and a tomato slice - the guards gave us wool blankets. We wanted to go to sleep right away. Then along came soldiers with four frightful sheep dogs that they led on chains.

They sicked the dogs on us, and we were bitten. Anyone who defended himself or ran away was beaten by the soldiers. The young prisoners aged 15 or 16 began to cry. They pressed their faces into the ground and tried to protect their heads with their hands. But even they were beaten. It was like a horror film.

Once the soldiers demanded that we take all our clothes off. Three men came with portable pumps and hoses and sprayed us with DOT. Then each of us received a pair of underwear and an undershirt, blue trousers and a khaki shirt, two wool blankets, a hand towel, a pair of socks and old military boots, a spoon and a plate.

Every day brought a new torment. Many of us were beaten with iron rods, on the testicles and on the hands. One of the prisoners came back once with four broken fingers. Moreover, others were whipped- on the back, the chest, or the soles of their feet. Once they hung me up by the feet and used me as a training bag for boxers.

If someone wanted extra water, the soldiers urinated into his water cup and the prisoner had to drink it.

One time they covered our eyes and drove us into the sports stadium of the nearest village, where we thought we were going to attend a football game. Then the soldiers demanded that we get a team together to play against the village team. The result was that the villagers pelted us with empty bottles and cans, because to them we were "terrorists." Often they wanted todo us in psychologically, leaving the corpses of one of our fellow prisoners lying near us the entire night. Often we weredriven through the camp like cattle, with clubs and whips. When we were ordered to, we had to repeat the chant, "Peas, beans, onions, potatoes."

For one entire week we had to remain sitting, often holding our hands over our heads. We were allowed to stand only for necessities. This first week was the so-called guest week. Afterwards we belonged, so to say, "at home" and to the old prisoners. From then on we were allowed to use the shower and to move about the camp freely.

The worst days for us were Friday and Saturday, because Saturday is the Sabbath for them. At sundown Friday the Israeli soldiers began to drink. When they were drunk, they arbitrarily grabbed a few of us and smashed us together, laughing scornfully. (17)

Such treatment belongs in the same category with the Nazis. Perhaps, like some of the Nazis, these Zionist thugs behave differently when they are not brutalizing their Palestinian victims. Even Nazi butcher Rudolf Hoess describes in his diary one of his lieutenants who was condemned to death for his part in the Auschwitz tortures and murders:"Such a compassionate man, too. When his pet canary died, he tenderly put the body in a small box, covered it with a rose, and buried it under a rose bush in the garden." (18)

Did such a "compassionate" man think of his victims and their families? Do the Zionist war criminals think of their victims and their families? For they are similar "compassionate men" to the Nazi butchers. Do they think of the Palestinian man, Omar, and his family?

Most of the beating was on his head. They broke all his teeth with the butts of their rifles. They broke his nose and the blood poured from it. Then they beat him all over his body. His body was sore. It was black from the trapped blood. The beatings left their marks all over his body and he lost sensation.

When he lost consciousness they hung him from a pole. They crucified him for four days in the hot sun. They hung him by his wrists with nylon cord, his arms outstretched. The nylon cord cut through his wrists to the bone. All the skin fell off. He could not use his hands.

After four days they dumped his body outside the Convent School. He was left for dead. People found him inert and took him to Sha'ab Hospital where he was treated by Dr. Ramsey Sha'ab.

Omar was amnesiac. He could not recall his own name. He could not recognize his family. When he saw me he asked: "Who are you?" When I said I was his sister he asked me to leave. A friend of his who had been released had to tell us what had happened.

We sent Omar to a hospital in Abu Dhabi. There was no tissue on his hands. The bones were visible and he needed a skin graft. In the first operation they took skin from his arm but the operation failed and the skin did not take. They had to insert his hands surgically into his thighs to permit new tissue growth to take. He didn't recover the full use of his hands. He cannot write. (19)

The mutilation of Omar is not an isolated case of Zionist barbarity. Nazi war criminals devised all kinds of tortures for their victims. Lord Russell of Liverpool writes: "Some were tortured with bars of red-hot iron; their eyes gouged out, their stomachs ripped open; their feet, hands, fingers, ears and noses hacked off..." (20)

Bangladeshi physician Dr. Mohammed Aman al Haq testifies as an eyewitness:

I saw a soldier pulling Dr. Nabih Shuaiby by his shirt and the soldier started beating him. They tied him to a pole and began to beat him systematically. They beat him with everything. They used wooden sticks. They used their belts. Blood was coming from his face, from his body. He looked like Jesus Christ, crucified. His head was on his side, bleeding. His hands were tied behind his back. They tied a rope around his neck. They bound him to look up towards the sun. I think he was there for twenty-four hours -all through the night, too. His whole body became swollen.

Imet Dr. Nabih again in Safa. He was beside me. His entire body was still swollen. He could not easily move. His cheek Torture and Inhuman Treatment of Palestinian Prisoners 627 had been punctured - with a knife. You could see from the outside to the inside. His lip was hanging down to the side. He was cut over his eye. His wounds were dark. Festering. They needed cleaning and there was nobody to clean them. The tissue was dead and putrified. Flies continually clustered on him. His life was in jeopardy.

I told you that Dr. Nabih was avery polite man. Although he was suffering much more than us, at that moment he was thinking about others. What would happen to the Palestinian people? What would happen to the men in Safa? Torture was administered to him, the current so strong that his body leapt from the ground. Mohammed Zaydani lost consciousness and died. Ibrahim Zeitoun, 30, was also tortured with electricity. Electrodes were placed on each side of his head. Other wires were attached to mucous membranes in the mouth, to the testicles and to the join of scrotum and the anus. He is scarred from these electrode bums. He was also beaten severely and soldiers burned him with cigarettes, beginning with his wrists, arms and back, ultimately burning him all over his body.

A feeble-minded man, Mahmoud al Nabulsi, 22, a Palestinian from the el Akbieh region, was singled out for torment. He was slowly beaten to death after tonure with electricity, Abu Ali ofRashidiya was attacked by seven soldiers. He was beaten with sticks to the point where his swollen face forced his eyes shut. Then he was tortured with electricity. It was administered with a car battery. He was then put in an electrified chair, his hands and legs tied to the chair so that he could not move. (21)

Treblinka was another infamous Nazi concentration camp where torture and inhuman treatment were adaily occurrence. When the Nazis left, "there was no lack of physical evidence on display, the suffocated bodies in recently arrived cattle cars, the abandoned instruments of torture and death, the files and records that the Germans had so carefully maintained." (22)

At Megiddo, the biblical Armageddon. where the Zionists have created a camp to rival Treblinka, a Palestinian survivor, Ahmed Ibrahim, testifies:

Three days followed in the broiling sun without food or water. The prisoners were forced to stand all day and were beaten if they lost their balance or fell. These beatings, with staves and pipes, took place as prisoners were forced to hold onto long strands of sharp barbed wire.

Ahmed Ibrahim was struck with a stave with a very thick trunk, four and a half feet long. He felt that he was dying and would not survive internal bleeding and injury. Two months later, Ahmed Ibrahim still bore the scars and bruises on his back, which we photographed, and suffered from chronic chest pain and impaired respiration. The doctor treating him reported to us that blood was still present in his urine.

The extensive beatings did not conclude Ahmed Ibrahim's ordeal. When he was comatose from the beatings, he was brought to an area where electric torture was being administered to prisoners in a production line. An officer, known as "Lieutenant Amnon," about 28 years old, supervised while Sergeant Rafi, 34, turned on the current. The current which passed through the electrodes was so strong that a man's body would leap into the air, screams issuing from the victim. Ahmed Ibrahim was made to lie down on the ground as electrodes were attached to his ankles, genitals, chest and wrists.

Of the nine people whom Ahmed Ibrahim saw tortured with electricity, some were electrocuted. Among these was Mohammed Zaydani, who experienced seven shocks before losing consciousness and dying.

Torture unto death was not a random or isolated occurrence. Ahmed Ibrahim witnessed and heard firsthand accounts from fellow prisoners who witnessed death-by-torture of sixty-five prisoners in Megiddo. Every prisoner known by Ahmed Ibrahim in Megiddo had been brutalized and tortured in one fashion or another. Age provided no protection. Mohammed Moghrabi, in his eighties, and Hussam, a boy of nine, were among those beaten while forced to keep their hands on sharply barbed wire. Both were subjected to electric torture.

Upon release from Megiddo prison, Ahmed Ibrahim was placed on a bus together with 60 prisoners. The degradation and beatings continued en route, even as prisoners had been abused when first transported to the prisons from which they were now released. They were made to repeat the chorus first required of them in Zeeb: "All is wonderful here." They were all struck with batons. Some had batons jammed in their mouths, rupturing the throat. Before being released from the bus, Ahmed Ibrahim was warned that were he to speak of his experience in the detention camps he would be killed. (23)

The Nazis subjected some of their victims, especially Jews and Gypsies, to castration. One would think that the coreligionists of these Jews would not inflict the same on their victims. But the Zionists have learned nothing, and repeat everything. Only the names of their Palestinian victims differ from the names of the Nazis' victims. Eyewitness testimonies confirm this:

A Palestinian fisherman, aged 37, had lost an eye, was married and had a son and daughter. The only thing he knows is that they are trying to survive under the ruins of the steps leading to the school. He talked about his cross-examination: "We received blows everywhere, especially between the legs. They gripped Our testicles and twisted them and crushed them. This treatment lasted four days. Another time, when I was being interrogated again, a soldier wrung my wrists and hands. He kicked my thighs and genitals. Then they hit my sides with big sticks. I don't know what they did afterwards because I lost consciousness. When I woke up I was in Haifa hospital. My hand was in acast and my genitals were considerably swollen. I wanted to urinate but could not. The doctor untied me because 1 was tied to the bed. They put in a tube and then the urine came out."

It was very surprising to obtain these different testimonies on mutilations or tortures applied to the sexual organs (Arabs usually do not volunteer information on this issue) and I started to mention the problem more frequently and found that this practise was constant, also in the Occupied Territories. A 22-year-old student who left his family in the West Bank and is studying in Damascus and whom I will call Said, told me that in the West Bank, the thing with the cartridge in the penis is a common occurrence. "During a cross-examination, they undressed me, pulled out the hairs on the pubes, gripped my testicles and twisted them. It was horrible. They did tome the thing with the cartridge in the penis. It's unbearable. After my liberation I went to see a doctor (this was about 18 months ago) who treated me for months. I still have pain during erections and I don't know if I am still fertile. Some of my friends had their testicles smashed. The Red Cross knows all this very well. We have been invited to make a complaint to Geneva. What has been done with these reports? How come you don't know anything about these reports? It's a scandal that they are not published. Hundreds of people are in my situation. I beg you to go back to your country and to relate what I have told you. The world has got to know about all that." (24)

Article 3 of the Geneva Convention requires that "Women shall be treated with all consideration due to their sex."25 The Israelis maintain a prison for women political prisoners in Ramle. The conditions in this Neve Tertsa Prison are worthy of a Nazi administered camp. In Nazi concentration camps they placed common Jewish criminals in charge of the Jewish inmates, in violation of international law.

At Neve Tertsa Prison the Zionists place their Palestinian women political prisoners along with Jewish women criminals, thieves, prostitutes, drug addicts and so forth.

The conditions in which the Palestinian women political prisoners are held are horrible, so much so that in March, 1987 they declared a work strike. They made the following demands:

1. To separate the political prisoners from the Jewish criminal prisoners.

2. To stop mistreatment of the political prisoners by the Zionist policewomen wardens.

3. The presence of a translator during the visit of the representative of the Red Cross to the prisoners.

4. To improve the health conditions of the prisoners, particularly those who suffer illnesses.

5. To improve the quality and quantity of the food, among other degrading living conditions.

Here are the names of some women prisoners with long sentences of imprisonment:

1. Fadwa Ahmad Abaasi, from Silwan in Jerusalem district, was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment, starting from November 16, 1985. Her brother and cousins are imprisoned as well.

2. Naahedah Ataa Abaasi, from Silwan in the Jerusalem district, was sentenced to 1 112 years imprisonment, starting from February 1 1,1986. Her husband, mother and stepmother are also all imprisoned. 3. Afaat Mohammad Abdul Qader, from Nseirat in the Gaza Strip, was imprisoned for a one-year term, starting from September 14, 1986.

4. Aaishah Abdul Qader Ubeid, from Dhesiheh in the Bethlehem district, was sentenced to 1 1/2 years imprisonment, starting from January 3, 1986. She suffers from a bad health condition.

5. Ilhaam Qutub Abdul Jalil, from Balata near Nablus, was sentenced to 2 112 years imprisonment, starting from February 29 ,1985.

6. Zahrah Sa'id Othman Kar'ush from Deir Balut in Tulkarm District, was detained from February 15, 1986. Her brother and a niece are also imprisoned.

7. Lamyaa Ma'ruf Hasan Abdallah, from Deir Balut, has been detained since January 13 1986. Her husband is also imprisoned.

8. Su'ad Sleirnaan Faares, from Balata near Nablus, was sentenced to three years imprisonment, starting from April 7, 1986. Her husband is also imprisoned.

9. In'aam Risheq from Shu'fat in the Jerusalem district, was sentenced to two years imprisonment, starting from July, 1986.

10. Nabilah Risheq, from Shu'fat in the Jerusalem district, was sentenced to two years imprisonment, starting from July 1986.

There are another 12 prisoners who were sentenced between 4 months to one year.

The prison administrators at Ramle are blatantly violating international law and are war criminals following in the footsteps of their Nazi forbearers. The guilt is that of Zionism itself, as the guilt was that of Nazism before it. The Nazis were guilty of following the inhuman tenets of Nazism. The Zionists are guilty of following the inhuman tenets of Zionism. Torture is intrinsic to both ideologies, and followers of either ideology cannot escape responsibility for committing the crime of torture.

The International Military Tribunal of Major War Criminals ruled that:

If the basic idea is criminal under international law, the staff officer who puts that idea into the form of a military order, either himself or through subordinates under him, or takes personal action to see that it is properly distributed to those units where it becomes effective commits a criminal act under international law. (26)

Thus the orders under which Zionist soldiers tortured their victims, with electric shock instruments, for example, are in themselves criminal under international law. Thus an entire Israeli military chain of command is guilty of the war crime of torture and inhuman treatment of each Palestinian victim, such as Abu Mohammed, whose testimony follows:

Abu Mohammed is a Palestinian from Rashidiya. He is thirty-eight, married and has six children. His detention, although typical, is described by him in chilling detail:

"On Tuesday night about 1 a.m. all the boys and men were driven by bus to Nahariya in Israel. We were blindfolded but when I peered down there was a sliver of light for me to see my watch. We were taken into a building with several rooms. I thought it was a school or an abandoned office building. Every Palestinian had to run a gauntlet of eight to ten Israeli soldiers. Each soldier carried either a club or a large stave and every one of us was beaten. In fact, every soldier I met in Israel wore a club used for beating.

'Each of us was beaten and tortured during interrogation. They struck me repeatedly over a long period on the head and on the body. When I fainted, they revived me by throwing water in my face and began to beat me again. Three soldiers held me while a fourth hit me with his club over my right eye and left ear. Several times I was struck on the left side of my chest, breaking three ribs.

'Then I was put in a room approximately nineteen square feet (16 m). There was a shallow pool of water on the floor, about two inches (5 cm) deep. They put electrical wires in the water and switched on the current. It was not enough to kill, but sufficiently strong to cause me to jump up and down involuntarily, causing involuntary muscle spasms that made me collapse. Then they switched off the electricity and threatened to use a stronger current. They told me that if I admitted to being a commando nothing further would be done to me. They also said that if I told them even one name of someone who worked for the P.L.O. they would treat me well. I answered only that I was Abu Mohammed from Rashidiya - nothing more." (27)

A young Lebanese victim also testifies:

At Safa, where we were first taken, a soldier would strike us with blows from his baton when anyone of us budged. I shall always remember the way in which one Israeli soldier kept kicking an old man of seventy on the chest. It was so terrible. He moaned in pain. Later, the old man told us he had to watch this same soldier break all the teeth of a young man.

One Israeli soldier lit cigarettes and threw them into the crowd. The men started to argue over who would get them. One youngster told his comrades to leave them untouched. A group of soldiers fell upon him, battering him and breaking his arm.

I was put along with twenty-eight prisoners on a bus for Israel. The first stop was Nahariya. During the stop, Israelis came in the bus and abused us with the worst insults. Some began to punch and kick us.

After three and a half hours, the bus stopped. We were told to descend one by one. As soon as anyone put his foot on the ground, the soldiers hit him on the back. Then they faced us against a wall and untied our bindings.

After that they made us run to a place called "The Hole" while kicking us from behind. Only those whoran fast enough escaped being kicked.

"The Hole" is a place reserved for torture. All "suspects" are placed there for a time. The earth is white. It is divided into four sections separated by a large passage and surrounded by barbed wire. It is below a watch-tower for guards. At the entrance there is a tent, a table and some wooden chairs. Beside the table there is an opaque nylon curtain with two holes. From this hiding place spies point out prisoners who are segregated for the most severe treatment.

In back there is a special place reserved for the torturers. We learned that soldiers who served in "The Hole" were specialists in torture and had received intensive training in this field.

We sat in the first part of the "Hole". They ordered us to keep our hands on our heads and to remain absolutely still. Whoever moved even a hair was struck with blows from a baton or electric cables - not to mention the punches and other blows rained upon us. Even when sleeping, if anyone moved he was severely punished.

The most common torture consisted of blows with an iron bar. No one among us escaped having a toe severed by a blow from the iron bar. Some suffered serious injury from the electric cables, others from tear-gas grenades used on our legs and backs. We were struck in the genitals, usually on different occasions.

They attached us to winches and used us as punching bags. Soldiers pissed in the mouths of those who asked for water - pointing their penises and calling them their "fire hose". They put corpses around us to break our spirit.

They brought us to a large sports stadium and forced us to take part in a football match. Our eyes were blindfolded and they told us to help one or another team. The goal of this operation was to present us to Israeli civilian spectators as saboteurs. People threw rocks and empty bottles at us. They extinguished their cigarettes on our bodies.

There were yet other methods of physical andpsychological torture. We were seated under the burning sun waiting for what would follow. We had to leave the "Hole" in groups under a shower of baton blows accompanied by laughter and mocking. We were brought into a large military camp where the Israelis paraded us in front of television cameras as fedayeen captured on the field of battle.

"One night an Israeli soldier asked one of us, "Where are you from?" "From Burj al Jemali," answered one man. Scarcely had the soldier heard the reply when he began to strike our comrade with heavy blows. The soldier asked the man his nationality and he responded that he was Palestinian. This provoked a new deluge of blows. Then the soldier asked him which organization he belonged to: Fatah? Ahmed Jibril? Hawatmeh? Habash? The prisoner denied belonging to any organization. This brought on new blows. The soldier asked him his tent number. As the man said "sixteen," the Israeli began to count 1, 2, 3, 4. ... The prisoner received sixteen blows. Fortunately he wasn't in tent twenty-eight! (28)

The torture and inhuman treatment by the Israelis often leads to the death of their victims. The Times of London investigated the murder offive Lebanese, one Palestinian and one Egyptian, all prisoners of the Israelis in Lebanon.

Mr. Chehadi, a Syrian who has lived in Sidon since he served with the French Army in the Second World War, says that he has been interviewed by Israeli military investigators. Questioned by The Times he said that he arrived at the Muslim cemetery at one o'clock on the afternoon of June 18 to find Mr. Batrouni waiting for him.

"He told me the Israelis wanted the bodies buried," Mr. Chehadi said .... "I laid them on the stone just inside the gate so that I could find their relatives to identify them." On the following day, June 1 1, a Lebanese engineer, who asked The Times not to publish his name, says that he was driving past the cemetery when a Lebanese police adjutant, Younis Abrusli, stopped him. Next to Adjutant Abrusli, he says, was an Israeli military policeman. "Abrusli said that Chehadi, the cemetery keeper, was not there, so he wanted me to cut open the gates of the cemetery with my engineering tools."

The engineer, who has since been interviewed by investigators from the Israeli military attorney's office, says that when he arrived at the gates, he was told to help to carry five bodies from two vehicles, one of them an Israeli car, the other a former Palestinian ambulance. "I did not look at them closely," he says, "...Their hands were tied."

A week after The Times first asked the engineer's family for information, three armed Israelis - two in plainclothes and one in uniform - asked to see him. He refused to disclose what they said to him but was reluctant to discuss the deaths any further.

He did say, however, that a Sidon taxi-driver named Nazih Habbash was also forced to carry the corpses. Mr. Habbash, who runs a taxi service on the northern side of Sidon, confirmed this to The Times. He too has been interviewed by the Israeli investigators.

Adjutant Abrusli has told The Times that an Israeli major tried to cut the nylon cords tying the hands of the dead men. The Israeli officer wanted to open the gates of the cemetery but Chehadi was not there," he said. "The Israeli asked me to help and I had to do what I was told. So when I saw a man who was an engineer, I asked him for help."

Mr. Chehadi says he left the corpses of the seven men at the open entrance to the cemetery for two days. "They were in civilian clothes," he says. "All of them had their hands tied with nylon rope. There were bruises on the necks of two of them. After twodays ... in the heat ... I had to bury them, I dug beneath an old family vault in the cemetery and put them there."

Mr. Chehadi succeeded in finding the relatives of six of the dead. He named them as: Mohamed Akra; Abudi Abrusli, Yahya Musri, Samir Sabbah, Mohamed Mansou (all Lebanese) and Mohamed Abu Sikini (Palestinian). Mr. Chehadi could not discover the name of the seventh man, an Egyptian. (29)

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