In August 2012, South African miners went on strike in the Marikana mine, owned by Lonmin. Lonmin, the successor to the Lonrho firm—which was central to the apartheid economy and had been set up to seize mining rights in neighbouring Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)—maintained its own police force. Even Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath once called Lonrho boss Tiny Rowland the “unacceptable face of capitalism.”
The strike, which began among rock drillers, was initially denounced as sectionalism by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the official miners’ union, which was closely aligned with the ruling African National Congress (ANC). The NUM’s increased passivity had driven many miners to join the new Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which used more militant language.
One week into their strike, 3,000 miners held an open-air assembly, where they were surrounded by razor wire and heavily armed police and soldiers. When some workers approached the razor wire, police fired at them with live ammunition. Many were shot in the back while running away. By the end of the day, 34 miners were dead. Others were arrested and beaten in prison.
After the event, Lonmin management solicited Cyril Ramaphosa, one of their directors, to coordinate “concomitant action” against “criminal” protesters. Ramaphosa had once been a courageous union leader and a leading militant in the ANC. By the time of the massacre, he owned 23% of Lonmin and 100% of McDonalds South Africa. He is now South Africa’s president.
The South African state charged 270 mineworkers with the murder of their own workmates under the “common purpose” law. A National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson said, “When people attack or confront [the police] and a shooting takes place which results in fatalities… suspects arrested, irrespective of whether they shot police members or the police shot them, are charged with murder.”
South African miners were no strangers to repression and injury. They had been at the forefront of the fight to overthrow Apartheid and had regularly come into conflict with the state. Between 1900 and 1993, 69,000 miners died in “accidents” and more than a million were seriously injured. But this time, the men who gave the orders to fire were not white racists, but their old colleagues in the ANC. Many concluded that while apartheid might be gone, capitalism still rules South Africa.
Police will continue intervening against the “From the River to the Sea” slogan
The Berlin police will continue intervening whenever the pro-Palestinian slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” is shouted, despite contrary rulings. If the public prosecutor’s office believes the slogan is criminal, the police must record personal details so that a legal assessment of the situation is possible later. However, considering the rulings by Berlin courts rejected the criminality of the slogan, which questions Israel’s right to exist, there is uncertainty among the police. Given the large number of demonstrations in the capital in the context of the Middle East conflict, security is important for the emergency services, affirmed the spokesperson Anja Dierschke. Source: BZ
Berlin plans job rules for former senators
The Berlin Senate wants to introduce rules regarding conflicts of interest for former senators transitioning to new professional activities. Until now, former senators in Berlin have been allowed to take on almost any new position—even with former negotiating partners. A law changing this is to be passed before the next House of Representatives election, in September 2026. Under the new rules, senators who have left office will have to notify the Senate of any employment outside the public service within the following 24 months. “According to the draft bill, employment can generally be prohibited for twelve months, or a maximum of 24 months, during this period,” Senate Speaker Christine Richter said. Source: rbb
The Green Party accuses Berlin Senate of using Tempelhof housing debate as a distraction
According to the Senate, the battle over Tempelhofer Feld is back. Not for Werner Graf, head of the Greens in Berlin’s parliament. He calls the discussion “nothing but a distraction” from the CDU-SPD coalition’s failure to deliver on actual housing projects. “Berlin doesn’t have a land problem, it has an implementation problem,” Graf told the German Press Agency. He mentioned for instance delays at the Schumacherquartier (Tegel), Molkenmarkt (Mitte) and Güterbahnhof (Köpenick). “If CDU and SPD focused on getting those built, we’d achieve a lot more than wasting time and money debating Tempelhofer Feld.” Source: theberliner
NEWS FROM GERMANY
Die Linke leader believes raising the age is possible
Die Linke leader Ines Schwerdtner can imagine a slightly higher retirement age: “If it’s a moderate increase, we can talk about it.” However, she emphasized that “we don’t need a retirement age of 70.” An increase in the pension level could be financed “by everyone simply contributing to the pension, including freelancers, self-employed individuals, and members of parliament.” In addition, the contribution assessment ceiling must be raised. “A fairer pension system” is necessary, emphasized the Die Linke leader. Economics Minister Katherina Reiche recently called for a longer working life. The SPD, the Greens, and Die Linke criticized Reiche’s proposal. Source: n-tv
Merz plans Europe’s strongest army
Germany is implementing the most profound change in its security policy since the end of the Cold War. For instance, around 5,000 soldiers are to be permanently stationed in Lithuania by 2027. The measure is part of a realignment of the Bundeswehr, which, according to Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU), is to be developed into “the strongest conventional army in Europe.” As The Economist reports, the brigade in Lithuania is the most visible symbol of the security policy shift initially initiated in 2022 by Merz’s predecessor, Olaf Scholz (SPD). According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Germany already has the fourth-highest defense budget in the world. Source: BZ
Approval of the Federal Government falls
Approximately 100 days after Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) took office, the federal government is in a worse position than ever. According to the ARD’s “Deutschlandtrend” survey, the CDU and SPD coalition has reached a new low in public approval ratings. The assessment shows that 29% of respondents are currently satisfied with the government’s work. This is the worst result since the federal government took office in early May. Chancellor Merz is also losing significant trust: the Infratest dimap survey found that only 32% are currently satisfied with his work. Conflicts such as the dispute over the electricity tax and the failed judicial election might be behind such outcomes. Source: BZ
Open letter from the scientific community to end cooperation with Israel
An open letter, with the signatures of over 300 respected German scientists from universities and research institutions in the country and abroad, declares their refusal to cooperate “with the Israeli state and with Israeli institutions involved in illegal occupation, apartheid, genocide, and other violations of international law.” They note that they “are following the example of the Uppsala Declaration written by colleagues in Sweden.” Not a single German media outlet has reported on the document. Itidal, committed to checking facts, publishes the full content of the open letter. Source: itidal
Norwegian elections 2025: a preview
What is going on in Norway and why you should care
I was astonished to learn that my first contribution to The Left Berlin was in fact a snap analysis of the previous Norwegian parliamentary election in 2021. Things have come full circle, and I now contribute this preview to the upcoming election in September 2025, writing from Oslo, posing as a foreign affairs correspondent.
First and foremost, it is perhaps useful to justify why the election of a somewhat obscure country of a mere 5 million people is of interest. My primary justification is that Norway is a limit case of progress under capitalism in the 21st century. The Norwegian and Swedish electorates can be considered, within a liberal capitalist framework, to be the most left-wing among advanced economies today (as this Financial Times data journalism story illustrates). A success for the left in Norway is therefore a sign of hope and an opportunity for learning, with defeat being a bellwether of global regression.
But there are strong economic factors to consider as well. The chief among them is Norway’s role as the largest producer of oil and gas in Western Europe—a sort of Saudi Arabia of Europe on account of being both a petrostate and a monarchy. The EU is particularly reliant on Norway for meeting its energy needs now that Russia is out of the picture as a key supplier, as shown by the figures below.
Source: Eurostat. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Source: Eurostat. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Furthermore, Norway has a sovereign wealth fund that owns a whopping 1.5% of all listed shares in the world. This is over 20 times Norway’s share of the global population. This figure of 1.5% is not a trifle, and the choices this fund makes can have a ripple effect on other significant market actors. The figure also doesn’t represent all the financial assets the fund controls; it is merely the headline figure. (I encourage readers to learn a bit more here.) In short, you may not be interested in Norway, but Norway is interested in you.
Setting the political scene
Four years ago, the kingmaker was the Centre Party (Sp), achieving a stunning success that propelled it to the forefront of government with 13.6% of the vote. They ran on a platform emphasising local government autonomy, fiscal discipline, advocating for the interests of farmers, and prioritising Norway over its relationship with Europe.
I predicted that this victory would prove pyrrhic. It did. Current polling predicts Sp suffering a total collapse in comparison to the previous election (see the polling comparison at NRK.no). Despite Sp getting their wish to be part of a two-party minority coalition with confidence arrangements with the Socialist Left Party(SV) and control of the finance ministry, the coalition collapsed in January of this year over Sp’s refusal to implement an EU directive on electricity markets in the EU and EEA that would have raised prices for Norwegian consumers.
Unlike in Germany, Norway has fixed-term parliaments, and early elections cannot be called. The Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, would have to limp on. The government was immensely unpopular in the lead-up to the split, with a poll in December putting the ruling Labour Party(Ap) at a catastrophic 16.8% (NRK poll), which, if realised, would be the party’s worst vote share since their first parliamentary election in 1906. Furthermore, the far-right Progress Party(FrP) has usurped the Conservative Party (H) as the flag-bearer for the so-called bourgeois (borgerlig) parties. Their extremist leader, Sylvi Listhaug, was in prime position to become the next prime minister. So how, within the space of eight months, has the man that I described to be dull as dishwater managed to turn this hopeless situation around?
Return of the king
Enter stage right: Jens Stoltenberg. Fresh from his tenure as the second-longest serving secretary general of NATO and the most significant Norwegian politician since perhaps the father of the nation Einar Gerhardsen himself, the former two-term Prime Minister and predecessor as party leader was appointed by Støre to the finance ministry, replacing the embittered Trygve Slagsvold Vedum. At a stroke, as if by the aid of Faust himself, polling improved dramatically. Ap went up to 20.2% in January and then 28.7% in February before settling around the 30% mark now. More significantly, this expansion in support for Ap came directly at the expense of the major parties of the right and centre. In a moment of crisis, Støre ran to daddy and daddy delivered. It is now Støre’s election to lose.
Norwegian commentators are utterly mesmerised, struggling to explain how this reversal has come about. They make vague allusions about Stoltenberg’s reassuring qualities vitalising the animated corpse of Ap. Meanwhile, to a Norway observer looking in from the outside, it’s rather sheepishly simple to explain. It’s the Orange Man stupid.
The counterfactual to assess is: would Støre’s party have experienced a revival of some sort on its own as the carnage unleashed by Donald Trump on the world became more pronounced? It’s a coin toss; I would hazard to say yes, but not enough to win an election. The truth is that Norwegian voters were being offered three bad choices for leadership, and now they have one tolerable option on the table, namely a fusion between Støre and Stoltenberg. In an unstable international order, a country whose national self-conception is one of being an insecure upstart will seek to rally around something that promises to help them weather the storm.
Source: Ali Khan.
Ap is the natural party of government in Norway, and Stoltenberg is its most decorated politician of the century. In a world beset by crises, he and his name are a constant in Norwegian public life. (His sister led the Norwegian public health institute during the pandemic and became a regular face on the TV). For a country that feels insignificant, he is the only person of international significance it can lay claim to. The timing of his entry into government was indeed brilliant and Støre should thank Vedum for having left in a huff. Trump’s tariff wars and mania have poisoned any political party or leader who is seen as vaguely aligned with him. For Norway, bordering Russia and a founding member of NATO, Ukraine is an especially pertinent theme, but so is Palestine.
Trump is seen as an enemy of Ukraine, a friend of Putin and Netanyahu, and therefore, his brand is toxic for Norwegian politicians. No party has a stronger association in Norway with Trump and the Republicans than FrP. The rise of the FrP to pole position on the right has ironically strengthened Ap—centrist voters from H and Sp have likely migrated to Ap, reducing the former two to their core rumps of supporters. The rise of the far-right in Norway, troubling as it is, has helped consolidate the left bloc.
The collapse of the centre-right
In all this fanfare about Stoltenberg, it is easy to overlook that he was in fact defeated by a right-wing coalition of H and FrP, led respectively by Erna Solberg and Siv Jensen. This same coalition defeated Støre in 2017. It is not enough to say that FrP is toxic—Siv Jensen oversaw a great moderation in her party that made it palatable— is it enough to say that Erna Solberg, a two-term PM herself, does not represent reassurance. Events have conspired to make things the way they are.
Erna Solberg is a compromised candidate. She was embroiled in a corruption scandal involving her husband making trades on the stock market based on privileged information gleaned from his wife. Solberg somehow survived this scandal as opposition leader by claiming to be a victim of sexism being made to pay for the sins of her spouse. She managed to survive the storm but has been plagued ever since by the stench of corruption. It is a nice testament to the standards of public life in Norway.
The third candidate for prime minister is odiousness personified. Sylvi Listhaug (FrP) had to resign as justice minister for a Facebook post claiming that the Labour party cared more about the rights of terrorists than the nation’s security. She voted against gay marriage before changing her tune to go with the times. She supports moving the Norwegian embassy to Jerusalem and is the staunchest pro-Israeli politician in frontline Norwegian politics. As early as January 2024, 47% of Norwegians supported a boycott of Israel, a number that surely must have skyrocketed by now. Though she claims to be against Donald Trump, describing herself as a Reaganite, she is firmly aligned with the European far-right, having vocally supported the Sweden Democrats (a party with neo-Nazi roots), and the convicted Danish Social Democrat immigration minister who was found guilty of violating the rights of Syrian refugees. She has led her party to the forefront of the Norwegian right, received millions of kroner in financial support from the private sector and their front groups, but her support has a ceiling due to her reputation as a polarising figure.
The story on the margins
Unlike the previous election, which saw significant movements on the margins of Norwegian politics, this election is relatively subdued. Minor parties have long played a decisive role as their ability to get at least 4% of the vote can determine the colour of government (red or blue). Sp ensured that the far-left could be shut out of any decision-making last time, but, should polls bear out, Sp would be leapfrogged by the very party they sought to act as a guardrail against—delicious schadenfreude.
Where previously it was a tremendous breakthrough to go from 2.4% to 4.7% between elections, this time the far-left Red Party (R) might expect a modest 1% increase in support and gain one extra member in parliament. The other left party, SV, is practically fossilised around 8%, statistically tied to its previous result despite fresh leadership. Disappointing. It is a tug of war between these two parties to claim supremacy over the mantle of left-wing opposition to Ap, despite there being little to distinguish the two parties. R is a more Eurosceptic, left-purist party, while SV has been carrying the banner for socialism much longer, and their ideological purity has been diluted over time due to the hard business of negotiating with power.
The biggest change on the margins is the fate of the Green Party (MdG), which narrowly failed to cross 4% last time but has since receded to under 3%. They are now irrelevant. Their singular focus on environmentalism has left them crowded out. They are a retail politics party, and not a lot of people are buying their organic produce. The Bible bashers at the Christian Democratic Party(KrF) are doing one big heave to break past 4%, having slipped under last time. If they do, that would ironically shift the parliamentary arithmetic in favour of the radical left parties. The weird eco-market liberals at the Liberal Party (V), the closest parallel to Germany’s FDP, are hovering steadily above 4%. Should they go under it would help Støre, since H and FrP would have no coalition partners to speak of—another sign that fate has conspired against the right for once.
FrP and H have run a boring, old anti-tax, pro-business, red-scare election campaign, conjuring apocalyptic visions for the Norwegian economy should a Støre government have to rely on the Marxists to have a majority. The wealth tax instituted by Ap has been their biggest bone of contention, and they are raising the spectre of tax increases should R have any say on policy. Once again, it is ironic that should Norwegian voters want to avoid this situation, their best chance lies not in supporting the right but rather defecting to Ap, such that a majority without R would be possible. They’re cooked as Gen Z might say. The right only has itself to blame for its woeful unpreparedness for the world-historic juncture at which Norway finds itself.
Conclusions
The centre-right gambled on trusting Solberg to lead them, and the gamble failed. The far-right gambled on leaning on its inherent extremism and succeeded a little too much, alienating the otherwise moderate Norwegian electorate that spends a little bit more time touching grass than being driven to extremism on Facebook than its peers in Europe. All the left bloc had to do was not interrupt their opponents while they made their mistakes and let world history push them over the edge.
Frankly, Listhaug is an evil woman, a blight on humanity. Her only chance of success lies in somehow detoxifying herself along the lines of Georgia Meloni in Italy. She has undergone something of a makeover in the lead-up to the election, while still hoping to draw attention away from herself as a potential PM, even though she is now clearly the main alternative to Støre. The state broadcaster still frames it as a contest between Støre and Solberg—a complete mystery—but he is seen as the preferred PM candidate to Solberg by a margin of 10% in polling. Compared to Listhaug, the numbers would be even worse, and Listhaug would probably be glad if nobody even frames that question. She’s a burglar hired by private firms and lobbyists for Israel trying to get into the PM’s office through chicanery and deceit. It would be a tragedy if she won somehow, but, as things stand, it is very unlikely. On the other hand, the radical left should consider it a success if it holds its position in conditions where other radical alternatives tend to get their lunch eaten.
The significance of Epping
“Stop the boats” rhetoric is enncouraging physical attacks on refugee homes
Epping is a leafy and prosperous town on the edge of London. It seems more of a village than a town and is separated from the city by the eponymous large forest. It is, to a certain extent, a victim of “white flight”, although the black population has grown significantly in recent years. It is more divided by class than anything else. It is the stereotypical haunt of former Eastenders who have made money. As with most of rural Essex, it’s a place where the Conservatives normally rule. But it is also home to some active fascists.
It has become a focal point of the far-right and neo-Nazi groups in recent weeks as a result of an alleged sexual assault on a local woman by an asylum seeker who was a resident of the local refugee hostel, the Bell Hotel. It is called a hotel, but asylum seekers in the UK are normally housed in run-down and dilapidated hotels that no tourist would ever want to visit.
The media and right-wing politicians will portray this as a cushy setup. Yet, refugees are housed in the most miserable conditions. They suffer from a lack of privacy; men, women and children are often housed together in cramped accommodation; they are prevented from working, which leads to intense boredom and frustration; and refugees do not have access to cooking facilities.
The policy of housing refugees in hostels began with the last Conservative government. It is an unplanned response to the increasing number of refugees arriving in the UK by boat. But housing refugees in hotels also benefits the invariably Conservative voting owners of such properties. As of 30 July, 25,436 migrants had crossed the Channel in small boats in 2025. The figure is about 49% higher than at the same point in 2024. In 2024 as a whole, nearly 37,000 people were detected making the crossing, 25% more than in 2023. The highest yearly total was recorded in 2022, when 45,755 people arrived. One consequence of Brexit. Britain’s withdrawal from the EU’s Dublin Regulation outsourced its responsibility for refugees to neighbouring countries like France.
All this has contributed to a very toxic debate around migration and refugees, with the important distinction often being blurred by the mass media. “Stopping the boats” has become an obsession with the right-wing tabloids, which dominate Britain’s political discourse.
Unsurprisingly, refugee hostels have become the focus of the far-right in recent years. As in most Western countries, violence and sexual violence in particular are often racialised, even though the non-white population are proportionately less likely to commit sexual offences against white women.
It was on 29 July last year that a mass stabbing targeting young girls occurred at a dance studio in Southport (a town some 30km north of Liverpool). Seventeen-year-old Axel Rudakubana killed three young girls and injured ten others at a Taylor Swift–themed dance workshop attended by 26 children.
Immediately, far-right groups, assisted by Elon Musk’s X platform, spread false rumours that the killer was a muslim refugee. Neither was true, but this helped to whip up a pogromist atmosphere which resulted in attempts to burn down refugee hostels and unleashed some of the worst racial violence Britain has witnessed in over sixty years. The response of the anti-racist movement, led by Stand Up to Racism, was large-scale mobilisations which left the racists and far-right isolated in August last year.
A word also needs to be said about the role of the extreme right party, Reform UK. It is now the leading party according to opinion polls. After the Stockport killing, Nigel Farage, its leader, falsely claimed that the police were hiding information about the killer, implying that the killer was a muslim refugee. And in the case of Epping he encouraged the protests and spread false claims that the anti-racist protestors attacked the police when the truth was that all the violence came from the neo-Nazi presence in Epping.
The toxic mix of fourteen years of austerity and the biggest fall in living standards since the Napoleonic Wars has created a political tinderbox. Now we have a deeply unpopular Labour government that swept to power last July after fourteen years of Conservative misrule. It has done nothing to address the economic malaise. Under Chancellor Rachel Reeves, it is unleashing a new wave of austerity and the relentless scapegoating of refugees. Worse still, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is echoing the language of the far-right with his “island of strangers“ speech a few months ago.
The UK has witnessed a significant mobilisation in solidarity with Palestine over recent years. But mobilising against the far right is proving to be much harder. Last July, two successive mobilisations against the far-right came under attack as the anti-racist were outnumbered. It was the shock of last week and evidence that Reform UK were openly collaborating with the neo-Nazis of Britain First and other far-right groups, which created the impetus for the much greater mobilisation of last Sunday. With the school holiday, August is traditionally a month of unrest in the UK.
Despite the victory on Sunday, 20th July, the fight against fascism is by no means over. The anti-racist anti fascist movement will have a summer of mobilisation ahead of it. But this success will make it easier to organise opposition at similar flashpoints up and down the UK.
Israel uses rape as a weapon of war
Jakob Reimann attempts to comprehensively document sexualised torture by Israeli forces after October 7, 2023
Content warning: this article contains graphic descriptions of cases of extreme sexualised torture, which can be highly disturbing for many people.
After the onset of Israel’s war against the civilian population in Gaza in October 2023, reports of severe torture and mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners and hostages by Israeli soldiers have increased. These include a plethora of allegations of often extreme sexualised violence that is “systematically” used as a method of torture (UN, B’Tselem). These reports shed a shocking light on the conditions in Israeli detention centres, with the infamous Sde Teiman Prison—”Israel’s Guantanamo”—taking centre stage.
The guards moved Amer Abu Halil and several fellow prisoners to another wing. As always, they had to leave their cells with their hands tied behind their backs and in a bent-over position. In the kitchen, the guards took off their clothes and threw them on top of each other: “a pile of 10 naked prisoners”. There they were beaten with clubs and spat on. One guard began ramming carrots into the men’s anuses and raping them. After the ordeal, dogs were let loose on the prisoners. Dogs also repeatedly urinated on the prisoners’ mattresses in the completely overcrowded cells.
Abu Halil has a broken vertebra in his back and can only walk with the help of a walking stick after an attack in prison. His medical report also notes dilated veins in his testicles. Guards hit the prisoners’ genitals with metal detectors. The 30-year-old tells of another day when guards beat up a group of naked inmates, repeatedly kicking them in the testicles. Over a period of 25 minutes. Abu Halil also describes the anal rape of another inmate, which he witnessed, with “an iron baton as thin as a cigarette”.
Amer Abu Halil gave testimony toHaaretz andLe Monde about the ordeal he suffered in Israeli captivity after 7 October.
“Welcome to hell”
A UN commission report published in March made serious accusations against the Israeli state: since 7 October 2023, Israel had “systematically used sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence … intended to retaliate and punish them [the Palestinians] for the attacks [of 7 October]”. The commission speaks of “a pattern of sexual violence” to “humiliate and degrade Palestinians in detention”, including men, women and children. Sexualized assaults are used as a means of oppressing and controlling the Palestinian population. The experts see these crimes as possible evidence of genocide, as they are “calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians as a group”. According to Navi Pillay, Chair of the Commission, “There is no escape from the conclusion that Israel has employed sexual and gender-based violence against Palestinians to terrorise them and perpetuate a system of oppression that undermines their right to self-determination.” Israel categorically rejects all accusations with the familiar strategies, because according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the UN is an “anti-Semitic organisation” anyway.
This latest UN report is preceded by others that accuse the IDF of the systematic use of sexualised violence as a method of torture. Back in August 2024, the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem published the report “Welcome to Hell” on the “Israeli prison system as a network of torture camps”. Based on interviews with 55 Palestinian prisoners and hostages, the NGO documents the most serious abuse and torture, including “repeated use of sexual violence, in varying degrees of severity” and “gang sexual violence”. The testimonies “uncover a systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners”.
Here too, the Israeli authorities categorically denied everything: “We are not aware of the claims you described and as far as we know, no such events have occurred under IPS responsibility,” Reuters quoted a spokesperson for the Israel Prison Service (IPS) as saying. All prisoners are treated in accordance with the law and all their basic rights are fully respected by professionally trained guards, the spokesperson continued, adding that prisoners also had the right to file complaints that would be fully examined and investigated.
Since the beginning of the war, 75 Palestinians have died in Israeli prisons, according to two Palestinian prisoners’ rights groups cited by Anadolu. The Palestinian Prisoners’ Commission attributes the deaths mostly to starvation and torture. However, there are also multiple allegations of prisoners being “likely raped to death,” including a case raised by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese involving the well-known orthopaedic surgeon Adnan Al-Bursh.
Clubs, metal rods, fire extinguishers, tools, assault rifles, dogs
There are numerous reports according to which, in addition to the carrots and metal batons mentioned at the beginning, Israeli soldiers in torture prisons like the Sde Teiman camp sodomised Palestinian prisoners and hostages with a wide variety of objects.
Israeli +972 Magazine interviewed lawyer Khaled Mahajneh, who testified about a visit to a client in Sde Teiman—the journalist Muhammad Arab, who was abducted by the IDF in March 2024 while reporting on the siege of Al-Shifa Hospital for Al Araby TV. Arab was unrecognisable after 100 days in custody, according to his lawyer; he was covered in dirt and pigeon droppings. The hostages’ hands were cuffed behind their backs around the clock with metal handcuffs, which were removed once a week for a minute-long shower. Arab testified how Israeli guards raped six prisoners with a stick in front of the other prisoners after they had violated the guards’ orders. According to a statement from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Commission, journalist Arab also testified that one detainee “had a fire extinguisher hose inserted into his rectum, and the extinguisher was discharged inside him”. Other methods of sexual abuse are “difficult to describe”.
Paramedic Walid Khalili told Human Rights Watch (HRW) about sexualised torture in the al-Naqab camp, in addition to other extreme forms of physical and psychological torture he had been subjected to in Sde Teiman, and the executions he had witnessed. There, a man who was visibly “bleeding from his bottom” was placed next to Khalili by Israeli soldiers. The man confided in Khalili and told him that “three soldiers took turns raping him with an M16 [assault rifle]“. Out of shame, the man did not tell anyone else about his ordeal, but he apparently placed a special trust in Khalili as a medic. “He was terrified. His mental health was awful, he started talking to himself,” Khalili told HRW.
Palestinian Ibrahim Salem was abducted by Israeli forces from the intensive care unit of Kamal Adwan Hospital in North Gaza in December 2023 and taken to Sde Teiman. He was released after almost eight months without charge. Published by CNN, the photo of the 36-year-old went around the world—it was one of the first ever to be leaked from the torture prison (the cover picture of this article [see here]). Salem told Middle East Eye about months of humiliation, sadistic soldiers and constant torture, including various forms of sexualised torture: “He [a soldier] electrocuted me in sensitive spots and hit me in these spots.” Various objects were rammed into his rectum. When the thick iron baton “is inserted inside you, it feels like your brain is exploding“, he describes the torture to the British Channel 4 News.
He reports the “rampant” rape of Palestinian hostages; the shame among the men was particularly great when they were raped by “female soldiers, who were sometimes in their teens”. One prisoner was bent over a table and handcuffed. The female soldier behind him “would insert her fingers and other objects into his rectum.” If he flinched, the soldier in front of him would hit him on the skull. “Most of the prisoners will come out with rectum injuries,” Salem testified to Middle East Eye. The human rights NGO Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor also reported, based on witness testimonies about “placing sharp objects in the victim’s buttocks“.
Several witnesses told B’Tselem about “blows to the genitals and other body parts of naked prisoners”, according to the aforementioned report. “Metal tools and batons” were used “to cause genital pain”. A former Palestinian hostage told the British Channel 4: “When the female soldier grabbed me by the balls and penis, she injured me with her nails, digging them into my penis. I started screaming and biting the wire like a dog.” According to a statement by the Palestinian Prisoners’ Commission, journalist Muhammad Arab told his lawyer that “another detainee was completely stripped and electrocuted, his genitals were yanked“. Shortly after the war began, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on the testimonies of several witnesses from Megiddo Prison in northern Israel. Among many other abuses, guards there had been “hitting their testicles, and humiliating prisoners”. “They tell people to spread their legs and then kick them between the legs,” Haaretz quotes 41-year-old Israeli prisoner Ahmed Khalifa.
In June last year, the New York Timesuncovered extremely disturbing events at Sde Teiman. In November 2023, 39-year-old senior nurse Younis al-Hamlawi was abducted by Israeli forces outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and taken to the torture prison. Al-Hamlawi was repeatedly tortured during interrogation with electric shocks that caused uncontrolled urination, followed by an inability to urinate at all for several days. He described an incident in which an officer ordered two soldiers to lift him up and press his rectum onto a metal bar attached to the floor. He experienced “unbearable pain” and bled from his anus. A 41-year-old Palestinian described variations of this ordeal to the UN. He too was rammed with his anus on a metal rod attached to the ground, but it was extremely hot: “it felt like fire – I have burns [in the anus]“. Another Palestinian abductee was reportedly killed by soldiers ramming an electric metal rod into his anus. “He got so sick; we saw worms coming out of his body and then he died.”
A Palestinian prisoner told the Israeli +972 Magazine that he had personally witnessed cases of Israeli soldiers sexually assaulting prisoners with dogs. Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor quotes Fadi Saif al-Din Bakr, a lawyer who was detained for 45 days, as saying that police dogs were used to rape Palestinians in Israeli captivity. “This was among the most awful things that I witnessed,” says Bakr, “this was just one more [incident] added to the heap of torments. I was hoping to die so that this would not happen to me.” 45-year-old Palestinian Adham Mansour from Jabalia also “revealed shocking details about the conditions and suffering of prisoners in Israeli jails”, according to the Israeli-Arab magazine Arab 48: “There are prisoners who were raped by dogs.”
Let me tell you about the worst thing I experienced at Sde Teiman prison. They called the names of three people, and I was one of them. We came out into a cement courtyard, dedicated to one form of torture. They removed our blindfolds. We were crouching on our knees. They came and took one of the other men. They beat him. After they beat him, they forced him to the ground on his belly. They tied his hands and tied his feet. There were about eight or nine soldiers. They stripped him of his underpants. A captain came and sprayed something on his backside. There was a dog there. They unleashed the dog on him. The dog raped the young man. It raped him, literally speaking. Rape.
A video circles the globe
In the summer of 2024, a case from the Sde Teiman torture prison caused an international outrage. As video footage of the alleged crimes was leaked, this one case could not be swept under the carpet as usual. The Israeli Channel 12 published footage from a surveillance camera showing several soldiers in Sde Teiman taking one of around 30 prisoners lying on the ground to one side. He is then apparently raped while other soldiers try to conceal the violence from the cameras with their shields. As a result of the ordeal, the prisoner suffered “a ruptured bowel, a severe injury to his anus, lung damage and broken ribs“, according to information obtained by Haaretz. The Palestinian was taken to the hospital for treatment.
The video circled the globe. On 29 July 2024, masked officers from the Israeli military police entered Sde Teiman and arrested nine reservists who were allegedly involved in the crime, Haaretz reported. Right-wing and fascist politicians and activists then called for protests and blockades. Dozens of demonstrators—including Knesset members of the ruling coalition such as Zvi Sukkot (Religious Zionist Party) and Nissim Vaturi (Likud)—broke through the fence and stormed the base. Masked men chanted: “We will not abandon our friends, certainly not for terrorists.” Soldiers barricaded themselves inside the detention centre. When the military police arrived to arrest the suspects, violent clashes broke out and some soldiers inside used pepper spray against their colleagues.
After their arrest, the suspects were taken to the Motta Gur military base in Beit Lid for interrogation, and there too right-wing extremist demonstrators gathered, some 1,200 in number, chanting “Release the warriors“. At the protest, Revital Gotliv of Netanyahu’s Likud party took on the role of mob inciter. Several people broke into the base, some in IDF uniform, some armed. They first broke into the military court and laid siege to the base’s prison. The police dispersed the mob, but no one was arrested. The following day, a special session was held in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, in which the manner of the initial arrests was sharply criticised and assurances were given that this would not happen again. “Our soldiers are not criminals and this contemptible pursuit of our soldiers is unacceptable to me,” said committee chairman Yuli Edelstein (Likud).
Three of the detainees were released shortly afterwards, Times of Israel reported. Five others were at first placed under house arrest. Prof Yoel Donchin, a doctor in Sde Teiman who had examined the Palestinian prisoner, was shocked by the man’s condition: he “couldn’t believe an Israeli prison guard could do such a thing”, according to Haaretz. “If the state and Knesset members think there’s no limit to how much you can abuse prisoners, they should kill them themselves, like the Nazis did, or close the hospitals,” Donchin continued. According to a medical report published by Channel 14, the pro-government surgeon Alon Pikarsky came to the strange conclusion that the “foreign body” was not inserted “by any external party”, but that the man had raped himself.
On 19 February, the military prosecutor’s office filed charges against the five military police soldiers, Times of Israel reported: a team commander, a security guard, an interpreter and two other members of “Force 100”, two of them officers. The three soldiers who covered the others with their shields and the two who secured the area were not charged. The indictment reads: “For 15 minutes, the accused kicked the detainee, stomped on him, stood on his body, hit him and pushed him all over his body, including with clubs, dragged his body along the ground, and used a taser gun on him, including on his head.” Then, the blindfold came off the detainee, and one of the soldiers “stabbed the detainee in his buttock with a sharp object”. The man had screamed in pain during the attack. The soldiers took the prisoner back to the others after the torture. It was not until an hour later that he was taken to the hospital because of the heavy bleeding from his anus. While the military prosecutors accused the soldiers, among others, of “aggravated sodomy” (equivalent to rape) in court on 22 August last year, this accusation is not included in the indictment. “IDF troops and commanders act in accordance with the law and IDF values,” reads a military statement on the indictment.
During a hearing on the case in early July, the head of the military court at Beit Lid, Judge Meir Vigiser, repeatedly urged both sides to strike a plea deal for the five accused in order to avoid a full trial, Haaretz reported. The prosecution has expressed willingness to consider mediation.
From perpetrator to national hero
In addition to the protests protecting the alleged perpetrators, the publication of the Sde Teiman video also triggered a wave of solidarity on the political right. In September 2024, a video was released showing the extreme right-wing Rabbi Meir Mazuz blessing one of the suspected soldiers, saying he was “completely innocent”, following whichthere was a heated exchange of words in the Knesset. When asked by Ahmad Tibi, chairman of the Arab Ta’al party and a trained doctor, “To insert a stick into the rectum … Is it legitimate?”, MP Hanoch Milwidsky (Likud) shouted at Tibi: “Yes! If he is a Nukhba [Hamas special forces unit], everything is legitimate to do to him! Everything! Everything!”
Some ministers also backed the suspected soldiers in reaction to the arrests. Justice Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Yariv Levin (Likud) said he was “shocked to see harsh pictures of soldiers being arrested”, and that it was “impossible to accept this”. The extreme right-wing Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir (Religious Zionist Party), described the arrest of the soldiers as “nothing less than shameful. […] Soldiers need to have our full support.” Ben-Gvir also stated that: “Gang rape is permissible for the security of the state.” Economics Minister Nir Barkat (Likud) also made his position clear: “I support our fighters and call on the defense minister to immediately put a stop to the despicable show trial against them.” Transport Minister Miriam Regev (Likud) warned that the arrests of Israeli soldiers in the war were “a dangerous step”, and urged the military judges to “focus on protecting our soldiers, not appeasing our enemies”. MP Limor Son Har-Melech (Otzma Yehudit) went further, accusing the military’s attorney general, who had ordered the arrests, of being a “criminal“.
One of the alleged perpetrators was invited to Israel’s Channel 14 shortly after the chaotic scenes outside the Sde Teiman to defend his “Force 100”, wearing a balaclava to disguise himself. He was cheered and said that the IDF was “a very healthy army“. To applause, he portrayed himself and his unit as the real victims. A few days later, the man revealed his identity in an online video: Meir Ben-Shitrit. This was followed by further interviews and appearances, now unmasked, including on the satirical show “Fathi and Shai”, where he was celebrated as a national hero. Ben-Shitrit defamed Guy Peleg, the Channel 12 journalist who originally published the surveillance camera footage from Sde Teiman, saying that he had “split the nation”. In the scene shown in the video, the soldiers acted according to standard procedure, he claimed. They did not rape the man, but only searched him and “kept a very, very high level of morality”. The shields held up were merely intended to prevent other inmates from seeing how such a search was carried out—because: “They peek.”
לוחם כוח מאה מאיר בן שיטרית שנחקר בחשד לאונס נוחבה, לא פחות, מגיע הערב לפתוח הכל על פרשת שדה תימן.. שתפובואו pic.twitter.com/DNbSFayOZ2
Hosts and soldiers are mutually exalting each other in their glorification and fantasies of violence. The whole nation should “kiss our hands”, says the Sde Teiman soldier, as they are doing “holy work“. He continues: “We could have just cocked our weapons and killed them all on the floor, from the nature of things, because you want to kill that person with a machete.” The soldier lamented that the state had betrayed him, which was “very offensive”. The media had also treated him unfairly. The people in Israel were different: “A lot of love and warmth” he received from people in the streets after coming out; “many hugs, a lot of love, we get many gifts, I got a holiday package”. A link to fundraising for the “Force 100” is shown. The show ends with a handshake: “Meir Ben-Shitrit, a hero! A hero of Force 100! Success to you!”
One of the main suspects in the only investigation into a large number of serious allegations of sexualised torture against Palestinians is celebrated as a hero on Israeli television.
Women and girls as targets
The case made public by the video leak was the first and only time after 7 October 2023 that Israeli soldiers were prosecuted for sexual crimes allegedly committed in Israeli detention facilities (as reported), although extreme allegations of sexualised torture were widely made. Sde Teiman was quickly nicknamed “Israel’s Guantanamo”—which, from what we know, is a clear understatement. Guy Shalev, director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, toldCNNthat he was aware of at least ten cases of Palestinians being sexually abused in this prison alone. The number of unreported cases is probably much higher. When asked why soldiers were arrested in this particular case, Shalev replied:
This got out. This person was hospitalised in a civilian hospital where doctors and nurses, and other staff members could see what happened to the person while he was incarcerated in Sde Teiman. So, the information leaked out. And I don’t think the military or other apparatuses in Israel were able to keep it silent anymore.
And yet officials refer positively to this arrest to show that the system is supposedly working: A military spokesperson stated that the Israeli military “rejects allegations of systemic abuse, including sexual abuse, in its detention facilities” and abides by Israeli and international law. The military pointed to the arrest of the soldiers suspected in Sde Teiman as proof of the functioning of the Israeli rule of law.
In addition to the categorical denial of all allegations of sexualised torture, the Israeli government is also actively taking action against the prosecution of alleged perpetrators. Most prominent is the Israeli blockade of a UN investigation into sexualised violence by Hamas during the 7 October 2023 attack of January 2025. As this would also require an examination of allegations of sexualised violence by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians, and for Pramila Patten—the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict—to be granted access to Israeli detention facilities, Israel refused this investigation.
In addition, the Israeli state creates conditions of comprehensive impunity for itself internally. For example, at the end of November 2024, Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara decided not to initiate criminal investigations against high-ranking officials who had publicly called for extreme violence against people in Gaza or made inflammatory statements—i.e. those relevant to the genocide proceedings at the International Criminal Court—explicitly mentioning, among other things, the remark by the Minister of Cultural Heritage, Amihai Eliyahu (Otzma Yehudit), who brought up the dropping of an atomic bomb on Gaza. In the same month, the Knesset’s Ministerial Committee for Legislation advanced a bill that would extend legal immunity of Knesset members and would de facto “put MKs above the law“, the Committee’s legal adviser Arbel Esterhan warned. The bill has since passed through further parliamentary hurdles.
In January this year, Israeli State Attorney Amit Isman dropped the investigation into five soldiers suspected of raping and killing a handcuffed Palestinian after 7 October 2023—despite video footage, the victim’s body being found in a suspect’s vehicle, and confessions. One reportedly shows how one of the five soldiers stabbed the Palestinian in the face with a knife, killing him. Another confessed that he had tortured the man in a sexualised manner. The five alleged murderers are free men.
Sexualised violence is deeply rooted in the everyday practice of the Israeli armed forces. In addition to the comprehensive dehumanisation of Palestinians, this is based on the knowledge of absolute impunity, protection by the courts and encouragement from politicians. The systematic nature of the mounting accusations leads to the conclusion that Israel is using rape as a weapon of war against the civilian population in Palestine.
This article was originally published in German on etos.media and translated by Jakob Reimann.
Jakob is an independent journalist focused on international politics—primarily in the WANA region—and serves as the foreign affairs editor of the online magazine etos.media.
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