CAIR Calls on Biden Admin to Condemn Rape and Torture of Palestinian Detainees Held by Israel

The New York Times reports the Israeli military tortured detainees by impaling them with hot metal rods in their rectums and tying them to electric chairs.

The Times reported: “Mr. al-Hamlawi, the senior nurse, said a female officer had ordered two soldiers to lift him up and press his rectum against a metal stick that was fixed to the ground. Mr. al-Hamlawi said the stick penetrated his rectum for roughly five seconds, causing it to bleed and leaving him with ‘unbearable pain.’

A leaked draft of the UNRWA report detailed an interview that gave a similar account. It cited a 41-year-old detainee who said that interrogators ‘made me sit on something like a hot metal stick and it felt like fire,’ and also said that another detainee ‘died after they put the electric stick up’ his anus.

“Mr. al-Hamlawi recalled being forced to sit in a chair wired with electricity. He said he was shocked so often that, after initially urinating uncontrollably, he then stopped urinating for several days.

“Ibrahim Shaheen, 38, a truck driver detained in early December for nearly three months, said he was shocked roughly half a dozen times while sitting in a chair. Officers accused him of concealing information about the location of dead hostages, Mr. Shaheen said. Mr. Bakr also said he was forced to sit in chair wired with electricity, sending a current pulsing through his body that made him pass out.”

In a statement, CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said:

“The Biden administration must condemn these latest clear, credible firsthand reports that the Israeli government has been and is currently raping and torturing Palestinians, including men forced to sit on hot metal rods. There must not be a ‘Palestinian exception’ to condemning rape and torture. We call on Biden administration officials to break their silence, acknowledge the equal humanity of the Palestinian people and end the U.S. military aid that enables these abuses.”

Yesterday, CAIR condemned what it called the latest “Israeli war crimes of the day” after video was posted online showing Israeli soldiers celebrating blowing up a mosque in Gaza.

In yet another video posted online, Israeli soldiers are shown reportedly dragging the body of a slain Palestinian while other soldiers stand nearby. Another shows a Palestinian woman reportedly seeking food for her children killed by an Israeli sniper in Gaza.

Also yesterday, CAIR condemned the massacre of 40 people by Israeli forces at a UN-run school in central Gaza, 23 of whom were reportedly women and children. CAIR also applauded a call by the NAACP for President Biden to “indefinitely” halt all weapons deliveries to Israel and to put pressure on Israel to end its genocide in Gaza.

CAIR recently called on X (formerly Twitter) and other social media companies to shut down a secret campaign by the far-right Israeli government to pressure Congress to continue the flow of taxpayer funds for its genocide in Gaza and called on President Biden to condemn the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Washington, D.C., based CAIR also called for international action after a report by Oxfam found that “85 percent of children did not eat for a whole day at least once in the three days before the survey was conducted” and that thousands of displaced people are being forced to use one toilet.


https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-calls-on-biden-admin-to-condemn-rape-and-torture-of-palestinian-detainees-held-by-israel/