A Palestinian abductee who was among prisoners released on Saturday by Israel as part of the ceasefire deal has recounted the tragic ordeal and brutal torture that he has been through in the occupying regime’s detention.
Ibrahim Mohammad Khaleel al-Shawish said in his testimony that for 45 days he was ‘blindfolded, shackled, and forced to kneel’ before being transferred to Israel’s Negev prison, where he endured ‘electric shocks and attacks by dogs’.
Shawish is from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza and was arrested on December 10, 2023. His face vividly bore the signs of severe malnourishment and torture.
Describing the horrendous condition of Israeli barracks where he was kept as ‘indescribable’, Shawish said: ‘Whatever form of torture you can think of is there. They would use electric shocks on you and electricity was used in torture. In addition, dogs were used in torture.’
Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, on Saturday, handed over three Israeli captives to the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) in Deir al-Balah city in the central Gaza Strip.
Israel, in return, released 183 Palestinian prisoners as part of the fifth phase of the prisoner exchange deal under the ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
Of the freed prisoners, 42 were from the occupied West Bank, three from Jerusalem, and 27 from the Gaza Strip, all serving life sentences or lengthy terms, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees’ and Ex-Detainees’ Affairs said in a statement.
Seven of the freed prisoners would be deported outside Palestinian territories, the statement noted.
The Gaza ceasefire deal, which went into effect on January 19, ended the 15-month Israeli war on Gaza and resulted in the release of captives still held in the blockaded territory in return for hundreds of Palestinian abductees held illegally in Israeli jails.
Israel has released a list of more than 700 Palestinian abductees to be released under the deal.
The Israeli military’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, occupied West Bank and Lebanon has been accompanied by appallingly perverse behaviour, which experts link to a deeply ingrained culture of depravity within Zionist settler society.
One particularly grotesque trend among Israeli occupation soldiers during the genocidal war on Gaza involved photographing and filming personal belongings looted from Palestinian homes – especially items like undergarments.
Social media has been awash with such images and videos, where Israeli soldiers shamelessly flaunt the stolen items, proudly posing for the camera and sharing them online.
These posts were often met with enthusiastic approval from Zionist settler audiences, reinforcing a disturbing cycle of dehumanisation and cruelty that defines the illegitimate Zionist entity.
A particularly egregious case emerged from Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli military raids have been relentless.
A viral video captured an Israeli reservist grotesquely dancing in women’s lingerie – pulled over his uniform – after ransacking a Palestinian home and seizing the clothing from a bedroom.
Over the past year and a half of destruction in Gaza, such incidents reached epidemic proportions.
United Nations Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani also condemned these actions, stating: ‘The posting of such images is demeaning to Palestinian women, and all women.’
Despite widespread criticism, these images continue to circulate on social media platforms, racking up tens of thousands – sometimes even hundreds of thousands – of views, further exposing the deep-seated moral decay within Israel’s occupation forces.
In March 2024, two Israeli soldiers were photographed wearing the clothing of Palestinian women inside an occupied home in Gaza.
One of them had already gained notoriety for sharing similar images on TikTok, revelling in the humiliation of his victims.
A month later, eight Israeli soldiers posed, grinning, in the ruins of a Palestinian child’s bedroom. They clutched stuffed animals, a ball, and a tiny bicycle – trophies of their destruction—turning a scene of devastation into a grotesque photoshoot.
‘The vulgar spectacle of these Israeli soldiers posing with the toys of dead or displaced children in their genocidal playground is grotesque. It reveals how utterly depraved and inhuman you need to be to participate in genocidal horror and keep a smile on your face,’ remarked Professor and Islamophobia researcher Jasmin Zine.
By late August 2024, the horrors had only escalated.
Four Israeli soldiers proudly posed for photos wearing nightwear looted from a home in Gaza.
December 2024 brought one of the most chilling images yet: an Israeli soldier from the 51st Battalion of the Golani Brigade sat with his pants down, gazing over Gaza’s apocalyptic ruins.
His posture suggested a deep, perverse satisfaction, as though the sheer scale of death and destruction in the besieged Gaza Strip was a personal pleasure for him.
That same month, deeply disturbing footage surfaced showing Israeli soldiers inside a Palestinian child’s bedroom, filming a doll and a stuffed toy hanging from a ceiling fan, turning a child’s innocent playthings into a twisted display of terror.
As the year drew to a close, an unsettling image emerged of Israeli regime soldiers donning women’s clothing during their occupation of southern Lebanon.
American journalist and war veteran Seth Harp, who has witnessed countless atrocities across four wars, remarked that he had never seen anything as bizarre and depraved as this.
‘Dressing up in the clothes of the women and girls you’ve killed or displaced is a sick and twisted practice wholly unique to the murderous perverts of the Israeli army,’ he stated.
A group of anti-Zionist rabbis and Orthodox Jews, identifying as ‘Torah Judaism’ and operating under the name ‘Voice of Rabbis’ on X, has repeatedly condemned these acts as deeply immoral and perverse.
In February of the previous year, they strongly denounced Israeli soldiers who looted a home in Gaza, posing with women’s underwear on social media.
They declared that such individuals should not even be considered Jews but rather ‘Zionist terrorists’.
‘The Israeli army is an immoral and perverted army’ they wrote.
- The Palestinian resistance movement has celebrated the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Netzarim Corridor and the return of thousands of displaced Palestinians to their homes and the ongoing prisoners swap as a victory, describing it as yet another failure for the occupying regime in achieving its declared goals in the 15-month-long genocidal war on the people of Gaza.
Hamas made the remarks in a statement on Sunday, after Israeli troops withdrew from the Netzarim Corridor – a military zone cutting off the north of the Gaza Strip from the south – as part of a ceasefire deal in the blockaded territory.
The complete withdrawal of the Israeli military from the corridor signals a ‘continuation of the failure of the goals of the war of extermination against the Palestinian people,’ the resistance group said, and refutes Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ‘lie’ about achieving victory in Gaza.
‘Gaza will remain a land liberated by the hands of its people and its fighters, and forbidden to the occupying invaders and any external force,’ it added.
Meanwhile, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) also described the Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the Netzarim Corridor as a sign of the Palestinian nation’s and the resistance’s victory over the ‘American-Zionist’ projects.
‘The withdrawal of the enemy army from the Netzarim Corridor is a victory for our people and their courageous resistance, and it destroys the myths of the Zionist extremists,’ the coalition of resistance groups said.
The Israeli military withdrawal confirms that Palestinians will remain in their land and that the displacement projects have failed in the face of the steadfastness of people in Gaza, they added.
The latest developments came after Hamas announced earlier in the day that the Israeli military had pulled out, with the police force deployed to the area to manage the flow of Palestinians crossing through.
The Netzarim military base was a corridor created by the Israeli occupation forces as a way to enforce the permanent displacement of Palestinians from the northern parts of the Gaza Strip.
However, after more than 15 months of genocide, Palestinians are now using the same corridor on their return journey back to the north.
