A report from Hadassah Hospital suggests that a Palestinian terror detainee whom critics claimed was raped by Israeli reservists at Sde Teiman prison may instead have hidden an object inside his rectum, thereby causing injury.
The hospital evaluation, reported by Israel’s Channel 14, casts doubt on the sensational claim — which has gone viral in the Arab world — that Israeli reservists sodomized a Palestinian terror detainee who had been arrested in Gaza.
The controversy has raged for weeks. After a prisoner was found to have an injury to his buttocks, the Israeli military began an investigation. But when officers arrived at Sde Teiman to arrest and question the reservists who supposedly were responsible for the prisoner, right-wing protesters had invaded the prison, overwhelming the guards, to protect the reservists. The resulting standoff shocked Israelis, as it implied a collapse of law and order at the prison facility.
Earlier this week, a surveillance video from the Sde Teiman prison was leaked to the media and aired by Israel’s Channel 12. The video showed a group of soldiers surrounding a prisoner, but it was unclear what was happening.
Supporters of the reservists contend that the Palestinian prisoner was injured after trying to smuggle a cellphone into the prison inside his rectum. The Hadassah Hospital report lends weight to that theory. It found that there was no injury to the prisoner’s anus, as would have been consistent with forced insertion of an object, but just internal injury.
Instances of rape by Israeli soldiers are so rare as to be completely undocumented in the history of Middle East wars.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
