What’s most shocking about the latest accounts of sexual torture of Palestinians in Israeli custody is not just their inherent horror. It is that despite so much evidence being so visible for so long, the machinery of abuse and denial continues to deepen.

Nicholas Kristof’s recent reporting on the issue in the New York Times brought important public attention to the issue. But abuses in Israeli custody have long been reported by former detainees, lawyers, doctors and journalists, and documented by human rights organizations. Since October 2023, this body of evidence has revealed a horrific reality: Israel’s prison system has been transformed into a criminal network of torture camps.

In his reporting, Kristof documented harrowing testimonies from Palestinian men, women and children describing widespread sexual abuse, rape and humiliation by Israeli soldiers, prison guards, settlers and interrogators. Israel’s response to the reporting followed a familiar script: deny the abuse, lash out at those who document it, and protect the system that made it possible. The ministry of foreign affairs dismissed the New York Times piece as “Hamas propaganda” and has gone so far as to declare that Israel will sue the New York Times. Other officials and commentators reached for the familiar charge of “blood libel”, called for the New York Times to be shut down, and broadly did everything in their power to delegitimize not only the work of Kristof, a world-renowned journalist who has covered sexual abuse in conflicts across the globe, but that of anyone trying to bring this abuse to light.

Their collective meltdown is not only about denying specific allegations. It is about controlling what can be seen, who can be heard, and whose pain is allowed to enter the public realm.

B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization I lead, has documented this system through testimonies from released Palestinian detainees who were held in various Israeli facilities. At any given moment, thousands of Palestinians are held inside this system. Their testimonies reveal a regime of deliberate sexual harassment and abuse, humiliation, violence, starvation, and severe physical and psychological torture. Sexual violence is one part of a broader system that denies Palestinians rights and dignity, treating them not as human beings but as bodies that can be humiliated, broken and discarded.

The accounts themselves are as consistent as they are gruesome. In testimonies collected and verified by B’Tselem, Palestinians held in Israeli custody describe sexual violence used as a tool of torture and domination: forced nudity, severe beatings to the genitals, dogs set on naked prisoners, and forced anal penetration with objects. Tamer Qarmut described a soldier raping him at Sde Teiman detention center: “During the torture, one of the soldiers raped me. He shoved a wooden stick into my anus, left it there for about a minute, and pulled it out. Then he shoved it back in, even harder, and I screamed at the top of my lungs. After a minute, he pulled the stick out again, told me to open my mouth, pushed the stick into my mouth and forced me to lick it.”

Another witness reported: “I’m still suffering from severe trauma. They held me naked, and soldiers set dogs on me that attacked me. They beat me on the penis, tied it with a plastic cord and caused swelling and bleeding.” Ibrahim Fuda, who was held at Negev prison, testified that he “saw prisoners who were sexually assaulted. Some were attacked by dogs in sensitive areas and after that had urgent surgery. Some prisoners bled from the rectum and urethra.”

Since October 2023, more than 88 Palestinian detainees have died while held in the Israeli prison system, an unprecedented number by any standard.

Fuda’s testimony is one of many accounts that have long been public. Israeli authorities and international actors cannot credibly claim ignorance. And still, the abuse continues, because it is not a deviation from the system, but a feature of it. A system built on the denial of Palestinian humanity will not treat Palestinian pain as evidence of a crime.

The effort by Israel and its supporters to delegitimize reporting like Kristof’s is not limited to one article, or to the prison system. Israel has killed journalists in Gaza on an unprecedented scale, bars foreign reporters from entering Gaza and used legislation to shut down Palestinian and Arab media outlets. Under such conditions, the work of those able to elevate the information that the state prefers to suppress – journalists, human rights organizations, doctors and lawyers – becomes ever more critical in asserting the basic fact that Palestinians are human beings, and that their suffering cannot simply be ignored.

The abuses exposed in the summer of 2024 at Sde Teiman, an Israeli military detention facility, offered a striking example of the lengths the state will travel to prevent accountability for the crimes that take place in these prisons. A Palestinian detainee was sexually assaulted in Israeli custody, in an incident that was captured by security cameras and leaked to the public. The case became a national scandal, not because of what was done to him, but because the soldiers who allegedly assaulted him were arrested, and violent protests broke out on their behalf. After an intense public and political campaign, the charges against the soldiers were dropped in March, and they were allowed by the military chief of staff to return to military service. Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated the decision, the prime minister calling the case a “blood libel” and declaring: “The State of Israel must hunt down its enemies – not its heroic fighters.” The only person punished over the affair was the military lawyer who leaked the video.

This is impunity in practice: the system is built to protect itself and those who carry out the abuse.

The torture of Palestinian detainees is part of a wider Israeli assault on Palestinian life. In Gaza, the genocide continues. In the West Bank, violence by the military and of settler militias is intensifying, displacing entire Palestinian communities from their land. In detention facilities, Palestinians are systematically tortured. The pattern is the same throughout: escalating violence, the removal of restraints and the normalization of a system that strips Palestinians of protection.

The backlash to Kristof’s reporting, and the threats to the New York Times, have revealed the real priority of Israel and its defenders: to constantly raise the price of exposing Israel’s crimes and speaking out against them. The question is no longer whether the evidence exists. The question is how long this system will be allowed to keep operating before the world acts on a basic truth Israel works so hard to erase: Palestinians are human beings, and their lives must be protected.