On June 12, Hisham Abu Is’ifan, a 54-year-old father of six and resident of Hebron’s Wadi Al-Hassin neighborhood, was on his way to his job as a clerk at the Education Ministry when he was stopped and attacked by soldiers.
“[A soldier] came over and pushed me, and then he ordered me to hand over my ID card and phone,” Abu Is’ifan testified to B’Tselem. “Before I could give him the phone, he grabbed me by the back of the neck and shoved me to the ground. My back hurt a lot and I shouted … When I kept shouting in pain, the soldier sat on me and pressed both his knees hard into my chest, until I felt I couldn’t breathe from the pain.”
Yasser Abu Markhiyeh, a 52-year-old father of four from the Tel Rumeida neighborhood, was abused at a checkpoint in Hebron on July 14 because of what soldiers found on his cell phone. “When I got to him, [the soldier] ordered me to hand over my ID card,” he recounted. “I did, and he ordered me to unlock my phone and hand it over, too. I heard him talk to someone on the wireless radio and say my name.
“About five minutes later, four soldiers arrived at the checkpoint,” Abu Markhiyeh continued. “One of them spoke to me in Arabic and accused me of contacting Al Jazeera and slandering the Israeli army. I told him that I had, in fact, spoken to Al Jazeera three weeks earlier about soldiers who attacked me on June 22 … Then he tied my hands behind my back with zip ties and fastened them very tight. Two soldiers pounced on me and started beating me, including in the testicles, for several minutes.”
Mahmoud ‘Alaa Ghanem, an 18-year-old who lives in the city of Dura in the Hebron district, was attacked by soldiers in Hebron on July 8. Like Abu Markhiyeh, he also had his phone inspected by soldiers. Upon opening Ghanem’s Instagram, they found a meme of an Israeli soldier saving young children on October 7 with the word “Photoshop” written on it, mocking the army’s apparent ineptitude in the face of the Hamas attack that day.
“He asked me about it, and I said it was just a picture,” Ghanem told B’Tselem. “He said, ‘We’ll show you Photoshop.’”
After a few minutes, Ghanem was put on the floor of a jeep and driven away. “One of the soldiers grabbed me by the hair and slammed my face into the back door, three times in a row,” he said. “I felt that my mouth and nose were bleeding. The soldier asked me, ‘Do you like Hamas?’ I said no, and then he grabbed me by the arm, twisted it around my neck and strangled me … Two soldiers started slapping me and asking me again: ‘Do you like Hamas?’ Again, I said I didn’t, and then one of them hit me hard in the testicles. I screamed in pain, and then he hit me harder in the same place. I begged him in the name of God to stop hitting me.”
“One of the soldiers came to me and put his cigarette out on my right leg,” Muhammad A-Natsheh, a 22-year-old from Tel Rumeida who was detained on July 14, told B’Tselem. “He put it out slowly, so it would hurt more. One of them asked: ‘Does it hurt?’ When I said yes, he punched me in the back of the head, stood on my legs and pressed down hard.”
A-Natsheh continued: “One of them got an office chair and put it on my legs. He sat on it from time to time, which hurt a lot. They kept swearing at me the whole time, and one of them spat at me, too. It went on like that for about an hour, and then one of the soldiers said to me in Arabic: ‘We’ll rape you’. One of them grabbed my head, and another soldier tried to open my mouth and shove a rubber object in it. I made a huge effort not to open my mouth. I heard him say in Hebrew: ‘Film him, film him.’
“Then a soldier who spoke Arabic came,” he went on. “He came over and ordered me to get up, but I couldn’t. He grabbed me by the neck, lifted me up and made me stand facing the wall, and then he started pushing my head left and right violently with his hands, saying: ‘If I see you in this place again, I’ll rape you and kill you. I’ll do the same to anyone else I see here.’”
“The soldiers brought ice and put it down my underwear,” Qutaybah Abu Ramileh, a 25-year old from the neighborhood of Al-Salayma who was detained on July 8 along with his 22-year-old brother, Yazan, told B’Tselem. “Yazan told me afterwards they did the same thing to him. They also poured an alcoholic drink into our clothes. I heard a soldier talking to a girl on the phone. I think it was a video call. They were laughing and making fun of us.
“One of the soldiers kicked us in the head and face while cursing us and our mothers,” he continued. “Then, suddenly, I heard the sound of a leather belt coming from above, and one of them started whipping us with a belt on our heads and all over our bodies … The soldiers stepped on our [bare] feet. The beating with the belt lasted about three minutes, and then the soldiers brought a bucket and put it on my head. Later, I understood they also put a bucket on Yazan. They started playing with a ball or something like that, and threw it at the bucket on my head. It hurt every time the ball hit the bucket. It was hard to breathe and I felt like I was suffocating.”
“The soldiers ordered us to leave,” she said. “My husband turned the car around, and the soldiers were still surrounding us. One of them looked at me and winked. He gave me a mocking smile and then I saw him pull the pin on a stun grenade and throw it between my legs. I pushed the grenade away and it fell under the seat. I shouted, ‘Grenade! Grenade!’ and ducked to the other side. [My husband] turned around to me when I shouted, so the grenade exploded under his face. He passed out. Thank God, the car stopped by itself.”
