“They Stole My Childhood”: Palestinian teens speak out on Israeli prison torture

The three boys, aged 16 to 17, told the non-governmental organization Defense for Children Palestine that they were abducted by Israeli forces near aid distribution centers and taken to the notorious “Sdeh Teiman” prison in southern Israel. There, they were reportedly beaten, starved, and tortured to the point that they could not sleep and continue to suffer from nighttime fear and bedwetting.

Middle East Eye quoted one of the teens as saying: “I feel like my childhood was stolen from me.”

One boy, who was abducted along with his father on September 11 while searching for food near the Morag corridor, said that he was beaten so severely during interrogation that his forehead split open and required stitches.

He described: “All I felt was pain. I endured endless suffering, hours without water, without food, without access to the restroom. I was terrified and couldn’t ask anything. Most of the time during interrogation, I lost control of my bladder.”

All three boys were reportedly placed in the so-called “disco room,” a concrete chamber where they had to lie on the floor while loudspeakers played Hebrew music for more than 12 hours.

In one instance, an Israeli prison officer showed one boy a manipulated photo of his mother in a compromising situation and falsely claimed that she and his sisters had been raped and killed. When the boy attacked the officer, he was handcuffed and suspended about a meter off the ground, beaten repeatedly, and now struggles to stand, suffers from urinary incontinence, and experiences nightly nightmares.

Another boy described his cell as infested with flies and mosquitoes, causing him to suffer from insect-borne illnesses. When he requested medical treatment, his pleas were ignored. He said an Israeli intelligence officer offered him $9,200 a month to serve as a human shield for the army.

He also reported being repeatedly attacked by dogs in his cell, while Israeli soldiers threw stun grenades at him. The severity of the torture led him to attempt suicide twice.

A third boy, abducted on July 11 and taken to Sdeh Teiman, said: “I feel extremely exhausted and struggle to express or process my experiences. Every time I recall those moments, I feel intense loneliness and break down in tears.”

Defense for Children Palestine stated that the treatment of these boys in Israeli detention was designed “to destroy self-esteem and extract false confessions.” Their detention had nothing to do with security, law, or justice.

The organization added: “This is a system designed to inflict physical and psychological wounds on a generation of Palestinians, to suppress any attempts to resist the Israeli apartheid regime or demand basic rights. The systematic torture and detention of Palestinian children by Israel constitutes a violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute.”