Inside Israel’s documented sexual torture program — and why northeastern Pennsylvania should be paying attention
In July 2024, Israeli soldiers at the Sde Teiman detention facility gang-raped a Palestinian prisoner so violently that he suffered a ruptured bowel, a punctured lung, and broken ribs. The assault was captured on CCTV. When military police arrived to arrest the suspects, sitting members of Israel’s parliament stormed two military bases to stop them. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich joined the mob. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir — the man in charge of the entire prison system — called the accused rapists “our best heroes.”
When a fellow lawmaker asked Likud member Hanoch Milwidsky whether it was legitimate to insert a stick into a prisoner’s rectum, he shouted back on camera: “Yes! If he is a Nukhba, everything is legitimate to do! Everything!”
Netanyahu never condemned the assault. He called the leaked video “perhaps the most severe propaganda attack the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment.” In March 2026, the IDF dropped all charges. The only person punished was the military’s own top lawyer, who had leaked the footage. She was forced to resign. The soldiers held a press conference demanding compensation.
This is not an aberration. It is policy.
The Dogs
Among the most documented forms of sexual torture in Israeli detention is the use of trained dogs to rape prisoners. The evidence comes from converging testimony gathered independently by the UN Commission of Inquiry, B’Tselem (Israel’s leading human rights organization), the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Al Jazeera’s investigative unit, and the Dutch research center SOMO.
The testimonies are consistent across unconnected victims and multiple facilities. Released detainees describe an organized practice: prisoners taken to locations away from cameras, stripped, restrained, and attacked by dogs that appear trained for the purpose.
A 35-year-old father detained at al-Shifa Hospital and held for 19 months described being raped by a dog inside Sde Teiman that he said was “trained” for the act. A Palestinian lawyer detained for 45 days described watching soldiers strip a young man, tie his hands and feet, spray something on his backside, and unleash a dog that raped him. A 43-year-old detainee named Wajdi described being tied naked to a metal bed, raped first by a soldier while others filmed, then raped by a dog. A detainee named Halim Salem described being mounted by a dog and then beaten by guards for “disturbing the dog” by screaming. A 48-year-old man reported watching a dog maul another detainee’s genitals until he bled to death in his arms.
These are sworn testimonies collected by established human rights organizations, corroborated by UN investigators, and consistent with medical records from hospitals that treated prisoners with matching injuries.
An investigation by SOMO traced the dogs to European breeders — primarily the Netherlands. Between October 2023 and February 2025, Dutch companies obtained veterinary certificates for exporting at least 110 dogs to Israel, with 100 going to a single company, Four Winds K9, which has supplied Israel’s Oketz canine unit for 25 years. Leaked emails showed the Israeli Defense Ministry considered it “very important to maintain the relationship” with this supplier. Under EU regulations, dogs are not classified as weapons, so no export license is required.
Systematic, Not Aberrational
Every major investigation since October 2023 has reached the same conclusion. The UN Commission of Inquiry found in March 2025 that Israel’s use of sexual violence was systemic, designed to “dominate, oppress, and destroy the Palestinian people.” The commission concluded the abuse was “committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership” and that forced nudity, rape threats, and sexual assault “comprise part of the Israeli Security Forces’ standard operating procedures.”
B’Tselem’s August 2024 report, based on interviews with 55 released prisoners from 16 facilities, called the Israeli prison system “a network of torture camps.” Its spokesperson said: “Every witness account was almost identical, no matter what their age, gender, or location.”
Israel has refused access to independent monitors at every turn. The Red Cross has been denied entry. UN investigators have been blocked. In January 2025, Israel refused a UN request to investigate sexual violence claims in detention. In August 2025, the UN Secretary-General formally warned Israel of potential listing in the annual sexual violence report. Israel’s ambassador dismissed it.
When Israeli morning television discussed the Sde Teiman rape, presenters debated how to best arrange the rape of prisoners, criticizing only the “disorganized” way it was carried out. Netanyahu’s personal physician suggested on Channel 14 that the Palestinian prisoner had somehow raped himself.
13,000 Americans in the IDF — and the Soldiers Coming Home
Israeli military data obtained through a 2025 Freedom of Information request revealed that 13,342 American citizens were serving in the IDF — the largest foreign cohort among more than 50,000 dual-national soldiers. Following October 7, the Washington Post reported approximately 10,000 U.S. residents reported for Israeli military duty after receiving draft notices.
Northeastern Pennsylvania sits within the recruitment corridor of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, which openly advertises IDF volunteer programs and organizes supply drives for soldiers. The Jewish Federation of NEPA — covering Lackawanna, Monroe, Pike, and Wayne counties — maintains active Israel programming. The Lehigh Valley Jewish community has a formal two-decade partnership with an Israeli region. Programs like Birthright, Mahal, and Garin Tzabar actively recruit young American Jews to serve, and that recruitment extends through every Jewish community in the northeast, including ours.
The question no one is asking is what happens when soldiers who served in this system return to civilian life here.
We already know the answer from our own history. The National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study found that one-third of male veterans with PTSD exhibited violence against partners. Studies of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans found similar rates. Israel is already seeing it: an IDF report from July 2025 documented 9,000 requests for psychological recognition, with over 1,100 soldiers discharged for PTSD. Israeli PTSD specialist Tuly Flint told AFP: “We see violence, domestic violence. We see people split apart, couples split. We see many people collapse.” An IDF official told the Knesset the military recorded 37 suicides since the beginning of 2024.
But here is what makes this different from our experience with Iraq and Afghanistan: the torture in this war is not a scandal the military is trying to stop. It is a practice the government has defended, the political establishment has celebrated, and the justice system has refused to prosecute. Soldiers who participated are not treated as criminals. They are treated as heroes.
The Abu Ghraib research is clear on what this means. Ordinary people become torturers not because of individual pathology but because of systemic authorization — when the institution tells them what they’re doing is legitimate. That framework does not switch off at the airport. The dehumanization practiced against Palestinians does not stay at the checkpoint.
American communities are not screening returning IDF veterans for anything. No monitoring, no mental health evaluation, no reintegration program. A dual-national soldier who served at Sde Teiman can step off a plane at Newark and be back in the Poconos by dinnertime, with no one asking a single question.
The Hind Rajab Foundation has filed ICC complaints against over 1,000 named IDF soldiers, with cases pursued in 14 countries. Approximately 10 percent are dual nationals. But here at home, the silence is total.
Northeastern Pennsylvania is home to growing Arab and Muslim communities. It is also home to Jewish communities with deep institutional ties to Israel and active IDF recruitment pipelines. The intersection of these realities is not hypothetical. It is a public safety question that deserves honest examination.
Sources: UN Commission of Inquiry on the OPT (March 2025); B’Tselem “Welcome to Hell” (August 2024) and January 2026 update; Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (November 2025); Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (June 2024, April 2025); SOMO, “Unleashing Terror: Dutch Dogs in Israel’s War Crimes” (2025); Al Jazeera documentary investigations (October 2024); Anadolu Agency (November 2025); Israeli military FOI data via Declassified UK/Hatzlacha (March 2025); IDF data reported by Haaretz, Times of Israel, and Jerusalem Post (2024–2025); European Parliament Question E-002814/2025; peer-reviewed research from the British Journal of Psychiatry, the Lancet, Aggression and Violent Behavior, and the Journal of Psychiatric Research.