Robert Inlakesh
The issue of Prisoners of War (POWs) taken captive by Hamas-led Palestinian resistance forces has become one of the key justifications for Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip.
While western audiences are often presented with the image of these groups as bloodthirsty terrorists, a closer look reveals that Hamas and other factions may have treated Israeli captives more humanely than how Israel treats Palestinian political prisoners.
While the Israeli POW issue spans eight weeks, the plight of Palestinian captives has persisted since at least 1967. There are said to be some 137 Israelis that are currently being held captive in Gaza, whom Hamas claims all are males and/or soldiers.
In the seven-day truce struck in November between Hamas and Israel, the Palestinian resistance released 108 women and children held captive in Gaza. In return, Israel was to release 300 Palestinian women and children held in detention and permit much-needed aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
Stanley Cohen, a US attorney who has represented both Hamas and Hezbollah members, tells The Cradle that “the laws of war do not limit Prisoners of War to State actors.” He says that “all the laws of war apply, whether it’s state actors or non-state actors.”
This would mean that the same legal obligations on the treatment of POWs should apply to both Hamas and Israel, despite there being a greater moral expectation often placed on UN member states.
How Hamas treats Israeli POWs
Access to interviews with detainees is limited due to Israeli government restrictions on media interaction with the recently freed captives, especially since the embarrassing PR blunder in late October when one of the four Israelis unconditionally released before the truce – 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz – said at a presser that “they treated us very well” in Gaza, but had endured “hell” while being taken captive.
But despite the challenges in obtaining their full stories, certain facts stand out. Recent audio recordings quoted by Israeli media have revealed statements from freed prisoners who claim they were more fearful of Israeli actions than those by Hamas. One former detainee, criticizing the Israeli government, highlighted the lack of support and the challenges faced during their captivity:
“We were sitting in the tunnels and we were terribly afraid not that Hamas but Israel would kill us, and then they would say – Hamas killed you.”
Another former Israeli captive went further in expressing disdain for the Israeli government’s responses on and after the events of 7 October:
“The feeling we had there was that no one was doing anything for us. The fact is that I was in a hiding place that was shelled and we had to be smuggled out and were wounded. Not including the helicopter that shot at us on the way to Gaza. You claim that there is intelligence, but the fact is that we are being shelled. My husband was separated from us three days before we returned to Israel and taken to the tunnels. And you are talking about washing the tunnels with sea water? You are shelling the route of tunnels in the exact area where they are.”
Reports on the health of detainees suggest that there was a gradual decrease in food quantity inside Gaza, with claims that prisoners lost between 10 to 15 percent of their body mass. Dr Yael Mozer-Glassberg, an Israeli pediatrician, described the children’s experience as “psychological terror,” though her account should be viewed with some healthy skepticism.
Mozer-Glassberg’s accounts are the closest thing to a detailed explanation of how the freed Israeli captives were treated. According to a report published by Haaretz, the doctor repeated the following story of two children, stating that “the older one wouldn’t eat until the younger had finished eating and felt full,” adding that “these are the kind of stories I heard from my grandfather, who was a Holocaust survivor.”
When reading the language she employs to describe the conditions of the former captives, it is quite apparent that her account is geared towards exaggeration and that the doctor is not a neutral source.
Conflicting claims
On the other side of the spectrum are the Hamas-released videos showing the handover of mostly Israeli detainees to the International Red Cross. The footage is characterized by high-fives, smiles, waves, hugs, and even Arabic expressions of gratitude to their captors – visuals the Israeli government dismisses as propaganda.
Government spokesperson Eylon Levy said that Hamas “releases footage of crowds terrorizing the hostages in their final moments of captivity,” stating that the videos show how the group “continues to document its own atrocities.” Levy’s portrayal was a clear exaggeration, to say the least.
Tel Aviv’s health ministry has even gone as far as to suggest POWs were administered “drugs” to make them appear happy. Yet contrary to Mozer-Glassberg’s portrayals of terror, these videos provide more direct insights into the experiences of the freed Israelis.
Emily Hand, a 9-year-old Israeli girl who was held by Hamas, was returned to her father during the recent prisoner exchanges. Her father, Thomas, who had been paraded across western media after incorrectly being informed that his daughter was killed on 7 October, stated that “she [Emily] has lost a lot of weight, from her face and body, but generally doing better than we expected.”
Thai negotiator Dr Lerpong Sayed asserted that those he helped release were well cared for, receiving shelter, clothes, food, and water, with mental support provided equally to Thai and Israeli detainees – who he said were held together. There have also been reports of friendships blooming from within the Palestinian resistance groups’ detention tunnels, one between an Israeli woman and a Thai Worker. Claims of intentional injuries during transport and a letter expressing gratitude from a released captive’s family remain contested and unverified.
Hamas alleges that Israeli airstrikes have killed around 60 Israelis they were holding captive, including their Palestinian guards, with 23 of the bodies still trapped under rubble. The Israeli army, blaming Hamas, has discovered two of these corpses.
Amid varying accounts from families and doctors, it appears that conditions in the facilities where Israeli detainees were held were unpleasant, possibly exacerbated by Israel’s cutoff of all essential services at the start of the war.
A lack of hygiene, water, food, medicine, and electricity are all realities for the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians living in Gaza right now. If anything, the conditions that the Israeli captives faced were consistent with, if not better, than those faced by Gaza’s civilians.
How Israel mistreats Palestinian Prisoners
Unlike the Israeli detainees, freed Palestinian political prisoners have spoken directly to the international media and provided horrifying accounts of physical abuse, including torture, beatings, and even rape. According to a number of Palestinian women and children who were freed in the latest exchanges, they were threatened by Israelis not to speak out about their treatment in detention.
“There are no laws. Everything is permitted,” Lama Khater, a freed Palestinian captive, told the media. “I was led to the investigation handcuffed and blindfolded, I was threatened with being burned, I was explicitly threatened with rape and with deportation to the Gaza Strip,” she added.
Palestinian journalist Baraah Abu Ramouz, who was also freed from Israeli detention, gave the following testimony of what she witnessed:
“The situation in the prisons is devastating. The prisoners are abused. They are being constantly beaten. They’re being sexually assaulted. They are being raped. I’m not exaggerating. The prisoners are being raped.”
Mohammed Nazal had his fingers broken, his back bruised, and hands fractured by Israeli prison guards. “One week ago, we were savagely beaten with metal bars. I put my hands on my head to protect it from injury, but the soldiers did not stop until they broke my hands,” the 18-year-old freed prisoner said. Despite his clear injuries and horrifying testimony given to the media, where he said he was left lying on the floor in pain and was denied medical treatment, the Israeli authorities tried to claim he was a liar and released a video claiming he was unharmed. His testimonies and medical reports were later verified, revealing that Israel had lied and not Mohammed.
Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian icon and activist who was being held without a charge, looked shaken and weak following her release, stating:
“The circumstances in the prison are very difficult, with daily abuse against female prisoners. They are left without water or clothes, sleeping on the floor and being beaten…The Israeli authorities threatened me with [targeting] my father if I spoke about anything that happens in prison.”
Their testimonies consistently highlight that conditions inside Israeli prisons further deteriorated after 7 October. Freed detainees spoke of physical and psychological abuse, and deprivation of essentials such as food, water, medical care, and proper sleeping arrangements.
Palestinian prisoner support and human rights association, Adameer reports that over 7,600 political prisoners are held in Israeli military detention, with more than 3,000 of these civilians captured since 7 October – far surpassing the total number of Israelis held in Gaza.
The overlooked Palestinian struggle
Tel Aviv’s claims that these Palestinians are all “convicted terrorists” is a farce. Israel’s military court system maintains a near 100% conviction rate for Palestinians, while thousands more are held under what is called “administrative detention” — jargon for those individuals detained without any charge. One testimony, which I recorded last year, came from now 22-year-old Abdul-Khaliq Burnat, who told a harrowing story from when he was held in Israel’s notoriously brutal al-Moskobiyya detention center:
“They shouted at me, beat me with their fists, slapped me and used tools. I was restricted with a plastic zip tie which cut into my wrists, whilst I was strapped to a chair in a stress position for 20 hours of the day .. for three days they had me in a smelly, tiny cell; it was so cold in there and there wasn’t any light, I was stripped of all my clothes for the whole time and tied up naked, they didn’t give me any food and I couldn’t even use the bathroom.”
During his detention in May of 2021, Abdul-Khaliq says that he was informed daily by Israeli interrogators about how many women and children were being killed in Gaza at that time. His captors then brought his then 17-year-old brother Mohammed to the same detention center and beat him so severely that he was hospitalized on three separate occasions.
Mohammed Burnat still languishes in Israeli jail, where he has been held without a charge since his 2021 arrest. Abdul-Khaliq, who was first held captive for 13 months, at the age of 17, has again been taken captive by Israeli forces following the 7 October operation, and is currently being held in administrative detention.
When taking into consideration that the plight of Palestinian political prisoners represents one of the most important issues in contemporary Palestinian society, one can begin to understand the rationale and strategic thinking behind the resistance’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation to capture Israeli POWs.
Since 1967, Israel has detained over 1 million Palestinians, including tens of thousands of children, according to the UN.
Cases of torture, sexual abuse, and psychological trauma have been well documented throughout decades of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and detention of its people, yet this has not received a fraction of the media attention afforded to the Israelis imprisoned only two months ago.
(Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and has worked with RT, Middle East Eye, The New Arab, MEMO, Mint Press News, Al-Mayadeen English, TRT World, and various other media outlets. He has worked as a news correspondent, political analyst, and produced a number of documentary films. Courtesy: The Cradle, an online news magazine covering the geopolitics of West Asia from within the region.)
Hugs, Smiles Were Enough to Take Israeli Propaganda Down
Normal human interactions: handshakes, smiles, blowing kisses, and pats on the back. This was enough to shatter the Israeli propaganda into pieces in front of the entire world. During the now-expired truce, al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas Resistance movement, would release video footage of the prisoners-captives exchange deal daily.
With these videos, the Resistance movement became the center of attention for users on social media, who would take screenshots from the videos and comment on the footage, either by creating memes, praising the way Hamas has been treating the captives, or even expressing amazement over the idea of how the captives were bidding the Hamas fighters farewell with signs clear enough to prove that they were all in good shape and health.
The videos would show the captives waving goodbye with wide smiles while saying “thank you” to the Resistance fighters.
These smiles have driven the Israeli occupation crazy.
Going insane over a smile
Pro-“Israel” users on social media fell desperate. They should. After all, the billions of dollars worth of campaigns to try to demonize the Palestinian Resistance have just gone down the drain. Now, they should be seeking modifications to their propaganda. How? Attribute all that had happened during the exchange to the Stockholm Syndrome, pressure from the Resistance, and other made-up similar reasons.
They tried to edit videos to their preferences, take pictures out of their context, and fabricate news and pictures for the sake of pushing forth their false narrative.
A good example of this is a post on X by the former International Media Advisor to the Israeli President Isaac Herzog Eylon Levy.
He posted a 5-second part of one of Hamas’ videos of releasing captives with the caption: “Don’t mess with Jewish women.”
The video shows a mere 5 seconds of a woman talking with serious facial expressions to one of Hamas’ fighters. Levy seemed to have cut the part where the same woman was smiling and saying goodbye to the Resistance fighters.
Under the post, many debunked Levy’s footage, saying he had falsely framed and taken the footage out of context.
In an article in Israel Hayom newspaper, political analyst, Yaniv Peleg, admitted that publishing such footage on television “is detrimental to Israel.”
Another political analyst, Maya Lecker, wrote in Haaretz that “many pro-Palestinian influencers and social media users—most of them from outside Israel and Palestine—find the nightly hand-overs of hostages to be heart-warming public displays of humanity and morality by Hamas militants.”
For ‘Israel’, it’s all being forced
In a piece in Times of Israel, author Michael Bachner talks about how Hamas forced the captives to smile and wave to cameras. Not only this, but he also claimed that Hamas “appears to have forced” a hostage named Danielle Alone to write a letter thanking Hamas fighters for their extraordinary humanity in Gaza.
The writer does not even give one piece of evidence to back his claims. His entire piece resonated like an angry pro-Israeli propagandist.
Israelis are seeing Hamas winning the propaganda war, and they can’t do anything about it. The snowball effect is on a roll. Another reason for their infuriation is that this is not how they ever perceived treating prisoners, detainees, or hostages. Cruelty, inhumanity, savagery, and torture is their middle name.
The stark difference
If we take a moment and look at the conditions of liberated Palestinian prisoners and the conditions of Israeli captives, it is evident that the difference is striking.
Israa Jaabis was liberated with her face and hands fully burned. Several liberated Palestinian women spoke to Al Mayadeen about the endless torture they had endured during their imprisonment.
Did we get to hear anything from the Israeli captives? We only got to hear from the Israeli captive Yocheved Lifshitz, who was released by al-Qassam Brigades back in October. She explained how al-Qassam fighters were very friendly with the captives, took care of them, and provided them with medicine.
On the one hand, you have a party that is seen releasing its captives with smiles, hugs, and warm goodbyes, while, on the other, nothing is allowed or made available for the masses to see. Did “Israel” ever document a video showing how it treats Palestinian prisoners or any footage of it releasing one Palestinian prisoner? This never happened. Why? Because “Israel” is infamous for torturing and depriving Palestinian prisoners of their most basic rights.
Activists on social media started to question why “Israel” holds so many children in its jails with many of them held without any charge. Not only does “Israel” kill Palestinian children, but it also keeps a large number of them in its infamous jails without any charges.
Years and years of paying billions have gone in a handshake
In this war, “Israel” discovered that money cannot fix everything. At the beginning of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, journalist Sophia Smith, in a thread on X, pointed out that the Israeli government invested nearly $7.1 million exclusively in YouTube advertising. Using the analytical tool Semrush, which estimates ad campaign expenditures, along with Google’s ad transparency center, Smith’s research highlighted that the campaign specifically targeted countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
They released a total of 88 ads in a short period from October 7 to October 19. Delving deeper into the metrics, it was found that the campaign had a substantial reach, accumulating nearly a billion impressions. Approximately $1.1 million was allocated for targeting the United Kingdom alone.
Not only did money not work for “Israel’s” propaganda, but also all the rhetoric efforts that “Israel” has put on “influencers” and celebrities to voice their support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza have backlashed.
Social media users started to unfollow “infected” celebrities, forcing some of them to delete their posts or even explain their wrongful stance.
Screw up after screw up
While “Israel” continues to fail, both on the actual battlefield and in the virtual one, the Palestinian narrative seems to be winning among the masses. Just recently, Axios reported that the views of pro-Palestine content surpass by far the views of pro-“Israel” content. The report detailed that posts that use the hashtag #StandwithPalestine have significantly surpassed the posts that use the hashtag ‘#StandwithIsrael’ in the U.S. and globally in the two weeks leading up to the end of October (October 16 to 31).
Thanks to Israeli blunders and fiascos, people around the globe are now more aware of Israeli propaganda. Thanks to the efforts that are made constantly by the people of Gaza to convey to the entire world the real picture, people now can wipe their eyes clear and see the picture as it is.
The failed Israeli campaign to picture the Palestinian Resistance as “terrorist” is failing. The image of the “invincible army” is shattering. The millions and even billions of dollars spent to whitewash Israeli crimes are going with the wind, in vain. This is it. This is “Israel” losing. This is “Israel” being defeated.
(Aya Youssef is a journalist, writer, and Palestinian activist. Courtesy: Al Mayadeen, an Arab Independent Media Satellite Channel based in the Lebanese capital Beirut.)
