By Nora Barrows-Friedman, Reposted from The Electronic Intifada, August 01, 2025
Palestinian children abducted, imprisoned, and tortured for information
Israeli and American mercenary forces operating the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites continue to trap, injure, and kill starving Palestinians every day.
More than 1,200 Palestinians have been killed and more than 8,000 have been injured trying to obtain aid since the GHF began its operations on 27 May, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
A group of children who were kidnapped in late June by Israeli forces at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation site in Rafah, in southern Gaza, were released this past week and described their brutal torture and detention in Israel’s Sde Teiman concentration camp.
🚨BREAKING | Kidnapped at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation @GHFUpdates death trap, 17-year-old Omar Nizar Asfour was released today from Israeli prisons, along with nine other Palestinian children who had been abducted at the same site in the Al-Shakhoush area, north of Rafah. All… pic.twitter.com/SNsX8tnLGn
— Translating Falasteen (Palestine) (@translatingpal) July 24, 2025
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, these 10 children joined thousands of other starving people desperately seeking food aid. However, PCHR reports, “they found themselves arrested after facing the risk of death under the Israeli army’s fire.”
According to information obtained by PCHR, the children returned in miserable condition.
One of the children testified to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights that at the time of the kidnapping, the Israeli soldiers beat him with their hands and a stick and forced him to take off his clothes. He said that he and the other children were all placed inside metal cages that were one square meter large, where it was impossible to lie down or sit comfortably, and were given rotten food to eat.
“They then took me to a barrack containing four rooms with steel mesh roofs and concrete floors,” the child said. “The rooms had beds without mattresses and only one blanket. We were forced to remain seated on the beds all day and were not allowed to move.”
The child said that he was interrogated for a full week, with daily sessions of four-hour questioning about “Hamas, tunnels, hostages, cameras, handmade bombs, and identifying houses in my residential area.”
The Israeli interrogator, the child explained, “was dissatisfied with my answers because I had no answers to his questions. He beat me with his hands while my hands and feet were tied to a chair. Sometimes the interrogation was done without anger or threats, because the investigator already knew detailed information about my family, which made me fear for them.”
The child was taken to what is known as the “disco room,” where Hebrew-language songs were played loudly, and the air conditioner was set to a high temperature. I was blindfolded, and my hands and feet were tied to a pipe all day. I remained there for seven days on the floor,” he said.
Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and associate editor at The Electronic Intifada, and is the author of In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine
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