March 13, 2025
Dear friend,
The powerful, yet challenging, core of human rights work is understanding that every person is entitled to basic rights, regardless of who they are and what they have done. Ensuring the rights of prisoners is an important part of ensuring that we live in a society that values the rights of all. We at ACRI have been working from the very first days of the war to shed light on the abuse of prisoners, pursue all legal avenues to stop the abuse, and attempt to close the detention centers that serve as the epicenters for the abuse.
Torturing and starving Palestinian security prisoners is not only morally wrong and a human rights violation, it also has consequences for the hostages still being held by Hamas. Eli Sharabi, who was abducted from his home on October 7 and spent 16 months in Hamas captivity, recently sat for an extensive interview with the Israeli investigative journalism program “Uvda.” During the interview, in which he recounted his time in captivity, he revealed that statements by individuals such as Ben Gvir would have dire consequences for the hostages: “Every irresponsible statement—we're the first ones to suffer. They come to us and tell us, ‘They aren’t giving our prisoners food—you won’t eat. They’re beating our prisoners—we'll beat you. They aren’t letting them shower—you won’t get to shower.’” Another recently-released hostage, Eliya Cohen, also stated that Ben Gvir’s boasts of his work to worsen conditions of Palestinian detainees would result in the hostages being treated worse. These statements echo testimonies from other hostages who were released.
For many people it is difficult to understand why we would advocate on behalf of humane treatment for people who are accused of having committed atrocities. We have been asked, accusingly, why we focus on the rights of security prisoners rather than national security or on helping the hostages who committed no crimes but who are being abused and tortured. But even if there were no other reason to oppose the abuse of prisoners, it is clear that when Israel abuses Palestinian prisoners, Israeli hostages pay the price. When we oppose the unlawful mistreatment of Palestinian security prisoners, we prevent the worsening of conditions for the hostages, giving them that much more of a chance to make it through another day, until they can finally come home.
The culture that has led to the acceptability of abusing security prisoners ultimately stems from former Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, who embarked on a policy of collective punishment against Palestinian security prisoners. Although Ben Gvir recently left the government to protest the hostage-ceasefire deal, under his watch the situation became so dire that both the head of the Shin Bet and Israel’s Attorney General felt the need to address the situation, and, ACRI and other human rights organizations have filed a number of critical cases on behalf of the rights of prisoners, some of which have resulted in significant changes. Now, when the government is cutting off aid to Gaza in order to impose a collective punishment on the entire population, not just prisoners, we are fighting back against that too.
We will not stop fighting for everyone’s rights. Donate Now.