Women soldiers sent to be raped by terrorist in exchange for ‘intelligence’

The Gilboa prison sex scandal is not an aberration but a sign of deep problems in Israeli society, writes ELANA SZTOKMAN.

I thought nothing could shock me after years of researching sexual abuse. But recent revelations that an IDF officer knowingly sent female soldiers under his command to be raped by a Palestinian terrorist incarcerated in the Gilboa prison have taken the issue of sexual assault to a new low.

Between 2014-2017, a young woman who was doing her compulsory service as a prison guard was repeatedly instructed by her commanders to sexually “service” a Palestinian prisoner named Mahmoud Atallah, who had been sentenced for murder and terror.

She was left alone with him in an area with no cameras, where he raped her. He was also allowed to walk around uncuffed and was given free rein to grab her and apparently other female guards any time. He was promised these privileges apparently in exchange for some “intelligence”.

Five other soldiers have now come forward and reported similar experiences.

The soldier who broke the story, “Hila”, wrote in her crowd-funding campaign that this was an “open secret” and that since then her “life has been hell”.

"My commanding officer, my superiors, the ones who I thought were supposed to protect me, handed me over to this terrorist. They made sure that I would be alone with him, against clear guidelines, in order for him to cruelly torture me and sexually abuse me over and over again. And not just me, also many other female prison guards. He could have killed me, or taken me hostage, just the two of us, without handcuffs or bars. He is a convicted murderer! A terrorist! What were they thinking to themselves? That he would ‘just’ have fun with me? That it’s okay? That it’s okay to sacrifice a female soldier in exchange for information? Quiet? Money? I can’t even imagine what they got in exchange for a female soldier’s body."

In 2017, after she was released from the army, Hila reported these rapes to various authorities and got nowhere. The State Attorney obtained a gag order on the story and a series of authorities refused to deal with her complaints.

But in July, the story was picked up by the media, and then five other victims came forward saying that it happened to them, too. 

Gilboa Prison commander Freddy Ben Shitrit, who was not in the role at the time, confirmed female guards had been regularly used as “bargaining chips” with inmates in order to get concessions from prisoners. He said the prison “pimped soldiers” and “they handed over female soldiers to terrorists for sexual purposes.” The Israel Prisons Service Commissioner, Katy Perry, has now vowed to investigate the allegations.

The use of sex trafficking in the name of Israeli security reveals the depths of patriarchy, misogyny, and sexual objectification buried deep in Israeli power structures. People in the IDF, the Prison Service, The General Security Service (GSS, or Shabak), the Shin Bet, the State Attorney, the Israeli Police, and the Security Cabinet all knew this was happening.

 It raises many questions about how far Israel is willing to go in the name of “protecting Israel”, how much violence Israelis are willing to take as normal, and how entangled some of these ugly, violent cultures are within the Zionist narrative.

It is also reminder that among Israeli leadership and its allies, apparently anything is considered justifiable in the name of “fighting terror”. (As if that’s what this is.) And for those who are still hanging on to the idea that the IDF is “the most moral army in the world”, that Israel can do no wrong in the fight against whatever it is we’re fighting against, maybe this story will blow up that myth once and for all.

Mostly, the story reveals how intensely women are viewed as sexual objects, even as they are doing their military “service”. Sexual abuse rarely takes place in a vacuum. That was one of my strongest findings in my research on sexual abuse in the Jewish community. Sexual predators, especially those with high profiles or in positions of power, are able to get away with their abuses because their cultural and structural surroundings allow them to.

The Gilboa prison case is a litany of such structural abuses. Those who received and ignored complaints include the intelligence officer in charge of the soldiers’ placements, Nissim Finish, then head of Gilboa Prison Bassem Kishkush, and then Prison Services Commissioner Ofra Klinger.

Makbil Tafesh, commander of the Northern District at the time, apparently told the victims, “What you’re saying is not good for the Prison Service” and dismissed them. He then told the media that he never received complaints, and recently added that “it didn’t happen”, and that the victims are “greedy, money-hungry liars”.

Rani Basha, the intelligence officer who succeeded Finish, admitted in an interview on Channel 12 that he had moved female prison guards to where Atallah was, at the prisoner’s demand. He claimed this was done with the victims’ “consent”, and that the female soldiers were “agents” tasked with extracting information from the inmates. The victims vehemently deny this version of events. Public Security Minister Omer Barlev has now suspended Basha over these descriptions.

The case was discussed in high places, including the Security Cabinet, which did nothing. A proposal put forward to establish a state commission of inquiry into the affair failed to pass in Knesset because the coalition refused to support an opposition measure.

“As more and more details emerge, we are getting a clearer picture of the depth of this travesty,” Hila’s lawyer, Keren Barak, said. “Many parties were involved and knew about what was being done to the female soldiers in the prison and even permitted it. It seems that those same parties were building an apparatus for defending Israel using the bodies of female soldiers.”

The real issue is not just that a convicted terrorist serving a sentence for violent murder wants women’s bodies as his personal playthings. The real issue is why all of these Israeli commanders, officers, attorneys, police officers, and even politicians thought that this was an acceptable idea. It is about making sexual assault part of the cultural norms, and minimizing or even dismissing the physical, emotional, and moral devastation that it causes.

Thus far, except for recent the suspension of Basha – which only happened because he spoke out publicly – there has been no accountability for those who perpetrate this abuse. The victims continue to suffer from the trauma, but many of the people who caused the trauma are still protected within the system. 

READ MORE

Israeli Police Investigate Claims Prisoner Raped Female Guard (Haaretz)

Female Warden in Israeli Prison Says She Was Repeatedly Raped by Palestinian Inmate (Haaretz)

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Photo: Gilboa Prison (Haaretz)