Dr Khaled Alserr’s voice strained as he recalled the way Israeli soldiers tortured and humiliated him and other medics.
Their treatment “was designed to humiliate us”, the 33-year-old surgeon said over an unstable online call. “They forced us to make the sound of a donkey.”
Dr Alserr had been arrested along with other healthcare workers at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in March last year – they had stayed to care for their despite an Israeli assault on the hospital in February.
Rights groups say the arrests are part of Israel’s deliberate targeting of healthcare workers, pointing to the arrests of more than 250 Palestinian healthcare workers.
In its report, Torture of Medical Workers in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights, Israel (PHRI) has catalogued the arbitrary detention and abuse of healthcare workers in Gaza.
Among the medics interviewed for the report was Alserr, whose tearful return to his father in Gaza was caught on video below.
‘We’ll cut off your fingers because you are a dentist’
Over an uneven phone line from Gaza, the sound of a clamouring ward behind him, Dr Alserr is specific about his detention.
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He describes being forced from the hospital with other doctors, nurses, and staff, and made to strip naked “in public and in front of the soldiers and nearby houses” on March 25 last year.
“They then let us put our underwear on, and tied our wrists with plastic ties.”
Dr Alserr was interrogated three times, twice by soldiers and once by people who said they were from Israeli security services, the Shin Bet.
The interrogations, Najji Abbas from PHRI said, aimed to find out if the medics came across any information that could help Israel in its assault on Gaza – a stark violation of the Geneva Convention, which protects medical workers.
The questions were always the same.
“[They] asked about my identity and my job and what I was doing on October 7th. Where was I, who did I treat? Nothing about me,” he said.
Of the more than 250 Palestinian healthcare workers – doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other essential medical staff – detained by Israel throughout the war, more than 150 remain in custody, PHRI said.
Of the 24 healthcare workers interviewed for the NGO’s report, all said they had not been formally charged or presented with credible evidence against them.
Instead, they were threatened, beaten and humiliated, all the while being questioned about captives taken from Israel, tunnels and anything they may have heard about the movements of Hamas.
One medic, Dr KJ, recalled being told during an assault: “We will cut off your fingers because you are a dentist.”
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Another, senior surgeon Dr MT, told the NGO that military dogs were set upon detainees while soldiers watched and laughed. “They made us bark like dogs,” he said.
Many of the healthcare workers testified to being sexually and psychologically abused by Israeli soldiers, including being stripped, left in stress positions for hours, receiving threats against their families and being coerced into playing “games” or face further beatings.
“On 28th March, the soldiers called me and two other civilian prisoners, aged around 16 and 17 by name,” Dr Alserr recalled.
“It was night. They tied us very tightly at our wrists and ankles and put us in a military car. No one told us anything. We drove for around two hours into the hills. All the while they beat us, kicking us, and humiliating us.
“They were laughing. I was trying to explain in English that the ties on my wrist were too tight, but they just said I was a doctor so I would be OK.
“At around 4am I heard one say in Arabic: “These three are to be hanged.”
“I … thought it was the end,” said the surgeon. “I was in pain. They had broken my ribs. Even when they said I was going to be hanged, I didn’t care. I just wanted it to end,” he said.
Dr Alserr was not released until late September, reuniting him with his parents, for whom he is the sole care provider.
Overall, he endured more than six months in Israeli detention without charge. Half of that time was spent incommunicado, under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law.
Illegal activity
“This is unlawful on numerous counts,” PHRI’s Abbas told Al Jazeera.
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“It’s illegal firstly, because you can’t just arrest someone on what’s clearly a fishing mission and, secondly, healthcare workers are a protected category under international humanitarian law.”
The abuse and starvation that Israel inflicted on healthcare workers is “a moral and legal outrage”, but seemed a matter of policy.
“None of [the healthcare workers] were accused of anything or formally charged,” he said. “Others were presented with someone identifying themselves as a judge – sometimes in military uniform, or on the other end of a phone line – who told them they were to remain in custody possibly until the end of the war.
“We have no idea who these people were,” he said.
“Many of the people we spoke to talked about being victim to sexual violence and humiliation,” Abbas recalled, “the use of dogs either to attack or pee on prisoners seemed to reoccur a lot.
“The idea is for the soldiers to rob Palestinian men – and doctors specifically – of their dignity. That kind of torture also leaves scars; ones that take a long time to heal.”
A history of violence
Reports of Israeli forces torturing healthcare workers for intelligence are longstanding and, according to legal representatives for Kamal Adwan Hospital Director Dr Hussam Abu Safia, who was taken by the Israeli army in December, ongoing.
The case of Dr Abu Safia resembles the arbitrary detention of 49-year-old Dr Adnan al-Bursh, who was “likely raped to death” while in Israeli custody, as UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said in a social media post in November.
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In August last year, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on Israel arresting and torturing Gaza healthcare workers said the matter merited investigation by the International Criminal Court.
HRW interviewed several healthcare workers detained by Israel during the forced evacuation of healthcare facilities, noting repeated instances of humiliation, beatings, and forcing prisoners to maintain stress positions. They also reported torture, including rape and sexual abuse by Israeli forces.
“Their status as healthcare workers didn’t stop the abuse,” Milena Ansari, a lawyer with HRW who worked on the report said.
Likely raped to death.
A doctor. A stellar surgeon. The embodiment of Palestinian ethics.
Likely raped to death.The racism of Western media who are not covering this, and Western politicians who are not denouncing this, together with the thousand other testimonies and… pic.twitter.com/IRpCSi9nVZ
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) November 18, 2024
“Surgeons, paramedics, doctors and nurses were all subjected to abuse. One surgeon told me he was interrogated while still in his scrubs … the soldiers just didn’t care.”
A report last year by the UN human rights office (OHCHR) said it was “clear” the wholesale detention of healthcare workers amid a blockade that has, to date, killed some 60,000 Palestinians also contributed to the collapse of a healthcare system desperately trying to mitigate the impact of Israel’s assault on the people of Gaza.
Dr Alserr paused the call for five minutes, there was a crisis in his ward that needed his attention.
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“I hurt deeply,” he said, returning to the phone.
“I know I will not heal completely. I just hide it with work. and by keeping busy.”
