00:00Excellencies, I stand before you today with a deep sense of injustice and determination.
00:09Injustice because I have served this Council with rigor and in good faith,
00:14and for doing so I have faced relentless personal threats, insults and reprisals.
00:23Determination because in spite of all this I remain steadfast in my mission to bear witness,
00:28to speak the truth and to reject complicity in this time of unremitting criminality.
00:36Today I present the findings of my eighth report,
00:39the fifth documenting the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.
00:44Its findings highlight a hallmark of this genocide,
00:48Israel's widespread and systematic use of torture,
00:52alongside the creation of a torturous environment against Palestinians.
00:57I unequivocally condemn the torture committed by all actors,
01:02including also by Palestinian armed groups on and after 7th of October 2023.
01:09However, this report focuses on the use of torture in the context of the ongoing genocide,
01:14thus on the actions by Israel as the occupying power, as my mandate demands.
01:20Between October 2023 and January 2026,
01:25Israeli forces arrested more than 18,500 Palestinians, including children,
01:31especially if they were doctors, journalists or humanitarians.
01:35Nearly 100 of them died in custody.
01:384,000 remained forcibly disappeared.
01:42Thousands detained without charge, held in inhuman conditions,
01:47beaten, shackled, sexually abused, denied medical care, starved, raped.
01:55Israel has effectively been given a license to torture Palestinians
01:59because most of your government, your ministers have allowed it.
02:04It is thanks to the courage of torture survivors
02:07and the Palestinians and Israeli NGOs who helped document their inferno
02:13if the truth has today reached this room.
02:16Hence, I have decided to lend my voice to them, to the survivors.
02:24Quote,
02:25On the fourth day in prison,
02:27an Israeli soldier threw food on the floor, which was only Lebanon,
02:32yelling,
02:32Eat off the ground, you, Hamas horse,
02:36just like animals.
02:38End of quote.
02:39Quote,
02:40The assaults were violent with buttons and boots,
02:43leaving prisoners bleeding on the ground.
02:46They would beat prisoners,
02:48force them to insult each other and even howl like animals.
02:51End of quote.
02:53Quote,
02:54They unleashed police dogs on us again,
02:57allowing them to tear into our flesh.
03:01One dog attacked a fellow detainee and started mauling his genitals.
03:05He bled to death in my arms.
03:08A doctor shielded in a cage, examined him from a distance and said,
03:12Throw him outside.
03:14End of quote.
03:15Quote,
03:16One of the soldiers raped me by violently inserting a wooden stick into my anus.
03:23After about a minute, he removed it and inserted it again more forcefully,
03:28while I screamed loudly.
03:31Then he forced me to open my mouth and lick the stick.
03:35End of quote.
03:37Quote,
03:38They put me on a metal table.
03:40They put me on a metal table, pressed my chest and head against it,
03:43cuffed my hands to the head end of the bed,
03:46and pulled my legs apart and pulled my legs apart forcefully.
04:16Death every moment.
04:18End of quote.
04:19End of quote.
04:20End of quote.
04:21In Israel, authorities openly boast about the sadistic treatment inflicted on Palestinian detainees,
04:27while journalists and other civilians have been granted access to witness and even filmed their humiliation.
04:34Officials caught on camera sodomizing a Palestinian detainee with a knife are publicly celebrated.
04:39The criminal charges against them were recently dropped.
04:43And my report also shows that torture extends far beyond the prison walls,
04:47in what can only be described as a torturous environment imposed by Israel across the entire occupied Palestinian territory.
04:55The continuous decades-long destruction of homes, hospitals, schools and infrastructure combined with forced displacement,
05:04starvation, mass bombing, pervasive surveillance and arbitrary detention,
05:09has transformed Palestinian life into a continuum of physical and mental suffering.
05:15Quote,
05:16Our brains can't process it anymore.
05:19End of quote.
05:20Said a Gaza resident.
05:22Quote,
05:23The dead bodies, the explosion, it's too much.
05:26We are like the walking dead.
05:29Aid is scarce.
05:30The constant buzz of the drone is unbearable.
05:33You don't understand.
05:35It eats at my bones.
05:37End of quote.
05:39The philosopher Jean Amery, himself a survivor of torture during the Holocaust, once wrote,
05:44Quote,
05:45Whoever had succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world.
05:49End of quote.
05:50Indeed, torture does to the individual what genocide does to a group as such.
05:55It destroys the conditions that make life meaningful, stripping away human dignity, leaving empty shells of being where humanity once
06:05stood.
06:05The Palestinian people today, whether in detention, under bombardment in Gaza, terrorized by armed criminals in uniform, or settler squads
06:17in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,
06:20are enduring the pain of such intentional destruction, including those in the diaspora.
06:26This reality cannot be understood outside its historical context.
06:32From the earliest years of the State of Israel, depriving Palestinians of all their rights and freedoms has been essential
06:39instruments of Israel's domination,
06:43sustained by laws, institutions, and the normalization of dehumanizing rhetoric against the Palestinians.
06:50Since October 2023, torture has effectively become state policy, sustained by a torturous culture that is socially produced, politically defended,
06:59and publicly normalized.
07:01The proposed build on the death penalty for Palestinian detainees marks yet another dangerous escalation.
07:07I have therefore recommended that those responsible, including senior officials such as Itamer Bengvir, Bezalel Smotrik, and Israel Katz, be
07:16investigated and were warranted that arrest warrants be issued.
07:20Excellencies, the testimonies that I and many others are documenting are not just tragic stories of suffering.
07:28They are evidence of atrocity crimes targeting the totality of the Palestinian people, across the totality of the occupied Palestinian
07:36land, through a totality of criminal conduct.
07:39Hence, I concluded that genocide has become the ultimate form of torture.
07:43Continuous, generational, collective.
07:47The way you respond to this abomination will be a test of our collective, legal, and moral responsibility.
07:55International law is unambiguous.
07:57Torture is absolutely prohibited in all circumstances, and so is genocide.
08:03Under both the torture and the genocide conventions, all parties have the obligation to prevent, stop, and punish these crimes.
08:12The choice before you is stark.
08:15Either the prohibition of genocide and torture remains a binding legal norm, for it Israel's leaders must be held accountable,
08:23together with those who stand behind them.
08:25Or, it will stand exposed as an empty promise.
08:29And together with the millions who still believe in the universality of human rights, I say to you again,
08:36disregard for international law will not stop in Palestine.
08:39It is already unfolding from Lebanon to Iran, across the Gulf countries, and in Venezuela.
08:46And if left unchecked, it will spread far beyond.
08:50What is lost in Palestine will be lost to us all.
08:55Thank you.
08:55Thank you.
08:55Thank you.
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