Humiliation of naked Palestinian women in front of female soldiers and dogs
The affair caused a stir in Palestine and beyond. Haaretz even devoted its editorial to it this Tuesday morning. Masked soldiers accompanied by an attack dog forced 5 women to strip completely naked in front of their children at their home in Hebron during a raid by the occupier.
“On July 10, a unit of the Israeli Defense Forces, made up of soldiers from the canine unit and the Kiryat Arba police, searched the home of the Ajluni family in Hebron,” reports the Israeli daily.
“The female members of the family – the 53-year-old mother, her 17-year-old daughter and the mother’s three daughters-in-law, all aged in their 20s – were each taken separately to the children’s room. There, two armed, masked female soldiers demanded that they undress. Amal, the first to be asked to undress, was forced to do so in front of her terrified children in the room. The women said there was also a dog in the room and that when they refused to take off their underwear, the soldiers let it approach and threatened to release it.
These comments were relayed by B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights association, and Manal al-Ja’bari, a field researcher at B’Tselem, says he suffered the same thing a short time ago, at her home, by female soldiers accompanied by a dog, although she was not suspected of being in possession of weapons.
According to the IDF spokesperson, interviewed by Haaretz, twenty-six members of the family, including 15 children, were actually searched on the night of July 10 in the apartment belonging to a brother, Abdullah, and his wife, Amal. “As is usual in such raids, the women and children were separated from the men; they were held in two rooms guarded by armed soldiers. The soldiers carried out body searches on the men while they were clothed. »
But it’s not clear why the women had to undress. “If they were trying to hide ammunition or a rifle, it could have easily been discovered without touching them,” he noted.
“Military raids on Palestinian homes are commonplace. recognizes the Israeli newspaper. They take place every night, sometimes to arrest armed people or an activist from popular protests against the settlements, and sometimes for the purposes of information gathering, deterrence or exercises. As in other raids, the Ajluni family was awakened by the sounds of banging and screaming, to find dozens of armed soldiers, most of them masked. As always, the dogs (at least two) added to the terror, especially for the children. And here too, the women hastened to cover their night clothes with their prayer robes, which were easy to put on quickly. It is rare for soldiers to demand that women undress completely, the B’Tselem researcher said. But in recent months, she added, such incidents have increased. »
“It is clear that the requirement that women undress in front of armed and masked female soldiers cannot be interpreted as an ‘operational necessity’, but rather as a method of humiliation in itself, with the broader aim of punishment , automatic oppression and intimidation. If there is one action over which the black flag of illegality flies, it is this one. », concludes the article.
We also learned that the soldiers, under the pretext of searching for weapons or ammunition, stole gold and silver from the family’s home. The latter filed a complaint. So the gold was returned to him, but the money was gone…
Europalestine
