Mohammed Zaki al-Bakri, a Gaza civil servant who was held prisoner by Israeli soldiers after the October 7 attack on Gaza, says he was raped by a huge dog during his time in Israeli custody. Recounting the horror he faced at the hands of Israeli guards, al-Bakri says he remembers the exact date he was raped.
“I think the date was 10th April 2024. This was the worst day I went through there. They took away many of our young men, leaving about six or seven of us. They treated us like crazy,” he told Al Jazeera.
He recalled, “They put us in a small cage outside. Outside the cage we were in, there was a small case, like a passage, they call it something like a waiting area. They stripped us of our clothes while we were . We were blindfolded, and our hands and legs were bound.”
“They attacked us with dogs…with them were officers and soldiers. It was a big party, as they call it. The dog was very big. The dog has an iron muzzle that also cuts the body and shaves the body.”
“After we were stripped, some officers or soldiers had with them a rubber rod. A rod used like a sex toy. They used these and pipes on some of us, and they used dogs on others. I was among them. After being stripped of my clothes, I was raped by a huge dog,” Al-Bakri said.
“We were crying and screaming and saying, “Oh Lord, Oh Lord…we couldn’t do anything,” Al-Bakri said as he shared detailed testimonies to Al Jazeera for a documentary titled Bodies of Evidence: Israel’s Darkest Weapon.
The documentary was released on YouTube on June 9. It claims to expose “Israel’s use of rape in jails”, interviewing former detainees who alleged systematic torture and sexual violence, including rape, while in Israeli custody. Mint could not verify the claims independently.
The media outlet says it is a documentary investigation into what International Criminal Court (ICC) judges, the United Nations and its special rapporteur on the occupied territories, Francesca Albanese say amounts to the widespread and systematic use of rape and sexual torture by the Israeli army against Palestinians.
As with Al-Bakri, ‘casual labourer’ Job’s memory of his rape is equally clear. “The hardest moment I saw in my whole life wasn’t the beating, or the humiliation or the electric shocks,” he could be heard telling Al Jazeera in the documentary.
Like Al-Bakri’s, Job’s account also started with soldiers handcuffing him and stripping him of his clothes. He alleged that the women soldiers raped him using artificial objects.
“They put iron handcuffs on my hand behind my back. They removed the chain from my ankles and replaced it with handcuffs. They put me face down, and stomped their foot on my back and neck,” he alleged.
“While I was lying like this, female soldiers came wearing a strap of [artificial objects], and one began to rape me explicitly. There were two of them. The soldiers around them were applauding and filming,” Job said.
Job’s rape and sexual torture continued, all while being questioned for any knowledge of the Hamas-led attack of which he knew nothing, Al Jazeera reported.
Women said the same things, that they were forced to be nude searched, in front of their family members, in degrading and humiliating positions, “under the threats of large dogs, under the threats of weapons, one of them who actually got beaten on her face.”
Shereen, an educator and activist who was a detainee in the West Bank, told Al Jazeera, “They took me to the bedroom, ordered me to strip off all my clothes…a strip search was conducted. They said: stand up and squat down 14 times. Turn around and squat 14 times.”
“So I kept standing and squatting, asking: ‘Is this really necessary? ‘”
‘If he is a Nukhba…everything is legitimate’
Allegations of the sexual abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons are not new – they date back decades, the report added.
Rights groups such as the and Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor have also documented testimonies of prisoners recounting how Israeli soldiers used dogs to rape them.
According to the Al Jazeera investigation and various reports by the UN and leading rights groups, Israel appears to have increased the use of rape as a weapon of war after launching its “genocidal” war on Gaza following the Hamas-led attack of October 2023.
A UN report published in March 2025 found evidence of the “systematic” use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence by Israel since October 7, 2023.
No soldiers or guards have been convicted of sexual abuse of Palestinians, the report claimed. As per the documentary, all charges against five soldiers accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman military prison in July 2024 have been dropped.
Asked in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in July 2024, whether it was ever legitimate to rape a prisoner, Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Likud party, shouted: “Yes.”
“If he is a Nukhba [Hamas fighter], everything is legitimate to do, everything.”
