‘Torture and Genocide’, a new report by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese

On March 23, 2026 a new report by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese to the Human Rights Council was published, with the title ‘Torture and Genocide’. Here is a brief abstract. The report can be downloaded, by clicking on the image below.

Torture and Genocide in Palestine: A Systemic Policy

The report by the UN Special Rapporteur exposes a stark reality: the torture inflicted on Palestinians is neither incidental nor exceptional. It is a central pillar of a system of colonial domination and an ongoing genocidal process.

For decades, Israel has embedded coercive violence within its mechanisms of control. However, since October 2023, an unprecedented escalation marks a qualitative shift: torture has become massive, openly endorsed, and directed against the Palestinian people as a whole. It no longer targets individuals alone, but a population “as such.”

In prisons and detention camps, testimonies describe a regime of extreme brutality: beatings, sleep deprivation, deliberate starvation, sexual violence, and systematic humiliation. Children, doctors, journalists, and humanitarian workers are arrested, tortured, and in some cases killed. Bodies are broken, minds shattered, lives destroyed. This violence is not a deviation—it is coordinated, institutionalized, and publicly justified.

But torture is not confined to detention sites. The report demonstrates that the entire occupied Palestinian territory has been transformed into a “torturing environment.” In Gaza, siege, famine, mass bombardment, and the destruction of hospitals, schools, and homes create permanent collective suffering. The entire population is trapped in a space where death, fear, and deprivation are constant.

In the West Bank, pervasive surveillance, settler violence, forced displacement, and the destruction of livelihoods extend this logic. Daily life itself becomes a form of torture—an existence defined by insecurity, humiliation, and constant threat.

International law is clear: torture is absolutely prohibited. But the report goes further. It shows that the systematic use of torture against a group is a key indicator of genocidal intent. By inflicting widespread physical and psychological harm, destroying living conditions, and targeting social structures, Israel is implementing a strategy aimed at weakening, fragmenting, and ultimately erasing the Palestinian people.

This system is not sustained by the military alone. It is reinforced by legislation, validated by courts, legitimized by political discourse, amplified by media, and normalized within parts of society. Torture thus becomes a collective enterprise, socially produced and politically defended.

The report’s conclusion is unequivocal: the ongoing genocide also manifests as continuous, collective, and generational torture. These are not isolated acts, but a coherent architecture of destruction.

In the face of this, international inaction is no longer tenable. States have a legal obligation to prevent, investigate, and prosecute these crimes. Ending torture also requires ending the system that produces it: occupation, apartheid, and settler colonialism.

War Is the Opiate of the Israeli Masses, by Gideon Levy

From news panelists salivating over the possibility of a strike on Iran to the public’s jubilation at the promised ‘total victory’ over Israel’s enemies, the country seems to have a very short memory, stupefied by war after war

 Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 1/3/2026

It’s wartime again, with the war, yet again, coming to solve Israel’s existential problems once and for all.

It will again be declared a stunning victory at first, with everyone applauding, with Yair Lapid writing that we are a strong and united nation and with analysts competing over who can laud Israel’s brave feats more, all of this until the next satisfying venture.

Again, almost all Israelis are convinced that there is no war more justified or successful than this one, and "what choice did we have?" and "what do you propose?" as in all of Israel’s wars. This cheering could already be heard in TV panels on Friday evening, with salivating panelists eagerly waiting for this moment as if they were waiting for the Messiah. The release came Saturday, lasting only until the next round of pleasure, which will arrive earlier than expected.

If Israel once enjoyed a few years of quiet between wars – eight from the 1948 war to the Sinai Campaign, 11 between that one and the Six-Day War, six to the Yom Kippur War, nine to the first Lebanon war and 24 to the second one – now we have only a few months between one war and the next. Once, the promises made after each war reached the sky, the delusional sky of the war’s instigators and supporters, who include almost all Israelis. "No shell, no Katyusha rocket will fall again on our communities," promised Menachem Begin at the end of the first Lebanon war. "The blood was not in vain," promised Ehud Olmert after the second.

Last June, just eight months ago, total victory over Iran was declared. Benjamin Netanyahu said the opening salvo would go down in Israel’s military history and be studied by armies around the world. "At the decisive moment, a nation like a lion [the Hebrew name of the war is ‘Roaring Lion’] rose, and our roar rattled Tehran and resounded around the world." The lion’s roar quickly turned out to be the squeak of a mouse.

Fatal Motorcycle Accident Leaves Israel's Most Serious Security Corruption Case in Limbo

Judge Benny Sagi was set to deliver the verdict regarding a suspect in the submarine and naval vessels affair, which concerns two deals with a German conglomerate for the acquisition of submarines and missile boats to defend the natural gas fields off Israel's coast

Chen Maanit, Haaretz, 7/1/2026

Amos Harel, Josh Breiner, Yael Freidson and Meirav Arlosoroff contributed to this report.

The death of an Israeli district judge in a motorcycle accident earlier this week may delay the legal proceedings in the 2016 submarine and naval vessels affair.

According to information obtained by Haaretz, Be'er Sheva District Court President, Judge Benny Sagi, was scheduled to announce his verdict on February 26 in a case connected to the affair.

In the case, media consultant Tzachi Lieber is accused of mediating bribes between Michael Ganor, who was the representative of the German industrial engineering company ThyssenKrupp in Israel, and David Sharan, who served as the head of Prime Minister Netanyahu's bureau.

 

Judge Benny Sagi. Photo Tomer Appelbaum

Lieber has denied all charges against him.

The submarine and naval vessels affair concerns two deals with ThyssenKrupp: one for the acquisition of two submarines, and one for the purchase of missile boats to defend Israel's natural gas fields off the coast. Netanyahu also wanted to include anti-submarine ships in the deal, but defense officials opposed this idea, which was shelved.

The main allegation against the prime minister was that he pushed to buy additional submarines for the navy despite defense officials' objections. Netanyahu, former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and former Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon were not questioned under caution in "Case 3000," which investigated the affair.

Lieber's case was separated from the main trial of Sharan and Ganor, which is being held at the Tel Aviv District Court. The prosecution had been waiting for Lieber's trial – ongoing since May 2021 – to conclude before calling him to testify in the trial of Ganor and Sharan.

In most cases, a defendant does not testify against another defendant in the same case to rule out a conflict of interest, seeing as a defendant might try to incriminate an accomplice in exchange for leniency.

Michael Ganor in court, in 2019. Photo Moti Milrod

Beyond its impact on the submarine affair, Sagi's death just before the verdict raises a complex dilemma regarding how Lieber's trial should proceed and be brought to a conclusion. Section 233 of the Criminal Procedure Law addresses situations where a judge is unable to complete a criminal case.

The section states that when "evidence has been heard and, for any reason, the judge is unable to complete the trial, another judge may continue the trial from the stage reached by his predecessor, and may, after allowing the parties to present their arguments on the matter, treat the evidence collected by his predecessor as if he had collected it himself, or may choose to rehear any or all of the evidence."

However, there is no known precedent for a judge dying or becoming unable to continue with a case at such a late stage, just as he was preparing to deliver a verdict.

The dilemma now facing the system is complex. On one hand, allowing a new judge to deliver a verdict based solely on the protocols and evidence submitted is problematic, as a criminal verdict should be based on the judge's direct impression of the witnesses and the defendant, and their credibility.

On the other hand, having another judge rehear the witnesses, or some of them, is also problematic and would mean the case would drag on for years. As mentioned, this would also delay Lieber's required testimony in the main case against Sharan and Ganor.

Apart from this trial, Sagi was presiding over several other ongoing cases, which will now be transferred to other judges.

Supreme Court President Isaac Amit (in tie, right) and Justice Minister Yariv Levin (in tie, left) at Be'er Sheva District Court President Benny Sagi's funeral, Tuesday. Photo Tomer Appelbaum

Overall, Sagi's death has left the Be'er Sheva District Court in a difficult position. Sagi, who was appointed as district president only two years ago, was an outstanding administrator and a respected and well-liked judge, leaving a significant void behind.

Six judges in the court are set to retire in the coming year. The paralysis Justice Minister Yariv Levin imposed on the Judicial Appointments Committee, combined with Sagi's death, have left the Be'er Sheva District Court in dire straits.

The justice minister and court administration will have to quickly find a replacement for Sagi, but Levin continues to boycott his counterpart, and without communication between them, this will be a complex task.

Lieber's attorney, Liran Zilberman, said he is "deeply saddened and pained by the death of the honorable Judge Sagi. The manner in which the case against Lieber will proceed is not up to us, and we will await the court's decision on this matter before determining our next steps."

The prosecution said, "Further proceedings regarding Lieber will be determined by the court in accordance with the law," adding that he is not expected to testify in the submarine affair trial in the near future, "and in any case, there is no obstacle to hearing his testimony."

Netanyahu climbs out after a visit inside the Rahav, the fifth submarine in the fleet, after it arrived at the Haifa port, in 2016. Photo Baz Ratner / Reuters

Statement from Birzeit University on the Israeli military invasion of its campus and shooting of students

As part of its ongoing assault on Palestinian life and institutions, the Israeli occupying army carried out a military invasion of Birzeit University during official working hours, at a time when the campus was filled with students, faculty members, and staff. The invasion was premeditated and coincided with a student union protest against the settler-colonial army’s violence against our people and its policy of mass political imprisonment.

Turning the university campus into a site of military aggression, the occupying forces destroyed the University’s main gate, stormed the campus with a large number of soldiers and military vehicles, and fired live ammunition, stun grenades, and tear gas directly at students and members of the university community. As a result, several students sustained gunshot injuries and remain hospitalized.

This daytime military invasion of Birzeit University constitutes part of a systematic policy pursued by the Zionist settler-colonial regime to intimidate students and undermine their right to education, with the aim of suppressing Palestinian consciousness and targeting national institutions. The University affirms that these repressive practices will not break the will of its students or staff, nor will they deter it from continuing its academic and national mission.

In flagrant violation of international norms and conventions that guarantee the protection of students and workers in academic institutions, including the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law, the Zionist state continues to criminalize Palestinian education. Birzeit University reiterates its call on international organizations, human rights institutions, and media outlets to assume their moral and legal responsibilities by taking immediate action to expose these ongoing violations against Palestinian higher education, to exert effective pressure to halt them, and to hold those responsible accountable.

Birzeit University affirms that education will remain an act of anti-colonial resistance, and that the University will continue to be a space for knowledge and freedom, despite all attempts at repression and aggression.

Birzeit University, January 6, 2026

In Netanyahu’s Folktale, Only 70 Young Men Are Responsible for All the West Bank Pogroms

Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 4/1/2026

The state is behind the pogroms. It is responsible for them – they serve the government’s interests. Its soldiers are always present, but not a single IDF commander has carried out what international law requires – protecting Palestinian residents

 
A Palestinian man uses a mobile phone to record a burning truck after an Israeli settler attack in a village east of Tulkarm in the West Bank in November. Photo Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP

These are two common folktales: In heaven, 72 virgins await shahids, or martyrs; in the West Bank, 70 young men from broken homes are behind all riots. It’s hard to know which of the two folktales is more far-fetched.

The second is a figment of the prime minister’s imagination: Benjamin Netanyahu even told Fox News that the youths "are not from the West Bank."

Let’s put aside the arguments that broke out over his use of the forbidden term "West Bank," and ask: Are there actually any settlers from the West Bank? They all moved there in recent decades. None of them belong there, uninvited guests in a foreign land whose time there, one hopes, will be short, and their end will be like that of crusaders, inshallah.

Nonetheless, Netanyahu’s concern for the handful of youths’ mental health is touching – and fitting for a man leading a government that has always prioritized mental health. Settler activists were quick to offer them treatment – the hostels and rehab centers are already being set up. But we’re not talking about 70 people, 700 or 7,000.

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The more accurate figure is 70,000, or in fact, seven million. Netanyahu’s attempt to minimize the phenomenon and attribute it to a handful of rioters is a total lie, just like the 72 virgins who are waiting for no one. It’s doubtful that even Fox News bought it.

The state is behind the pogroms. It is responsible for them, it wants them to happen – they serve the government’s interests and satisfy its residents’ wishes. Just look at the fact that they continue, unopposed.

The blame is shared by the army, the settlers and law enforcement. All settlers take part, whether actively or passively, and the riots’ evil and sadism – from mercilessly beating up the elderly to slaughtering sheep – are unpleasant to many Israelis, but make up a much broader web of violence which everyone quietly accepts.

Settlers slit the throats of lambs in the southern Hebron Hills, elite paratrooper soldiers carry out a pogrom in Deir Dibwan that would make the rioting youths proud. Running over a Palestinian who lay a prayer carpet by the side of the road is no more serious an act than soldiers shooting children throwing stones. The second is just more lethal, but no one is horrified.

Behind every pogrom – I have seen the devastating results of many of them – stand the Israel Defense Forces.

Its soldiers are always present. Sometimes they arrive late, sometimes on time, but they never perform their duty to protect the helpless victims. It has not yet occurred to a single commander in the IDF to carry out what international law requires – protecting residents.

The pogroms could be contained within a few days far more easily than Palestinian terrorism, but Israel doesn’t want to contain Jewish terrorism. It pleases all settlers and most Israelis, even if secretly, because it advances the ultimate goal – cleansing the land of its Palestinian inhabitants.

Have armed settlers ever gone out to defend their neighbors against the terrorism? Don’t make them laugh.

They see the flames rising from their fields and hear the bleating sheep slaughtered in their pens. They see the uprooted olive trees on the side of the road and hear the off-road vehicles that MK Orit Strock gifted them, precisely so that they would commit these pogroms.

Why do they need the vehicles, if not to trample fields and run over old men? Since when has the government equipped farmers with free ORVs? Would a farmer in the moshav of Avivim be entitled to one? No, because he does not commit pogroms against Arabs.

Another pogrom by around 50 rioters was reported on Saturday night, this time in Kafr Farkha. According to Netanyahu, they are almost all the existing rioters in the West Bank. Most Israelis probably believed that. How convenient and comforting.

Jaafar Ashtiyeh: This Palestinian Photojournalist Has Long Documented Israeli Violence. This Time, It Nearly Killed Him

 

Ashtiyeh. "I'm the most active and veteran photographer in the West Bank and I've never faced dangers like this." Photo Alex Levac

Jaafar Ashtiyeh, an acclaimed West Bank press photographer, has been wounded frequently in the course of his work. But nothing prepared him for what settlers did to him

Gideon Levy & Jaafar Ashtiyeh / AFP (photos), Haaretz, 8/11/2025

 

Jaafar Ashtiyeh has seen and photographed the final expressions of innumerable people drawing their last breath. He will never forget them. In the course of nearly 30 years of work as a photographer for the French news agency AFP in the West Bank, he has captured thousands of images of sadness, of human suffering, of death, of peace, of hope, of victory, even of happiness.

 

It's hard for him to choose which of them best encapsulates his life's work. But when pressed, he finally chooses choose one – of an elderly woman hugging the trunk of an olive tree – which he took in 2006 and has since become iconic.

 

This veteran war photographer has documented virtually everything that has happened in the occupied and suffocated West Bank in recent decades. About a month ago, while documenting Palestinians harvesting their olive crop, he was attacked by a gang of violent settlers. They set his car afire before his eyes, and if he hadn't run for his life he's certain they would have killed him.

 

We met last week in a café in the town of Huwara, near Nablus, not far from the scene of the crime: groves owned by inhabitants of the village of Beita. Ashtiyeh doesn't have a new car yet and he's barely gone back to work since the assault. Signs of shock, of the consequences of the attack and above all of helplessness he feels are still visible even on this warhorse.

Jaafar Ashtiyeh's car burns in the village of Beita on October 10. He's "not for or against anyone," he says. His job, he explains, has always been simply to take pictures. "Some soldiers understood that – others called us terrorists." 

 

He was born 57 years ago in the village of Salem, not far from Nablus, and still lives there with his family. For a few years he served as deputy head of the local council on a volunteer basis. Since coming of age, he has never been arrested or gotten into trouble with the Israeli security forces. As a photographer for an international news agency, he says, he maintains neutrality.

 

Ashtiyeh never studied photography – he studied economics in a Nablus college – but in 1996 started to work for AFP. He had rented a camera and photographed scenes at Joseph's Tomb. The prestigious agency published the shots and he has been employed there ever since. The BBC once chose one of his pictures as photograph of the year.

 

An extinguished star: Parnia Abbasi, young Iranian poet, murdered by Israel

Fausto Giudice, Tlaxcala , 16/6/2025

One of the missiles dropped on Iran by Israel on the night of June 12/13 hit a residential building in western Tehran, the Orchid Complex on Sattar Khan Street. The target was Professor Abdulhamid Minoushehr, a nuclear scientist teaching at Beheshti University. The missile destroyed the third, fourth and fifth floors of the building. Among the “collateral” victims was the entire Abbasi family: Parnia, 23, her brother Parham, 16, and their parents Parviz, a retired teacher, and Massoumeh, a retired bank employee. Parnia taught English, worked at Bank Melli and was a poet.

The Extinguished Star   I wept for the both for you and for me   you blow at the stars, my tears   in your world the freedom of light in mine The chase of shadows   you and I will come to an end somewhere the most beautiful poem in the world falls quiet   you begin somewhere to cry the murmur of life   but I will end I burn I’ll be that extinguished star In your sky like smoke   Translated by Ghazal Mosadeq

ستاره‌ی خاموش   برای هر دو گریستم   برای تو   و خودم   ستاره‌های اشکم را   در آسمانت فوت می‌کنی   در دنیای تو   رهایی نور   در دنیای من   بازی سایه‌ها   در جایی   من و تو تمام می‌شویم   زیباترین شعر جهان   لال می‌شود   در جایی   تو شروع می‌شوی   نجوای زندگی را   فریاد می‌کنی   در هزار جا   من به پایان می‌رسم   می‌سوزم   می‌شوم ستاره‌ای خاموش   که در آسمانت   دود می‌شود.

 

This poem was published by the poetry magazine Vazn-e Donya [Weight of the World] in an issue devoted to “Generation Z poets”, the result of a writing workshop. Excerpts from a magazine interview with the author:

“I look at everything in my life in a way that allows me to write about it”

Parnia Abbasi: “Whenever I write something, I always show it to my mother, to my friends. I ask those around me what they think. I love seeing how people react when they read my poems, their facial expressions, their response, it’s fascinating to me. Honestly, this has become a huge part of my life. I look at everything that happens to me as something I might be able to write down, to express the feeling I had in that moment through poetry. In that sense, writing brings me peace. Even if it is just a little every night. Many of these poems I never submit or publish anywhere, but when I read them myself, it feels like those feelings are alive again inside me, and that’s deeply meaningful to me.

When I joined the poetry workshop, I was busy with work and university at the same time, but honestly, the workshop mattered far more to me than school or anything else. I would get excited beforehand, preparing something to say. Getting to know poets, seeking them out—that meant more to me than most other things in life. And it still does.”

SANTIAGO GONZÁLEZ VALLEJO EU and Spain associated to war crimes

Santiago González Vallejo, 10/2/2025

The author is a Spanish economist who works at the Unión Sindical Obrera trade union and is a member and co-founder of the Comité de Solidaridad con la Causa Árabe (Arab Cause Solidarity Committee).

For many years now, we have accused the European Union of being an accomplice in the occupation and colonization of the Territories occupied by Israel (Palestine territory prior to 1967, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Shebaa Farms in Lebanon), as well as the blockade of Palestinian Gaza. This is confirmed by its global inaction and its de facto support for Israel in terms of arms trade, security agreements, maintenance of trade relations – including with the settlements in the Occupied Territory, in both directions – partnership in programs of all kinds or granting aid. All of this forces us to consider that the EU is not only complicit but also a party to Israel's war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Dragan

The European Union (as well as NATO), through these agreements, has been considering Israel as a partner, ally, etc., despite it being an occupying state with supremacist laws that discriminate against Palestinians and despise international law, including the right of return.  All of this is the origin and cause of the injustice suffered by the Palestinian people.  The European Union and other Western countries, by siding with Israel, are participants in the crimes of repression and continuous violence that Israel exercises to maintain that territorial domination.

An excuse sometimes alleged in the abandonment of accepted values of the European Union (such as the respect of international law, democracy or shared prosperity) is that many Europeans are trapped ideologically in accepting the Israeli narrative that they are the Jews who were massacred and discriminated against in the last century. But those Europeans who discriminated and massacred Jewish citizens of their own country, are not us, today’s Europeans. They were, generically, our ancestors. This leads us to ask questions such as: do today’s European have to pay for crimes that they did not commit, or are today’s Israelis victims of those atrocities?

Israelis cannot adduce that they are the same people as those Jews who suffered the Holocaust along with other groups. Nor can the actions of these Israelis against the Palestinians, with their occupation, colonization and supremacist laws, be justified based on the suffering and attempted annihilation of Jews by Nazi and fascist supremacist ideologies (now recreated by many European and Israeli parties).