ABC | Brad Ryan in Washington DC | 17.12.23
Hani Almadhoun and his family had such a great summer holiday in Gaza this year, they were talking about packing up and moving there.
“We saw a Gaza that we were optimistic about,” says Hani, who grew up in the Strip and owned a home there with his brother Majed but now lives in the US.
“I wanted to get a job in Gaza, work for a year. My kids loved it. They wanted to go to the American school in Gaza.”
But just seven weeks after they returned from their trip, Gaza was a war zone.
Israel declared war after Hamas militants killed more than 1,200 people and abducted 240 others in the October 7 attack. It started dropping bombs on Gaza —including on Hani’s old neighbourhood in the northern city of Beit Lahiya.
Just a few weeks ago, the home Hani owned with his brother was hit by an Israeli air strike during the night. Majed, his wife and their four children were killed.
The optimism has been shattered, replaced by horror, stress and grief.
“We have a [online] group for Palestinian Americans from Gaza, and every day it’s like an obituary page,” Hani says.
‘They took your brother’
Hani, the director of philanthropy for an American charity raising funds for UN relief work, says he had barely had time to begin grieving before he got another distressing message.
His sister, who was sheltering in southern Gaza, contacted him to say the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had taken several of his family members from homes in Beit Lahiya.
“She says, ‘Hey, they took your brother, they took your nephew. Call the Red Cross. Please find out where they are,'” Hani says.
By then, now-notorious video of Palestinian men — rounded up, stripped to their underwear and surrounded by soldiers — had begun to circulate online.
Palestinian men were forced to take off their clothes when they were detained in Gaza.
In conservative Arab culture, even wearing shorts in public is considered immodest. Being forced to stand outside in one’s underwear is deeply humiliating.
Hani saw the video on the Telegram messaging app — and spotted his brother Mahmoud.
The 32-year-old — who Hani says has epilepsy, can barely run due to his health and is not connected to Hamas — was among the dozens of near-naked captives.
Hani posted the video to his social media pages.
“My brother Mahmoud can be seen in this IDF-released video,” he wrote.
“He is a shopkeeper and a dad… We have no idea where the Israeli criminals took them and what they will do to them once the camera is turned off.”
Shots fired until clothes removed
Hani has since had an opportunity to ask his brother and find out.
Mahmoud told him he was playing with his daughters when an Israeli tank arrived in the neighbourhood and ordered the men out of their houses.
“He said, as they were taking the men, there were officers who just burned cars, just for fun,” Hani says.
One of the cars belonged to his cousin.
“There’s not a military reason. They’re just inflicting damage on people and property.
“And you know, he [Mahmoud] is emotionally traumatised from this because he thought he is never coming back.”
Some of the men — including Hani’s 76-year-old father, a teacher, and his 13-year-old nephew — were soon released.
But others, including his brother and another nephew, were held and ordered at gunpoint to strip, Hani says. Mahmoud wanted to keep his undershirt on, so a soldier fired at the ground near his feet until he removed it.
They were blindfolded, bound and insulted in Hebrew and Arabic with crude remarks about their mothers, loaded into a truck and taken to an unknown location, Hani says.
“They obviously kept them naked the entire time, with their boxers on, and they’ve blindfolded them for the most part.”
The men were held for about 16 hours before some were told to find their way home in their underwear.
“They said, ‘no shoes, no clothes, and go home now’, with their hands tied [behind] their back.”
The ABC put detailed questions to the IDF about Mahmoud’s account.
In response, it provided a statement that did not address those questions but said that “individuals suspected of involvement in terrorist activity” were detained, questioned and “treated in accordance with international law”. (Some rights groups have said the release of the images could breach international law, which protects prisoners against “outrages upon personal dignity”.)
The IDF statement says their clothes were removed to make sure they weren’t concealing explosives.
“Individuals who are found not to be taking part in terrorist activities are released.”
‘These are not Hamas people’
As the video showing Hani’s brother hit Israeli media, headlines characterised the men as terrorists.
One in the Jerusalem Post said, “Images circulate of dozens of Hamas terrorists surrendering in Gaza”, while Israeli TV network i24NEWS tweeted: “WATCH: Hamas terrorists surrender themselves to the IDF in Gaza”.
Lies on two levels, Hani says.
“These are not Hamas people. I know most of these kids. We’re related. We grew up together in that neighbourhood — exactly the street where they took them.
“And two, they’re not surrendering. They were at home, the Israelis came with a tank with a megaphone and told them, ‘Hey, all the men need to leave and come here.'”
When asked about the video at a press conference, Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said the IDF detained “military-aged men who were discovered in areas that civilians were supposed to have evacuated”.
Hani says his family had earlier tried to evacuate south with the help of an NGO but “they couldn’t pull it off”. With no connection to the area, violence and killings along the route, no safe shelter, and increasing overcrowding, starvation and disease in the south, they — like many others — stayed put in the north.
Detainees describe violence
Other men detained in and near Beit Lahiya tell similar stories to Mahmoud’s.
Some released detainees told Associated Press (AP) that soldiers came to their homes with dogs or blew open their doors with grenades, shouted sexual insults at the women, and beat the men with their rifle butts. After the men were taken, they were held for hours or days outdoors without clothes or food.
“My only crime is not having enough money to flee to the south,” one released detainee said.
“Do you think Hamas are the ones waiting in their homes for the Israelis to come find them now? We stayed because we have nothing to do with Hamas.”
CNN yesterday reported it had spoken to 10 men and boys who had been detained and released, who all gave similar accounts of abuse.
“They would tie your hands behind your back and drag you like a dog,” a 14-year-old boy, who was detained with his father in Gaza City, told the network through an interpreter.
“They would come kick you with their boots. I didn’t do anything to him, they just decided to come kick me.”
Some of the men identified in the vision have not been heard from since, including Diaa al-Kahlout, a Gaza reporter for London-based, Qatari-owned outlet The New Arab.
The UN says it has asked the IDF for information about him but has been refused. Press freedom organisations have called for his release.
Changing tactics
Human rights groups believe hundreds of Palestinian men have been detained, stripped and interrogated by the IDF in Gaza in recent days.
Some argue it is an effective tactic.
“This is already helping us, and it will be crucial for the next stage of the war,” former Israeli national security advisor Yaakov Amidror told AP. “That’s the stage where we clean areas from all the remnants of Hamas.”
But Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin, from the International Communities Organisation, says it is “part of a revenge mentality” that’s “detrimental to our joint future”.
“We [Jews and Arabs] have to find a way to live in dignity together,” he told the Washington Post, and the way to do that “is not to take men and humiliate them in that way. It is stupid”.
The US, while continuing to provide significant military support to Israel, has been increasingly critical of its tactics, and State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the US found the images “deeply disturbing”.
Later, at a press conference on Wednesday, he said Israel had assured the US some things would change.
“They made clear to us … that these photographs should not have been taken, should not have been released,” he said.
“And they made it clear going forward that that will not be their practice, and that if they do conduct searches of detainees they will give them their clothes back immediately. Those are obviously appropriate steps to take.”
Hani takes no comfort.
“What worries me now,” he says, “is they’re not going to release as many pictures — and do even worse things.”