SB

A terrible read here, but an important truth. I don't think you ever read anything like it. The following text was not written by me. It is a machine translation (with a few light edits for understandability) of a piece published in Haaretz haaretz.co.il/opinions/2025-… It was written by an IDF reservist and published anonymously. It details some of the horrors of the Israeli death/torture camp Sde Teiman, and the active role Israeli media plays in concealing them. The immediate context is the airing of an investigative report about Sde Teiman as part of a fairly well-known Israeli TV program ("Real Time"). - 'I was nervous this week, ahead of the airing of a "Real Time" investigation on Sde Teiman, where I was drafted as a reservist during the war. I wondered what would happen when the entire country heard about the systematic abuse of detainees there, with the knowledge of all the senior officials. This is also the reason I interviewed for the program: I felt that all of Israeli society must know about it. But that's not what was on the broadcast. In the end, I wasn't in it either. "True Time" did not present the public with the truth, only with parts of the truth. A filtered truth, which is perhaps even worse than a lie. The investigation focused mainly on the question of whether "Power 100" did indeed push something up the detainee's buttocks and the way in which the event turned, with the help of cynical politicians, into a near-armed rebellion against the rule of law. I understand why they chose to focus on this event, which was a turning point in the military's perception of ,. Voices like those of the interviewees who said that "our soldiers should not be punished" are the basis for the dissolution of a society, which, without preserving humanity will be emptied of morality, and without upholding the law, will turn into chaos. But the discussion that took place on the program was shameful, because while it focused on the specific case, it deliberately – and knowingly – ignored the context in which it occurred. The overall morbid picture that is Sde Teiman. Sde Teiman, as everyone who was there knows, is a sadistic torture camp. Dozens of prisoners entered it alive and left in bags. There are testimonies from guards, doctors, and prisoners. None of this was mentioned in the investigation. As if all the hell we created there was summed up in the question of whether or not an object was inserted into a prisoner's buttocks. But I saw this hell. I saw a detainee die before my eyes – he was sitting next to other detainees, with a flannelette over his face, and at some point we just realized that the man was dead. I saw the commander of the facility gather everyone and try to calm down the daily routine of abuse, the psychological use of force, and the barbaric conditions in which the prisoners are held. I heard him explain that “they tell me from above that they call Sde Teiman a cemetery,” and that “this needs to stop.” I saw people enter this facility with war injuries, then starve for weeks without any medical care. I saw them peeing and shitting on themselves because they weren't allowed to go to the bathroom. I remember the smell to this day. Many of them weren't even Hamas terrorists, just Gazans who were detained pending interrogation and released to their homes after severe abuse, when it turned out they were innocent. It's no wonder people died there. The wonder is that people survived. The "Real Time" investigators were shocked when I told them this, but there was no mention of it in the program. What was it? The person in charge of the investigation at the MPI is dumbfounded that "until that moment" - that is, until the report of one prisoner, wounded and bleeding - "we had no warning signs." Really? After all, there were reports and testimonies of abuse, inhumane conditions, and poor medical care. It was enough to listen, or just count the detainees who entered alive and did not make it out. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes [to fill in the blanks, A.M.]. Everyone who was in Sde Teiman knows. They know about torture, about surgeries without anesthesia, about shocking sanitary conditions. But none of this was broadcast. As if an army torture camp, which exists with the knowledge of all the senior commanders, is less interesting than a story about one specific abuse, which can be refuted or verified. This is an entire program about Sde Teiman, without talking about the Sde Teiman. What happened in Sde Teiman is no secret, but most Israelis know nothing about it, even now, because the Israeli media has almost completely ignored it. That's also why I chose to be interviewed. Because Palestinians continue to come out of our detention facilities in droves, and most people around me haven't heard about it. But more than revealing to the public the truth about the reality in Sde Teiman, the broadcast made it clear how it might continue. The reason is that journalists in Israel, who are well aware of the facts, prefer to hide them and instead sell a specific, isolated story about 'bad seeds'. Sde Teiman is not this one incident, but a clear story of policy, and it is carried out and maintained with the kind assistance of the Israeli media.'