New Category: In Their Words… “What Every IDF Soldier Serving at Notorious Sde Teiman Knows Is Happening to Its Palestinian Detainees”

This is a new series of posts that takes excerpts from news sources based in Israel. Here is the first one.

It comes from a Haartez article titled “What Every IDF Soldier Serving at Sde Teiman Knows Is Happening to It…” that was published on May 31, 2025 by none other than “anonymous reservist in the IDF.”

“My nerves were raw as I waited for the investigative report on the events in the Sde Teiman detention facility amid the Israel-Gaza war, where I served as a reservist, to air on Israel’s public broadcaster this week. It wasn’t an easy decision for me to participate when the producers of the prominent Israeli investigative docuseries asked to interview me.”

“I saw people arrive at the facility from the Gaza Strip wounded, then be starved for weeks without medical care. I saw them urinate and defecate on themselves because they weren’t allowed to use the bathroom. I can still smell it. Many of them weren’t even members of the Nukhba (the Hamas commando force that led the October 7 attack), just regular Palestinian civilians from Gaza detained for investigation and, after enduring brutal abuse, released when it turned out they were innocent. It’s no wonder people died there. The wonder is that anyone survived.”

Final paragraph:

“But more than revealing the truth about Sde Teiman, the program laid bare how such a reality can persist. The reason is that Israeli journalists, who are fully aware of the facts choose to conceal them, so they can instead sell a narrow, localized story about a few “bad apples.” Sde Teiman is not an isolated incident. It is, distinctly, a story about policy – a policy implemented and sustained with active complicity from the Israeli media.”

I hate to say it, but reading the final paragraph made me think about the American public, although I wouldn’t be as generous as Mr. Anonymous IDF Soldier and just blame the media. This is a deeply rooted societal problem where every liberal, democratic, religious and secular institution is complicit.