Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir “stepped on prisoners’ heads” at Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank last Friday, a Palestinian rights group said Monday.
Video footage on social media showed Israeli forces raiding a section of Ofer Prison near Ramallah and suppressing inmates held there, accompanied by Ben-Gvir and Israeli media coverage.
In a statement, the Palestinian Prisoner Society said the raid targeted “Section 26” and took place during the evening "count", also known as the “security inspection.”
The operation lasted about 15 minutes and involved police dogs and stun grenades, with extensive media presence.
According to the statement, Ben-Gvir remained in the section for about an hour and delivered remarks that included what the group described as provocative and degrading language toward Palestinian prisoners.
The group said Ben-Gvir insisted on publishing video clips documenting the suppression of detainees, alongside promotional slogans linked to proposed legislation to execute Palestinian prisoners.
In November 2025, Israel’s Knesset approved, in its first reading, a bill submitted by Ben-Gvir for issuing a death penalty for Palestinian prisoners accused of killing Israelis. The bill must pass second and third readings to become law, and no date has been set for further votes.
The group said Ben-Gvir aims to “boast of his ongoing crimes inside prisons and camps, which have become one of the most prominent arenas of the genocide crime, resulting in the killing of more than 100 prisoners and detainees, 88 of whose identities have been announced.”
However, it stressed that the published clips “represent only a small part of the systematic torture against prisoners.”
Testimonies heard by a lawyer with the rights group included “several accounts of Ben-Gvir stepping on prisoners’ heads and filming their humiliation, torture and abuse.”
Detainees also reported that “guards forced them to keep their heads and faces pressed to the ground during suppression operations, to humiliate them, degrading their dignity and physically torturing them,” according to the group.
The society said that since the start of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza in 2023, “the Israeli prison system has deliberately broadcast more videos and images documenting abuse of prisoners.”
Brutality
It described the footage as “an ongoing attempt to target the will of the Palestinian prisoner and intimidate prisoners’ families” and as “a race to achieve higher levels of brutality to gain more support within Israeli society without regard for humanitarian laws and norms.”
The group called for “urgent intervention to stop the ongoing genocide crime inside prisons and to enable international organisations to visit prisoners.”
It also urged authorities to allow family visits and to “impose sanctions on the occupation authorities and their leaders to end the policy of impunity.”
Ben-Gvir has previously published videos widely viewed as offensive toward Palestinian detainees and has threatened them with death, including in remarks directed at Marwan Barghouti, a jailed leader of the Palestinian resistance movement.
Since Ben-Gvir took office in late 2022, conditions for Palestinian prisoners have deteriorated sharply, with noticeable weight loss reported due to punitive policies.
More than 9,300 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, including about 350 children, and face torture, starvation and medical neglect that has led to dozens of deaths, according to Palestinian and Israeli human rights organisations.
Israel has intensified measures against Palestinian detainees since 2023 and has killed more than 72,000 people and wounded over 171,000, most of them women and children.
