https://farid.ps/articles/the_return_of_the_palestinian_hostages/en.html
In the wake of the ceasefire agreement, Israel began the process of returning Palestinian hostages and bodies of the deceased to Gaza. What was received, however, shocked even seasoned doctors and civil defense workers on the ground. The condition of both the living and the dead revealed a horrifying pattern of abuse, torture, and possible extrajudicial execution. In a context where international monitors have been denied entry and independent forensic investigation has been obstructed, it is the testimonies, photographs, and firsthand documentation of Palestinian medical professionals that provide the clearest window into what transpired behind closed gates.
Among the hostages returned alive were individuals in states of severe physical and psychological deterioration. Many were visibly emaciated, bearing the skeletal outlines of long-term starvation or caloric deprivation. Eyewitnesses described the “thousand-yard stares” of men who had clearly endured prolonged isolation, humiliation, or trauma. Several former detainees were missing limbs - in some cases, reportedly amputated due to untreated wounds, infections, or injuries caused by prolonged shackling. Others were returned with their eyes removed, faces disfigured, or fingers blackened with necrosis, signs consistent with tightly bound restraints that cut off circulation over extended periods.
In one widely circulated image, a returned hostage sits in a wheelchair, blind and legless, a symbol of the irreparable toll exacted by captivity. His body tells a story no statement can erase.
Equally disturbing, if not more so, was the condition of the Palestinian corpses returned by Israel. These were not anonymous, decomposed remains; they were bodies still largely intact, many of which bore unmistakable signs of human-inflicted trauma. Medical workers in Gaza reported that the bodies had been stored in refrigerated units, delaying decomposition - a fact that allowed for clearer examination of injuries. The results were harrowing.
Many corpses arrived with hands and feet still bound by zip-ties or plastic restraints, some embedded deeply into the flesh, causing open lacerations and swelling. The bondage was consistent with restraint methods previously filmed being used by IDF forces on Palestinian detainees. Some were blindfolded. Others arrived with a noose or cord tied tightly around the neck, suggesting strangulation or staged deaths. At least one body bore clear tire marks and crush injuries, consistent with being run over by a military bulldozer - a method previously documented in past military operations. There were also corpses with close-range bullet wounds to the head or chest, showing the familiar blackened skin of powder burns - evidence suggesting execution-style killings. In several cases, doctors reported burn marks on the wrists and ankles, possibly from tasers or heated restraints.
These were not random deaths. The uniformity of the injuries, the consistency in bondage, and the surgical precision of many wounds paint a deeply unsettling picture. They point toward a systemic pattern of torture, humiliation, and execution - acts that, if verified independently, would constitute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
Even in the absence of international forensic teams, the patterns visible in the bodies and testimonies are hard to dismiss. The conditions under which Palestinian detainees - both living and dead - have been returned demand a full accounting. They also demand that the world stop turning a blind eye to the abuse and slow violence inflicted on Palestinians held in military custody. This is not just about the dead. It is about the lives that were destroyed in silence, the wounds inflicted behind walls, and the truths still waiting to be acknowledged by a world reluctant to believe them. The images coming from Gaza are graphic, but they are not propaganda. They are evidence - and they are testimony.
The return of mutilated Palestinian bodies under the 2025 ceasefire did not emerge in a vacuum. The horror expressed by medical teams in Gaza today echoes a long and deeply controversial history - one that has left generations of Palestinians with unresolved questions, severed trust, and buried loved ones whose remains were never truly whole. While Israeli officials have repeatedly dismissed such accusations as antisemitic blood libels, historical record and testimonial evidence suggest that organ harvesting without consent did, in fact, occur - systematically and under official oversight - particularly during the 1990s.
The earliest serious allegations of organ theft by Israeli institutions emerged not in the aftermath of war, but during the First Intifada of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Palestinian families began reporting that the bodies of sons, brothers, and fathers returned by Israeli authorities showed signs of surgical intervention. Eyewitnesses described chests sewn shut, eyes missing, and internal organs absent - often without explanation. These claims, initially dismissed as rumor, became increasingly specific. Testimonies appeared in Palestinian newspapers, oral history archives, and were later compiled by foreign journalists, notably Swedish writer Donald Boström, whose 2001 field research documented a pattern of unauthorized extractions during autopsies following military killings.
Israel categorically denied the claims at the time, branding them antisemitic fabrications. Officials insisted that all autopsies were conducted lawfully and that no organs were taken without permission. Yet, these denials would later be contradicted by evidence from within Israel’s own pathology establishment.
In 2009, international attention was reignited by a controversial article in Sweden’s Aftonbladet, provocatively titled “Our Sons Plundered for Their Organs.” The article referenced testimonies from Palestinian families and implied systemic organ removal. Amid the uproar, an older but little-known interview surfaced - one that had the weight of authority and the ring of truth.
It was a 2000 interview conducted by American anthropologist Dr. Nancy Scheper-Hughes with Dr. Yehuda Hiss, the former chief pathologist at Israel’s national forensic center, the Abu Kabir Institute. In this recorded conversation, Hiss candidly described routine, unauthorized harvesting of skin, corneas, heart valves, and bones from the bodies of deceased individuals - including Palestinians, Israeli soldiers, foreign workers, and civilians - without family consent. Hiss admitted that the removals were often concealed: eyelids glued shut over empty sockets, chests resewn after organs were taken, and no official documentation provided to grieving families. His tone was clinical, not confessional - a reflection of how normalized the practice had become. He emphasized that Palestinians were not the only victims, but his admissions shattered decades of denial.
The Israeli government, under international pressure, confirmed that such harvesting had occurred, but claimed it ended in the early 2000s. No criminal charges were filed. Instead, Hiss was quietly dismissed in 2004 amid a separate wave of family complaints - both Palestinian and Israeli - regarding unauthorized autopsies. He was later reprimanded via a plea bargain, avoiding full legal accountability. In court filings and public hearings, officials acknowledged “ethical lapses,” but argued there was no profit motive or targeting of Palestinians alone.
The picture that emerges from the Hiss affair is not one of isolated misconduct, but of an institutional culture that viewed the bodies of the dead - particularly the politically invisible - as available for clinical use. Israeli anthropologist Dr. Meira Weiss, a former Abu Kabir employee, detailed these practices in her 2002 book Over Their Dead Bodies. She described how organs from Palestinians were used for medical research and transplantation without consent - a quiet, bureaucratic violence carried out in the name of science and survival.
What makes this history especially chilling is not only its confirmation, but its relevance. In 2023 and again in 2025, Palestinian officials in Gaza alleged that bodies returned by Israeli authorities bore similar signs: missing internal organs, open cavities stuffed with cotton, eyes removed, and disfigurement inconsistent with battlefield injury. These claims have been dismissed by Israel as recycled propaganda - yet in light of what we now know, they cannot be so easily waved away.
The allegations emerging from Gaza - of Palestinian detainees tortured, executed, mutilated, or returned with missing organs - do not exist in a legal vacuum. They strike at the heart of international humanitarian and human rights law, raising urgent questions about war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the collapse of protections long established under the Geneva Conventions.
At the center of this legal crisis is a practice Israel has normalized for decades: administrative detention - the imprisonment of Palestinians without charge, without trial, and often without access to legal counsel or family. Most of those held under this system are civilians, not combatants. Many are detained for months or years based on “secret evidence,” in conditions that deprive them of the most basic procedural rights. Under international law, this practice alone constitutes a form of arbitrary detention - a violation of both Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Fourth Geneva Convention, which governs the treatment of civilians during wartime and occupation.
If the accounts documented by doctors, civil defense workers, and human rights groups are accurate - if detainees were returned emaciated, blindfolded, zip-tied, with flesh wounds from restraints, signs of beatings, and psychological trauma - then the treatment they endured may legally constitute torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment (CIDTP).
Under Article 1 of the UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT), torture is defined as:
“Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person… for such purposes as obtaining information, punishment, intimidation, or coercion… when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official.”
The Convention prohibits torture under all circumstances, including war, national security, or emergency. It also requires states to investigate all credible allegations of torture and to prosecute those responsible.
In cases where detainees suffered amputations due to prolonged shackling, were deprived of medical treatment, or were subjected to sensory deprivation and solitary confinement, those practices may also meet the threshold for CIDTP under international case law, including rulings by the European Court of Human Rights and UN Human Rights Committee.
The fact that some of the detainees were never charged, tried, or convicted - and held purely under administrative orders - only compounds the legal and moral gravity of their treatment.
The condition of the returned corpses - particularly those with close-range bullet wounds, blindfolds, and restraints still intact - raises the specter of extrajudicial execution.
International humanitarian law (IHL), particularly Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, prohibits:
“Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds… [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”
International human rights law, including Article 6 of the ICCPR, guarantees the right to life and explicitly forbids arbitrary deprivation of life, including by state authorities.
If detainees were killed while restrained, blindfolded, or incapacitated - or executed without trial - this would constitute a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and a crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Close-range gunshots, injuries consistent with being run over by heavy vehicles, and indications of execution-style killings - as alleged by forensic personnel in Gaza - all demand immediate independent investigation under the rules of international criminal law.
The most controversial - and difficult to verify - of the allegations involves the removal of organs from deceased Palestinians prior to their return. This would represent an egregious violation of international law.
Article 11 of Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions states:
“Mutilation of dead bodies and the removal of tissues or organs for purposes other than identification, autopsy, or burial, without the consent of the deceased or relatives, is prohibited.”
The Rome Statute, under Article 8(2)(b)(xxi), classifies:
“Committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment” and “Mutilation or medical or scientific experiments not justified by the medical treatment of the person concerned”
as war crimes.
The act of removing organs without consent - especially if done systematically or selectively - could also be prosecuted under Article 7 (crimes against humanity) if committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population.
Even in the absence of live organ trafficking, the removal of corneas, livers, or other tissues from detainees without consent - particularly when carried out in secret, or with attempts at concealment - would constitute a serious breach of international ethical and legal standards.
What makes the situation even more legally alarming is the total denial of access to independent investigators. UN special rapporteurs, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and international forensic bodies have all been barred from Gaza since the escalation of violence. Requests to inspect detention facilities such as Sde Teiman, where detainees are reportedly kept blindfolded, shackled, and subjected to amputations, have been denied or ignored.
This obstruction creates a dual violation:
In domestic law, this would be equivalent to a suspect destroying evidence and then arguing that no crime can be proven.
The treatment of Palestinian detainees is not just a humanitarian tragedy - it is a legal emergency. The routine use of administrative detention against civilians, combined with systematic abuse, execution, and potential mutilation, represents a cascading series of war crimes and human rights violations. And yet, with access blocked and political cover ensured, accountability remains elusive. But international law does not sleep. The documentation gathered by doctors in Gaza - the photographs, witness testimonies, and injury patterns - may one day form the backbone of a legal case. They are evidence-in-waiting. And the law, though slow, has a long memory.
The Israeli military’s return of mutilated Palestinian corpses, many of which show signs of torture, execution, and possible organ removal, has not generated the same global headlines, political outrage, or investigative urgency as previous, far less substantiated claims. The contrast is not just stark - it is damning.
In the wake of October 7, 2023, a single unverified report alleging that “40 Israeli babies had been beheaded by Hamas” went viral across the world. Within hours, this claim - based not on forensic investigation or verified images, but on a battlefield rumor - appeared on the front pages of major newspapers, in the mouths of world leaders, and across the screens of global television networks. Even former U.S. President Joe Biden repeated the claim publicly, asserting he had “seen images” of the beheaded infants. The White House would later walk back that statement, admitting the President had not personally reviewed such evidence. Several media outlets quietly issued corrections or retractions. But by then, the damage had been done. The image of Palestinians as savage, subhuman, and unworthy of protection had been etched into the public imagination - an image that would go on to justify two years of continuous bombing, blockade, starvation, and mass death in Gaza. That single, false claim became a rhetorical cornerstone of global complicity.
By contrast, when Palestinian doctors, civil defense teams, and health officials report finding bound, blindfolded corpses with signs of field execution, torture, or surgical mutilation, the international response is not outrage but procedural deflection.
These are the demands - demands that would be fair under normal circumstances, but in the case of Gaza, they are not simply difficult to meet. They are impossible. Gaza is under complete siege. No independent forensic experts from the UN, ICRC, or human rights organizations are permitted entry by Israel. No bodies can be sent out for international post-mortem. The hospitals are bombed, the labs are destroyed, and the power is often out. The forensic pathologists are volunteers, students, or civilian doctors operating under siege conditions. And yet, they are expected to meet evidentiary standards that no Western war zone has ever been held to.
This is not a demand for truth. It is a demand for silence.
Contrary to media insinuations, international law does not discard evidence gathered in imperfect conditions — especially when those imperfections are imposed by the perpetrator.
International courts have long recognized that when the party accused of atrocity controls the crime scene, destroys evidence, or blocks access, the threshold for admissible evidence shifts. Courts rely on the “best available evidence” — because to do otherwise would reward obstruction.
What has unfolded in Gaza over the past two years will not be forgotten. It cannot be. The scale, the savagery, the systematic targeting of civilians, infrastructure, hospitals, schools, and the very foundation of life itself - these are not tragedies of war. They are deliberate acts of erasure. This is not a conflict between equals. It is a siege against a trapped civilian population, carried out with impunity and shielded from consequence by powerful allies. And in the eyes of millions across the world, it will be remembered as the worst crime of the 21st century - a defining stain on our collective moral record.
Tens of thousands killed. Entire neighborhoods wiped off the map. Children buried beneath rubble. Bodies returned blindfolded, mutilated, or stripped of organs. Hospitals bombed. Journalists targeted. Famine used as a weapon. And all of it - all of it - broadcast live, minute by minute, in one of the most documented atrocities in modern history. No one will be able to say they didn’t know. No world leader, no diplomat, no official, no media outlet will be able to claim ignorance. The suffering of Gaza has been streamed, archived, photographed, and written into global memory in real time.
Yet for two years, world powers chose complicity. Governments that claimed to uphold human rights instead armed, funded, and defended Israel as it carried out relentless bombardment and collective punishment. These states did not simply look away - they actively enabled what international jurists, human rights scholars, and survivors are now increasingly calling genocide.
Those who supplied Israel with weapons, diplomatic protection, and legal cover - from world leaders to arms dealers - will one day have to answer. Some may face trials in domestic courts. Others may stand before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. And even if they escape legal judgment, history will indict them.
Under international law, aiding and abetting war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide is not a policy dispute. It is a crime. And the justifications offered now - national security, strategic alliance, political calculus - will not stand the test of time or truth. There is no doctrine, no alliance, no legal loophole that absolves complicity in atrocity.
The Rome Statute, the Geneva Conventions, and decades of precedent from Nuremberg to Rwanda make it clear: those who support or facilitate international crimes share responsibility for them.