On the finish of our dialog, Nathan (a pseudonym) stored repeating, practically to himself: “Perhaps we should have done more. Perhaps we could have done more. Perhaps there was something we could have done about the camp itself. About the dogs. We kept on hearing the dogs. Every night.”
Nathan, a senior surgeon in certainly one of Israel’s larger hospitals, was once speaking concerning the Sde Teiman camp, a military camp within the Negev wasteland in southern Israel which, following the October 7 2023 assault on Israel, was once become a protecting facility for detainees from Gaza.
First of all, this camp served to imprison participants of the Nukhba drive, the Hamas unit which led the bloodbath in southern Israel. However since then, and all through Israel’s next attack on Gaza, Sde Teiman has been a “black site” during which Palestinians captured through the Israeli military within Gaza had been held, together with many that say they weren’t concerned within the preventing.
The previously secret camp has transform notorious following claims of remarkable violence, abuse and cruelty that reportedly came about in it. One soldier who served there referred to it as a “sadistic torture camp”.
Nathan by no means stepped foot within the camp. However he was once certainly one of a small collection of Israeli medical doctors who volunteered to paintings in a scientific facility which operated subsequent to it, the place one of the most maximum badly injured detainees from Sde Teiman gained scientific remedy. This facility was once arrange after many Israeli hospitals refused to confess any individual suspected of collaborating within the October 7 bloodbath, lots of whom had been seriously injured.
Nathan’s choice to serve on this facility was once now not a easy one, he defined to us. Whilst he had no reservations about treating detainees from the camp, and noticed it as his accountability as a physician to regard sufferers regardless of who they had been (particularly if no person else would deal with them), his paintings at Sde Teiman’s scientific facility – which he has stored secret from circle of relatives and associates – continues to hang-out him. “Ultimately,” he mentioned, “it made me into a war criminal.”
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We interviewed Nathan for a ebook we now have been writing on torture in Israel. In our analysis, carried out during the last 5 years with the Israeli human rights organisation, the Public Committee towards Torture in Israel (Pcati), we investigated the level to which healthcare methods and different civic establishments have transform complicit within the processes of torture that experience transform extra in style and brutal for the reason that October 7 assaults.
After harrowing accounts additionally started to emerge from the scientific facility, we got down to examine it. Tales from this facility informed of sufferers held in humiliating and degrading stipulations, of sub-standard hospital therapy resulting in scientific headaches (together with pointless amputations because of consistent handcuffing), and of sufferers demise because of overlook.
Nathan, and two different medical doctors we interviewed who labored there, supply new insights into the stipulations within the scientific facility – and extra most often, the habits of the Israeli healthcare device within the wake of the October 7 assaults. Their tales permit us to look, as all of them made transparent in more than a few tactics, how even folks with the most productive intentions can transform complicit in conflict crimes.
‘They were all in unbearable pain’
In a while after the October 7 2023 assaults, Nathan were given a choice from the Israeli Ministry of Well being asking him if he can be prepared to regard a few of those that had dedicated the atrocities. The ministry approached a small collection of medical doctors after many Israeli hospitals and a few medical doctors had refused to regard folks broadly seemed in Israel as savage terrorists.
Medical doctors have a moral legal responsibility to maintain all sufferers, without reference to who they’re or what they have got executed. Certainly, the Israeli healthcare device had prided itself on its lengthy document of treating all sufferers similarly, together with enemy warring parties, suicide bombers and Hamas leaders. However after the October 7 assaults, for causes we discover beneath, hospitals began turning such sufferers away.
The scientific facility at Sde Teiman was once arrange so detainees held in the primary camp may obtain scientific remedy with no need to be admitted to public hospitals. Recalling the primary time he visited the ability, Nathan informed us: “I had no idea where I was going or what to expect.” He didn’t be expecting it to be anything else however a brief repair – and no doubt didn’t consider himself operating there for lots of months.
BBC Information file on remedy of prisoners within the Sde Teiman detention centre, August 2024.
Within the first few weeks, with out good enough apparatus, appropriate drugs, a functioning logistical equipment or even a correct institutional association, the medical doctors needed to improvise and depend on their resourcefulness. “By the end, this facility was well-equipped compared to a field hospital … But the point is,” Nathan insisted, “a field hospital should be temporary; you cannot really perform operations in a tent in the middle of the desert.”
After we met on the finish of 2024, Nathan was once now not comfy and gave the impression very nervous. A number of occasions all through our dialog, he informed us that “no one can know who Nathan is”. Seeing how involved he was once at being uncovered, we had been stunned he had agreed to be interviewed in any respect. However unknown to us, a couple of days sooner than we contacted him, he had attended a public communicate we gave about our analysis on torture being carried out through Israel. That is most certainly why, after we reached out, he in an instant agreed to satisfy us.
Along with Nathan and the 2 different medical doctors who labored within the facility, we additionally interviewed others who had been curious about its operation by some means: two participants of the Israel Scientific Affiliation’s ethics board, a scientific ethics knowledgeable who urged medical doctors operating within the Sde Teiman facility, and human rights practitioners who investigated it. We additionally interviewed scientific body of workers and healthcare execs from seven of Israel’s biggest hospitals, in addition to a number of Israeli govt officers operating within the healthcare device and Ministry of Justice.
Whilst maximum interviewees spoke below situation of anonymity, Nathan was once specifically guarded. He was once most commonly scared that he or his circle of relatives can be centered through rightwing Israeli activists in the event that they knew he had handled “terrorists”. However he was once additionally occupied with his colleagues’ reactions – even his direct line supervisor had no thought what he were doing, past that he were referred to as up for army reserve accountability.
Moreover, Nathan sought after to give protection to himself from complaint from participants of the leftwing neighborhood who noticed any individual concerned with the Sde Teiman facility as a conflict felony. But it was once transparent that he too noticed the very lifestyles of the scientific facility as against the law – even supposing he at all times attempted to give you the sufferers there with the most productive conceivable care.
Certainly, Nathan informed us that whilst operating there, he had attempted again and again to get the scientific facility close down. “The patients there could not receive the treatment they needed. They all needed to be admitted to a normal hospital.”
After many months, as soon as “it was no longer an emergency situation” – and when Nathan realised his efforts to close the ability down had been futile – he felt he may now not “be there any longer”, and give up.
Cuffed, blindfolded and dressed in diapers
We approached Ben (additionally a pseudonym) for an interview as a result of his involvement with every other human rights organisation, to invite concerning the scientific remedy of Palestinians in Israeli prisons after the October 7 assaults. It was once most effective all through our dialog, when he heard that we had been writing concerning the scientific facility at Sde Teiman, that he informed us he, too, were referred to as past due in 2023 to serve there.
Ben, a a lot more junior physician than the opposite medical doctors we interviewed, works in certainly one of Israel’s public hospitals. He recalled being requested through a colleague if he would assist carry out a process on a affected person from Gaza he had prior to now handled. He in an instant were given in his automotive and drove to Sde Teiman, following the instructions he’d been given over the telephone – now not understanding precisely the place he was once going.
As soon as he were given to the scientific facility, Ben mentioned he was once astonished through what he noticed. Even if this was once past due December and where were operational for greater than two months, “patients were still wearing nothing but diapers”. He informed us they had been nonetheless cuffed to their beds and blindfolded all the time, together with whilst receiving scientific remedy. They weren’t allowed to get off the bed, so needed to defecate in mattress after they had to relieve themselves.
Ben performed the process he was once referred to as to accomplish. However as soon as he were given house, the truth of what he’d witnessed dawned on him: “I decided not to step into that facility ever again.”
As a result of they had been cuffed, the nursing body of workers needed to do the whole lot for the sufferers. They washed them, modified their diapers, or even needed to feed a few of them liquid meals thru straws. Those accounts had been showed through the opposite two medical doctors we interviewed who had labored within the facility.
Medical doctors describe stipulations within the Sde Teiman scientific facility: BBC Information, Would possibly 2024.
Nathan informed us a number of occasions: “You must emphasise the care and dedication of the nurses” who bathed, fed and cared for folks few others had been prepared to maintain. But whilst this was once definitely noteworthy, particularly below the ones instances, these kinds of sufferers would were in a position to visit the bathroom, bathe and feed themselves had they now not been restrained to their beds 24 hours an afternoon. The usage of such restraints indiscriminately on sufferers violates Israeli legislation, and is regarded as a type of torture consistent with moral codes each in Israel and the world over.
“At first, [the cuffing] may have been necessary because we treated very dangerous people” who had simply performed a brutal bloodbath, Nathan defined. He described a serious assault on one feminine body of workers member which he witnessed, confirming: “We had several instances in which patients assaulted staff.”
However, he persevered: “They had no justification after the first few weeks. By then, other precautions could have been introduced, and assessments could have been conducted to determine who might pose a danger to staff and still needed to be cuffed.”
Nathan mentioned that finally, most of the sufferers observed through the medical doctors and nurses weren’t bad. “Arrangements should have been made so those patients could be cared for in a general hospital in Israel.”
After visiting the Sde Teiman scientific facility in past due February 2024, participants of the Israeli Ministry of Well being’s moral committee reported that every one sufferers had been nonetheless chained to their beds through all 4 limbs – even if, through the Israeli military’s personal admission in December 2023, many Sde Teiman detainees had been through then now not suspected of being associated with Hamas or different militant factions. Lots of the ones incarcerated in Sde Teiman, together with some who were held for lots of months and had been chained to their beds, would sooner or later be launched at no cost.
‘We did everything we could’
Nathan’s account was once supported through our 3rd interviewee, Yoel Donchin – a senior anaesthesiologist who additionally served within the scientific facility for lots of months. Donchin described one of the most sufferers he handled to the New York Instances in June 2024, explaining that one was once paraplegic, every other seriously overweight, and a 3rd had wanted to make use of a respiring tube since adolescence. Donchin concluded it was once “highly unlikely” that any of them had been concerned within the preventing. “They take everyone,” he mentioned, relating to the Israeli military’s movements in Gaza.
Since he had already spoken publicly about his reviews within the facility, Donchin was once simple to find. In contrast to Nathan and Ben, he was once satisfied for us to make use of his actual identify, and had no reservations about his involvement there.
After he publicly defended his choice to serve within the facility, Donchin and the remainder of the scientific group operating there was once criticised through human rights organisations together with participants of Pcati’s board. Treating sufferers there, they claimed, was once “a moral disgrace and a violation of every ethical principle” to which medical doctors will have to dedicate.
However, a few hours into our lengthy dialog in his quiet house in a suburb of Tel Aviv, we started to reconcile the info we knew about Sde Teiman with Donchin’s account of his time operating within the scientific facility. He equated the location in Israel in an instant after October 7 to “a multi-casualty event”, explaining that during such stipulations, “medical ethics is different”. Within the chaos of the primary few weeks after the assaults, he informed us, “no one knew what they were doing. The hospitals were swamped with patients and the system was overwhelmed.”
Donchin mentioned that even some Israeli squaddies wounded within the Hamas assault may now not get the whole care they wanted. Within the aftermath of October 7, he informed us: “The entire [Israeli] healthcare system was in complete disarray. In the first month, there was no state to speak about whatsoever.”
A UK protester requires the discharge of folks detained in Sde Teiman, January 2025.
Zuma/Alamy
Inside of this chaos, Donchin informed us: “We did everything we could.” He defined that after the vitamin sufferers wanted was once now not provided, body of workers would purchase it themselves. When a affected person had to be observed through a consultant, they’d use their private networks to herald colleagues with the wanted experience – both having them come to the ability or, when that was once inconceivable, having them supply recommendation over a video name.
But whilst those will have been efficient emergency measures, “they should not have been the solution”. In the end, Donchin mentioned, those “compromises and improvisations” supposed the medical doctors had been working below “a black flag of illegality”.
In line with the scientific ethics knowledgeable who urged medical doctors operating in Sde Teiman: “In this first month, treating those who’d just taken part in the massacre posed particular challenges”, as a result of some had been very bad and competitive. “General hospitals are not set up to treat patients who pose such risks to staff.”
Then again, he additionally mentioned that “Israel had detailed contingency plans in place for such a scenario, which included preparing a dedicated ward for enemy combatants in one of the main hospitals. But those were never implemented.”
‘He should be left to rot’
Lots of the just about 200 Hamas militants who took phase within the October 7 assaults and had been captured within Israel had been wounded within the preventing. In the beginning they had been taken to normal hospitals, however phrase temporarily were given out – resulting in in style studies of mobs raiding sanatorium wards, attacking body of workers and sufferers they suspected of being Palestinian.
To give protection to the security of each sufferers and body of workers, Israeli hospitals started refusing to confess those sufferers. However some scientific body of workers additionally expressed their “difficulties” with treating the ones whom they suspected of getting dedicated the October 7 atrocities.
On October 11 2023, Moshe Arbel, Israel’s well being minister on the time, formally recommended this reluctance through issuing an ordinance declaring that normal hospitals must now not deal with “terrorists from Gaza”. This steerage additionally enabled Israeli hospitals to refuse remedy to any Palestinian strolling back from any incarceration facility.
Workforce operating in a few of these hospitals informed us within the aftermath that they’d ceaselessly heard colleagues making statements akin to “Gaza should be erased” or “as far as I am concerned, all babies in Gaza are terrorists and can die” – now and again in formal body of workers conferences and in entrance of Palestinian colleagues.
We additionally heard tales of scientific body of workers demonstrating particular fail to remember to the wounds and wellbeing of the ones they suspected had been a part of Hamas’s Nukhba drive – and in some circumstances, Palestinian detainees from Gaza extra most often.
For instance, Nathan described calling a senior specialist when he wanted pressing recommendation about treating one of the vital detainees in Sde Teiman, most effective to learn: “As far as I am concerned, he should be left to rot.” And consistent with Ben: “On October 8, I witnessed a doctor inserting a tube into the lungs of a patient from the Nukhba force without anaesthetising him. There were likely other such cases.”
“Paradoxically,” Ben informed us, “the doctors in Sde Teiman’s medical facility had a much deeper commitment and understanding of their responsibility to provide care to these patients.” It was once within the normal hospitals, he mentioned, that he had discovered extra “verbal violence, less care” – and a few circumstances of bodily abuse.
As an underequipped and understaffed makeshift facility, in accordance to those that labored at Sde Teiman, if a affected person wanted pressing remedy that might now not be supplied on website online, they’d now and again be taken to certainly one of Israel’s normal hospitals. Nathan described spending lengthy hours at the telephone every time, calling other hospitals till he may to find one prepared to confess a affected person. But it surely was once the very lifestyles of the Sde Teiman scientific facility that allowed many hospitals to shirk their obligations, since those sufferers had been it seems that already receiving remedy.
And when a sanatorium process was once carried out, the sufferers had been temporarily despatched again to the Sde Teiman scientific facility, as described on this leaked letter to Israel’s Ministry of Well being from a physician operating within the facility:
Sufferers after primary operations, akin to stomach surgical procedures for intestinal resections, are introduced again after about an hour of post-op statement to the Sde Teiman scientific facility, which is staffed lots of the day through a unmarried physician, accompanied through a nursing group, some with not more than medic coaching.
Sooner or later, body of workers on the Sde Teiman scientific facility controlled to get some sufferers launched from being handcuffed to their beds through all 4 limbs, and to permit them to put on sanatorium gowns quite than diapers. However without reference to their effort to offer higher care, and without reference to their vital struggles and partial successes, to regard folks within the Sde Teiman scientific facility was once, within the view of many observers in addition to one of the most medical doctors themselves, to transform complicit in violations of world and Israeli legislation.
The nameless letter submitted to Israel’s Ministry of Well being claimed stipulations within the facility frequently resulted “in complications, and sometimes even in the patient’s death”:
This makes all folks – the scientific groups and … the ones accountable for us within the well being and protection ministries – complicit within the violation of Israeli legislation, and most likely worse for me as a physician, within the violation of my fundamental dedication to sufferers, anyplace they’re – as I swore once I graduated two decades in the past.
The medical doctors’ quandary
Ben most effective visited the Sde Teiman scientific facility as soon as, but the remorseful about stayed with him. “I should have turned around the moment I saw the patients were treated while naked and cuffed to their beds,” he informed us. “To treat patients there was not only a violation of our ethical codes as doctors – it was to take part in war crimes, if not crimes against humanity. This was not something I was willing to consider.”
He persevered: “To serve there effectively mediated the crisis that would have been caused had no doctor agreed to do so. The medical staff allowed the facility in Sde Teiman to continue operating, and the existence of the facility allowed the hospitals to refuse treating those patients.”
Whilst the Sde Teiman detention camp held many masses of detainees over lengthy classes, its scientific facility may deal with not more than 15 sufferers at a time. In most cases, most effective detainees recognized with acute accidents had been gained – frequently most effective after their situation had already deteriorated. This supposed lesions would often get inflamed, consistent with our interviewees, resulting in amputations of limbs that can have simply been averted.
In the primary detention camp, untreated sicknesses ended in headaches, debilitation and, in some circumstances, loss of life. The newest public information presentations that between October 2023 and July 2024, no less than 36 detainees died within Sde Teiman. To a reasonably lesser extent, the withdrawal of care has additionally transform the usual in different prisons and detention amenities the place Palestinians are held. In line with the newest (nonetheless unpublished) information we now have gained from Physicians for Human Rights (Israel), from October 2023 to July 2025, 52 Palestinians have died inside army amenities and 41 within Israeli prisons.
A military officer speaks with Israeli activists protesting the detention of 9 army reservists accused of the sexual abuse of a Sde Teiman detainee.
Sipa USA/Alamy
Denying hospital therapy to an imprisoned particular person would possibly itself quantity to torture. Whilst often imagined as breaking somebody’s bones, pulling out their fingernails or making use of electrical shocks, torture can take many other kinds. When somebody is ill or injured, denying them the remedy they want and combating them from getting any ache aid generally is a method of inflicting insufferable ache and pointless struggling.
For Donchin, to refuse to regard sufferers would have supposed turning into an companion on this crime. “For me, the alternative – to provide no care at all, to show no compassion – was impossible,” he mentioned, including that it’s something to take into accounts those questions in concept, a fully other factor while you see an individual struggling proper in entrance of you.
Against this, for Ben, the one proper factor to do was once to refuse to paintings within Sde Teiman’s brief scientific facility – particularly when cutting-edge hospitals had been just a quick automotive force away. “Treating patients there doesn’t save them, since it leaves them outside the healthcare system that could have given them the lifesaving treatment they so needed,” he informed us.
However as we had been concluding our dialog, he added: “There are no right answers here. It is a huge tragedy, no matter which way you look at it.”
The Sde Teiman scientific facility was once in spite of everything close down in October 2024 when, following a petition to Israel’s Prime Court docket of Justice through a number of human rights organisations together with Pcati and Physicians for Human Rights, the inhabitants of the primary detention camp was once considerably diminished.
By the point Nathan sat down to speak to us, the scientific facility were close for a just right few months. However the guy we met was once nonetheless completely defeated, visibly damaged. He stored asking himself if he had executed sufficient – or if he must or can have executed extra. That is when he concluded: “Perhaps there was something we could have done about the camp itself.”
Whilst he by no means stepped foot within the primary camp, he informed us he may pay attention very obviously the yelling and the barking of the canines. “Maybe we could have done more about the camp itself.”
While Ben and Donchin perceived to draw some convenience from their trust that they’d executed the precise factor (regardless of attaining reverse conclusions), Nathan didn’t percentage that conviction. At the one hand, it was once transparent to him that he had transform complicit in crimes. The stipulations within the scientific facility failed even to agree to what he referred to as the “stripped-down law” that Israel had tailored to regard those folks – let by myself world human rights legislation and all scientific codes of ethics.
But on the similar time, Nathan felt he may now not abandon those sufferers. After we met him, he was once nonetheless torn about what he had executed, nonetheless questioning whether or not he had made the precise selections.
A legacy of torture
The usage of torture through Israel didn’t start in October 2023. At some point of our analysis, we now have analysed greater than 1,500 of the torture circumstances recorded through Pcati within the 25 years previous the assaults. Those circumstances are all moderately analysed as having met the definition supplied through the UN Conference In opposition to Torture.
Evaluating our findings with testimonies that experience emerged over the past two years, we will say with self assurance that using torture through the Israeli safety forces has larger each in scale and severity since then – despite the fact that this has been denied through the Israeli govt and armed forces.
In line with a large number of verified studies, most of the detainees in Sde Teiman had been subjected to sexual violence starting from compelled nudity and humiliation to rape; consistent cuffing that ended in accidents and in some circumstances the amputation of limbs; and beatings the usage of batons, steel bars and the butts of weapons and boots, now and again till detainees misplaced awareness.
Equivalent practices had been reported in practically all Israeli prisons and detention amenities the place Palestinians had been held after the October 7 assaults.
The tales of the medical doctors operating at Sde Teiman must now not distract from the gravity of this wider tale of abuse and torture. However the dilemmas the medical doctors confronted, and the have an effect on it has had on their lives, display the complexities, if now not impossibilities, confronted through Israelis who’re making an attempt to withstand the atrocities Israel has been committing in Gaza (and the West Financial institution) within the aftermath of the October 7 assaults.
A Palestinian sanatorium employee inspects harm to a bombed pharmaceutical warehouse in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, Would possibly 2025.
Anas Mohammed/Shutterstock
In its July 2025 file, Physicians for Human Rights Israel claimed that the “broader targeting of Gaza’s healthcare system” quantities to a dismantling of the “existing conditions of life with effects into the future”, and must due to this fact be observed as a contravention of the UN’s 1948 Conference On Genocide.
The medical doctors we met, along the opposite scientific body of workers within the Sde Teiman facility, tried to counteract the dehumanisation and abandonment of lifestyles that permits genocides to occur. In numerous tactics, they attempted to prevent the atrocity that was once evolving in entrance of them and to treatment the stipulations that made it conceivable. But they nonetheless, of their view, discovered themselves complicit within the very crimes they attempted to forestall.
Up to their tale is a tale of the inconceivable dilemmas those medical doctors confronted, additionally it is a tale of people that no less than did what they might to counter this almost-inevitable complicity. No longer most effective through insisting at the humanity of the folks in entrance of them, and due to this fact additionally of their very own, but in addition through refusing to stay silent.
Reaction to this newsletter
The Israeli Scientific Affiliation (IMA) was once contacted through The Dialog all through the modifying of this newsletter. Its reaction, which is mirrored within the ultimate article, integrated the next feedback:
In line with Israeli Ministry of Well being pointers, all sufferers within the Sde Teiman scientific facility had been handled consistent with standard Israeli scientific requirements, that means the extent of care there was once upper than what they’d have gained in Gaza.
It’s true that using indiscriminate restraints violates Israeli scientific ethics. The IMA ethics committee has addressed this factor on a couple of instance, together with with a observation in September 2023 and a letter to the Israeli Ministry of Well being in February 2025.
The IMA has steadily spoken out on humanitarian problems all through this conflict and can proceed to take action. On August 5 2025, we reaffirmed our long-standing coverage at the assurance of hospital therapy all through armed struggle.
The destruction of Gaza’s healthcare is tragic, however there is not any “mass killing, detention, torture and abuse of medical personnel” [as was stated in the Physicians for Human Rights Israel report, July 2025]. There were some scientific team of workers that had been suspected or confirmed terrorists. The IMA has made it very transparent that every one sufferers are to be handled similarly.
The Israeli army was once contacted through The Dialog concerning the findings on this article, however didn’t supply a reaction. When prior to now contacted through the BBC about allegations of abuse and torture within the Sde Teiman scientific facility, it mentioned it “completely rejects accusations of systematic abuse of detainees”.
Israel’s govt has additionally rejected accusations of in style ill-treatment and torture of detainees within the Sde Teiman detention centre, insisting it’s “fully committed to international legal standards”.
