AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, as we go now from Gaza to the occupied West Bank, to Ramallah, where we’re joined by Naji Abbas, director of the Prisoners Department at Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, the group’s new report headlined “Unlawfully Detained, Tortured, and Starved: The Plight of Gaza’s Medical Workers in Israeli Custody.”

If you can talk about the scope of your report, Naji Abbas, what you found? And then I want to ask you about Dr. Abu Safiya, as well.

NAJI ABBAS: Good afternoon, Amy, and for Dr. Khaled.

Actually, the address of our report can give you a direct picture to our findings. When we call it “Unlawfully Detained,” we are based on testimonies. And actually, we have testimonies more than we published, that show the same pattern and the same story that Dr. Khaled described just now. All the doctors, and also including Dr. Abu Safiya, are facing the same situation: being brutally arrested, without any cause, from their workplaces because they are doctors, interrogating through torture, beating, violence, sexual abuse, being held without any charges, without any proper legal procedure, in horrific conditions, including torture. We know torture before to get information, but here torture are being used in every day of the detention journey. It’s a whole journey of torture and abuse, using the starvation policies, denial of medical care. So, we tried in the address to give a direct picture to our all findings from all of the testimonies that we got.

AMY GOODMAN: Naji, you assert that the medical workers have been targeted for the very fact of their profession. Explain.

NAJI ABBAS: First of all, there’s the numbers of the healthcare workers who were arrested. We are speaking about hundreds. From the first invasion to Al-Shifa Hospital, and after that, Nasser Hospital, Al-Mamdani Hospital and Kamal Adwan, lately, we saw a pattern of attacking the health system in Gaza. And in every invasion, we heard about dozens of healthcare workers, staff of these hospitals, in these facilities, being taken away by the Israeli soldiers. And we didn’t know — we tried to find out what they are looking for, beside destroying the buildings of the hospitals, why they are taking the whole staff, the medical staff.

And through the testimonies, through our visits, we started to understood that the doctors were arrested mainly for collecting information. When you hear a doctor saying that he was forced to draw a map of the hospital, when he was asked about his colleagues, when he was asked if — you can understand that there’s a pattern of questioning looking, fishing — fishing for information. And they weren’t accused or charged with anything. All of the doctors, more than 100 medical staff who’s still, 'til now, in detention, have the same story of Dr. Khaled. They weren't charged or accused as individuals with any offense. But all the interrogation were collecting information about their workplace, about their colleagues, about the health system in Gaza. And beside the doctors who were arrested inside the hospitals, we met doctors who were arrested through checkpoints of Israel’s army inside Gaza when they were trying to move with their families. So, if a soldier heard that he’s a doctor, he was arrested. So you can understand that they were targeted directly because of their profession.

AMY GOODMAN: Your report also details incidents of sexual assault, including the insertion of batons into and electric rods into the buttocks, leaving signs of burns or injuries. In fact, Dr. Khaled has talked about treating at least three prisoners when he was in prison with such injuries while they were detained.

NAJI ABBAS: That’s right. That’s right. All the testimonies described, as I said, the horrific conditions, horrific daily beating, the daily beating without any cause, without anything happening before. When you hear more than one doctor, like in Sde Teiman, they all started to know — the detainees, the doctors, started to know the unit names that storm to the section they are being held at — or, it’s not a section. When they call Sde Teiman — through the testimonies, you can see that the doctors are calling it bareksat. Bareksat is something like a stable. It’s not a section. It’s not a prison. It’s a military camp, and there are stables, actually, that people are being held at, including the doctors. So, you hear about the brutal violence of this unit called Unit 100. And actually, some of these units are accused, after that was revealed, that they raped, actually, some of the detainees in the last summer. That was revealed in the media. And this same unit entered every week, every two days, with dogs, beating, making — letting the dogs attack the doctors and the other detainees, without any cause, without any cause, without any logic reason to try to understand what they are looking for through these policies. But you can understand, it’s just a way of torturing people.

AMY GOODMAN: Thirty seconds on Dr. Abu Safiya. We’ve recently seen video of him since — the first time since we did not know where he was. He’s been detained, head of Kamal Adwan. Naji, what do you know?

NAJI ABBAS: We don’t know a lot. We know that Dr. Abu Safiya — Dr. Abu Safiya, in the first month, disappeared, as all the doctors. Dr. Khaled Alser disappeared, actually, for four months. And Dr. Abu Safiya, the same. He disappeared for one month. We didn’t know anything — where he was, in what conditions, why he are being detained. We didn’t know anything.

We know now that he’s in Ofer prison. Just one lawyer managed to visit him. PHR lawyers are not allowed yet to visit him. We know that he was held in isolation, in solitary confinement, for 25 days, with a cell alone, disconnected to the outside world.

And Dr. Abu Safiya, as all the doctors, all of the healthcare workers, nurses and doctors and paramedics, are not accused with anything. But you can see that the Israeli media is, like, interrogating Dr. Abu Safiya on media reports and accusing him with things that, in reality — and in the Israeli media — he wasn’t accused at. He wasn’t accused with an offense that he did. But the Israeli media — this propaganda of the Israeli media and the Israeli authorities is part of the targeting of the medical staff, trying to accuse the whole Gaza healthcare system and take its protections, the protection that the healthcare system and these medical personnels have by the international law, taking this away through media reports.

AMY GOODMAN: Naji Abbas, I want to thank you for being with us. Yes, you see him with helmeted guards through a prison in shackles, appearing exhausted. His family condemned the video broadcast, saying, “We reject any media outlet publishing the video without addressing the psychological terrorism involved and exposing the manipulation of his statements.” Naji Abbas, director of the Prisoners Department at Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. We’ll link to your new report, “Unlawfully Detained, Tortured, and Starved: The Plight of Gaza’s Medical Workers in Israeli Custody.”

Coming up next, we speak with the head of the Wayback Machine. Thousands of government webpages are being deleted. What is happening? Back in 15 seconds.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Ayiti Leve Kanpe,” “Haiti, Get Back Up,” by the Haitian musician, composer, journalist Jean Jean-Pierre, once a guest on Democracy Now! He’s died at the age of 71.