Released Palestinian Tells of Horrors He Claims to Have Endured

[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]

The arch-terrorist Sami Jaradat, once the leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Jenin, has just been released by Israel, as part of the latest installment of the innocents-for-murderers exchange. In the article below, that appeared at the anti-Israel and pro-Hamas Middle East Monitor, you won’t find out about what he was imprisoned for, but you will be treated to his highly imaginative account about the assorted tortures he claims to have endured while in an Israeli prison.

More on Sami Jaradat’s fairy tale of terror and torture can be found here: “Freed Palestinian recounts ‘deliberate starvation’ practices in Israeli prisons,” Middle East Monitor, February 5, 2025:

Since 7 October, 2023, Israel has intensified its use of deliberate starvation as a tool of torture against Palestinian prisoners in its detention centres, Anadolu Agency reports.

“Prison guards and staff have turned into ‘monsters and Nazis’ since 2023,” Sami Jaradat, a freed Palestinian prisoner, told Anadolu.

Jaradat, 57, was set free by Israel last week under a Gaza ceasefire and prisoner swap agreement with Palestinian factions.

Since 7 October, 2023, Jaradat, who was arrested by Israel in 2003 and slapped with multiple life sentences, has lost around 30 kilograms (66 pounds) due to malnutrition and harsh detention conditions.

“After 7 October, 2023, prison conditions changed drastically,” Jaradat said. “Treatment of any Arab prisoner, except Druze, has become monstrous and Nazi-like.”

On Saturday, the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said that the majority of Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli prisons showed severe health deterioration, with many exhibiting significant weight loss – clear evidence of deliberate starvation.

The Rights group said that Israeli prison authorities have deprived Palestinian detainees of medical treatment throughout their imprisonment.

“Israel has transformed its jails into institutionalized torture facilities” post-7 October, it added.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor was founded by Arab propagandist Ramy Abdu, and an unstated part of its remit is to blacken the image of Israel. We have only its word for it that those freed prisoners suffered from “deliberate starvation.” The Red Cross, to which Israel delivered those freed prisoners, did not report any evidence of “deliberate starvation.” Nor is there any evidence of emaciated or underfed prisoners in the videos taken of them after their release.

There is no denial of medical treatment to any prisoner held in Israeli prisons. They are treated by doctors on site, and if their condition warrants a specialist, or surgery, they are taken to Israeli hospitals for treatment. Some have even received cosmetic surgery to “improve their self-image.” The food they eat meets IDF nutrition standards, they have full medical and dental care. Most, in fact, eat and live in better conditions within Israeli prisons than they did in their normal life outside. They are allowed to study, inside prison, for university degrees, with their tuition paid for by the government of Israel. None of this is mentioned by the mythomane Sami Jaradat.

Jaradat said Palestinian prisoners were subjected to humiliation, severe beatings, terrorism and deliberate starvation….

If there had been any evidence of these “severe beatings” and “deliberate starvation,” the inspectors from the International Red Cross would have reported both. They have found no signs of either.

The prisoners’ lies are so preposterous, so comical. Why not try to make them less ridiculous? If their food portions were “insufficient even for a two-year-old child,” they would have starved to death within a month or two. No one has, in fact, starved to death in an Israeli prison. Even those on hunger strikes have been kept alive by the Israelis.

Repeated requests by Jaradat, who has a catheter implanted in his abdomen, for hospital visits were rejected by the Israeli prison service….

First Jaradat claims there is no medical treatment available to prisoners, and then he offhandedly mentions the catheter implanted in his abdomen. That sounds like medical treatment to me.

If Israel “deliberately neglects medical treatment,” then why are both doctors and dentists available on-site? Why are prisoners provided with specialized care, when needed, in Israeli hospitals? If the prison service “aims that no prisoner remains alive,” why is it that there are thousands of them who are not just alive, but thriving inside prison? Where are the reports from the International Red Cross about Palestinian prisoners being deliberately denied medical treatment?

The freed prisoner recalled an incident after a surgical operation, when a doctor assured the guards that his condition was stable. The guards immediately replied: “Let him die; we don’t care about him.”…

So Israeli doctors performed a surgery on a Palestinian prisoner — but hasn’t Jaradat just said that the prisoners were denied medical treatment? Sami Jaradat can’t keep his story straight.

And how plausible do you find his charge that the guards said “Let him die; we don’t care about him”? Jaradat himself masterminded a suicide bombing in which 21 people were murdered, including four children. Isn’t he the one who should be described as “inhumane and lack[ing] conscience and morals”? And aren’t the 6,000 Hamas terrorists who smashed into Israel on October 7, 2023, and proceeded to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder 1,200 Israelis, the outstanding examples of those who are “inhumane and lack conscience and morals”?