PALESTINIAN journalists, previously jailed by Israel, today reported facing widespread abuse while they were in custody.

In a damning new report published by the International Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), reporters were subjected to routine beatings, starvation and sexual assault.

The CPJ said it interviewed 59 Palestinian journalists who had been imprisoned by Israel after the Hamas-led attack of October 2023. All but one reported “torture, abuse or other forms of violence.”

The alleged abuse carried out by the Israelis ranged from beatings to electroshocks. Two journalists said they had been raped while in custody.

Journalist Sami al-Sai reported being stripped by soldiers who then penetrated him with a baton in a cell in Israel’s Megiddo prison.

The CPJ report said: “Descriptions of sexual violence appeared repeatedly in the testimonies, with journalists describing assaults as intended to humiliate, terrorise and permanently scar them.”

Psychological abuse was also routinely carried out in the prisons, according to the report. This included threats to kill family members, sleep deprivation through loud music and medical neglect, including the denial of treatment for bone fractures and eye injuries.

CPJ Regional Director Sara Qudah said: “These are not isolated incidents. 

“They expose a deliberate strategy to intimidate and silence journalists and destroy their ability to bear witness.”

The journalists also reported experiencing “extreme hunger or malnutrition” during their imprisonment.

The CPJ said many journalists reported having to survive almost entirely off “mouldy bread and rotten food.”

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has previously celebrated the “abominable conditions” of Palestinian prisoners and pledged to keep food provisions at the “bare minimum” required by law.

Nearly 300 journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli forces since the conflict in Gaza broke out.

They are among more than 75,000 people confirmed dead.

The latest figures from the Gaza Mortality Survey (GMS), a study published in the Lancet Global Health, estimates that there have been 75,200 “violent deaths” between October 7, 2023 and January 5, 2025.

Thursday’s new figures represent approximately 3.4 per cent of Gaza’s pre-conflict 2.2 million population. 

The Gaza Health Ministry estimates that as of February 16, at least 72,063 people have been killed since the start of the war. Of those, 603 people have been killed since the declaration of a “ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip on October 10, 2025.

Israel has routinely questioned the Ministry’s figures, but in January an army official told journalists they accepted killing around 70,000 Palestinians.