“Everything was forbidden except breathing and swift death”: Israel’s sadism up close."
Salah Saleh The Electronic Intifada 2 October 2026
The Israeli army has wrought massive destruction on Gaza City, where the photo was taken on 8 February 2025.
Omar Ashtawy APA imagesI felt like I was breathing through the eye of a needle, and my chest tightened considerably.
The Israeli interrogator had just asked me if I agreed to cooperate with them or not, if I would go down into a tunnel.
My nerves were on edge, my mind reeling; I didn’t know what I should choose.
It was after midnight on 7 December 2023 – the interrogator was sitting in front of me, a table in between us.
I was seated in a school chair, stripped down to my underwear and wrapped in a blanket.
My throat was still moistened from the sip of water I had just been given, and the sweet taste from the chocolate bar with nuts and dried banana chunks lingered in my mouth.
All these were enticements from the interrogator to gain my trust as he questioned me.
“As salaamu alaykum. How are you, Salah?” he said in perfect Arabic.
“Alhamdulilah, I’m fine,” I replied, thanking God.
“Listen, Salah, we need to treat each other normally and naturally. Consider me your friend and feel free to speak your mind. Say whatever you want,” he said.
“Why haven’t we been released yet? We haven’t been charged with anything, and there’s no reason for us to be detained,” I replied – the “we” being myself and other detainees.
“You’re right. We know there are no charges against you,” he said. “You’re innocent, and we’ll release you, inshallah.”
He continued: “But we need you to do us a small favor, and in return, we’ll release you from detention, take you anywhere you want and do anything you say.”
“What favor? What task is this?” I said, nervously.
“It’s a simple task, inshallah,” he said. “It’ll only take 10 to 15 minutes at most, and we’ll be done. There’s no danger involved. Do you agree to help us or not?”
“Can I at least know what the task is?” I replied.
“We just need you to go down into a tunnel entrance and walk forward about 20 meters. Then turn right. There’s a door there that we need you to try to open, or at least give us a detailed description of it.”
My voice choked, and I became even more nervous.
“What if the tunnel entrance is booby-trapped and explodes? What if something goes wrong and the tunnel collapses? What will we do then?” I asked.
“Don’t worry – we thoroughly inspected the tunnel. We even deployed a drone and a trained dog, neutralizing everything you’re thinking of right now,” the interrogator replied.
“So why don’t you send one of your soldiers down since everything is ready and secure?” I said.
“We need someone with your level of intelligence to go down there,” he replied.
What a dilemma.
A refusal to cooperate could hold fatal consequences for me, yet cooperating would also likely mean being killed, either in a resistance ambush, the tunnel collapsing or even by the Israeli soldiers themselves.
I didn’t know what to do.
The interrogator noticed my anxiety, so he stood up and left me to mull over his offer. A soldier remained to keep watch over me.
“I advise you to accept the offer,” this soldier said. “Listen to me, you’ll be in big trouble if you don’t cooperate with us.”
He had such a pure Gaza accent that I assumed he was from Gaza.
I asked him if he was an Arab to which he nodded yes.
“Druze or Bedouin?” I asked.
“Neither,” he replied.
“So where exactly are you from, or what’s your ethnicity?” I asked.
He smirked and said, “Somewhere in the triangle,” meaning southern Palestine.
“I recommend you to agree,” he said. “Believe me, you’ll benefit greatly. The whole thing will only take 10 minutes, and it’s very simple. I promise you, nothing will happen to you.”
The interrogator came back and asked, “So, Salah, do you agree or not?”
“I’m so sorry, but I can’t do the mission due to health and physical reasons,” I said.
“So that’s it? A final decision?” the interrogator said, obviously frustrated.
“I can’t do it, unfortunately. I can’t do the mission at all!” I said it a second time.
It wasn’t my mind that answered that question, but my heart; because my mind knows that such an answer would be tantamount to a death sentence.
“Fine, Salah, you don’t want to cooperate with us?” he said, shaking his head in anger.
He told the other soldier, “Take him back the way he was.”
The soldier blindfolded me again, tied my hands even tighter than before and returned me to where other detainees were.
But this time, everyone in the building – soldiers and officers, estimated in the hundreds – knew I had refused to cooperate with them.
This gave them irrefutable proof that I was a “terrorist,” as they claimed.
As soon as I returned to my previous position, they took my older brother Omar.
That would be the last time I saw him.
Flashback
Several hours before this interrogation, my brother Omar and I were preparing our bedding in my aunt Um al-Abd’s apartment in the southern al-Rimal neighborhood of central Gaza City.
Her apartment was on the third floor of a seven-story building that was home to around 10 to 12 families.
My parents, brothers and I had evacuated to my aunt’s on 1 December 2023 after the Israeli army declared our neighborhood in northern al-Rimal a dangerous zone.
While we stayed there, we adapted to the state of war and the sounds of clashes coming from the Beach Camp and al-Nasr. Sometimes we would see a real battlefield before our eyes when we looked out the windows. We also saw phosphorus bombs, thick smoke bombs and drones.
We would sleep close to the outside walls so that if the Israeli army bombed the house on our heads, neighbors could retrieve us with less effort and bury us.
On the morning of 5 December, my family and I had woken up to find that military vehicles were parked about 200 meters from our building.
We – along with the other families in the building – decided not to leave the building, with each family sitting in their own stairwell, as people in Gaza believe it is the most fortified place in a building.
While we were sitting and chatting with each other, a shell hit an apartment above us and ignited a huge fire, causing smoke and flames that forced all the building residents to descend to the hall on the ground floor.
Young men like myself worked to extinguish the fire, despite the army being meters away.
Using plastic buckets, we transported water from neighboring apartments to the burning one, repeating the process until we finished putting out the fire after several hours.
But as we returned to the building to rest, another shell hit an apartment below us.
Another fire started, and smoke filled the whole building, which forced us to descend again to the lower hall.
We discussed whether to extinguish the fire again or to evacuate the entire building, where we would likely be greeted by military vehicles and drones.
We eventually decided to put out the fire again, and with painstaking effort we extinguished it.
The only explanation that made sense to us as to how we were not targeted and the soldiers did not see us was God’s divine protection.
We prepared our bedding and slept under the sound of shelling and terrifying clashes.
The Israeli army at our doorstep
The next morning, 6 December, we woke up to birds chirping – an eerie, unusual calm that made us assume the army had withdrawn. My mother even decided to knead the dough to make bread for breakfast.
But, just then, we were startled by the sound of a tank’s massive engine; the screech of its metal against the asphalt roared right below the building.
As the tank started firing shells, gunfire from machine guns mounted on vehicles hit the building and apartments directly, and a military bulldozer started operating on the patch of land next to us.
The sounds spread terror in our hearts, and all the families rushed back to the stairwell and remained anxiously gathered there the whole day.
Even the simplest act – going to the bathroom – was perilous. We would open the door carefully, crouch and move quickly, fearing we could be sniped.
The passing of time felt unbearably heavy.
As darkness fell, we spread out our bedding and chatted. A neighbor came and gave us some dates.
Not long after, we heard a mixture of Arabic and Hebrew below the building.
We were petrified.
A neighbor then called out to us, and his message was clear: The Israeli army had reached our building.
We didn’t know what to do until the neighbor shouted from downstairs, repeating what an Israeli soldier had told him: Everyone come down, stand in a line and raise your hands while holding your IDs.
We exited toward the street, where soldiers, tanks and vehicles were positioned. It was the first time in my life to see Israeli soldiers so close.
Every inch of their bodies was covered with armor or a piece of equipment. This density of armor made their bodies look unusually huge, invincible.
We passed in front of a tank, its machine guns aimed at us during the inspection. I never imagined that a tank was this enormous, a huge mass of steel, equipped with the latest technologies.
I realized how much courage it must take for any resistance fighter to directly confront such an extermination machine.
The soldiers separated the women and children from men. They ordered us to strip down to our underwear or else be beaten.
Then they took our personal information before blindfolding and handcuffing us so tightly behind our backs that I felt my wrists almost come detached from my arms.
They led us to another place and kept us standing for about an hour, insulting us throughout as laser lights pierced the blindfolds every now and then.
As our bodies were shivering from the night cold, a loud noise grew louder, seemingly getting closer to us.
The ground shook beneath our feet as if an earthquake had struck. An intense light penetrated the blindfolds.
I thought the tank would run over us, so I began to recite the shahada – the Muslim profession of faith – and prayed to God to have mercy on us.
The loud sound and light got closer and closer, and just as I heard the engine stop, I lost consciousness and crashed to the ground.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself lying on the ground and able to see, as the soldiers had removed the blindfold.
“You were going to kill us all,” my brother whispered to me, explaining that the soldiers were on high alert when I fainted, thinking I was trying to escape.
Blood to keep us warm
The soldiers then called us one by one for interrogation, starting with my father, Omar, my brother Ramez and then me.
Throughout the waiting period, we were like punching bags to the soldiers as they beat and verbally insulted us.
We were kneeling on the ground, which the soldiers had littered with pieces of glass and rubble from destroyed houses.
When my turn came, the interrogator asked me: “What’s your name?”
“Salah Saleh,” I replied.
“What are you studying?”
“Computer systems engineering at Al-Azhar University.”
“Are you married? Are you engaged?”
“No.”
“Do you love or at least think about someone?” he asked.
I smiled slightly and replied, “God willing, He will grant us what is best.”
“Who is she?” he asked “What’s her name?”
I remained silent, and as he persisted, I grew more determined to say nothing.
“Okay, Salah,” the interrogator said, “what were you doing on 7 October?”
“I was asleep, and I woke up to the sound of missiles. Nobody understood what was happening,” I replied.
“So, what do you think about what happened?” he asked.
I paused for a moment and replied, “As you can see, the whole country is destroyed. Our lives, our jobs, our future – it’s all gone, just because of an irresponsible act like this.”
“Okay, Salah,” the interrogator said before ordering one of the soldiers to take me back out with the others.
I was forced to kneel again, blindfolded and hands tied. I had no idea what was happening around me, only the soldiers talking in Hebrew and the laser beams from their weapons and flashlights piercing my blindfold intermittently.
The other detainees and I were left in this position for about two hours, during which the soldiers would beat us with rifle butts and sometimes with their boots. They would also pour water on us and extinguish cigarettes on our backs.
It was bitterly cold, and we huddled together to get warm. Otherwise, when we were beaten by the soldiers, warm blood would rush over our frozen bodies. Though it might sound bizarre, it was a wonderful feeling. The blood was incredibly effective in warming us.
More interrogation after a freezing night
As we sat there, a soldier approached and shouted, “Where are Ramez and Salah?”
A soldier then came and put a blanket around me and led me outside, grabbing me by my head and below my neck as he directed me: “Right, left, lift your leg, forward,” and so on.
We walked for about two minutes over the rubble of destroyed houses until he sat me down on a rock.
I sat waiting in the darkness of the blindfold. I shivered from the cold and tried to pull the blanket down and adjust it with my teeth to cover my bare chest, but it kept slipping because of the way my hands were tied behind my back.
Most of the time, I would bend over to cover as much of my body as possible.
I wept that night, feeling like the world around me was shrinking and that my end was near.
I don’t know how much time had passed, but it wasn’t less than two hours before I sensed a soldier approaching and lowering my blindfold slightly so I could see him.
He was tall, equipped with gear and weapons. One of his eyes was blue and appeared injured, like it had been shot.
He pointed his weapon at my knee and loaded it before telling me: “Keep your eyes on mine while I’m asking you questions.”
He interrogated me three times. After each round, he would leave for around an hour and then return.
I answered all his questions calmly, but when he knew that our family home had been bombed during the 2008-9 war on Gaza, as one of our family members was in the resistance, the soldier was delightfully surprised and even called another soldier to tell him about this.
After he finished, he left me for about 15 minutes before another soldier came and led me to where the other detainees were.
We asked the soldiers several times when we would be released, and, as we froze from the cold, we repeatedly asked for blankets.
They responded only with insults, beatings and even mocked the miserable state we were in.
When we insisted that we needed blankets, one of the soldiers said, “Listen, we’re not going to give you blankets or anything else. We just want you to die. When the next shift comes, you can ask them.”
Around an hour later, the next shift arrived, and when we again asked for blankets, one of the soldiers – to my surprise – started writing down what we said.
I told him that we needed food, water, blankets and to use the bathroom. He told me to get up and led me to the bathroom, blindfolded and hands tied.
After relieving myself and returning to where I was, a soldier brought us some food, water and blankets and covered our shivering bodies.
I took a tiny bite of toast and only a small sip of water so as to avoid having to go to the bathroom again.
I briefly thought they were humane for treating us nicely, but it was only to trick us into collaborating with them.
“Do you smoke, Salah?”
This was when the soldier asked me if I would do them the “small favor” of going down into the tunnel.
After I vehemently refused, I was sent back to where the other detainees were.
The soldiers then took my brother Omar and another detainee.
Only retrospectively did I know that they were offered what I had refused. After a short while, a soldier told me, “Your brother accepted the offer you refused; now he will be set free, and you are not.”
I have not seen Omar since, though I did see the other detainee who agreed to go into the tunnel.
Through my loose blindfold I was able to observe some of what happened next: It appeared that an engineering team was preparing the necessary equipment to enter the tunnel.
What struck me was that the soldiers never approached the tunnel entrance, and they communicated with the detainee via radio.
I heard the soldiers saying that the door inside the tunnel was tightly sealed, and the only way to open it was by blowing it up.
I don’t know what happened next because one of the soldiers noticed that I was able to see, so he rushed over and blindfolded me tightly before hitting me on the head and moving me to another room in the building.
As soon as I was seated, a soldier subjected me to severe humiliation and abuse: He poured water on my face, which was completely covered with a cloth. He placed the muzzle of a gun against various parts of my body and pulled the trigger without firing. He beat me all over my body – I think my nose was broken in two places. He insulted me and made threats against my family.
This continued for approximately three hours.
That night, my blindfold loosened again.
The room looked like a foggy morning, full of smoke from the soldiers’ cigarettes. Taking a breath was incredibly difficult for me.
One of the soldiers suddenly approached me and said, laughing, “Do you smoke, Salah?”
“No, I don’t,” I replied.
Another soldier laughed and said, “No, you will smoke!”
“OK, I’ll smoke,” I replied.
I had never smoked in my life and never wanted to, but I had to go along with them.
The soldier held a lit cigarette for me; I took a drag and quickly exhaled.
“No, no, Salah, you have to inhale. You can’t do that!” he said sarcastically.
He held the cigarette for me again, and I took another drag.
“Inhale,” he said.
I was overcome with a violent coughing fit and could hear all the soldiers burst into laughter.
After that, for around two more hours, the soldiers continued mocking, beating and insulting me.
A thousand times I wished I had died rather than live through such a situation for even one minute.
Field execution
I thought about escaping many times, but then an officer suddenly appeared with several soldiers and moved us all to another room that was devoid of furniture, except for one corner.
The officer sat me down in a chair and took out his gun. He wrapped what appeared to be a silencer around the muzzle of his gun. He then loaded the weapon and placed it against my head.
I felt calm and at peace. I quietly recited the shahada, praying to God and asking for His forgiveness.
The officer tried to elicit a confession that I’m a Hamas militant. He wanted to know why my family didn’t go south; he said that I was a “terrorist,” that my family members were “terrorists.”
(I have never been and never will be affiliated with any specific party or faction, but I am affiliated with ideologies and principles, nothing more.)
The officer finished the interrogation and pulled out my chair. I knelt on the blanket. A soldier wrapped me in more blankets and tightened the blindfold.
I heard the sound of the silencer being prepared again, followed by several shots and bodies bumping to the ground. I realized that people had been executed near me, and I knew my turn was next. I prayed to God, quietly recited the shahada, and asked for forgiveness. I was ready – even eager – for death, longing to meet it.
The officer started calling names, summoning between six and eight other soldiers.
I was seated facing the soldiers. I could make out vague, shadowy shapes through the blindfold.
All the soldiers prepared their weapons and loaded them. They sent a soldier to fetch the Torah, and they began to recite passages from the Torah.
As soon as they started, I began reciting the shahada.
They pulled the triggers – nothing came out.
They did this several times: started repeating their prayers, recited the countdown and pulled the trigger just for nothing to come out.
After this “fake execution,” the officer took me to another room and left two soldiers to guard me.
I was forbidden from lying down or even changing my position. They took my blanket, placing it two meters or less away from me – I could see it as the cold was gnawing at my bones.
My hands were tied tightly behind my back, and my shoulders felt almost dislocated from the forced posture. My muscles and bones ached from sitting in that position.
I remembered I hadn’t prayed that day, so I began making up all the five prayers using only my head and eyes. It was a prayer without clothes, without ablution, without the usual movements, without me even knowing which way I was praying!
But it was one of the most peaceful and reverent prayers I ever prayed. It was the prayer of a fearful, confused, lost servant, yearning for deliverance from his distress, with no power or strength except in God.
Time weighed heavily that night. Sleep was forbidden, speaking was forbidden, changing position was forbidden – everything was forbidden except breathing and swift death.
They wanted a very slow and humiliating death for me.
I entered a state of unconsciousness, a state between life and death or perhaps hallucination. I would see people and speak to them in a place resembling a garden with some trees.
Then, suddenly, I would feel my hands bound, aching from the binding tightness, from which I would realize I was not yet dead.
I was sitting hunched over, with my knees touching my forehead. I would press my head against my knees and lower my forehead to slide the blindfold down.
The two guarding soldiers would walk over and blindfold me again, much more tightly, and insult and beat me.
These events – the dreamlike visions and the soldiers’ reaction when I removed the blindfold – happened many times, and I don’t know how the night passed.
A soldier then came and moved me to another place where other detainees were.
The soldiers started talking to the other detainees about their release, saying they would be freed at the shift change.
I was hopeful. I asked one of the soldiers about the time of our release, to which he replied, “Everyone will be released except you, Salah. You’re a terrorist, you’re Hamas, and you’re going with us.”
I felt as if my heart had been ripped from its place. I was deeply saddened, thinking about how I would remain alone in this hell forever.
A plot twist
Some time later, a soldier came, put a small piece of chocolate in my mouth and said, “Eat it, Salah, so that when you get out, you can tell them how kind and humane we were to you.”
I was perplexed by the “when you get out” part.
“Listen, Salah, we’re all here to kill and torture you, but you’re lucky the captain said to let you out because you’re not needed,” he furiously said.
I remained silent for a moment and didn’t react.
“May God bless the captain,” I calmly replied, internally bursting with joy.
The soldiers brought me and other three detainees down the building and removed only the blindfolds.
It was early morning. I couldn’t open my eyes – it was the first time I had seen daylight in almost three days.
Once my eyes reset, I looked around and saw that the neighborhood had become military barracks full of military vehicles and hundreds of soldiers. The scale of the destruction devastated me.
The soldiers pushed us to keep walking down the street, but we didn’t know where to go or what to do.
As we walked, a tank moved behind us, firing a barrage of bullets every now and then over our heads and at our feet.
After a few hundred meters, we found a school for displaced people.
We went inside, and I was happy to see people around me. They rushed to us, untied our hands and gave us clothes.
It was the first time I had seen my hands in front of me, but I couldn’t move them normally as my nerves and muscles were sore. My hands felt incredibly heavy, and moving them required a huge and painful effort.
We sat down with the school administration who insisted that we remain there until we recovered and regained our strength and decided what to do next.
I was utterly exhausted, so I asked their permission to sleep on a blanket that was lying on the floor of the room, but they told me they would bring a mattress so I could rest better. When they brought it, they found me already asleep. I was in desperate need of sleep.
I woke up after about four hours and gathered my strength, stood up and went outside. I walked around the schoolyard.
I decided to sleep there that night and look for my family the next day.
The next day, I trekked to the house of my friend Muhammad, who lived in al-Abbas area in Gaza City.
When I saw Muhammad, I hugged him with tears.
I told him what had happened, and then he brought me some clothes and food. I showered and spent the night at his house near Al-Shifa Hospital, agreeing that the next morning I would search for my family, whom I knew nothing about.
The next morning, Muhammad and I went to al-Wihda Street, where many people had taken shelter at schools.
While we were walking, a man called me from afar then he came close and said in a voice mixed with joy and tears, “Salah! Is that you?!”
It was my brother Ramez – we hugged each other and cried. I was looking at him and trying to process how all of this had happened.
Muhammad, Ramez and I continued searching for my family in the schools and shelters before my brother found one of his friends who told us that our family was in a school in al-Rimal neighborhood.
Reunion
We hurried to that school, and as we reached the class my family was sheltering in, my friend Muhammad waited for us outside and told me, “Be strong and don’t be so weak. Be strong in front of your mother.”
When I entered, my mother was sitting, so much changed from sadness and grief.
I burst into tears immediately and couldn’t control myself, like a small child. I hugged her tightly, and we all burst into tears, along with everyone else in the room – my aunt, her husband and their children.
I greeted them all, still unable to believe this was really happening.
I saw my father coming from afar, and it felt like I had been away for a hundred years, not five days. His hair was completely white, he was frail, in a pitiful state, his face had aged strangely.
I wept for his condition and for my joy to finally see him.
“Thank God for your safe return, son. Prison is for men. The important thing is that you’re all well,” he said, embracing me tightly.
“All that’s left is for Omar to return, and then our joy will be complete,” my aunt said, her face beaming with hope after my brother and I were reunited.
They had spent the previous days searching for us, and in the end, we were the ones who came to them.
The author is a writer from Gaza.
Pseudonyms are used in the article for safety considerations.