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<div class="gmail-inner-article-top"><h1 class="gmail-">USAID officials take 'daily meetings' at Israel's Sde Teiman torture camp</h1><p class="gmail-">US
aid agency is led by Samantha Powers, a scholar of genocide who has
refused to step down amid US support for Israel's genocide of
Palestinians in Gaza</p><div class="gmail-another-name"><p><a href="https://thecradle.co/authors/news-desk-9" style="color:rgb(164,4,4)">News Desk</a></p></div><div class="gmail-another-name" style="margin-top:16px"><p><span>OCT 15, 2024 - </span><font size="1"><a href="https://thecradle.co/articles/usaid-officials-take-daily-meetings-at-israels-sde-teiman-torture-camp">https://thecradle.co/articles/usaid-officials-take-daily-meetings-at-israels-sde-teiman-torture-camp</a></font></p></div></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-img"><img src="http://thecradle-main.oss-eu-central-1.aliyuncs.com/public/articles/e6482436-8ae1-11ef-bf9d-00163e02c055.jpeg" alt="" width="491" height="276" style="margin-right: 0px;"><span> (Photo credit: Chaim Goldberg/ Flash90)</span></div><div class="gmail-inner-article-content"><div class="gmail-row"><div class="gmail-col-md-8 gmail-col-sm-7"><div class="gmail-article-content"><span><p>Officials
from the US’s main humanitarian agency attend daily meetings on an
Israeli military base that also hosts the notorious Sde Teiman torture
camp for Palestinian detainees from Gaza, <i>The Guardian</i> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/14/usaid-gasa-aid-meetings-sde-teiman">reported</a> on 15 October.</p><p>United
States Agency for International Development (USAID) is tasked with
working with Israeli officials, the UN, and international NGOs to bring
humanitarian assistance into Gaza as part of the Joint Coordination
Board (JCB).</p><p>According to three officials with the agency, USAID
officials have been attending meetings as part of the JCB at the Sde
Teiman base in southern Israel since 29 July.</p><p>Sde Teiman was set
up as a temporary holding facility for detainees from Gaza after the
start of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in October 2023.
Since that time, Israeli and western media, the UN, and rights groups
have documented the horrific torture and rape of Palestinian detainees
at the camp.</p><p><i>The</i> <i>Guardian</i> viewed an internal USAID
document that referred to “the present JCB location on Sde Teiman IDF
base,” located outside the city of Be’er Sheva.</p><p>The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told <i>The</i> <i>Guardian </i>that two USAID officials travel to Sde Teiman daily for JCB meetings with Israeli and UN officials.</p><p>Israeli
soldiers working as guards in the facility torture Palestinian
detainees through the use of rape, beatings, electrocutions, and forced
feedings.</p><p>An Israeli doctor who worked at the camp <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/06/middleeast/doctor-israel-hospital-conditions-intl/index.html">reported</a>
that doctors in the camp are “routinely” forced to amputate prisoners’
limbs as a result of prolonged handcuffing by the guards.</p><p>“The
situation there is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu
Ghraib and Guantánamo,” Khaled Mahajneh, a lawyer who visited Sde
Teiman, <a href="https://www.972mag.com/sde-teiman-prisoners-lawyer-mahajneh/?utm_source=972+Magazine+Newsletter&utm_campaign=e6b556b6af-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_9_12_2022_11_20_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1fe821d25-e6b556b6af-320830489">told</a> <i>+972 Magazine</i>.</p><div class="gmail-twitter-tweet gmail-twitter-tweet-rendered" style="display:flex;max-width:550px;width:100%;margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:10px"></div> <p>The <i>Guardian</i>
added that the “officials who spoke with the Guardian said that the
Israeli military has undermined coordination with the UN and
humanitarian organizations over the past year, and the relocation of the
JCB to Sde Teiman reflected that.”</p><p> “It seems like trolling,” one of them told <i>The</i> <i>Guardian</i>.</p><p>Last week, the UN Commission of Inquiry for the occupied Palestinian territories issued a <a href="https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/262/79/pdf/n2426279.pdf">report</a>
stating it “received credible information concerning rape and sexual
assault, including the use of an electrical probe to cause burns to the
anus and the insertion of objects, such as sticks, broomsticks, and
vegetables, into the anus. Some of those acts were reportedly filmed by
soldiers.”</p><p>The report also found that as of 15 July, at least 53
Palestinian detainees had died in Israeli detention facilities since 7
October 2023, presumably due to torture.</p><p>One prisoner, Thaer Abu
Assab from Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank, was beaten to death by
prison guards on 18 November. He had been imprisoned since 2005.</p><p>Dr
Iyad Rantisi, the director of a women’s hospital in Beit Lahia, was
detained on 11 November and taken to Shikma Prison. He died six days
later after being tortured to death by Israel’s Security Agency, the
Shin Bet.</p><p>Samantha Power, the current head of USAID, was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/31/samantha-power-usaid-confronted-gaza/">criticized</a>
by current and former USAID employees during a public event in January
for her complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.</p><p>“You
wrote a book on genocide, and you’re still working for the
administration: You should resign and speak out,” said Agnieszka Sykes, a
global health specialist who left her job at USAID in protest.</p><p>Before
joining the Obama White House, Power had become famous as an academic
after she wrote a book, “The Problem from Hell,” criticizing US failures
to prevent genocide in past conflicts.</p></span></div></div></div></div>
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