DayofPal– During the nearly 16 months of war, Israeli forces have systematically targeted journalists and medical personnel in a brutal campaign that defies human comprehension.
Among those was Ahmed Shaqoura, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, who was recently released from Israeli prisons after enduring ten months of relentless torture.
When Shaqoura stepped out of captivity a week ago, even his closest friends struggled to recognize him. More disturbingly, he did not recognize himself.
“When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t know who I was.”
The toll was severe as Shaqoura had lost 65 kilograms from his body and his weakened legs could barely carry the burden of survival.
Shaqoura is a resident of Beit Lahia’s housing project and a father of five children. Working as a Journalist since 2005, his ordeal began when Israeli forces arrested him outside Palestine Mosque in Gaza City while he was on duty wearing his marked vest.
From that moment, Shaqoura was transferred between various detention centers and tortured campa, subjected to physical and psychological torment. The truma attacked him as Israeli authorities kept spreading false narratives among detainees, telling them that Gaza had been annihilated.
“They told us, ‘There is no more Gaza, no Jabalia, no Beit Lahia. Your families don’t exist anymore.’”
Shaqoura revealed that in prison food was scarce, a handful amount just to keep prisoners alive but constantly they are teetering on the brink of starvation and death.
For Ahmed Shaqoura, captivity was not just about confinement, it was an unrelenting nightmare of sever unbearable torture, starvation, and psychological warfare.
“From the moment I was detained, I was beaten, especially on my feet. They hung me in stress positions for so long that I now suffer from severe muscle damage in my hands and legs.”
Israeli forces subjected Shaqoura and his fellow detainees to brutal conditions: sleep deprivation, exposure to the cold, and complete medical neglect. But the physical pain paled in comparison to the mental torment.
“They brought in a prisoner whose back and eyes had been burned. An Israeli soldier had poured acid on him. Days later, he lost sight in one eye. They let him suffer for weeks, refusing him treatment.”
Veteran detainees, Palestinians who had endured Israeli prisons so long years before, confirmed that the conditions had worsened beyond logic since October 7, 2023.
Shaqoura said that the daily routine was the systematic starvation, relentless beatings, and total denial of medical care, and the aim was not just to punish the prisoners, but to erase the truth, to erase the journalists who could tell it, and erase the doctors who could document it.
“If they knew you were a journalist or a doctor, the torture was even worse,” Shaqoura explained. International organizations, including the Red Cross, he said, did nothing to protect them.
The day of release should have been a moment of celebration, but for Shaqoura, it was a cruel awakening. He searched for his colleagues, asking for one name after another, the response was always the same: “killed.”
Shaqoura didn’t expect his release as, he along with other colleagues, were cut from the outside world.
“We sensed something was happening, maybe a prisoner exchange. But none of us dared believe it. Not until we stepped onto Gaza’s soil as free men.”
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