(WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 18, 2025)—Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Norway, Australia, and the United States should impose “Global Magnitsky” style sanctions on four Israeli officials for their roles in severe abuses and grave human rights violations against Palestinians in Israeli prisons since October 7, 2023, including torture, starvation, and sexual violence, DAWN said in a 18-page dossier published today. The officials named in the complaint are Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel Prison Service (IPS) Commissioner Kobi Yaakobi, Ofer Prison commander Vadim Goldstein, and Ketziot (Negev) Prison commander Yosef Knipes.
“Ben-Gvir, his hand-picked prison henchman Yaakobi, and the two prison wardens have been starving, torturing, and disappearing Palestinians into Israel’s civilian prison system ever since October 7, 2023,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of DAWN. “With no prospect of accountability in Israel and escalating regional violence due to Israel’s impunity, the very least the international community can do is to step up and punish the officials responsible for running these torture camps.”
New Prison Policies Produce Prison Abuses
DAWN’s submission documents dozens of instances of institutionalized abuses of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, including but not limited to systematic and widespread acts of severe and arbitrary violence, sexual assault, humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation, forced unhygienic conditions, sleep deprivation, and enforced disappearances under the direction and supervision of Ben-Gvir between October 2023 and December 2024.
In the wake of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Ben-Gvir and the IPS implemented a series of formal and informal policy changes vis-à-vis Palestinian security prisoners, resulting in systematic and deliberate abuses against them. The policy changes include a severe reduction of food and water provisions, the denial of medical treatment, severe deprivation of hygiene products and access to showers, severely restricted lawyer visits, and banning visits by the Red Cross. In order to shield IPS officers from accountability for their criminal acts, Ben-Gvir, Yaakobi, Goldstein, and Knipes also allowed guards to wear full face coverings. In addition, Ben-Gvir issued pronouncements encouraging violence against detainees, whom he referred to as “beasts of prey.”
Minister Ben-Gvir and Commissioner Yaakobi institutionalized these new prison policies exclusively against Palestinian prisoners knowing they would produce inhumane abuses across the Israeli prison system, and despite the fact that these policies violate international human rights laws governing the treatment of detainees. Wardens Goldstein and Knipes were responsible for implementing and overseeing the same abuses at Ofer and Ketziot prisons, respectively.
“Civilian authorities implemented the same policies of starvation and collective punishment in Israeli prisons that the Israeli army imposed in Gaza, and for which the ICC indicted Netanyahu,” said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, Israel-Palestine director at DAWN. “Israel’s systematic and widespread abuses are not just wartime anomalies but institutionalized crimes against humanity that have permeated every appendage of its apartheid regime.”
The resulting abuses included unacceptable overcrowding, severe medical neglect, undernutrition, malnutrition and starvation, and arbitrary beatings and torture that included sexual violence and humiliation. Prison conditions deteriorated so dramatically after the start of the Gaza war that the head of the Israel Security Agency (ISA, also known as Shin Bet), an agency itself notorious for torturing Palestinian prisoners, issued a letter to Ben-Gvir denouncing the horrid conditions of the prisons.
Prison Standards and Sanctions Precedent
Israel is party to a number of binding international legal instruments that govern detention conditions and the treatment of individuals in custody. Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, all persons under the jurisdiction of the state are protected by Articles 7 and 10, which prohibit torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and require that all detainees be treated with dignity and humanity. Under the Convention Against Torture (CAT), to which Israel is also a party, Articles 2, 12, and 13 establish the absolute prohibition of torture and require prompt and impartial investigation of any credible allegations.
The UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, also known as the Nelson Mandela Rules, mandate treating prisoners with dignity and without discrimination; providing them with adequate space, lighting, and hygiene; access to healthcare equivalent to what the public receives, as well as nutritious food; and family contact and religious rights, among other provisions. Such standards apply regardless of the nationality or status of the detainee and impose clear obligations on state authorities to prevent, investigate, and remedy mistreatment in custody. Where state officials are directly responsible for, complicit in, or fail to stop such abuse, their conduct rises to the level of sanctionable activity under human rights-based sanctions programs, including the U.S.’s Executive Order 13818 (“EO 13818″), which was drafted and signed by Donald Trump in his first term.
The international community has previously sanctioned officials responsible for gross abuses against prison detainees identical or similar to the abuses committed by Israeli officials. The U.S. government has, in at least two dozen cases, sanctioned individuals and entities responsible for the abuse, torture, or inhumane treatment of prisoners and detainees. In those decisions the U.S. repeatedly affirmed that such conduct—including physical abuse, medical neglect, denial of due process, and extrajudicial killings in custody—meets the threshold of serious human rights abuses under E.O. 13818.
The U.S. has used these sanctions against officials responsible for prison and detention abuses in China, Cuba, Iran, South Sudan, Uganda, and Yemen. Other countries have taken similar actions. In 2017, Canada issued sanctions against Venezuelan prison officials. In 2021, 2022 and 2024, the EU, Australia and the UK issued sanctions against Russian prison officials for similar abuses, respectively.
“Global sanctions efforts should not stop at settler violence in the West Bank but should also address the systematic abuses targeting Palestinians in Israeli detention facilities,” added Mohsen Farshneshani, sanctions advisor at DAWN and founder of the Sanctions Law Center. “Failing to act against the architects and enablers of these institutionalized abuses—flaunted by top officials on social media—undermines the credibility of Magnitsky-style programs while flouting international norms.”
The Abusers
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli national security minister, is responsible for all appointments within the IPS and dictates the organization’s policies. Ben-Gvir mandated abusive policy changes within the prison system, inspiring and granting effective immunity to officials throughout the IPS to commit serious human rights violations. These policy changes and resulting violations, detailed in the report, included a reduction of food and water, unacceptable overcrowding, arbitrary violence including torture and sexual violence, and deliberate medical neglect. A February 2024 report from Physicians for Human Rights—Israel concluded that: “the various prohibited measures utilized across the entire prison system indicate that the prisons are not acting independently but rather in accordance with directives from above.”
Kobi Yaakobi, the IPS commissioner, has command and oversight responsibility for all Israeli prisons, making him responsible for the starvation, torture, physical violence, sexual assaults, medical neglect, and lack of hygiene documented in the report. Almost immediately after being appointed by Ben-Gvir, he openly declared his intention to worsen conditions for Palestinian prisoners, “in keeping with the policy of the national security minister.”
Yosef Knipes is the commander of the IPS-run Ketziot Prison, located in the southern Negev region of Israel. Knipes holds command responsibility and is personally responsible for the abuses documented by DAWN, carried out at the prison under his supervision. These include starvation, torture, severe medical neglect, and forced unhygienic conditions, and severe and arbitrary violence..
In January 2024, Knipes described his new approach to Palestinian prisoners after October 7, 2023: “As far as we are concerned, everyone is a terrorist, so we reduced the conditions to a minimum according to the law. There are no more canteens, the spokesperson institution has been abolished. Regarding the food issue, it is not as described in the media, we have also reduced that to a minimum.”
Vadim Goldstein has been commander of the IPS-run Ofer Prison—distinct from the recently opened, IDF-run Ofer Military Prison Camp, both located at the Ofer Military Camp—in the Occupied West Bank, since 2020. As DAWN’s submission documents, Goldstein holds command responsibility and is personally culpable for the abuses carried out under his supervision. Testimonies of prisoners held in Ofer compiled by DAWN in its submission tell of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse and assault, policies bordering on starvation, and severe medical neglect.
