💥 Explosive Documents Show Israel Is Holding at Least 4,500 Palestinian Hostages
A leaked Israeli army database, exposed by +972 Magazine and The Guardian, reveals that Israel admits that 75% of the Palestinians they kidnap are just everyday civilians.
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A Database They Never Wanted Us to See
An explosive joint investigation by +972 Magazine and The Guardian has exposed one of the most damning truths of this entire genocide: Israel is holding thousands of Palestinians from Gaza not as prisoners of war, not as criminals, but as hostages.
The leaked data comes from Israel’s own Military Intelligence Directorate. According to the classified database, only one in four of the 6,000 Palestinians arrested in Gaza since October 7 were identified as militants. That means at least 4,500 men, women, and children — three-quarters of those abducted — are civilians.
Israel has spent nearly a year telling the world that everyone it detains from Gaza is a “terrorist.” Their own intelligence proves that was a lie.
Stripped, Shackled, Disappeared
The investigation, which draws on Israeli intelligence data, prison records, and testimonies from both Palestinian detainees and Israeli soldiers, describes a system of mass abduction. Palestinians were rounded up in refugee camps, dragged out of hospitals, separated at checkpoints, and thrown onto trucks. Men were stripped, blindfolded, shackled, and marched in convoys.
One Israeli officer admitted his unit’s mission in Khan Younis was to “drain the camp” — not to target fighters, but to force the population south and destabilize entire communities. Another officer confessed there was no distinction between “a terrorist… and someone working for the water authority.” Civilians and militants alike were swept up and disappeared. They are all literally being held hostage - and the only reason the world doesn’t describe it as such is because Israel has lied about it over and over and over again.
Who They Took
The stories are staggering. Doctors and nurses were pulled from hospitals mid-surgery, beaten, electrocuted, and held as so-called combatants. At least two senior physicians — Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh and Dr. Iyad Al-Rantisi — died in Israeli custody. Elderly Palestinians, including an 82-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s, were abducted and shackled, classified as unlawful combatants. Soldiers even created a compound nicknamed “the geriatric pen.”Amputees and patients in wheelchairs were taken directly from Gaza’s hospitals, trucked into Israel, and left in cells without care.
Ordinary civilians — barbers, farmers, laborers — were pulled from convoys, beaten, interrogated, and disappeared for months with no charges. One man testified: “I work as a barber in the camp, not affiliated with any faction. Every time a soldier approached, he cursed at us, until a truck arrived and we were thrown inside, piled on top of each other.”
The Law Built for Disappearance
How does Israel justify this? With a law specifically engineered for war crimes. The Unlawful Combatants Law, enacted in 2002, allows Israel to imprison civilians indefinitely without charge or trial. It authorizes the state to deny detainees access to a lawyer for up to 75 days and to rely on secret evidence in hearings that last only minutes. And the law then allows Israel to renew and renew the detention orders - effectively keep hostages for months or even years.
Human rights lawyers inside Israel have been blunt: this law was created to “bypass the Geneva Conventions.” Michael Sfard, one of Israel’s most prominent human rights attorneys, explained: “The conditions of Gazans in detention in Israel absolutely, without doubt, do not meet what is stipulated in the Fourth Geneva Convention.” Hassan Jabareen of Adalah put it even more starkly, saying the law “legalizes the abduction of Palestinians from Gaza.”
Torture and Deaths in Custody
The investigation documents systematic torture inside Israel’s prisons. Detainees were beaten with rifle butts and batons. They were electrocuted. Doctors were threatened with mutilation. Prisoners were denied food, warmth, and medical care. Dozens that we know of have died in custody. It’s likely hundreds.
A surgeon from Al-Shifa Hospital recalled: “They pushed our heads into the gravel, again and again for four hours, beat us savagely with batons, and electrocuted us.” Another doctor was beaten so severely his ribs were broken. When Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, the head of orthopedics at Al-Shifa, died in custody after being arrested in December 2023, his family said plainly: he was tortured to death.
Bargaining Chips, Not Security
The most chilling revelation is that these detentions are not even about intelligence or security. They are about leverage. Israeli lawmakers admitted they created thousands of hostages to use as bargaining chips. One soldier described the anger among his peers: “They’re not returning hostages, so why should we let them go?”
Think about that. Thousands of civilians kidnapped, tortured, and warehoused in Israel’s prisons — not for crimes, not for security, but as pawns in political deals. This is hostage-taking by any definition of international law.
A Pattern of Lies
Israel’s leaders told the world they were arresting “terrorists.” Their soldiers told the world they were fighting Hamas. Their prison service told the world nearly every hostage was a fighter. But the database — their own database — says otherwise.
And the proof is in their actions: over 2,500 Palestinians initially branded “unlawful combatants” have quietly been released. If they were truly militants, why release them? Because they never were. It was always a lie.
The Truth Laid Bare
Brothers and sisters, let’s call this what it is: Israel has abducted and disappeared thousands of civilians from Gaza, branded them with a legal fiction, and tortured them in conditions so brutal that many never came home.
This is not security. This is not law. This is hostage-taking.
And the world needs to stop pretending otherwise.
When a state can kidnap doctors and nurses, torture the elderly, starve prisoners, and call it “combatant detention,” it has crossed from occupation into the machinery of genocide. The database leaked to +972 Magazine and The Guardian is not just a set of numbers. It is a confession. Israel knows the majority of these prisoners are civilians. It knows. And it does it anyway.
International law is clear: the internment of civilians is only lawful if they pose an imperative security threat. But Israel has redefined “imperative” to mean “Palestinian.” This is why Israel bans cameras in detention centers. This is why it strips prisoners naked and blindfolds them. This is why it denies Red Cross access. Because if the world saw what those prisoners endured, if the world saw who those prisoners actually are, the entire narrative of “fighting Hamas” would collapse.
At least 4,500 Palestinian civilians are being held hostage by Israel. Doctors. Children. The elderly. Men pulled from their families and disappeared. Women separated from their babies. Professionals dragged from their hospitals. This is not counterterrorism. This is not self-defense. This is state-sponsored kidnapping on a mass scale.
And as long as Israel can hide behind the label of “unlawful combatants,” the disappearances will continue. The question is simple: How many more Palestinians will vanish into Israel’s prisons before the world says enough?
Why Membership Matters
Family, if you’ve made it this far, you know the truth: the powerful protect their own. They lie about the numbers. They bury the files. They tell us to move on. But we will not.
This newsroom only survives because people like you step up. We don’t take ads. We don’t take corporate money. We depend on you.
If you believe the world must know that Israel is holding at least 4,500 Palestinian civilians as hostages, if you believe survivors and detainees deserve justice and not silence, then I’m asking you — urgently — to become a monthly, annual, or founding member today.
Together we are building the kind of journalism the powerful can’t silence.
Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun
FYI: Please read, learn, comment, share, and subscribe. Here are three recent free pieces I wrote:
⚖️ The Day Israel Murdered 34 American Sailors, Injured 171 More, and Got Away With It
Family, I need you to sit with this truth. The same government that drops American bombs on Palestinian children in Gaza today once used those same bombs, those same tactics, against American sailors — and Washington covered it up.
Please read, comment, share, and subscribe. The world needs to understand this.
Could say every Palestinian has been held hostage for 77 years by genocidal impostors.