In Israel’s genocide, torture is state policy – UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese

Israeli torture of Palestinians is a core state policy, a new United Nations (UN) report led by Francesca Albanese warns. The UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine found that various forms of torture have become tools of the genocide. And she warned that the practice extends far beyond prison walls:

In Gaza, #WestBank & East Jerusalem, Palestinians are subjected to a continuum of suffering – @FranceskAlbs denounces torture of Palestinians, says it extends beyond Israeli prison walls. “There is no refuge. No safe place to exist.” @UN_HRC #HRC61https://t.co/9IBBWMCF9C pic.twitter.com/QRRsh53y6j

— UN Special Procedures (@UN_SPExperts) March 23, 2026

Albanese said:

Since the onset of the genocide, the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty.

What once operated in the shadows is now practiced openly: a regime of organised humiliation, pain and degradation, sanctioned at the highest political levels.

Albanese named Israel’s far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, among others, as having:

institutionalised torture, collective punishment and manifestly dehumanising conditions of detention.

Those responsible, she said:

 must face investigation and justice, including before the International Criminal Court.

The report said that in the aftermath of 7 October, torture became an “integral” component of:

the domination of and punishment inflicted on men, women and children, both through custodial abuse and through a relentless campaign of forced displacement, mass killings, deprivation and destruction of all means of life to inflict long-term collective pain and suffering.

Francesca Albanese centres settler colonialism

Settler-colonialism is central to Albanese’s analysis. And torture is a core tactic in the Israeli process of land theft and violent displacement. She accused Israel of carrying out:

A continuous, territorially pervasive regime of psychological terror…designed to break bodies, deprive a people of their dignity and force them from their land.

And Albanese said there was nothing random about Israel’s use of torture:

This is not incidental violence. It is the architecture of settler-colonialism, built on a foundation of dehumanization and maintained by a policy of cruelty and collective torture.

The Canary has reported on Israeli torture of Palestinian detainees, doctors, activists and children. One far-right pundit even called for the torture of climate and Palestine solidarity activist Greta Thunberg. You can read our reporting on the issue here.

A group of Israeli soldiers raped a Palestinian prisoner in one of the most high-profile recent cases. Footage of the rape was leaked, leading to a trial. Shockingly – and despite video evidence – all of the accused were acquitted on 12 March:

They raped a man.
They gang-raped him.
They raped him so brutally that he had to be hospitalized.
Doctors documented the injuries.
The video of the assault was leaked.

Now the rapists are free.

This is not just unlawful and immoral. It is sick!#ThisIsIsrael https://t.co/8eSc7RNsJb

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) March 13, 2026

Israel enjoys impunity in its violence, whether in the jails or abroad in military assaults on Iran and Lebanon. At the heart is Zionist ideology is a chilling indifference to the pain of the occupied and any who oppose Israel’s expansionist plans. And Israel’s allies, the UK included, are clearly content to support Israel despite its use of torture as a state policy.

Featured image via the Canary