The head of Israel's prison system has given a group of Jewish settlers a tour of a maximum-security prison, where they were allowed to watch Palestinian detainees handcuffed and forced to lie on the ground.
Kobi Yaakobi, the chief commissioner of the Israel Prison Service, invited 20 members of his synagogue in Har Homa - an illegal settlement south of Jerusalem - into the Nitzan prison, where they were given an "indulgent" lunch and a tour of the facility, according to Israeli media.
During the trip, the group was taken to several criminal wings before being allowed entry to the highest-security section, where Palestinians accused of being members of Hamas's elite Nukhba forces are held.
"Officers accompanied a rabbi and his entourage for the purpose of a Torah lesson in a criminal prison," the IPS told several news outlets.
The group was allowed to visit one of the prison's security wings to bless the prison guards, it said.
Yaakobi was appointed to head Israel's prison system in 2023 by the far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
He is currently the target of a criminal investigation into allegations that he helped suppress a probe into police complicity in settler violence in the occupied West Bank.
Ramadan abuse
The IPS usually imposes strict entry requirements on its facilities and has previously denied access to lawyers and members of international organisations.
The service has banned the Red Cross from visiting the thousands of Palestinian prisoners and detainees since the Gaza war erupted in October 2023.
The ban has coincided with a dramatic rise in arrests of Palestinians and a mountain of evidence, indicating widespread abuse of detainees in Israeli prisons.
A UN committee recently said torture has become a "de facto state policy" in Israel with mistreatment continuing into the month of Ramadan, which has seen inmates deprived of food and not informed of fasting times, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said over the weekend.
The Palestinian Prisoners' Club – a local NGO monitoring abuse in Israeli prisons – recorded testimony that guards have recently begun using a new weapon against inmates that causes burns.