Israeli army-abducted Palestinian Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya finally gets a mention in legacy media

NBC issued a not terrible but not great article on the heroic doctor from Gaza, however stopped shot of detailing his torture, nor the Israeli torture, rape & murder of 3 doctors from Gaza prior...

If you search for reports on the abducation and torture of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, they are scant in legacy media, and if mentioned usually unquestioningly parrot the Israeli lies about his “ties to” or “working for” Hamas.

Thus, I was surprised this morning to come across the NBC article. Not the best, by far, but with some truths. More below.

For background on the Israeli army’s abduction & subsequent torture of Gaza’s Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya (and the Israeli’s torture and murder of three Palestinian doctors from Gaza in the last two years), see my previous:

UPDATE:

According to Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya’s lawyer, Ghaida Qasem:

Dr. Hossam Abu Safiya is not okay. My last visit to him was on July 9, 2025.

He has lost over 40 kilograms — more than one-third of his body weight. At the time of his arrest, he weighed 100 kg — today, he weighs no more than 60 kg.

On June 24, 2025, he was severely beaten. His room (Room 1, Section 24 – Ofer Prison) was specifically raided. He was brutally assaulted in the chest area and sustained severe bruises to the face, head, back, and neck. The beating lasted approximately 30 minutes.

Dr. Hossam requested medical care, proper testing, and to be examined by a cardiologist — but his request was denied.

He suffers from irregular heartbeat. His eyeglasses, which had recently been sent to him through his lawyer, were broken. He is still wearing winter clothes while enduring starvation, torture, solitary confinement, and total deprivation — buried underground, with no exposure to sunlight.

NBC June 30, excerpts:

"...Before his detention, Abu Safiya, 51, who became the head of Kamal Adwan in 2024, was the lead physician in Gaza for MedGlobal, a Chicago-based nonprofit that has partnered with local health care workers since 2018 and arranges volunteer medical missions to the enclave.

The organization’s co-founder, Dr. John Kahler, told NBC News in a phone interview on Thursday that he was “very afraid” that Abu Safiya won’t “make it out alive” from detention. He added that the physician was “a friend of mine, a hero, mentor,” who, among other things, had helped to establish nutrition stabilization centers in the Gaza Strip.

On visits to Gaza, Kahler said, he had never seen any indication that Abu Safiya was linked with the Hamas militant group, or any suggestion that it was operating inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital.

Five other members of MedGlobal’s team have also been detained, and on Monday, the organization called for the release of scores of health workers detained by Israel, including Abu Safiya.

“Israeli authorities have repeatedly and blatantly violated international humanitarian law in repeated detentions of and attacks on health care workers,” it said in a joint letter published on Monday alongside several other organizations...

...according to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, a nongovernmental organization that advocates for the people of Gaza and has been providing legal support to Abu Safiya, no formal charges had been made against the hospital director as of Thursday.

Asked for an update on Abu Safiya’s case on Friday, the Israeli military did not immediately respond.

But a spokesperson for the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights said Thursday that he was still being detained in Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, where he faced dire conditions, inadequate food and overcrowded cells.

[and TORTURE

At least three Palestinian doctors abducted from Gaza have died in Israeli prisons since October 2023. In September 2024, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, stated, “Dr. Ziad Eldalou is the third doctor confirmed to have died while being detained by Israel since 7 October 2023.”

Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, head of the orthopedics department at Al-Shifa Hospital, was “killed under torture at Ofer Detention Centre on April 19, 2024”. Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh was “likely raped to death,” wrote United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese.

Dr. Iyad Al-Rantisi was “killed due to torture at an Israeli Shin Bet interrogation center in Ashkelon, one week after his detention in November 2023. Israeli authorities concealed his death for more than seven months.”

The torture of Palestinians in Israeli prisons has been widely reported. Methods include electric shocks to genitals, stress positions, psychological torture, near-starvation, and rape resulting in serious internal damage, sometimes leading to death.]

... Kahler said his colleague was a “heroic physician” whose “moral compass is directly pointing due North.”

...Thousands of Palestinians are held by Israel under a controversial practice known as “administrative detention,” which Israeli authorities use to hold people without trial or other usual legal proceedings, often based on alleged secret evidence they do not share with detainees, their families or legal representatives.

The practice has been roundly criticized by human rights groups that say it is used to hold Palestinians indefinitely without charge and due process, while Israel has defended the practice as a necessary security measure.

In their letter on Monday, MedGlobal and the other organizations said that as of February 2025, at least 185 health care workers from Gaza and the West Bank remained in Israeli custody. Their conditions were “unknown,” it added.

“Many of those released have reported severe abuse, while some have died in custody,” it said..."

The Israeli use of “administrative detention” to indefinitely imprison and torture Palestinians, including women and children, isn’t “controversial” it is outrageous and illegal. If it were one of the US “enemy” states doing this to just ONE civilians, you know legacy media would report on it endlessly, create PR campaigns about it, and definitely not use the term “controversial” to describe this barbaric practise.

From my April 2024 article:

…as of April 17, which is Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, over 9,500 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons – roughly one third of whom are imprisoned under what is termed “administrative detention” – a procedure that allows the Israeli military to hold people based on secret evidence, indefinitely and without trial.

Some 3,000 Gazan Palestinians have been detained by Israel since the current war on Gaza started last October – a number revealed by an investigation by Palestinian NGO Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. According to Al Mezan, this includes “women, children, elderly people, as well as professionals such as doctors, nurses, teachers and journalists.”

Out of the estimated 3,000 detainees, 1,650 Gaza Palestinians are held under the Unlawful Combatants Law – a draconian law similar to administrative detention but specific to Gazan Palestinians. They are also imprisoned without charge or legal representation, suspected of being “unlawful combatants.”

They are, Al Mezan notes, “held in total isolation from the outside world” and “are neither granted the status of prisoners of war under the Third Geneva Convention, nor afforded the protections of civilian detainees under the Fourth Geneva Convention.” Another 300 (including ten children) not currently detained under the Unlawful Combatants Law are being imprisoned pending investigation.

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, according to the Commission of Detainees Affairs, as of April 16 8,270 Palestinians have been arrested, including 275 women, 520 children, 66 journalists (with 45 still in custody, 23 of whom are in administrative detention).

Of these, 80 women (not including women from Gaza) and over 200 minors are imprisoned. The total number held under administrative detention is more than 3,660, including more than 40 children.

In March, the executive director of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) expressed extreme concern, stating that the nearly 10,000 imprisoned Palestinians is, “a 200% increase from any normal year” and that, since last October, at least 27 Palestinians have died in Israeli prison camps inside Gaza. Prisoners include children and the elderly, including an 82-year-old grandmother.

Al Mezan reports visiting 40 Palestinian detainees in Ashkelon and Ofer prisons, whose testimonies include being brutally beaten and deliberately starved as a form of torture and collective punishment. One 19-year-old told Al Mezan that “three of his fingernails were removed with pliers during interrogation” and he was, “handcuffed and bound in stress positions for long periods – three times over three days of interrogation.”…

More recently,

According to the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS), since 1967, Israeli forces have detained an estimated one million Palestinians, or approximately 20 percent of the Palestinian population. Statistically, this means one out of every five Palestinians has been imprisoned at some point in their life.

UPDATE:

This is tragic. His wife, Lina, apparently did a recent interview, in which she said,

“He could have joined me in Kazakhstan,” Lina said, referring to her country of origin, “but he told me he could not abandon his patients or his colleagues. He believed leaving would be a betrayal of his duty.”

“I don’t know anything—where he is, if he’s alive, if he’s okay,” Lina said. “I follow the news every day, terrified by what I hear about the conditions of detainees in Israeli prisons.”

My Related articles:

-Neglect, abuse, torture: The West is ignoring the fate of Palestinians stuck in Israeli jails, April 27, 2024, RT.com

-In the 8 months I spent in hard-hit areas of the West Bank in 2007, I saw many instances of Israeli soldiers abducting, attempting to abduct Palestinian civilians. I detailed some of these in a 2017 article, Abduct, imprison, repeat: Israel systematically imprisons Palestinians on false or no charges