“Mentally, I am suffering from a crazy regression – staring into space, crying and having angry outbursts,” Hila, the female guard at Gilboa Prison who was raped by a Palestinian terrorist, related at the thought of her rapist being let go.
By Rachel Avraham
Hila (not her real name), a former female guard at Gilboa Prison, gave an interview to Reshet Bet radio, where she objected to the fact that terrorist Mahmoud Atallah, who repeatedly raped her, sexually assaulted other female prison guards and is serving 15 life sentences for murdering a Palestinian woman accused of collaborating with Israel, is set to be released in the hostage deal. According to the Knesset, Hila was a victim of the “Gilboa Prison affair, in which senior Israel Prison Service (IPS) officers have been accused of pimping female guards to security prisoners between the years 2014 and 2018. The female guards in question were conscripted IDF soldiers who were performing their military service in the prison as guards.”
Arutz Sheva reported that Atallah has threatened repeatedly to come after Hila once he is released. “He knows a lot of personal details about me – who my parents are, where I live, that my fiancé is an IDF soldier in Nablus. He is sure that my child is his child,” Hila said with great concern, “I am warning about this before anything happens. He threatened me that he would haunt me for the rest of his life, that he would take me to Nablus. I have sacrificed too much and too many times already.” And Hila is not the only victim that Atallah has threatened. The Jerusalem Post reported that Atallah threatened another victim and her family.
Arutz Sheva reported that Hila said that the prison service did not prepare her or the other guards for Atallah’s release: “Mentally, I am suffering from a crazy regression – staring into space, crying and having angry outbursts. Throughout this whole story, there was always someone that had an interest in interrupting the indictment and silencing me.”
She compared the lack of warning about his release or response she received to the lack of attention that the lookouts in Gaza experienced before the October 7 massacre: “I warned the authorities before the rape. I said to the intelligence officer and my commanders, ‘He’s strange. He talks to me about things he’s not supposed to.’ After he touched me, I went to them and told them and they said, ‘Okay.’ I feel that the security forces here are very clever in hindsight. “In retrospect we should have listened to her, in retrospect we should have listened to the female lookouts.””
Hila and the other female Gilboa Prison guards submitted a request to the Supreme Court that Atallah would not be released, but their petition was rejected, Arutz Sheva reported. According to the report, Hila also approached Defense Minister Israel Katz demanding that the terrorist accused of rape not be released. “Defense Minister Katz did not bother responding, nothing, absolutely nothing,” said Hila.
The Jerusalem Post reported that in the published lists of the prisoners set to be free, Atallah is defined as a defendant in crimes against state security and murder, but “the fact that he is on trial as a sex offender who raped and attacked female IDF soldiers was omitted,” and the female guards at Gilboa Prison asked that he not be released to his home in Nablus, which is what is indicated in the lists. So far, also that request has been denied them.
“I don’t need to explain the panic that grips the guards,” Maariv quoted the guards’ lawyer, Attorney Keren Barak, as saying. “There can be no dispute that you’re releasing a dangerous prisoner who made explicit and specific threats against the guards. It’s impossible for you to return him to Nablus, so close to the border of Israel. I would ask that the terrorist who threatens to ‘settle the score’ with the prison guards and is, therefore, a ‘ticking bomb’ be among terrorists who will be deported.”
In 2022, Barak delivered a letter from one of the complainants to the Knesset Public Security, Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, proclaiming: “A few years ago, while I was still a soldier, I was brutally raped a number of times within the prison’s walls. Since then I have become a shattered and broken woman. There is no place for questions about why I did not tell anyone, in real time, that I had been repeatedly raped. Those who served in the prison back then and who are familiar with the despicable rapist and murderer, know that if I would have complained to someone, it would be only to him, because he had full control of the prison. In order to deliver justice to me and my fellow soldiers who were sexually assaulted in Gilboa Prison, help us get answers. I ask that you form a committee of inquiry that will explain to me and to all the citizens of Israel who gave the terrorist the power to sexually assault and rape female IDF soldiers.”
The Times of Israel reported that Atallah has been in solitary confinement since 2018 over the scandal in which the prison commanders “pimped” female guards to him and to other Palestinian inmates, at his request. Haaretz noted that Atallah served at the time as a spokesman for the Fatah wing in Gilboa Prison and consequently received preferential treatment from the prison authorities, who among other things agreed to his request to place the female guards in his wing and kept them there, even after they started to complain that they were getting sexually harassed.
Last December, it was reported that Atallah was on trial for raping one guard and sexually assaulting four others, while the prison’s former commander, Bassem Kashkush, and former prison intelligence officer Rani Basha, were on trial for breach of trust and failing to report the sexual abuse. At that time, the victims stated: “We’ve been waiting six years for this moment, finally we’re here.” The trial was supposed to result in justice finally getting delivered this June, until the hostage deal sabotaged everything.
Arutz Sheva reported that Hila claimed Hamas did not request that Atallah be released as part of the deal: “I am sure that there is no way that Hamas or Fatah requested him. I am sure that someone from the security forces found it convenient for him to be released, so that they will have quiet, and that the entire truth will not come to light.”
