An 18-month-old Palestinian boy named Karim Abu Nassar was subjected to hours of physical torture by Israeli soldiers at a military checkpoint in central Gaza—burned with cigarettes, pierced with sharp objects, and stabbed with a nail—all to coerce a confession from his detained father.
The incident, which took place on March 19 near the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, has been confirmed by medical documentation, corroborated by multiple eyewitnesses, and reported across international media. It arrives alongside a damning new United Nations report that declares torture has become official Israeli state policy.
What Happened to Karim
According to reports from Palestine TV, Anadolu Agency, and Al Jazeera Arabic—all citing Palestinian journalist Osama Al-Kahlout—Karim’s father, 25-year-old Osama Abu Nassar, had taken his young son out to buy food and basic supplies near the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the Deir al-Balah governorate.
The two were caught in gunfire near their home. Israeli soldiers opened fire, striking Abu Nassar in the shoulder. A quadcopter drone then ordered him via loudspeaker to place his child on the ground and walk toward a nearby military checkpoint.
At the checkpoint, soldiers stripped Abu Nassar and began interrogating him. What followed was a 10-hour nightmare. To pressure the father into making confessions, soldiers tortured his baby in front of him. They extinguished lit cigarettes on the toddler’s leg. They pricked him with sharp objects. They drove a metal nail into his leg.
A medical report cited by Palestinian media and Al Jazeera Arabic confirmed the injuries: cigarette burn marks and puncture wounds caused by the nail. Images shared by multiple outlets showed dark, circular burn marks on the child’s legs consistent with the allegations.
“International law is unequivocal: torture is absolutely prohibited, without exception. If the international community continues to tolerate such acts when inflicted on Palestinians, then the law itself will be stripped of meaning.”
After approximately 10 hours, the International Committee of the Red Cross facilitated Karim’s release, handing him over to his family at the Al-Maghazi market. His father was not released. As of this writing, Osama Abu Nassar remains in Israeli detention at an unknown location.
His family has had no contact with him and no information about his whereabouts. They are pleading with international organizations to intervene.
A Father Already Broken by War
The cruelty of what happened to the Abu Nassar family is compounded by the context surrounding it. Osama Abu Nassar had already been suffering from significant mental health difficulties before his detention. He had previously earned a living using a horse to transport people’s belongings—until Israeli forces killed the animal.
Left unemployed for two years with no way to support his family, Abu Nassar had become increasingly psychologically unstable and was receiving treatment. He was, by every account, a man already devastated by the war, trying to buy food for his child when soldiers opened fire on him.
Now his family doesn’t know where he is, whether he’s alive, or what condition he’s in. They live roughly 300 meters from the so-called “Yellow Line”—the boundary demarcating the more than 58 percent of the Gaza Strip that remains under Israeli military control despite the ceasefire.
The UN Says Torture Is Now Israeli State Policy
Karim’s case emerged in the same week that UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese presented a devastating report to the UN Human Rights Council titled “Torture and Genocide.”
The report’s findings are unequivocal: since October 2023, torture has become a defining instrument of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians—practiced openly, sanctioned at the highest political levels, and normalized throughout Israeli society.
Albanese told the Council that the Israeli prison system has deteriorated into what she called “a laboratory of calculated cruelty,” where practices once hidden are now carried out without pretense.
Her report documents that more than 18,500 Palestinians have been detained across the occupied territories since October 2023, including at least 1,500 children. Thousands remain held without charge or trial. Many have been forcibly disappeared. Nearly 100 detainees have died in custody.
The forms of abuse documented in the report are staggering in their brutality: rape with bottles, metal rods, and knives; starvation; breaking of bones and teeth; burning; attacks by dogs.
Albanese named senior Israeli officials—including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and Defense Minister Israel Katz—as bearing direct responsibility, and recommended their investigation by the International Criminal Court.
False Confessions as a Tool of War
The torture of baby Karim must also be understood within the broader pattern of Israeli forces using extreme coercion to extract false confessions from Palestinian detainees. Throughout the war in Gaza, the Israeli military has forced scores of Palestinians to “confess” on video to having links to Hamas or participating in the October 7 attack.
Multiple investigations by leading human rights organizations have found these confessions to be coerced through torture, including waterboarding and severe beatings. Even staff from UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, have reported being forced into false confessions.
It remains unknown what Israeli forces were trying to get Osama Abu Nassar to confess to. What is known is that they tortured his baby to get it.
Ceasefire in Name Only
The torture of Karim Abu Nassar took place months into what is supposedly a ceasefire. The agreement, implemented in October 2025, was meant to halt the fighting that has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and wounded over 171,000 since October 2023, while destroying approximately 90 percent of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
But the ceasefire has been a ceasefire in name only. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, Israeli forces have killed at least 677 Palestinians and wounded 1,813 others since the truce began, carrying out near-daily attacks on the enclave.
Reports indicate that Israeli forces continue to push the Yellow Line deeper into Gaza, expanding their zone of control rather than withdrawing.
When a military that is supposedly observing a ceasefire tortures babies at checkpoints, the word “ceasefire” has lost all meaning. It’s not peace. It’s occupation with better branding.
The World Is Watching. The World Is Not Acting.
Albanese put it plainly when she addressed the international community: Israel has been given a license to torture Palestinians because the governments of the world have allowed it.
The International Criminal Court has spoken. The International Court of Justice has spoken. The UN Human Rights Council has spoken. And still, the weapons flow. The diplomatic cover holds. The statements of “concern” arrive and evaporate.
An 18-month-old child was burned with cigarettes and stabbed with a nail to make his father talk. His father, a man already shattered by years of war, remains disappeared in Israeli custody. And the international community—the one that claims to uphold a rules-based order—has done nothing to stop it.
Karim Abu Nassar is not an abstraction. He is not a statistic. He is a baby with burn marks on his legs and a father he may never see again. His story is not the exception to how Israel conducts its occupation. According to the United Nations itself, it is the policy.
