‘Prisoners are in charge of the guards’: Knesset panel debates Gilboa Prison scandal

A joint debate is being held by the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the Public Security Committee to discuss the Gilboa Prison scandal, in which senior officers are accused of “pimping” out female guards to security prisoners.

MKs slam the Prison Service for trying to whitewash the situation after they bring in a female guard to testify, who tells the committee members, “It’s a good place to work.”

MK Orit Strock of the far-right Religious Zionism party bemoans the situation whereby “terrorists are in a place where they are in control of the guards.”

“Our long arm reaches them and then puts them in a luxurious kindergarten,” she says. “What happened to the female guards is terrible, but everything that is happening there is terrible, beyond these events.”

Female soldiers first alleged in 2018 that they were forced into close contact with prisoners as sexual bargaining chips, leading to them being harassed and assaulted, but the case was closed due to a lack of evidence.