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| EPISODE 2

Humiliation hurts most

Omar recounts how shock and helplessness intertwined in his early days of detention, and how systematic insults became a tool to subdue inmates and silence them through the threat of collective punishment. This is not merely an account of violations, but an attempt to understand how language itself becomes a precise weapon used to erode dignity and restrict any space for resistance within a system designed to strip away humanity.
26 November 2025
series [{"user_id":"3676","role":"Editorial support"},{"user_id":"1473","role":"Sound design"},{"user_id":"1408","role":"Graphic arts"}] https://inkyfada.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Assir-Ep02-الإهانة-أوجع-من-الضرب.mp3 Podcast : Assir - Episode 02 : “C’est l’humiliation qui blesse le plus” | بودكاست: "أسير" - الحلقة 02 : “الإهانة أوجع من الضرب Episode 02 : “C’est l’humiliation qui blesse le plus” | الحلقة 02 : “الإهانة أوجع من الضرب
يروي الأسير تفاصيل الأيام التي تداخلت فيها الصدمة مع العجز، وكيف تحوّلت الشتائم الممنهجة إلى وسيلة لإخضاع السجناء وإسكاتهم عبر التهديد بالعقاب الجماعي. ليست هذه مجرد رواية عن الانتهاكات، بل محاولة لفهم كيف تُستخدم اللغة كسلاح دقيق لتقويض الكرامة وتقليص مساحة المقاومة داخل مكان صُمِّم لنزع الإنسانية.

Omar recounts how shock and helplessness intertwined in his early days of detention, and how systematic insults became a tool to subdue inmates and silence them through the threat of collective punishment. This is not merely an account of violations, but an attempt to understand how language itself becomes a precise weapon used to erode dignity and restrict any space for resistance within a system designed to strip away humanity.

Omar raconte comment le choc et l’impuissance ont marqué ses premiers jours de détention, et comment les insultes systématiques servaient à soumettre les détenus et à les réduire au silence sous la menace d’un châtiment collectif. Ce témoignage n’est pas seulement une exposition d’abus, mais une tentative de comprendre comment le langage devient une arme précise pour entamer la dignité et restreindre toute possibilité de résistance dans un espace conçu pour déshumaniser.
93378
Created by
Omar al Khatib
Editorial support
Manel Lassoued
Sound design
Oussema Gaidi
Graphic arts
Hathemi Smedhi

In this testimony, violence is not only physical. It is structured, hierarchical, ritualized and deliberately built to humiliate. Bruises heal. But the insult stays. It reminds the prisoner of his inability to respond, not out of cowardice, but to protect the others from collective punishment.

In Zionist prisons, verbal violence takes on an even deeper dimension because it uses a shared language and knows exactly where to strike in the social imagination. Between colonial domination, militarized masculinities, and communal taboos, speech itself becomes a weapon.

It is an immersion into a system where even the smallest interaction becomes a negotiation between survival, dignity, and imposed silence.

( This episode contains descriptions of harsh verbal abuse, misogynistic and homophobic insults, and prison violence.)

Assir

Two years after October 7, 2023, Omar Al-Khatib, the Jerusalemite researcher and freed Palestinian detainee, returns to recount his sixteen-month experience in Israeli prisons.Through a five-episode documentary series, Omar documents the details of life behind bars, in conditions marked by hunger, illness, and isolation, with a profound sense of being cut off from the outside world.Between individual memory and collective experience, he traces the transformations experienced by Palestinian prisoners since the outbreak of the war on Gaza, in a time when the body and resistance have become two sides of the same struggle.

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ABOUT

Inkyfada Podcast is the first platform entirely dedicated to original Tunisian podcasts, and was conceived by Inkyfada media in collaboration with the in-house research and development laboratory, InkyLab.
Inkyfada joined the global podcast boom in 2017, when the team produced the first Tunisian audio documentary, diving deep into the belly of the El Kamour struggle taking place in the desert.
Since then, Inkyfada Podcast has produced a wide variety of documentaries, investigations, and podcast series, as well as articles accompanied by music; covering a multitude of contemporary issues in order to offer an immersive and alternative podcast experience.
Whilst exclusively offering audio content, the Inkyfada Podcast team upholds the same core values and principles of inkyfada.com, and is committed to producing high quality content though a dynamic and meticulous production process.
In addition to the permanent team, Inkyfada podcast works closely with various journalists, artists, illustrators, musicians and other content creators in order to diversify the platform and support artistic creativity.
These podcasts differ from traditional radiophonic content in that the applied production and editing process is more akin to cinematographic techniques, in addition to being web-based, downloadable and accessible on demand.
Additionally, Inkyfada Podcast uniquely offers subtitles in French, Arabic and English for all audio content, the majority of which is recorded in Tunisian or in the preferred language of the speaker in question.

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