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Though Western media has barely covered it, Israeli soldiers engaged in what can only be described as a gang rape of a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman, an Israeli military prison in the Negev desert, which Israeli media has dubbed the Israeli Guantanamo Bay.
When Israeli police detained soldiers who engaged in the rape, which was recorded and broadcast on Israeli TV, Israeli citizens, including Israeli politicians, protested not the rape but rather the attempt to hold the rapists accountable. In addition to these "right to rape" protests, the governemnt has given the rapes its blessing. Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, said during a session of the Knesset, that “to insert a stick into a person’s rectum” is "legitimate."
A one off gang rape would be bad enough. But the truth is this is merely one example of a systemic epidemic of abuse. In fact, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem released a haunting report on the Israeli prison system which it described as “a network of torture camps.” The title of the report is what an Israeli jailer told a Palestinian prisoner when he arrived at one of these torture camps: Welcome to Hell.
To learn more about this hell, we spoke to Sarit Michaeli, the international advocacy lead for B’tselem, which focuses on human rights abuses in the occupied territories. The abuse suffered by Palestinian prisoners was not random. Rather, “the most gruesome accounts” of the victims revealed “the systemic nature of what has been happening in the Israeli prison system. After October seventh, Israel turned the prison system that deals with Palestinians into a network of torture camps.”
This is not a case of a few rogue actors or bad apples: “The most important thing,” says Michaeli, “is that none of this is the result of individual actions by any sort of individual prison guard. These are systemic actions inspired by [National Security] Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.” And while the torture may have been inspired by Ben Gvir, it's approved of and encouraged by the Israeli government.
The testimony of the Palestinian detainees is harrowing. Fadi Baker, a 25 year old father and lawyer recalled, "they put cigarettes out in my mouth and on my body. They put clamps on my testicles that were attached to something heavy. It went on like that for a whole day. My testicles swelled up." Another detainee witnessed the killing of a Palestinian prisoner:
"He screamed in pain constantly, begging for the doctor. The guard would come now and then and swear at him and tell him to shut up. In the morning, the guards came to count us. One said, 'Get up, you animal. Get up, you dog.' They checked him, and the whole place went silent. Finally, the doctor said, 'There’s nothing to be done.' One of the guards said to them, 'My condolences.' And they all started laughing. They put him in a black body bag and carried him out like trash."
Eighteen year old Muhammad Nazzal recalls, "they kicked us and hit us with metal batons. Every time I tried to cover my head with my hands, they hit me on the hands as well as the rest of my body... people beat me again, and also strip-searched me and took photos of me naked." He also witnessed a fatal beating. When a prisoner dared to ask if there had been a ceasefire, "they beat him to death. The guards simply left him there for half an hour after the assault."
Subscribe to watch the full interview with Sarit Michaeli where she describes the “sadistic... orgy of hate and revenge that Israeli society was plunged into," explains why it's Netanyahu, not Hamas, that's blocking a ceasefire deal, and argues that Netanyahu is rooting for a Trump victory. Plus, she reacts to a truly terrible clip from the Israeli podcast “Two Nice Jewish Boys.”
And don’t miss this week’s Thursday Throwdown: AOC vs Predator – Is anti-genocide a predatory stance?
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