BAIT N' KILL: Cruel Israeli/US Criminality On Display In One Short Video

Who and what the Israeli and United States governments really are is embodied in a brutal 1-minute, 34-second video.

Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink

The imagery is the absolute embodiment of U.S. and Israeli depravity, criminality and genocidal war crimes.

By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (4/6/24)

As ugly as it is, there can be legitimate arguments for snipers in war time. Strategic long-range killing can disrupt and demoralize enemy troops, pin down attackers and even save more lives than are taken. But none of that applies to the criminal snipers in the Israeli ‘Defense’ Force (IDF).

First of all, what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank is not a “war”. Hamas has no tank units, air or naval force. What is happening is one-sided ethnic cleansing. Genocide that is the logical endpoint of 80 years of oppression and ethnic cleansing in the name of a racist belief system: Zionism. What unfolds every day is a massive, despicable war crime in which the United States is fully complicit and an active — and profiting — participant.

Slaughter of innocents

Second, the overwhelming majority of victims of Israeli snipers are innocents. As noted in my column yesterday, a growing number of them children. These snipers are not soldiers. They are depraved, venal, racist criminals. Just like the government in whose name they murder and the government that makes it all possible, the United States.

There have been an increasing number of videos showing innocents being shot down by snipers. Many are desperate people scrambling for what scraps they can find from the beyond-cynical, inadequate virtue-signaling parachuting of food bundles by the criminal U.S. government and military. (Reminder: Complicity with genocide is itself a war crime. So be clear, the Biden White House, congress, State and War departments are all guilty of war crimes. Everyone of us paying taxes for this national crime — like myself —share in the guilt.)

Yesterday, Al Jazeera released a particularly sickening video (below) of a lone man being gunned down by an IDF murderer. As he dropped dead beside the plastic bucket of meager supplies he was carrying, two dogs moved in to feed on his body.

The imagery is the absolute embodiment of U.S. and Israeli depravity, criminality and genocidal war crimes.

The one disagreement I have with the way the video ends is with the wording Al Jazeera uses to conclude the video: “The incident adds to the growing list of alledged Israeli war crimes.”

While there are journalistic niceties involved in that wording, there's nothing “alleged” in this video. The war crime execution of an innocent starving civilian desperately trying to obtain food is both clear and clearly a war crime. Full stop. It’s also “business as usual” for the two criminal states oppressing innocent Palestinians: Israel and the United States. Two vile dogs of war feeding off the oppressed of the Middle East.

Shame on this nation.

Resist.

End all U.S. financial and military support to the criminal state of Israel.

Now and forever.

Israeli Sniper Murders Palestinian Desperately Collecting Food From U.S. Aid Parachute Drop

Al Jazeera (4/5/24)

Exclusive video obtained by Al Jazeera shows Israeli forces opening fire and killing a Palestinian man as he tried to collect aid in north Gaza.

1+-minute video

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Concentration Camp Doctor Blows Whistle On Israeli War Crimes

Stripped, blindfolded, and bound Palestinian civilians are taken prisoner and ordered into a line by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza in December 2023. (Photo: Social media post by Israeli soldier)

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"Just this week, two prisoners had their legs amputated due to handcuff injuries, which unfortunately is a routine event."

By Brett Wilkins
Common Dreams (4/4/24)

A doctor at an Israeli field hospital inside a notorious detention center where hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are temporarily held is sounding the alarm about torture and horrific conditions at what some human rights defenders—including Israelis—are calling "Israel's Guantánamo Bay" and even a "concentration camp."

[Editor’s Note: Just to be clear, the proper term is ‘concentration camps’. And, again, since the US is funding and making all this possible, we are guilty of these war crimes.— M. Taylor]

In a letter to Israel's attorney general and defense and health ministers viewed byHaaretz—which reported the story Thursday—the anonymous physician describes likely war crimes being committed at the Israel Defense Forces' Sde Teiman base near Beersheva. Palestinian militants captured by IDF troops, as well as many civilian hostages ranging in age from teenagers to septuagenarians, are held there in cages, 70-100 per cage, until they are transferred to regular Israeli prisons or released.

"From the first days of the medical facility's operation until today, I have faced serious ethical dilemmas," the doctor wrote. "More than that, I am writing to warn you that the facility's operations do not comply with a single section among those dealing with health in the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law."

"This makes all of us—the medical teams and you, those in charge of us in the Health and Defense ministries, complicit in the violation of Israeli law, and perhaps worse for me as a doctor, in the violation of my basic commitment to patients, wherever they are, as I swore when I graduated 20 years ago."

Gazans arrested and detained by Israeli forces are not legally considered prisoners of war by Israel because it does not recognize Gaza as a state. These detainees are mostly held under the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows the imprisonment of anyone suspected of taking part in hostilities against Israel for up to 75 days without seeing a judge.

Human Rights Watch has warned that the law "strips away meaningful judicial review and due process rights."

Cruel, degrading, inhuman treatment by US/Israel

Sde Teiman detainees are fed through straws and forced to defecate in diapers. They're also forced to sleep with the lights on and have allegedly been subjected to beatings and torture. Other Palestinians taken by Israeli forces have described being electrocuted, mauled by dogs, soaked with cold water, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, and blasted with loud music at temporary detention sites.

The whistleblowing Sde Teiman physician said that all patients at the camp's field hospital are handcuffed by all four limbs, regardless of how dangerous they are deemed. In December, Israeli Health Ministry officials ordered such treatment after a medical worker at the facility was attacked. Now the camp's estimated 600-800 prisoners are shackled 24 hours a day.

At first, the cuffs were plastic zip ties. Now they're metal. The doctor said that more than half of his patients at the camp have suffered cuffing injuries, including some that have required "repeated surgical interventions."

"Just this week, two prisoners had their legs amputated due to handcuff injuries, which unfortunately is a routine event," he told Haaretz.

The whistleblower also alleged substandard medical care at the facility, where there is only one doctor on duty, who is sometimes a gynecologist or orthopedist.

"This ends in complications and sometimes even in the patient's death," he said. "This makes all of us—the medical teams and you, those in charge of us in the Health and Defense ministries, complicit in the violation of Israeli law, and perhaps worse for me as a doctor, in the violation of my basic commitment to patients, wherever they are, as I swore when I graduated 20 years ago."

The doctor claims in his letter that he warned the Health Ministry's director-general about the appalling conditions at Sde Teiman, but that there have been "no substantial changes in the way the facility operates."

An ethics committee visited the camp in February; the physician said that its members "are worried about their legal exposure and coverage in view of their involvement in a facility that is operated contrary to the provisions of the existing law."

Last month, Haaretzrevealed that 27 detainees have died in custody at the Sde Teiman and Anatot camps or during interrogation in Israel since October 7. While some were Hamas or other militants captured or wounded while fighting IDF troops, others were civilians, including some with preexisting health conditions like the diabetic laborer who was not suspected of any offense when he was arrested and sent to his death at Anatot.

Executions

One former Sde Teiman detainee claims that he personally witnessed Israeli troops execute five prisoners in separate incidents.

Responding to the 27 detainee deaths and invoking the U.S. military prison in Cuba known for torture and indefinite detention, the Haaretz editorial board wrote last month that "Sde Teiman and the other detention facilities are not Guantánamo Bay and... the state has a duty to protect the rights of detainees even if they are not formally prisoners of war."

"Israel's indifference to the fate of Gazans, at best, and desire for revenge against them, at worst, are fertile ground for war crimes," the editors said. "Indifference by Israelis and desire for revenge must not constitute license to shed the blood of detainees... The fact that Hamas is holding and abusing Israeli hostages cannot excuse or justify the abuse of Palestinian detainees."

In December, the Geneva-based advocacy group Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor—which has also accused IDF troops of allowing Israeli civilians to witness the torture of Palestinian prisoners—demanded an investigation of what it called the "new Guantánamo."

Israeli rights groups and individuals have also condemned the abuses at Sde Teiman, which, like Guantánamo, has been described as a "concentration camp."

"Enough, just enough. We have to stop this gallop into the abyss," urged Hebrew University senior lecturer Tamar Megiddo on Wednesday. "This war has to end. This government needs to end."

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