CARTOON: Israel Accused Of Running "Torture Camps" As Video Emerges Of Soldiers Raping Palestinian Prisoner
Every act of sexual torture is sponsored by United States' funding and arming of ZioNazi Israeli 'Defense' Force perverts.
“Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit. It has its own organic life; it develops finally into a disease … blood and power intoxicate.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, ‘The House of the Dead’, 1862.
Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
"The biggest insult to the memory of the Holocaust is not denying it, but using it as an excuse to justify the genocide of the Palestinian people." ~ Norman Finkelstein
Welcome To Israel’s Hell
Democracy Now! (8/8/24)
The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has published a major new report documenting how the Israeli prison system has become "a network of torture camps," where physical, psychological and sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners is normalized and routine.
The report, titled "Welcome to Hell," collects the testimony of 55 Palestinians who were detained by Israeli authorities since October 7 and later released, almost all without charges. This comes as a group of U.N. experts condemned the widespread torture of Palestinians and as Israel's Channel 12 News aired shocking footage of Israeli soldiers sexually abusing a prisoner at the Sde Teiman army base, where thousands of detainees from Gaza are held.
Sarit Michaeli, the international advocacy lead for B'Tselem, says the abuse in Israeli prisons is "systemic, ongoing and state-sanctioned," reflecting the cruelty and thirst for revenge among a growing number of Israelis. "They would like to have a completely open field in terms of what they can do to Palestinians," says Michaeli.
26-minute video
Link to B'Tselem’s Courageous Report HERE.
EXPOSED! Systematic, Brutal Sexual Violence By Israeli Forces
A recent exposé in The New York Times revealed instances of Palestinians being raped with burning metal rods. This aligns with a UNRWA report detailing similar acts of sexualized torture, including a case where a man was raped with a burning metal rod and left to die slowly.
Boy Robert Inlakesh
MintPress News (6/20/24)
As Israel’s assertions of a premeditated Hamas mass rape campaign on October 7 unravel, new horrifying evidence of mass sexual violence and rape against Palestinians committed by the Israeli military is emerging.
A recent article in The Times of London, along with UN reports and investigative journalism in independent media, has been undermining Israel’s allegations of an ordered mass rape campaign on October 7. Meanwhile, evidence of mass sexual violence against Palestinians continues to mount.
As early as December of last year, allegations emerged that female Palestinian prisoners were being raped in Israeli jails after women released in a prisoner exchange testified to the media. Additionally, in a series of testimonies collected by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, released female Palestinian detainees stated that Israeli forces threatened to rape them like Hamas raped Israeli women. This demonstrates that the October 7 rape stories spread by corporate media directly motivated rape threats against Palestinian women.
Back in February, a UN panel of experts sounded the alarm over evidence produced by the United Nations of two cases of rape committed against Palestinian women, in addition to various threats of rape and instances of sexual harassment. Despite this, Western politicians who had spoken out with indignation about the October 7 allegations showed little interest in the issue.
Horror of systematic sexualized torture
In March, horror stories of sexual abuse in Gaza emerged, including a case reported by Canadian volunteer physicians of a woman being raped for two days, leaving her unable to speak from the trauma.
At the Sde Teiman detention camp, where Palestinians are held without charges after being taken from Gaza, a recent exposé in The New York Times revealed instances of Palestinians being raped with burning metal rods. This aligns with a UNRWA report detailing similar acts of sexualized torture, including a case where a man was raped with a burning metal rod and left to die slowly.
Women were not spared from sexual violence at Sde Teiman either. A 34-year-old woman testified, “A male soldier took off our hijabs, and they pinched us and touched our bodies, including our breasts.” She also stated that she was spat on and beaten and that pepper was smeared on her and other women’s genitals.
Additionally, in an independent investigative report released on June 12, a UN-mandated inquiry concluded that mass sexual abuse carried out by Israeli military personnel was “either ordered or condoned,” implicating Israel’s chain of command. The report found that Israeli forces “systematically targeted and subjected Palestinians to SGBV [Sexual and Gender-Based Violence] online and in person since October 7, including forced public nudity, forced public stripping, sexualized torture and abuse, and sexual humiliation and harassment.”
However, sexual violence against Palestinians didn’t begin on October 7; it dates back to the creation of the State of Israel. In the 2022 documentary “Tantura,” former Zionist militia members admitted on film to various instances of raping Palestinian women in 1948. The elderly Israelis recounted these cases while smiling and laughing.
During the Second Intifada in 2002, Israeli occupation soldiers took control of Palestinian TV networks in Ramallah to broadcast pornography on several channels. Given the socially conservative nature of Palestinian society, this act was clearly intended to humiliate. This trend continues today, with the Israeli army admitting to running snuff film Telegram channels.
Israeli soldiers frequently release videos of themselves rummaging through the underwear drawers of Palestinian women after raiding their homes in Gaza. Additionally, to humiliate these women, soldiers have posted videos on social media of themselves wearing lingerie they seized while insulting the women to whom it belonged.
Hypocrisy of American silence
The scale of rape and sexual abuse against Palestinians during this conflict is staggering, yet it has not garnered the same level of international outcry as the October 7 allegations. Despite mounting evidence of systematic abuse by Israeli soldiers, influential figures like Hillary Clinton have remained notably silent, raising questions about the lack of high-profile advocacy for justice and condemnation on the global stage.
The revelation that debunked allegations of a mass rape campaign on October 7 may have fueled actual instances of sexual violence by Israeli soldiers raises questions about the accountability of those who propagated these narratives. Western officials and corporate media, in repeating these now-discredited stories, may face scrutiny over their role in potentially contributing to documented cases of sexual violence against Palestinians.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47
MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
REPORT: Israeli Officials Hiding Data About Forced Starvation of Gaza Prisoners
Traumatized and undernourished Palestinian men are viewed after they were released from Israeli army imprisonment, in Deir Al Balah, Gaza on June 20, 2024. (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“…all patients at the camp's field hospital are handcuffed by all four limbs, 24 hours a day, regardless of how dangerous they are deemed. 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.’"
By Brett Wilkins
Common Dreams (6/27/24)
Israeli prison officials are concealing information about reductions in food rations for Palestinians held in the Gaza Strip, where detainees—who have also reported horrific abuse including alleged rape and deadly torture—have been deliberately driven "to the point of starvation," according to a report published Thursday.
Security sources told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the Israel Prison Service (IPS) is intentionally cutting Palestinian prisoners' caloric intake, a move confirmed by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who called the policy a "deterrent."
"The Palestinian detainees will receive the minimum rights and the minimum food, and I will ensure that this policy is implemented," Ben-Gvir, who leads the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, said Thursday in response to a query from Israel's Supreme Court.
"There is no starvation, but my policy does call for reducing conditions, including food and calories," Ben-Gvir added.
"The IPS has been deploying a policy of starvation towards Palestinian prisoners and detainees."
However, dozens of Palestinians held by Israel, including so-called security prisoners and detainees unaffiliated with Hamas, have testified that the IPS "has significantly reduced their food rations, to the point of starvation, causing them to shed dozens of kilograms."
One unidentified security source told Haaretz: "Since the start of the war, there's been a deliberate policy of indiscriminate reduction of food. To put it mildly, this policy has raised factual questions about the figures provided by the prison service, to such an extent that it is impossible to get the full picture and to determine whether what is going on is legal at all."
"This is not just a legal question, it can cause security issues with serious implications," the source added.
According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which, along with the Israeli human rights group Gisha, filed a petition in the High Court of Justice earlier this year:
Since October 7, 2023, the IPS has been deploying a policy of starvation towards Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Recently released prisoners testified that they suffered from constant and extreme hunger and very poor quality of food. Among the testimonies presented in the petition were those of a diabetic prisoner who ate toothpaste to raise blood sugar, and of prisoners who lost tens of kilograms in weight in recent months.
The petition argued that the food reduction policy amounts to starvation and torture, and contravenes Israeli and international law. It violates the constitutional right of security prisoners to dignity and health, constitutes a policy of collective punishment, and violates the IPS' obligation to provide detainees in its custody with appropriate prison conditions.
At a hearing on Wednesday, the High Court of Justice slammed the reduction of Palestinian prisoners' food rations as "unacceptable."
Appalling conditions have been widely reported in Israeli military lockups since the start of Israel's bombardment and invasion of Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attacks that left more than 1,100 Israelis and others dead—at least some of whom were killed by so-called "friendly fire"—and over 240 others kidnapped on October 7.
According to Israeli whistleblowers who worked at the notorious Sde Teiman prison camp in the Negev Desert, Palestinian detainees there are tortured not to "gather intelligence," but "out of revenge" for October 7.
Israel's Abu Ghraib
Often referred to as "Israel's Abu Ghraib"—the infamous U.S. military prison in Iraq where dozens of detainees died, some of them tortured to death—Sde Teiman has been described by former detainees as hell on Earth. Palestinians held there and at other detention sites described being electrocuted, mauled and even raped by dogs, and starved, among other abuses.
One Sde Teiman physician said that all patients at the camp's field hospital are handcuffed by all four limbs, 24 hours a day, regardless of how dangerous they are deemed. 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."
"Two prisoners had their legs amputated due to handcuff injuries, which unfortunately is a routine event," he told Haaretz.
Last month, Haaretz revealed that 27 detainees have died in custody at the Sde Teiman and Anatot camps or during interrogation by Israeli forces 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.
One former Sde Teiman detainee also claimed that he personally witnessed Israeli troops execute five prisoners in separate incidents.
Photos and videos of Israeli troops abusing Palestinians—both alive and dead—have been published by perpetrators on social media. …
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Prisoners Held By Israel Are Suffering Torture & ‘tragic conditions’: al-Shifa Hospital Director
Palestinian sources confirmed that Abu Salmiya was subjected to brutal torture during his detention in Israeli-run prisons.
Al Jazeera (7/1/24)
The Israeli military has released a group of Palestinians from prison. They're having medical checks at Al-Aqsa and Nasser Hospitals. Among those released is the director of al-Shifa Hospital, Muhammad Abu Salmiya. He was detained in November, while taking part in a United Nations mission to evacuate patients, from the medical complex. …
14-minute video
How Does Israel Treat Thousands Of Palestinian Prisoners?
Inside Story
Al Jazeera English (7/1/24)
29-minute video
NOW, AFTER ALL THAT: Relax ‘Merica
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlyn’s Newsletter (7/1/24)
This obvious genocide is not what it looks like, smirks the man behind the podium.
Don’t trust your lying eyes, or your lying ears, or your lying mind, or your lying heart.
Silence that part of you which sees. Which feels. Which knows. Which cares.
Stomp it down until it stops moving. Pour concrete over it if you have to.
Stop feeling the feelings that you are feeling. Those feelings have not been authorized by the Israeli government. …
Biden and Kamala will certainly bend over for Bibi🤣
These 55 hostages are from West Bank what about the hostages from Gaza? their treatment is only body bags.