B'Tselem, the well known Israeli human rights organization, issued a disturbing report called "Welcome to Hell," last week. On its website (where the full report can be seen or downloaded) the human rights group describes its report thus:
Welcome to Hell is a report on the abuse and inhuman treatment of Palestinians held in custody since 7, October 2023. B'Tselem collected testimonies from 55 Palestinians held during that time and released, almost all with no charges. Their testimonies reveal the outcomes of the rushed transformation of more than a dozen Israeli prison facilities, military and civilian, into a network of camps dedicated to the abuse of inmates as a matter of policy. Facilities in which every inmate is deliberately subjected to harsh, relentless pain and suffering operate as de-facto torture camps.
Democracy Now and CNN have both covered the report. Below is a 25 min. clip from Democracy Now that discusses the horrifying report, along with recent UN condemnations of Israeli torture of Palestinians, and reporting on Israel's TV channel 12 which aired shocking footage of soldiers sexually assaulting a prisoner at Sde Teiman base, where 1000s of detainees from Gaza are held, and tortured (as revealed in previous reporting covered on this blog).
Earlier this month, video emerged of a gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner by guards at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev desert, southern Israel.
The video, which was widely reported, shows the prisoner being selected from a larger group lying bound on the floor. The victim is then escorted to a wall, where guards, using their shields to hide their identity from the camera, proceed to rape him. When 9 guards were held for questioning by the IDF (a rare event indeed), some far right ultra-nationalist politicians, like Security Minister Ben-Gvir (who perversely oversees the Israeli prison system) and many Israeli youths who share his views, condemned the decision to arrest the suspects, arguing that "anything is permissible, even rape, for the security of the state." He went on to say, "It is shameful to arrest our best heroes."
Another far right minister, Finance Minister Smotrich, demanded “an immediate criminal investigation to locate the leakers of the trending video that was intended to harm the reservists and that caused tremendous damage to Israel in the world and to exhaust the full severity of the law against them.” The rape and torture is legitimate against anyone deemed "Hamas" a label used even for 100s of randomly seized detainees from Gaza who have been rounded up, tortured and later released without charges.
Disturbingly, when asked by an Arab MP in Israel's Knesset whether "it is legitimate to insert a stick into a person's rectum," Hanoch Milwidsky, a member of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, responded: “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do! Everything!” (source: CBS News Reports).
Responding to warnings of overcrowding within the prison system from the security agency Shin Bet in early July, Ben-Gvir repeated his call for Palestinian prisoners to be executed, tweeting that one of his principal goals since attaining office had been to “worsen the conditions of the terrorists in the prisons, and to reduce their rights to the minimum required by law”.
He said: “Everything published about the abominable conditions” of the Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons “was true”.
So here we are, once again sending weapons to what has clearly become a fascist state, replete with eliminationist ideology, concentration camps, systematic torture, the now completed destruction of Gaza. This is our "closest ally!? "
The Times of Israel reported that Blinken (note: not Biden) has just approved $20 billion sale of weapons to Israel, including F-15s-- right on the heels of the revelations discussed here, which place Israel well outside of the category of ethical and law-abiding Liberal Democracies of the world. Biden doesn't make a sound about it. Blinken seems to be making decisions, while Biden is disturbingly AWOL. State Dept. mouthpieces only say, "Israel will investigate these allegations of violations of international law" as if they are reliable and transparent. Kamala Harris has studiously avoided the topic, as she tries to appease concerned progressives without actually saying anything about US policy in the face of these tragic developments. Of course, the problem will not go away as protestors prepare to make their voices known to the Biden Administration, including Harris at the upcoming convention. Campus protests are sure to restart in a few weeks, and it will be important to see how Harris responds. She has promised to listen with respect. I hope so. Of course, Trump too avoids discussing his plans should he win. But at the moment Trump has no power to stop sending weapons even if he wanted to (and he does not). This is happening in real-time. This administration has responsibility for its own policies in the ongoing present. The buck stops there. It is not only a potential pitfall for the Dems, but a moral stain on this nation. We have enabled all of this for the better part of a year, and do not even know who is in charge anymore.
It is in the context of all the above, that the following report on the Human Rights report and related revelations of torture, which is being defended by wide swathes of Israeli society and ignored by others, is of particular relevance.
Recommended related readings:
>>"As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel: This summer, one of my lectures was protested by far-right students. Their rhetoric brought to mind some of the darkest moments of 20th-century history – and overlapped with mainstream Israeli views to a shocking degree " by Omer Bartov at The Guardian here.
>> Haaretz' Gideon Levy: "Welcome to Hell: B'Tselem's Ignored Abuse Report Shows Israel's True Face" The short article can be read at Haaretz here.
Because the article may be behind a paywall, I will past just a few paragraphs from it below:
The B'Tselem report published this week, "Welcome to Hell," isn't only a report about what's happening in Israel's prison facilities; it's a report about Israel. Anyone who wants to know what Israel is should read this report before any other document about Israeli democracy.
Anyone who wants to become familiar with the spirit of the times in Israel should note how most of the media outlets ignored the report, which should have caused outrage and shock in Israel. Even the documentation of the gang rape reported this week by Guy Peleg on Channel 12 News didn't show only the Sde Teiman detention facility. It showed the face of the country.
If a report like that of B'Tselem was almost totally ignored here, and if even after the evidence shown by Peleg the debate as to whether it's permitted to detain the despicable soldiers presented in it continues – on the Channel 12 morning program there was a discussion of who's in favor of rape [of alleged terrorists] and who's opposed – then Peleg's documentation is documentation of the face of Israel 2024, its spirit and its likeness.Unfortunately, even Peleg continued to call the victim of the barbaric rape a "terrorist" (after all, he does work for Channel 12 News), although a moment earlier he revealed that the rape victim wasn't a member of Hamas or a company commander – he was an ordinary policeman in the anti-drug unit in Jabalya. He was also pulled out from among dozens of detainees who were lying handcuffed on the floor, perhaps at random because he was the last one in the row. No violence and no riots, as the suspects' disingenuous lawyers tried to claim....
When you read the 94 pages of the B'Tselem report, which causes you to lose sleep, you understand that it wasn't an exceptional incident, it's the routine of torture, which has become a policy. As opposed to the torture by the Shin Bet, which presumably had a security-minded purpose – to extract information – here it's solely to satisfy the darkest and sickest sadistic urges. Look how calmly the soldiers approach to carry out their malevolent intention. There are dozens of other soldiers too, who saw and knew and remained silent. Apparently they also participated in similar orgies, based on the dozens of testimonies cited in the B'Tselem report. That's the routine.The indifference to all these things defines Israel. The public legitimization defines Israel. In the Guantanamo Bay detention camp that was opened by the United States after the 9/11 attacks, nine prisoners were killed in 20 years; here it's 60 detainees in 10 months. Need anything more be said?
As it is OUR tax money that is paying for these obscenities, what, if anything do you-- readers-- think we, as ordinary citizens should do? Nothing? Sign petitions? Protest? Shrug our shoulders in saddened resignation? Nothing? Who bears responsibility if not the country paying for all of this insanity? Who does the government here represent in theory if not the citizens? Is this country actually a democracy if such representation does not exist even in a case like this where the vast majority of condemn Israel's behavior and want to see immediate and permanent ceasefire and humanitarian aid? Most Democrats believe Israel has committed genocide, and yet the Dems in charge in Washington ignore their voters and send more weapons (yet again) on the heels of reporting the likes of which we haven't seen in Western nation-states since WW2. The Israelis are not even denying it any more, as documented in this blogpost and the video and articles it features. How can we sit passively by in the face of this scandalous abuse of power by our top politicians? Do they act in your name?
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