Our Wednesday News Analysis | Nothing’s changed since 1948 – except now Israel’s excuses don’t work

The headline above, about yet another Israeli operation to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in the tiny, besieged, and utterly destroyed enclave of Gaza, was published in yesterday’s Middle East Eye.

"Israel is quite possibly the only nation in the world where it is permissible and commonplace to go on TV and openly declare that the RAPING of prisoners should be a LEGITIMATE and OFFICIAL POLICY of the state and must be widely implemented."

When I began studying Israeli history more than a quarter of a century ago, people claiming to be experts proffered plenty of excuses to explain why Israelis should not be held responsible for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes – what Palestinians call their Nakba or Catastrophe.

1. I was told most Israelis were not involved and knew nothing of the war crimes carried out against the Palestinians during Israel’s establishment.

2. I was told that those Israelis who did take part in war crimes, like Operation Broom to expel Palestinians from their homeland, did so only because they were traumatised by their experiences in Europe. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, these Israelis assumed that, were the Jewish people to survive, they had no alternative but to drive out the Palestinians en masse.

3. From others, I was told that no ethnic cleansing had taken place. The Palestinians had simply fled at the first sign of conflict because they had no real historical attachment to the land.

4. Or I was told that the Palestinians’ displacement was an unfortunate consequence of a violent war in which Israeli leaders had the best interests of Palestinians at heart. The Palestinians hadn’t left because of Israeli violence but because they has been ordered to do so by Arab leaders in the region. In fact, the story went, Israel had pleaded with many of the 750,000 refugees to come home afterwards, but those same Arab leaders stubbornly blocked their return.

Every one of these claims was nonsense, directly contradicted by all the documentary evidence.

That should be even clearer today, as Israel continues the ethnic cleansing and slaughter of the Palestinian people more than 75 years on.

Read more: Nothing’s changed since 1948 – except now Israel’s excuses don’t work

___________________

ZIONISM ON THE BRINK: THE GAZA WAR BEYOND NETANYAHU

Source: Middle East Monitor
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240806-zionism-on-the-brink-the-gaza-war-beyond-netanyahu/

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud
Published August 6, 2024 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L), Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces Herzi Halevi (R) follow the attack by Israeli warplanes Hudaydah Port in Yemen from the operations centre in Jerusalem on 20 July 2024. [Israeli Prime Minister’s Office /Anadolu Agency]

The idea that Israel’s war on Gaza is essentially waged and sustained by and for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dominated political analyses on the subject for some time. The notion is often kept alive by public opinion inside Israel. Most polls produced since the start of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza suggest that an overwhelming majority of Israelis believe that Netanyahu’s decisions are motivated by personal, political and familial interests.

"Initially, the Hamas-led assault and its aftermath posed a challenge
to all segments of Israeli society:
the humiliated army, the degraded intelligence agencies, the humbled politicians, the confounded media, and the angry masses.

The greatest challenge was faced by the far-right, though, which was about to shape the future of Israel for generations.

Thus, the Gaza war is not just important to Netanyahu but to the very future of Israel’s far-right camp, whose entire political and ideological program has been shattered, most likely beyond salvation.”

This conclusion, however, is too convenient and not entirely accurate. It assumes, wrongly, that the Israeli people oppose Netanyahu’s war in Gaza whereas, in reality, they have been quite approving of all tactics used by the Israeli army so far. For example, over 300 days into the war, 69 percent of all Israelis support Netanyahu’s desperate assassinations, including the murder of the top political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Tehran on 31 July. While Netanyahu’s decision to target a political leader reflects his failure and desperation, how do we explain the Israeli people’s enthusiasm for the expansion of the circle of violence?...

Read more: Zionism on the brink: The Gaza war beyond Netanyahu

___________________

WELCOME TO HELL: THE ISRAELI PRISON SYSTEM AS A NETWORK OF TORTURE CAMPS

Source: Jews for Justice for Palestinians
https://jfjfp.com/welcome-to-hell-the-israeli-prison-system-as-a-network-of-torture-camps/

Published August 8, 2024

The Executive Summary of the B’tselem report Welcome to Hell begins:

When we got off the bus, a soldier said to us:
“Welcome to hell.”

From the testimony of Fouad Hassan, 45, a father of five and resident of Qusrah in Nablus District, held in Megiddo Prison.

Ofer Prison (Wikipedia)

This report concerns the treatment of Palestinian prisoners and the inhuman conditions they have been subjected to in Israeli prisons since 7 October 2023. B’Tselem’s research for the report included collecting testimonies from 55 Palestinians who were incarcerated in Israeli prisons and detention facilities during this time.

We were taken to a room with many clothes, shoes, rings, and watches. We were stripped naked and even had to take off our underwear. We were searched with a hand-held metal detector. They forced us to spread our legs and then sit half-crouching. Then they started hitting us on our private parts with the detector. They rained blows down on us. Then, they ordered us to salute an Israeli flag that was hanging on the wall.

Overpopulation and crowding in cells

No sunlight or fresh air: “For 191 days, I didn’t see the sun. We felt our bodies were rotting with dirt. Some of us had rashes. There was no hygiene. There was no soap, shampoo, hair brushes, or nail clippers. After a month and a half, we got shampoo for the first time. There were no cleaning supplies either, and cleaning the cell, toilet, or clothes was impossible. ”

Violent roll calls

Withholding access to the courts, aid agencies, and legal counsel

Confiscation of personal possessions

Physical violence and intimidation: Pepper spray, stun grenades, sticks, wooden clubs and metal batons, gun butts and barrels, brass knuckles and tasers, attack dogs, beatings, punches, and kicks –leading to severe injuries, loss of consciousness, broken bones, and in extreme cases even death.

Extreme violence during transfers and travel

Sexual violence: blows to the genitals and other body parts of naked prisoners; the use of metal tools and batons to cause genital pain; the photographing of naked prisoners; genitals being grabbed; and strip-searches for the sake of humiliation and degradation. The testimonies also reveal cases of gang sexual violence and assault committed by a group of corrections officers and soldiers.

Absence and denial of medical treatment

Food deprivation and starvation

Hygiene and cutting off the water supply

Thirty of the witnesses are residents of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem; 21 are residents of the Gaza Strip; and four are Israeli citizens. The testimonies were given to B’Tselem after the witnesses were released from prison, the overwhelming majority of them without being tried.

The testimonies indicate a systemic, institutional policy focused on the continual abuse and torture of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel:

Frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; sleep deprivation, prohibition on, and punitive measures for, religious worship; confiscation of all communal and personal belongings; and denial of adequate medical treatment – these descriptions appear time and again in the testimonies, in horrifying detail and with chilling similarities...

Read more: Welcome to Hell: the Israeli prison system as a network of torture camps