Palestinians arrested in the northern Gaza Strip describe how Israeli soldiers systematically abused civilians and combatants alike, from severe deprivation to brutal physical violence.
In early December, images circulated worldwide showing dozens of Palestinian men in the city of Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, who were stripped to their underwear, kneeling or sitting hunched over, then blindfolded and put into the back of Israeli military trucks like cattle. The vast majority of these detainees were civilians with no affiliation to Hamas, Israeli security officials later confirmed, and the men were taken away by the army without notifying their families of the detainees’ whereabouts. Some of them never returned.
+972 Magazine and Local Call spoke with four Palestinian civilians who appeared in these photos, or were arrested near the scene and taken to Israeli military detention centers, where they were held for several days or even weeks before being released back to Gaza. Their testimonies — along with 49 video testimonies published by various Arabic media outlets of Palestinians arrested in similar circumstances in recent weeks in the northern districts of Zeitoun, Jabalia, and Shuja’iya — indicate systematic abuse and torture by Israeli soldiers against all of the detainees, civilians and combatants alike.
According to these testimonies, Israeli soldiers subjected Palestinian detainees to electric shocks, burned their skin with lighters, spat in their mouths, and deprived them of sleep, food, and access to bathrooms until they defecated on themselves. Many were tied to a fence for hours, handcuffed, and blindfolded for most of the day. Some testified to having been beaten all over their bodies and having cigarettes extinguished on their necks or backs. Several people are known to have died as a result of being held in these conditions.
It's crazy these israelis are acting like literal Nazi concentration camp guards.
Treating all their captives like sub-humans and going on a maximum level bully powertrip by making them do dehumiliating things or else they will torture them even till death.
I know that Israel is often cited as a client state, but it's better described as a psuedoclient state. The entirety of NATO could cut off Israel entirely tomorrow, and it wouldn't have any material impact on their capabilities. It would probably be enough international pressure, but Israel's military would be capable of maintaining it's genocide in roughly same capacity as it is now. Biden is culpable, but he's not complicit.
How tf is the US still supporting these sub-human pieces of shit. Holy fuck, Biden is just letting this happen. They’ve taken what could be called as an open area prison and fully converted it to a concentration camp. I said it last night, they won’t stop until the entire state of Gaza is dead. They talk about their vision for a post war Gaza and it’s essentially just Israeli occupation “until they see fit” and there will be “no speaking out or hostility towards Israel of any kind.” At best it’s a dictatorship, and at worst a fucking death camp.
The most terrifying part of this is that no one there is sub-human. The people doing these horrible horrible things are exactly as human as you and me and that's mortifyingly agonizing to me. I really really wish we lived in a world where the worst of monsters weren't human, even if it was just a little not human, but that's just not our world.
This is exactly what propaganda does, spreading misinformation, dehumanizing the people on the other side, spreading hatred and so on and unfortunately normal people can easily fall on that and start seeing the others as subhuman species.
The same with the Nazis. A lot of them were just regular citizens who were subjected to a lot of propaganda and at some point all of the atrocities they were doing were normalised in their eyes.
I'm with you for all this. But let's not be like them. Let's not dehumanize them like they do their victims. They're very human. Shitty humans. But definitely human.
I’m gonna say it. Israel is no better than the Nazis, and I wholeheartedly believe the nation should be dissolved and the people moved off of the land they stole from the Palestinians. These people do not act with humanity, and I don’t have any sympathy for whatever happens to them in the future.
I think the only way this can end is similar to South Africa. International pressure needs to end the current governance of Israel as an apartheid state and a new state with equal rights for all Palestinians, including all the refugees, and Israeli citizens needs to be created in its place.
True. But i would add the extra detail that all the land stolen from Palestinians by Israel should be returned.
In South Africa that wasn't done. We had land and a house that my grandfather built up by himself in what is now one the most expensive suburbs in Cape Town. That land was stolen from us and never returned.
And it hurts so much everytime we have to go past there because there are rich white folks living there now. And we know we'll never be able to afford that land now no matter how hard we work.
Now we struggle to even leave a home for our children to inherit.
I don't want that happening to the Palestinians again.
Forcing them off the land they’ve stolen is not a war crime any more than forcing Russia out of Crimea would be. The warcrime has already been committed, undoing that warcrime is justice.
How about we offer them the option, and if they refuse - bury them under the 70 years of Palestinian graves that they created.
Fuck off outta here with your "war crime to relocate them" shit. Israel is a made-up country that relies on money greasing the right pockets to exist. It's time to dissolve it.
I'm Israeli. I was born and raised here, in a city that never existed before pre-Israel pioneers established it. I also voted against the current shitshow of a government.
It didn’t exist before the Israelis showed up? Then what you’re saying is that your people established an illegal settlement on stolen lands. In that case, I would say that you should be forced to leave that land so that it can be used by the people it belongs to. You’re illegal squatters, you don’t have any right to that land.
According to testimonies, the soldiers ordered all the men to undress, gathered them in one place, and took the photos that were later disseminated on social media (senior Israeli officials have since chided the soldiers for sharing the images).
It's very telling that the officials only have a problem with the evidence of their war crimes.
Fun fact: sometimes people erect barbed wire fences around the external location where they store their torture victims and call that inside a camp and also outdoors/outside.
Another example would be large parts of the concentration camps along the southern US border.
You think that's not inside the camp? Are you expecting it to be like your church camp? With cabins and running showers, with beds and a fireplace outside where they can have some roasted marshmallows?