The Israeli sexual torture scandal, whereby nine soldiers were arrested on 29 July for allegedly physically and sexually torturing Palestinian men, was depicted in western media as a deviation from Israel’s usual torture methods.
The idea is that Israeli torturers of Palestinian prisoners do not usually subject them to rape.
Four of the arrested soldiers were later released following widespread riots.
The US State Department, presumably appalled by such torture, described a video reportedly showing the alleged rape as “horrific” and insisted that “[t]here ought to be zero tolerance for sexual abuse, rape of any detainee, period… If there are detainees who have been sexually assaulted or raped, the government of Israel, the IDF [Israeli army] need to fully investigate those actions and hold anyone responsible accountable to the full extent of the law”.
The White House, also presumably a stranger to the practice of abusing political prisoners held in US dungeons, remained calm but found reports of Israeli sexual torture “deeply concerning”.
The European Union followed suit and claimed to be “gravely concerned”.
But this is hardly a new development in the cruelty of the Israeli colonial-settler regime. The Israeli army has been systematically using physical and sexual torture against Palestinians since at least 1967, as human rights groups revealed years ago.
Indeed, sadism has been characteristic of the Zionist colonists’ treatment of Palestinians since the 1880s, as even Zionist leaders complained at the time.
This sadism and the sexual torture that often accompanies it are rooted not only in European colonial hubris but also in orientalist views that Arabs only “understand force” and are allegedly more susceptible to sexual torture than white Europeans.
Hellbound and Down 