Tag: israel

“They brought Israeli civilians to watch our nude torture”: IDF torture of Palestinian prisoners is turned into entertainment for Israeli viewers

The Israeli army introduced groups of Israeli civilians into detention centres and prisons holding Palestinian prisoners and detainees from the Gaza Strip, permitting the civilians to witness torture crimes against the detainees, with many allowed to film them on their own phones.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor received shocking testimonies from recently released Palestinian prisoners and detainees, in which they reported that the Israeli army invited a number of Israeli civilians during their interrogation sessions to witness torture and inhumane treatment, to which they were deliberately subjected in the presence of the civilians.

Arrested during ground incursions by Israeli army forces into the Strip, the prisoners and detainees were held for varying periods of time inside two detention centres: one located in the Zikim area on the northern border of the Gaza Strip, and another affiliated with the Naqab prison in southern Israel.

The released detainees told Euro-Med Monitor that the Israeli soldiers had purposefully presented them before Israeli civilians, falsely claiming that they were fighters affiliated with Palestinian armed factions and that they had taken part in the 7 October attack on Israeli towns on Gaza Strip borders.

According to testimony received by Euro-Med Monitor, groups of ten to twenty Israeli civilians at a time were permitted to watch and laughingly film Palestinian prisoners and detainees in their underwear while Israeli army soldiers subjected them to physical abuse, including beating them with metal batons, electric sticks, and pouring hot water on their heads. The detainees were also verbally abused.

This is the first time that these illegal practices have come to the attention of Euro-Med Monitor. It adds a new crime to the list of those committed by the Israeli army against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and specifically against prisoners and detainees who are subjected to cruel torture, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests, and denials of a fair trial, among other atrocities.

Palestinian Omar Abu Mudallala, 43, told the Euro-Med Monitor team: “I was arrested at the checkpoint set up near the Kuwait roundabout, which separates Gaza City from the central region, as part of the Israeli random arrest campaigns. I was subjected to all types of torture and abuse for approximately 52 days,” pointing out that Israeli soldiers “brought Israeli civilians to watch our nude torture.”

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Let Them Eat Dirt

There was never any possibility that the Israeli government would agree to a pause in the fighting proposed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, much less a ceasefire.

Israel is on the verge of delivering the coup de grâce in its war on Palestinians in Gaza – mass starvation.

When Israeli leaders use the term “absolute victory,” they mean total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a number Israel intends to exceed. 

Israel, and its chief patron the United States, by attempting to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides food and aid to Gaza, is not only committing a war crime, but is in flagrant defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). 

The court found the charges of genocide brought by South Africa, which included statements and facts gathered by UNWRA, plausible. It ordered Israel to abide by six provisional measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe. The fourth provisional measure calls on Israel to secure immediate and effective steps to provide humanitarian assistance and essential services in Gaza. 

UNRWA’s reports on conditions in Gaza, which I covered as a reporter for seven years, and its documentation of indiscriminate Israeli attacks illustrate that, as UNRWA said, “unilaterally declared ‘safe zones’ are not safe at all. Nowhere in Gaza is safe.” 

UNRWA’s role in documenting the genocide, as well as providing food and aid to the Palestinians, infuriates the Israeli government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused UNRWA, after the ruling, of providing false information to the ICJ. Already an Israeli target for decades, Israel decided that UNRWA, which supports 5.9 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East with clinics, schools and food, had to be eliminated.

Israel’s destruction of UNRWA serves a political as well as material objective. 

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DISGUSTING: US Senate Advances $95 Billion Aid Package to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan in Rare Super Bowl Sunday Vote — Here are the 18 Republicans Who Voted with Democrats

In an unusual session held on Super Bowl Sunday, the US Senate voted to move forward a substantial $95 billion aid package that will support Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, with no southern border security provisions. The vote garnered support from RINOs, with a final tally of 67-27.

The vote came in response to Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.)’s steadfast refusal to expedite voting on the bill, which he vehemently criticized as “rotten” and detrimental to national interests.

Senator Paul, expressing his staunch opposition, declared he would not allow the bill to pass immediately, emphasizing his concerns over prioritizing foreign aid over domestic issues.

According to the Hill, Schumer offered Republicans the chance to vote on amendments in exchange for expediting the legislative process.

“By a vote of 67-27, The Senate invoked cloture on Murray substitute amendment 1388 to H.R.815, legislative vehicle for supplemental appropriations,” the Senate Press Gallery wrote on X.

Sixty-seven senators voted in favor of war funding, while 27 senators opposed the expenditure, all of whom were Republicans.

On Super Bowl Sunday, the following 18 Republican senators supported the Ukraine war funding:

  • Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)
  • Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
  • Susan Collins (R-ME)
  • John Cornyn (R-TX)
  • Joni Ernst (R-IA)
  • Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
  • John Kennedy (R-LA)
  • Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
  • Jerry Moran (R-KS)
  • Markwayne Mullin (R-OK)
  • Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
  • Mitt Romney (R-UT)
  • Mike Rounds (R-SD)
  • Dan Sullivan (R-AK)
  • John Thune (R-SD)
  • Thom Tillis (R-NC)
  • Roger Wicker (R-MS)
  • Todd Young (R-IN)

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) acknowledged the unusual scheduling.

“I can’t remember the last time the Senate was in session on Super Bowl Sunday, but as I’ve said all week long, we’re going to keep working on this bill until the job is done,” Schumer said.

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The shocking inhumanity of Israel’s crimes in Gaza

Dozens of patients stand in line for hours outside the pharmacy booth in the Kuwaiti Hospital compound. They all start out by asking the pharmacist the same question: is my medication available? The answer for most is no.

Amid the long lines of the elderly, the ill, and mothers carrying their children, a man appearing to be middle-aged leaning on a young boy arrives, speaking in a loud voice and asking to be allowed to jump the line — he’s just been released from prison, and can barely stand.

“I spent sixty days of constant beating and humiliation,” he says. “They just released me, and I need to just get my medicine. Please let me take it without having to wait any longer.”

Everyone lets him through, allowing him to collect his medications from the booth and leave. 

I stand beside him in the hospital courtyard, asking him how he came to be arrested by the Israeli army — and how he was eventually released.

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The Silence of the Damned

There is no effective health care system left in Gaza.

Infants are dying. Children are having their limbs amputated without anesthesia.

Thousands of cancer patients and those in need of dialysis lack treatment. The last cancer hospital in Gaza has ceased functioning. An estimated 50,000 pregnant women have no safe place to give birth. They undergo cesarean sections without anesthesia.

Miscarriage rates are up 300 percent since the Israeli assault began. The wounded bleed to death. There is no sanitation or clean water. Hospitals have been bombed and shelled. Nasser Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza, is “near collapse.”

Clinics, along with ambulances — 79 in Gaza and over 212 in the West Bank — have been destroyed. Some 400 doctors, nurses, medics and healthcare workers have been killed — more than the total of all healthcare workers killed in conflicts around the world combined since 2016.

Over 100 more have been detained, interrogated, beaten and tortured, or disappeared by Israeli soldiers. 

Israeli soldiers routinely enter hospitals to carry out forced evacuations — on Jan. 24, troops entered al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis and demanded doctors and displaced Palestinians leave — as well as round up detainees, including the wounded, sick and medical staff.

On Jan. 30, disguised as hospital workers and civilians, Israeli soldiers entered Jenin’s Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank and assassinated three Palestinians as they slept. 

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Revealed: An Israeli businessman’s post-genocide plan for Gaza

An Israeli entrepreneur who participated in the genocide in Gaza has pitched a plan to a European firm for the territory’s future.

The Gaza Strip – which the plan assumes would be conquered and controlled by Israel – would be divided into two zones. In the northern zone, Palestinian collaborators would be permitted to live in relative comfort, while those who refuse to serve and obey their Israeli masters would be banished to a southern “area of terror.”

The Electronic Intifada has seen a copy of this so-called “day-after plan.”

The pitch exposes the frightening colonial mindset and condescendingly racist view of Palestinians pervasive in Israel. It also reveals an underlying desire to conquer and control every inch of Palestine, including Gaza.

The plan was submitted by Or Bokobza, an Israeli reserve officer in the Sayeret Matkal elite commando unit, who was deployed in Gaza for several weeks during October and November.

Bokobza lives in New York City, but was in Israel on 7 October when the Palestinian resistance group Hamas led a military operation that destroyed the Israeli army’s Gaza Division, which is responsible for enforcing Israel’s siege on the territory.

Bokobza “immediately reported for duty and was deployed to root out the Hamas fighters that day,” according to a glowing profile in The Wall Street Journal.

Bokobza, who spent eight years in Israel’s army, far longer than the mandatory service requirement, has also participated in “every war since 2005.”

He is also the chief executive of Venn, a company that makes software for large-scale residential landlords to manage, monitor and extract maximum rents and revenue from tenants. It has received $100 million in venture capital, according to The Wall Street Journal.

At least 15 percent of his employees also enlisted as reservists with Israel’s military after the genocidal war on Gaza was declared.

Now Bokobza undoubtedly hopes to profit from the destruction and slaughter – although his proposal is pitched as good for Israel and even good for Palestinians in Gaza.

Another Israeli businessman Eran Haggiag is also named in the proposal, The Electronic Intifada learned. Haggiag is a co-founder of Bokobza’s company Venn.

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Northwestern students face criminal charges for pro-Palestinian newspaper parody

Students at Northwestern University, in the Chicago suburbs, woke up on October 25 to face an unexpected allegation. “Northwestern complicit in genocide of Palestinians,” declared the school’s venerable student newspaper, the Daily Northwestern, in a front-page story.

The students, however, weren’t really looking at the Daily Northwestern. Instead, they had found the Northwestern Daily, a parody newspaper attacking the school’s stance on Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

The mock front page featured fake quotes from school officials, accusations of Israeli war crimes, and a fake ad for Birthright Israel — the travel abroad program that sends young American Jews to Israel — with the tagline “One man’s home is another man’s former home!” Overnight, someone had pinned the mock papers on bulletin boards, spread them on desks in lecture halls, and even wrapped the false front pages around roughly 300 copies of the Daily Northwestern itself.

The stunt quickly sparked a furor among Israel’s supporters online. One writer, at the conservative National Review, said the fake newspaper included an antisemitic “blood libel.” The university itself said the spoof “included images and language about Israel that many in our community found offensive.”

The parent company of the school paper, Students Publishing Company, or SPC, announced that it had “engaged law enforcement to investigate and find those responsible.” The results of the inquiry are just now coming to light.

Following the investigation, local prosecutors brought charges against two students for theft of advertising services. The little-known statute appears to only exist in Illinois and California, where it was originally passed to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from distributing recruitment materials in newspapers. The statute makes it illegal to insert an “unauthorized advertisement in a newspaper or periodical.” The students, both of whom are Black, now face up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine.

“I have never seen anyone charged with theft of advertising,” said Elaine Odeh, a lawyer who formerly supervised public defenders in Cook County, Illinois, which includes Evanston, where Northwestern is based.

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FACTS FOR PEACE: THE BILLIONAIRE-BACKED CAMPAIGN ATTACKING THE PALESTINIAN CAUSE

Aweek after Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, the social media page Facts For Peace was created with the message, “Get the facts on Hamas, Israel, and peace in the region.”

A few days later, the page began advertising its content. “Here is Hamas’ Founding Charter in Their Own Words,” one sponsored post reads alongside video clips of Hamas leaders speaking and snapshots of the document. The page has spent more than $945,000 on Facebook ads since the war began nearly four months ago, and according to POLITICO, was the single largest pro-Israel advertiser between November 2 and December 1, spending over $450,000 on Meta ads. The ads have mainly reached male-identifying Facebook users under the age of 35 in California, Texas, New York, and Florida.

Labeled as a media/news company on Facebook, now Meta, the page’s posts and its supporters appear less concerned with accurate reporting and more involved in shaping public opinion.

In November, news website Semafor reported real-estate billionaire Barry Sternlicht launched Facts For Peace and sought $1 million in donations each from some of the world’s wealthiest individuals. “This is just one of several behind-the-scenes efforts by business tycoons — many, though not all of them Jewish — to support Israel since the attack by Hamas,” Samafor reported.

“Public opinion will surely shift as scenes, real or fabricated by Hamas, of civilian Palestinian suffering will surely erode [Israel’s] current empathy in the world community,” Sternlicht wrote in an email, seen by Semafor, soliciting contributions from Wall Street, Hollywood, and tech moguls. “We must get ahead of the narrative.”

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Palestinians demand international inquiry after mass grave found in Gaza

Palestinian authorities have demanded an international investigation after a mass grave was found in Gaza with the decomposing bodies of Palestinian detainees who were blindfolded and handcuffed.

At least 30 bodies were found in “black plastic bags” near the Hamad school in northern Gaza, with Palestinian officials accusing Israeli soldiers of killing the civilians “execution-style”.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for an international investigation on Wednesday into what it described as Israeli “massacres”, demanding that a team visit Gaza “to find out the truth and dimensions of the genocide to which our people are exposed”.

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that the deceased were blindfolded, tortured and killed before being placed in the bags.

“As we were cleaning, we came across a pile of rubble inside the schoolyard. We were shocked to find out that the dozens of dead bodies were buried under this pile,” one witness told  Al Jazeera.

“The moment we opened the black plastic bags, we found the bodies, already decomposed. They were blindfolded, legs and hands tied,” the witness added.

“The plastic cuffs were used on their hands and legs and cloths straps around their eyes and heads.”

Hamas said human rights organisations should “document” the mass grave.

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