• Israeli media’s coverage of the rape of Palestinian detainees shows sup

    From NefeshBarYochai@21:1/5 to All on Mon Aug 12 23:15:41 2024
    XPost: rec.food.cooking, talk.politics.misc, talk.politics.guns
    XPost: alt.politics.immigration, soc.culture.israel

    Israel’s drama around the investigation of ten soldiers suspected of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman torture facility
    keeps reaching new lows. The reaction from Israelis, not just on the
    right, but also in the Israeli mainstream, has revealed a lust for
    sadistic revenge and an obsession with Hamas that is used to justify
    releasing all hell on Palestinians, including sexual abuse.

    In fact, the media coverage of events last week paints a grim and
    revealing picture of Israeli society.

    It began when the mainstream Israeli Channel 12 broadcasted a report
    concerning the gang rape case. The report features a segment from the
    security camera that caught the rape taking place — with three of the
    soldiers holding their shields up so as to obscure the crime from the
    camera. They knew exactly what they were doing.

    Also read: Netanyahu’s willing executioners: how ordinary Israelis
    became mass murderers.
    But beyond the harrowing aspect of the act itself is the nature of
    Channel 12’s report. A full fourth of the four-minute report dedicates
    itself to the scrutiny of whether the detainee was a “Nukhba” Hamas
    member — an elite fighter who participated in the October 7 attack.
    Such a focus reflects an obsession. It suggests that some people
    deserve to get gang-raped and have objects inserted into their anus,
    some less so.

    Let us see what Channel 12 says on this issue:

    “The terrorist that appears in the documentation did not participate
    in the massacre of October 7 and was not among the Nukhba forces.
    According to AMAN (military intelligence) information, he is a Hamas
    policeman who was involved in the drug-control department. In the
    intelligence report that was submitted in his case, it was written
    that despite this, he is counted with the force perpetrating acts of
    terror against Israel and it was emphasized that he represents a grave
    risk if released. Likewise, the terrorist was not arrested at the
    beginning of the war but in March. In contradiction to what was
    claimed, he was not a (military) Company Commander in Jabalia — the
    source of the mistake is in the interpretation of the initials — that
    is, not [military] M.P. [in Hebrew, military terminology stands for
    ‘Mefaked Pluga,’ or Company Commander], but rather M.P., which stands
    for ‘Mahane Plitim’ — refugee camp [in Hebrew] Jabalia.”

    So, let’s pause here to just reflect upon what was said – this is a
    civil servant, a policeman. But anyone remotely connected to Hamas is considered a terrorist, because Hamas is considered a terrorist
    organization. Actually, it doesn’t really matter for Israel, because
    like President Isaac Herzog said in October, there are simply no
    “uninvolved civilians” in Gaza; they are all involved with Hamas.

    But why is Channel 12 really going into all of this if it doesn’t make
    a difference?

    Channel 12 is a centrist channel and is the biggest news provider. By
    taking us through these details, it is distancing itself from the
    perpetrators and their defenders, who are mostly from the far right.
    The channel also aired interviews and unhinged statements of the gang
    rape suspects’ attorneys. One of the attorneys, Nati Rom, claims that
    the Israeli soldiers were acting in self-defense, as if it wasn’t a premeditated gang rape case at all:

    “He [the Palestinian detainee] tries to bite two soldiers, he tries to
    scratch another soldier, and when a taser is used on him he also
    resists, and attacks and scratches this soldier, and that’s why they
    are forced to use force in order to restrain him”.

    Another attorney, Adi Kedar, complains that

    “the military attorney office and military investigation unit are
    recruited fully, in a targeted and intentional way with all their
    forces … We are in a war — to invest all these resources for the sake
    of the rights of the terrorist against these ten heroes who really
    acted above and beyond, and against whom the suspicion is very very
    vague, it’s very disappointing, both at the legal level, as well as
    the personal level, and I hope this arrest will soon end.”

    Channel 12 gave the lawyers airtime for their egregious statements
    without comment — supposedly a neutral stance. As Tali Shapiro
    commented on social media: “According to Israeli media, what’s
    important in the rape case involving military personnel is not so much
    the rape but rather how much of a Nukhba the victim is.”

    Then, on Wednesday, Channel 14, the far-right channel which aired
    several snuff videos of these torture facilities earlier this year,
    featured a 10-minute interview with one of the rape suspects on its
    program, “The Patriots.” He is sitting there in an army uniform and a
    gun across his shoulder, with a black mask. The host begins by stating
    that the masked suspect is charged under the case with “the Nukhba
    terrorist, cursed be his name.” The suspect is complaining about what
    he sees as a witch-hunt and congratulates the right wing for rising up
    to protest it. He receives countless ovations. Asked about the
    security camera footage and the soldiers holding up the shields like
    that, he says this is just standard procedure. He chided Channel 12
    and their journalist, Guy Peleg, for slandering the soldiers in the
    other mentioned report.

    This is an unbelievable sight to behold — here is a partially
    subtitled version in Middle East Eye. And imagine, this guy is calling
    for law and order. While hailing the right-wing protests of the
    arrest, he nonetheless urges them not to “break into camps,” because
    it “hurts our good name.”

    Another shocking development came the same day, during a Channel 12
    morning news discussion.

    The Channel 12 journalist and panelist Yehuda Shlezinger commented on
    the gang rape case:

    “It interests my anus what they did to this Hamas person…From my
    perspective, the problem here is that it is not a regulated policy
    from the state to abuse prisoners. First of all — they deserve it.
    Maybe it will serve as deterrence.. It’s a worthy revenge, it’s just a
    pity that it’s not done in an institutional manner.”

    Later, Ynet published an article with a title suggesting that
    Shlezinger “apologized.” Here is his “apology”:

    “It was a mistake to say those things in a live broadcast. I was
    wrong. We need to get into them (sic), in the strongest possible
    manner, like I saw the heroic soldiers do it in Khan Younis, Jabalia,
    and Rafah … The terrorists need to be executed according to law. To
    let the state deal with them, to remember and to remind what Amalek
    did to you.”

    So, Shlezinger is now once again referring to the biblical Amalek
    story, suggesting total genocide down to babies and animals. This is
    his “apology.” By the way, the systematic abuse of prisoners is
    already established state policy — but not necessarily gang rape.

    Channel 12 tried to distance itself from Shlezinger’s views expressed
    on air. The production “regretted” the discussion and noted that it
    was said to Shlezinger that those things should not have been said.
    The host, Niv Raskin, said that he “distances himself from those
    sayings,” and that “it would have been right to do so in the broadcast
    itself” (which he didn’t do — the challenge to Shlezinger came from
    Haaretz journalist Josh Breiner). Raskin notes that “Shlezinger
    expressed remorse over the sayings and issued an apology.” But the
    “apology,” as we see, invokes genocide and is merely a regret of
    having advocated for rape on air.

    The broadcaster Keshet “unequivocally condemned the statements that
    were said today on live broadcast,” asking the production “not to
    invite Shlezinger to the morning program in the near future.”

    A day later, on Thursday, Middle East Eye released another testimony
    of a male Palestinian prisoner who was subject to rape, reporting on
    the systematic sexual abuse, but this time with an additional angle —
    female teenage soldiers raping men. It must be noted that the whole
    phenomenon of men testifying openly, with their name and on video, is
    something that had not existed pre-October 7. The shame related to
    such occurrences meant that, on the rare occasion where it was
    reported, it would be anonymous. But now we have seen a series of such testimonies, which demonstrates not only the systematic nature of the
    abuse but also the fact that these men are now willing to put their
    privacy and personal dignity aside to help change the reality for
    their brethren still undergoing the abuse on a daily basis.

    Ibrahim Salem, who was released last week after nearly eight months of detention, told Middle East Eye of his torture and interrogation at
    Sde Teiman (trigger warning):

    “I noticed that [the soldier] was glueing something on me. Then I
    started shaking. He was electrocuting me. He electrocuted me in
    sensitive spots and hit me in these spots.”

    The report continues:

    “Though it was rampant, inmates rarely spoke about it to each other,
    he said. It was embarrassing for many to admit, especially when they
    were raped by female soldiers, who were sometimes in their teens. It
    was common practice for soldiers to strip detainees naked, insert
    objects into their rectum and grab their genitals aggressively when
    they changed. When word got around that a prisoner in his 40s was
    raped, Salem kept getting close to him until he told him what happened
    to him.

    ‘He told me he was raped by a female soldier,’ Salem told MEE. When he
    asked him how it happened, the prisoner explained it would take place
    in the presence of another soldier in the room. The prisoner would be
    bent over a desk with his hands placed in front of him, handcuffed.
    The female soldier, standing behind him, would insert her fingers and
    other objects into his rectum.

    Salem said he was also touched in his private parts by a female
    soldier and had objects inserted in his rectum at some point.”

    Last week began with the Israeli human rights NGO B’tselem releasing a
    new report on Monday titled “Welcome to Hell – The Israeli Prison
    System as a Network of Torture Camps,” which makes the point that Sde
    Teiman is “only the tip of the iceberg.” So everything above is not exceptional. It’s the product of a system.

    And this is partly why this one story of gang rape is making the
    headlines in Israel, although for various and opposing reasons. The
    right wing wants the story to be justified and to go away so that
    soldiers can continue abusing Palestinian detainees with impunity. The
    center and left mostly want it prosecuted so that it can be chalked up
    to a few “bad apples.” This was the case with the murder case of Elor
    Azarya in 2016 — where the medic-soldier shot an already incapacitated Palestinian suspect in the head at point-blank range. Azarya was also
    caught on video. Although what he did happened “tons of times,”
    according to his comrades, he was to serve as the “bad apple,” which
    in turn would prove the innocence of the system. Azarya’s trial was a
    sham, and he eventually returned home to a hero’s welcome after a
    nine-month prison term. This is roughly what we should expect here.
    The Israeli center needs to differentiate between the murdering
    Zionist, the gang-raping Zionist, and the liberal Zionist.

    But the rot is way too overwhelming. It won’t help to close down Sde
    Teiman. This story is about the systemic usage of sexual violence as a
    weapon of genocide. And Sde Teiman is just a reflection of Israeli
    society, a cog in a network of torture that reflects and replicates an
    overall rape culture.

    https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/israeli-medias-coverage-of-the-rape-of-palestinian-detainees-shows-support-for-sexual-violence-in-service-of-genocide/

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