“Half of the Israeli public is no longer in favor of the war,” one friend told me Saturday night as we witnessed thousands of Israelis take to the streets to protest the Israeli government under the slogan, “Elections Now.” “Yes, but the other half is all-in, and REALLY in favor,” responded his wife. “And they are the more powerful group.”
She, of course, is right. For months, reports of torture and rape have emerged from Israel’s military base turned torture camp, Sde Teiman, where Israel has imprisoned thousands of Palestinians without charge. I wrote about it in a previous diary earlier this month. Palestinians who have emerged from this torture camp refer to it as the “slaughterhouse” with horrendous tales of torture, rape, abuse, and sleep deprivation being meted out by Israeli prison guards. Nearly 30 Palestinians have died while in Sde Teiman and other prisons, according to the information provided to date.
And while the precise chain of events is unclear, what we do know is that the Israeli military advocate general decided to dispatch the military police to question nine Israeli soldiers on suspicion of gang-raping and sodomizing a Palestinian man from Gaza at Sde Teiman. The man was rushed to the hospital where he exhibited signs of rape, including a ruptured bowel and broken ribs. It would be a mistake to simply think that Israel’s actions in prisons like Sde Teiman came only after October. Since becoming Israel’s national security minister in 2022, ultranationalist Itamar Ben Gvir has made prisons his target, with him authorizing abuse against Palestinians. He has also called for the death penalty to solve problems of overcrowding.
My tax dollars can’t be used to provide universal health care here in America, but they will go to support this, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
That’s depressing.
there’s nothing I can do about it
There is something we can do, but it takes unity, courage, willingness/resolve to suffer the consequences, regardless of the results. The first and last components are the hardest to muster, but they can be mustered. Time will tell.
Protesting against Israel in the USA quickly gets you pepper sprayed and beaten. This isn’t some theoretical.
And? People died to give us a 40 hour work week and voting rights, for some of us. The 40 hour week is gone and voting rights are shrinking. And neither major party is doing anything but moving miles right, economically. Socially left seems to be throwing a bone, while so many of us are overworked, underpaid, and still couch surfing, living rough and sick or dying. We have hard choices to make.
And Kamala is poised to choose one of the biggest zionists in the democratic party as her running mate…
Kamala isn’t a Zionist. Did you watch her speech she made recently after meeting Netanyahu? And Israel is pissed about what she said! That tells you all you need to know
Edit: no really, watch it. I can tell you haven’t 😚
Respectfully, what matters more to you: a politician’s words or their deeds?
I’d wager my life savings that Kamala, once elected, will go back on her word and support funding for Israel, just as every president has done even as Israel has become more and more of an apartheid.
You mean when she said she will defend israel and uncontionally support israel after israel bombed Lebanon two days ago?
I saw her release condeming protestors and calling them Hamas supporters.
We’re going to need a new nickname if she’s elected. Maybe Killmonger Kamala?
When I first heard about the riots I was thinking “finally, they’re reacting to something as egregious as rape”… you can only imagine the whiplash heartbreak I had when I found out they were rioting for it.
Agreed.
It’s tragedy with compounding interest, and as an American, I’m more than a little ashamed that my country is aiding and abetting it.
This whole thing has been so mask-off for Israel. I used to think that BDS was a distraction, that “Israel has right to defend itself” that “it’s the only real democracy in the middle east” etc. Now I know there is no space between Israel and Putin’s Russia. These are the bad guys. Full stop.
He has also called for the death penalty to solve problems of overcrowding
Completely normal thing to call for, nothing to see here. A lot of countries do that with their animal shelters. I do think it’s wrong, but it’s … Wait, we’re talking about human beings here. What the duck?
Gvir has also called for the death penalty to solve problems of overcrowding.
Reinhard Heydrich opened the Wansee Conference announcing it was too expensive to keep the ghettos open which informed the Jewish Problem but he and Eichmann had been testing a new solution.
Never again
The right’s right to do no right by any right.