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sexual violence
Why Israeli Soldiers Rape, Torture, and Massacre
Instilling fear in the Palestinian people is not a side effect of the IDF's brutal violations of human rights. It is the strategy.
Aug 16, 2024
On October 25, Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin told Arutz Sheva-Israel National News that “Muslims are not afraid of us anymore.”
It might sound odd that Feiglin saw the element of fear as critical to Israel’s well-being if not its very survival.
In actuality, the fear element is directly linked to Israel’s behavior and fundamental to its political discourse.
Historically, Israel has carried out massacres with a specific political strategy in mind: to instill the desired fear to drive Palestinians off their land. Deir Yassin, Tantara and the over 70 documented massacres during the Palestinian Nakba, or Catastrophe, are cases in point.
Israel has also utilized torture, rape and other forms of sexual assault to achieve similar ends in the past, to exact information or to break down the will of prisoners.
UN-affiliated experts said in a report published on August 5 that "these practices are intended to punish Palestinians for resisting occupation and seek to destroy them individually and collectively."
Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza has manifested all these horrific strategies in ways unprecedented in the past, both in terms of widespread application and frequency.
The Israeli army uses torture as a centralized strategy.
In a report entitled ‘Welcome to Hell’, published on August 5, the Israeli rights group, B’tselem, said that Israel’s detention “facilities, in which every inmate is deliberately subjected to harsh, relentless pain and suffering operate as de-facto torture camps”.
A few days later, the Palestinian rights group, Addameer, published its own report, “documented cases of torture, sexual violence, and degrading treatment”, along with the “systematic abuses and human rights violations committed against detainees from Gaza.”
If incidents of rape, sexual assaults and other forms of torture are marked on a map, they would cover a large geographical area, in Gaza, in the West Bank, and Israel itself—mostly notably in the notorious Sde Teiman Camp.
Considering the size and locations of the Israeli army, well-documented evidence of rape and torture demonstrates that such tactics are not linked to a specific branch of the military. This means that the Israeli army uses torture as a centralized strategy.
Such a strategy has been associated with the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister. His aggressive statements, for example, that Palestinian prisoners should be “shot in the head instead of being given more food”, are perfectly aligned with his equally violent actions: the starvation policy of prisoners, the normalization of torture and the defense of rape.
But Ben-Gvir did not institute these tortuous policies. They have predated him by decades and were used against generations of Palestinian prisoners, who are granted few rights compared to those enshrined by international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention.
But why does Israel torture Palestinians on such a large scale?
Israeli wars against Palestinians are predicated on two elements: a material and a psychological one. The former has manifested itself in the ongoing genocide, the killing and wounding of tens of thousands and the near destruction of Gaza.
The psychological factor, however, is intended to break the will of the Palestinian people.
Law for Palestine, a legal advocacy group published a database of over 500 instances of Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, inciting genocide in Gaza.
Most of these references seem to be centered on dehumanizing the Palestinians. For example, the October 11 statement by Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog, that "there are no innocent civilians in Gaza", was part of the collective death sentence that made the extermination of Palestinians morally justifiable in the eyes of Israelis.
Netanyahu's own ominous biblical reference, where he called on Israeli soldiers to seek revenge from Palestinians, stating "Remember what Amalek has done to you", was also a blank check for mass murder.
While choosing not to see Palestinians as humans, as innocent, as worthy of life and security, Israel has granted its army carte blanche to do as it saw fit to those, in the words of Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, "human animals".
The mass killing, starvation and widespread rape and torture of Palestinians are a natural outcome of these shocking dialectics. But the overall purpose of Israel is not simply to exact revenge, though the latter has been quite important to Israel's desire for national recovery.
By trying to break the will of the Palestinians through torture, humiliation and rape, Israel wants to restore a different kind of deterrence, which it lost on October 7.
Failing to restore military or strategic deterrence, Tel Aviv is invested in psychological deterrence, as in restoring the element of fear that was breached on October 7.
Raping prisoners, leaking videos of the gruesome acts, and carrying out the same horrific deed, again and again, are all part of the Israeli strategy—that of restoring fear.
But Israel will fail, simply because Palestinians have already succeeded in demolishing Israel's 76-year matrix of physical domination and mental torture.
The Israeli war on Gaza has proven to be the most destructive and bloody of all Israeli wars. Yet, Palestinian resilience continues to grow stronger, because Palestinians are not passive, but active participants in the shaping of their own future.
If popular resistance is indeed the process of the restoration of the self, Palestinians in Gaza are proving that, despite their unspeakable pain and agony, they are emerging as a whole, ready to clinch their freedom, no matter the cost.
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"Yes, Trump, 'I Am a Hater' of Yours," Omar Responds to Ex-President
"You traffic in hate," the Minnesota Democrat said, pointing to his dozens of felony charges and "history of sexually assaulting women."
May 16, 2024
"Yes, Trump, 'I am a hater' of yours."
That's how U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Thursday responded to former President Donald Trump's attack on her during an on-camera interview with the right-wing Minnesota outlet Alpha News.
Reporter Liz Collin pointed out that the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party just endorsed Omar for reelection and asked Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, whether he thinks she is serving Minnesota's 5th Congressional District well.
"Well she hates Jewish people and she hates Israel, there's no question about that, and I think she does a terrible job," Trump claimed, while noting that she may be popular in some areas. "She's a hater, and she hates at levels... rarely seen before."
Since Omar, a Muslim Somali refugee, was elected to Congress in 2018, she has faced an onslaught of Islamaphobia, racism, and mischaracterizations of her positions and statements from right-wing political leaders and media—particularly her criticism of the Israeli government that is currently waging war on Gaza—which have fueled attacks from the public, including death threats.
Republicans last year voted to remove Omar from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She said at the time: "Is anyone surprised that I am somehow deemed unworthy to speak about American foreign policy? Frankly, it is expected, because when you push power, power pushes back."
In her social media response to Trump on Thursday, Omar pointed to the ex-president's four ongoing criminal cases. He faces a total of 88 felony charges for two federal cases and two state cases—in Georgia and New York. A pair of them stem from Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, which culminated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection.
"You traffic in hate," she told Trump, "and have a history of sexually assaulting women."
Over two dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, including E. Jean Carroll. Last year, a jury in New York City found the former president civilly liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the 1990s and defaming her after she publicly accused him.
The group Justice Democrats also responded to Trump's attack on Omar Thursday, saying that "there's no greater threat or thorn to Trump and MAGA extremism than the Squad and progressives like Ilhan Omar. The Democratic Party should learn that and listen to them."
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Why I Delayed Biden’s Motorcade for Gaza
As an American Jew, I am compelled to embrace the power of my own voice, and refuse complicity with collective violence.
Apr 19, 2024
How do we break the cycle of violence?
As a local healing arts facilitator, trauma survivor, and Jewish activist, this question never leaves my mind.
Long before I dreamed of joining a mass action to block President Joe Biden’s motorcade route to his State of the Union address—or of co-organizing the 25 Mile March for Palestine—I was committed to understanding collective trauma, healing, and liberation.
You see, I grew up poor, white, and Jewish. The formative experiences of my childhood, including food insecurity, sexual violence, and antisemitism, left me with an intimate awareness of the human capacity for violence. Though this was normalized within the fabric of my everyday life, I always felt that so much more was possible. Only after my escape would I go through the painful and transformative process of learning what it actually meant to be a survivor, what it meant to have a voice, and what it meant to be free.
I am calling for the safety and freedom of all people, and an end to sexual violence, through an immediate and permanent cease-fire, the release of all hostages, unhindered humanitarian aid to Gaza, and a cessation of U.S. weapons sales to Israel.
Through this process, I uncovered trauma histories of my family lineage. I also learned to see my identity beyond victimhood by connecting with others who had experienced different forms of oppression and violence. I began to trace the familiar shapes of our silencing. I began to track the impact of mainstream narratives, including the stark dichotomy between victim and perpetrator, and how the assumptions of absolute innocence and evil that accompany these terms dehumanize all parties. When experiences of victimization become core to an individual or group’s identity, there is grave danger of being unable to grasp one’s sense of agency or impact. Indeed, I began to realize, victims can become perpetrators.
Following the shocking attack on October 7, allegations abounded that Hamas systematically sexually abused and mutilated Israeli women. As a survivor who deeply believes and loves other survivors, I immediately grieved alongside all who had been violated. My commitment to Palestinian liberation could never exclude my grief for the Israeli civilians who had been targeted. Yet, as further evidence surfaced, my heart broke open yet again: It became apparent to me that survivor voices were not at the center.
For example, the seminal New York Times article published in late December entitled “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7” was revealed to be wholly lacking in evidence for its sweeping claims. The United Nations has since released a special report clarifying that two of the most widespread allegations regarding sexual violence were groundless. The report also named that there were reasonable grounds to believe that incidents of sexual violence occurred on October 7. However, Israel has continued to disallow a full-fledged investigation by the U.N., while repeatedly using the specter of systematic sexual violence in Israeli and U.S. mainstream media to justify the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian men, women, and children.
Governments are so quick to act out of vengeance, but so slow to listen to the voices of survivors themselves. Many of us do everything within our power to find the truth beneath the rubble. Many of us plead that our society looks at the root causes of violence, ranging from intergenerational trauma to occupation, from racism to the pervasive denial of humanity. Many of us organize for systemic change and transformative justice practices that acknowledge the humanity of everyone who commits—and is impacted by—violence. Many of us break into pieces each time another child is killed before our eyes. Many of us scream: “Not in our name!” Many of us demand access to substantive healing resources for survivors everywhere, including the time to breathe and rest, and the support to tell our own stories.
While elected officials invest our tax dollars in deadly weapons, the actual demands and dreams of those who have been raped, traumatized, and brutalized by individual and communal acts of violence are forgotten. We know that the Israeli military has been documented sexually assaulting Palestinian civilians and prisoners throughout the occupied territories, even as such stories rarely make the headlines. State violence creates the conditions for sexual violence, and the resulting wounds are felt for generations.
In healing my sense of agency as a survivor, I have learned to recognize my privilege and power, and to see that I too have the capacity to commit acts both of harm and of healing. As an American Jew, I am compelled to embrace the power of my own voice, and refuse complicity with collective violence. I am calling for the safety and freedom of all people, and an end to sexual violence, through an immediate and permanent cease-fire, the release of all hostages, unhindered humanitarian aid to Gaza, and a cessation of U.S. weapons sales to Israel. Anything less would be a denial of my own humanity.
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