“The only thing that is a problem for me here is that it is not a regulated policy of the state to abuse the (Palestinian) detainees,” said Israeli journalist Yehuda Schlesinger regarding how Israeli soldiers should treat Palestinian detainees. Here, he is not talking about the physical abuses used in interrogation tactics that we are aware of. Rather he is ‘championing’ raping Palestinian detainees as a state policy. “Because first of all, they deserve it, and it is great revenge that we need to give them. And secondly, maybe it will also serve us a little more as a deterrent,” he added further reasons for his advocacy.
These comments were made after the events at Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility on 29 July when 10 Israeli soldiers were arrested by the military police for raping a Palestinian detainee. When the news of the arrests got out, dozens of Israeli protesters broke into a judiciary court and two military bases, Sde Teiman being one of them. They were protesting the arrests of these soldiers. They think as these Israeli soldiers are the ones who are protecting the country and its people, they deserve absolute impunity. In simpler words, they were protesting for their ‘right to rape’ Palestinians.
This came as a shock to even those of us who are well aware of Zionist brutality. Israeli society never seems to fail at surprising us, hitting new lows every once in a while. Even though Yehuda Schlesinger later said that his comment was a ‘mistake’, we cannot just brush off the weight of these protests because they came from far-right extremists. Especially since these extremists are now the face of Israel; they represent Israeli society.
Most of the people in Israel believe that their soldiers should be able to do whatever they want to do with the Palestinian people. They believe the human rights groups based in Israel that bring light to these abusive practices are national enemies.
Abusing Palestinians and giving the soldiers impunity to kill, loot, and vandalize is a de facto state policy in Israel.
Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is infamous for his far-right views and is said to encourage abusing Palestinian detainees.
A journalist can demand raping the detainees as a state policy in the 21st century only because people know that all the abuses Palestinians face are not happening behind the government’s eye but rather are direct results of the government’s orders.
Although Israel has detained 10 of its soldiers, it is most likely a PR stunt given the recent ICJ ruling that Israel has to put an end to the occupation of Palestinian territory. It is one of those attempts of the Zionist government to portray themselves as moral so that the governments of their ally nations can have something to defend them in front of their people. The US government and European Commission have expressed their ‘concern’ regarding this incident, pretending that raping Palestinians is a rare incident. Yes, sexual and physical abuses on Palestinian detainees have increased since October 7 last year, but they have always existed and existed vehemently. As per human rights organizations like B’Tselem. Zionist soldiers have raped, sodomized and sexually tortured their hostages as part of its fear-mongering or information-retrieving ‘tactics’ from as early as 1967.
The Zionist, as well as the Western treatment of Arabs, stems from the notion that Arabs are vulnerable to sexual humiliation. This idea was bolstered by the 1973 book The Arab Mind, written by Israeli orientalist Raphael Patai. This book is considered as the bible of neoconservatives of the West. It gave rise to these stereotypes that as Arabs are ‘brute’ people, they only understand the use of force, not logic. Secondly, Arabs are highly susceptible to shame and degradation. Therefore, Zionist soldiers focused on sexually abusing Palestinian detainees, and taking photographs of them being abused.
The idea was that Arabs would be willing to even spy on other Arabs if they were threatened that those photographs would be sent to their close ones. This strategy eventually failed, as Israel could not stop the rise of insurgency among Arabs. This treatment of Palestinians is a product of the idea that Arabs are lesser human beings.
When the Europeans committed atrocities against the native people in the Americas, they justified it by saying that native people were not ‘civilized’ enough; that they were crude and animalistic. Therefore, they can be subjected to any sort of cruel treatment. Historically we have seen, that to legitimize any kind of mistreatment of the subjugated, the perpetrators strip away every little sense of the victims’ being, reducing them to something lesser so that the brutality lies outside the established moral considerations.
This dehumanization trope is core to understanding Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. From the majority of the electorate to Knesset members and ministers, the subhuman treatment of Arabs has become a norm. When Israelis do not consider Arabs as their equals, it becomes easy for them to justify restricting road access and cutting off basic necessities like water for Palestinians. It even becomes easy for them to support the rape of Palestinians.
Zionist soldiers now sexually abuse Palestinian detainees just to establish their belief of ethnic superiority.
The view of Arabs that is entrenched in the mind of Israelis allowed them to support these abuses to the extent that they would storm the streets for the ‘right to rape’ Palestinians.
Thinking of Arabs as lesser human beings means they would justify doing anything to try to crush the collective willpower of the people of Palestine. As the issue of Palestinian liberation gains traction globally, as the youth of the Western countries are becoming more and more pro-Palestine, as more and more countries recognize Palestine, and as more universities divest from companies that sponsor Israeli occupation, the pressure on Israel will only grow, however slow it might be, and so will the systematic abuse of Palestinians.
At this point, Zionists are committing rape as a hate crime. Hoping that the sentiment of mainstream Israelis about Arabs would change seems far-fetched. As far-right people are the majority, the government would also be far-right regardless of who comes to power. In this case, any improvement in the situation of Palestinian detainees seems unlikely. The only feasible hope is international pressure: that people of the nations that are historically allies of Israel would pressure their governments, and that people around the globe would continue condemning everything Israeli soldiers are doing. It does seem like a long shot. But that would be the only way of shattering the sense of superiority Israeli Jews feel over Arabs. The emancipation of the people of Palestine is a long journey, a journey of hope. So, we do just that. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.