{"id":6030,"date":"2024-09-07T03:14:57","date_gmt":"2024-09-07T01:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6030"},"modified":"2024-09-07T17:23:09","modified_gmt":"2024-09-07T15:23:09","slug":"israel-torture-october-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2024-09-07\/israel-torture-october-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli torture chambers aren&#8217;t new. They are what provoked the violence of Oct 7"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"subtitle\"><em><strong>If you can&#8217;t see the causal link between the Israeli abuse of generations of Palestinians and Hamas&#8217; crimes, then you have no insight into human nature. You don&#8217;t understand yourself<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>For many years I lived just up the road from Megiddo prison in northern Israel, where new film of Israeli guards torturing Palestinians en masse has been <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MustafaBarghou1\/status\/1832113794387988764\" rel=\"\">published<\/a> by Israel\u2019s Haaretz newspaper. I drove past Megiddo prison on hundreds of occasions. Over time I came to barely notice the squat grey buildings, surrounded by watch towers and razor wire.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Footage uploaded to Israeli media depicts Israeli occupation forces collectively torturing Palestinians held in Megiddo prison.<\/p>\n<p>The video shows prisoners lying face down on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, while being terrorized by dogs. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/mZOIC1Glj8\">pic.twitter.com\/mZOIC1Glj8<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Quds News Network (@QudsNen) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/QudsNen\/status\/1832063536320872900?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 6, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>There are several large prisons like Megiddo in Israel\u2019s north. It is where Palestinians end up after they have been seized from their homes, often in the middle of the night. Israel, and the western media, say these Palestinians have been \u201carrested\u201d, as though Israel is enforcing some kind of legitimate legal procedure over oppressed subjects \u2013 or rather objects \u2013 of its occupation. In truth, these Palestinians have been kidnapped.<\/p>\n<p>The prisons are invariably located close to major roads in Israel, presumably because Israelis find it reassuring to know Palestinians are being locked up in such large numbers. (As an aside, I should mention that transferring prisoners out of occupied territory into the occupier\u2019s territory is a war crime. But let that pass.)<\/p>\n<p>Even before the mass round-ups of the past 11 months, the Palestinian Authority estimated that 800,000 Palestinians \u2013 or 40 per cent of the male population \u2013 had spent time in an Israeli prison. Many had never been charged with any crime and had never received a trial. Not that that would make any difference \u2013 the conviction rate of Palestinians in Israel\u2019s military courts is near 100 per cent. There is no such thing as an innocent Palestinian, it seems.<\/p>\n<p>Rather, imprisonment is a kind of terrifying rite of passage that has been endured by generations of Palestinians, one required of them by the bureaucracy managing Israel&#8217;s apartheid-occupation system.<\/p>\n<p>Torture, even of children, has been routine in these prisons since the occupation began nearly 60 years ago, as Israeli human rights groups have been regularly documenting.<\/p>\n<p>The imprisonment and torture of Palestinians serve several goals for Israel. It crushes the spirit of Palestinians individually and collectively. It traumatises generation after generation, creating fear and suspicion. And it helps to recruit a large class of Palestinian informants and collaborators who secretly work with Israel\u2019s secret police, the Shin Bet, to foil Palestinian resistance operations against Israel\u2019s illegal occupation forces.<\/p>\n<p>This kind of Palestinian resistance, we should note, is specifically permitted in international law. In other words, what the West denounces as \u201cterrorism\u201d is actually legal under the principles the West established after the Second World War. Paradoxical, to put it mildly.<\/p>\n<p>The humiliation and trauma systematically inflicted on these hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the wider Palestinian society \u2013 and the complete lack of concern from the so-called &#8220;international community&#8221;, or, worse, its complicity \u2013 have inevitably fed into growing religious extremism among parts of a Palestinian society that was once largely secular.<\/p>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-6031\" src=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/blindfolded-palestinian-prisoners-in-gaza-copy.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"520\" height=\"302\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/blindfolded-palestinian-prisoners-in-gaza-copy.jpg 520w, https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/blindfolded-palestinian-prisoners-in-gaza-copy-300x174.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 520px) 100vw, 520px\" \/>\n<p>If there is no justice, no redress to be offered by the international institutions created by a West that both trumpets its secularism while also flaunting its Christian values, then, Palestinians conclude, maybe they can find justice \u2013 or at least retribution \u2013 not through futile, rigged \u201cnegotiations\u201d but through greater commitment to violent resistance carried out in the name of Islam.<\/p>\n<p>That explains the emergence of the group Hamas in the late 1980s and its relentless growth in popularity. Hamas\u2019 unapologetic Islamic militancy contrasted with the more accommodationist secular nationalism of Fatah, long led by Mahmoud Abbas. Support for Hamas was something Israel was only too happy to cultivate. It understood that Islamism would discredit the Palestinian cause in the eyes of westerners and further bond the West to Israel.<\/p>\n<p>But Israel\u2019s system of torture \u2013 whether in &#8220;normal&#8221; prisons like Megiddo or in the giant open-air prison that Israel made of Gaza \u2013 also led to an ever greater determination among groups like Hamas to liberate themselves through violence. If Israel could not be reasoned with, if it only understood the sword, then that was the language Palestinians would speak to Israel. This was precisely the rationale for the atrocities of October 7.<\/p>\n<p>If you were horrified by October 7, but are not <em>more<\/em> horrified by what Israel has been doing to Palestinians for more than half a century in its prisons, then you are either in a state of deep ignorance \u2013 hardly surprising given the lack of media coverage of Israel&#8217;s despotic rule over Palestinians \u2013 or in deep denial.<\/p>\n<p>If you cannot see the causal connection between the barbaric abuses of Palestinians generation after generation and the crimes committed on October 7, then you have no understanding of human nature. You have no inner awareness of how <em>you<\/em> would act had you, your father and your grandfather been tortured in an Israeli prison, a trauma passed down through families little differently than hair colour or build.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The message of Israel\u2019s torture chambers is directed at all of us, not just Palestinians. \u2018Black sites\u2019 are about reminding those who have been colonised and enslaved of a simple lesson: resistance is futile.<\/p>\n<p>My latest can be read here:<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/PvaWfxdinV\">https:\/\/t.co\/PvaWfxdinV<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Jonathan_K_Cook\/status\/1794000369808494625?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 24, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The scenes filmed at Megiddo. The images of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.middleeasteye.net\/news\/palestine-west-bank-muazzaz-abayat-prison-interview\" rel=\"\">emaciated men<\/a>, broken from their beatings in prison. The disappearance of <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/05\/24\/gaza-palestinian-doctors-hospital-detained-missing-disappeared\/\" rel=\"\">hundreds of doctors<\/a> into Israel\u2019s torture chambers. The video of a Palestinian man being <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2024\/08\/09\/israel-prison-sde-teiman-palestinian-abuse-torture\/\" rel=\"\">raped by Israeli prison guards<\/a>. The findings by Israeli and international organisations that this is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.btselem.org\/publications\/202408_welcome_to_hell\" rel=\"\">going on systematically<\/a>. The horrors are staring us in the face. But too many of us are looking away, reverting to the magical thinking of our babyhoods in which, when we cover our eyes, the world disappears.<\/p>\n<p>The horrors of Israel\u2019s prison system aren\u2019t new. They have been going on for decades. What&#8217;s new is that Israel has intensified the abuse. It now relishes atrocities it previously hid away like a dark secret.<\/p>\n<p>Israel is lost. It is deep in a black, genocidal hole. The question is, are you going to allow yourself to be sucked into the same void? Are you going to keep covering your eyes? Does the torture end just because you prefer not to see it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you can&#8217;t see the causal link between the Israeli abuse of generations of Palestinians and Hamas&#8217; crimes, then you have no insight into human nature. You don&#8217;t understand yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6031,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55],"class_list":{"0":"post-6030","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-israel-war-crimes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6030"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6033,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6030\/revisions\/6033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}