War on Gaza: How Israel uses humiliation as a psychological weapon against Palestinians
21 December 2023 12:48 GMT
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Last update: 1 day 10 hours ago
Failing to
achieve their goals in Gaza, Israeli forces are punishing Palestinian
civilians through systematic humiliation and subjecting them to
degrading and sadistic treatment
Israeli
forces transfer blindfolded, stripped, and handcuffed Palestinian men
arrested and detained, in the Gaza Strip, on 8 December 2023 (Yossi
Zelige/Reuters)
Since the onset of Israel's colonisation of Palestine
in 1948, innumerable visual records, photographs, and televised footage
have documented wide-scale, disproportionate violence marked by humiliation and inhumane conduct by the Israeli military against unarmed Palestinian civilians.
Notably, in many cases, the victims were defenceless children, women, the elderly, and those with disabilities.
On 8 October, the Israeli government launched a major military
assault on Gaza, declaring its objectives as liberating the Israeli
captives and dismantling Hamas, although several leaders, from Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, made clear their genocidal intent.
Two months later - with more than 20,000 Palestinians killed - it appears that the Israeli government is failing to achieve its goals. The shocking level of carnage and destruction has triggered massive protests worldwide and international condemnations of Israel's genocidal war.
The staggering death toll, particularly of children, attacks on the Occupied West Bank, and wanton violations of international law, including the targeting of hospitals and placing a siege on food, water, and fuel, have raised questions about the intended outcome of Israel's war against Palestinians.This is coupled with internal pressure by the families of hostages and the broader Israeli public on the government to actively pursue their release.
In light of mounting domestic and international pressure, the Israeli
government has been working to craft a narrative to justify the extreme
violence it continues to inflict on more than 2.3 million residents in
Gaza in the name of fighting the threat of "Hamas terror".
Systematic degradation
Historically, there have been numerous instances of militaries punishing
civilian populations and subjecting them to sadistic and degrading
treatment after failing to attain their political or military
objectives.
Israel employs a systematic strategy of humiliation to
psychologically impact and break down Palestinian individuals and
communities
In response to global calls to halt its deliberate targeting of
civilian infrastructure, the Israeli government continues to desperately
establish the purported military presence of Palestinian armed factions within major hospitals across the strip.
This effort materialised in an intense aerial and artillery shelling
campaign on hospitals, including Gaza's main medical complex of al-Shifa. The attacks, targeting patients and displaced individuals within hospitals, extended to the detention, mistreatment, and exploitation of doctors as human shields.
In a disturbing turn of events, Israeli soldiers blocked medical
staff from retrieving the bodies of victims from hospital courtyards,
leaving them exposed to animals for an extended period.
In other incidents, eyewitnesses testified to the Euro-Med Human
Rights Monitor that Israeli soldiers assaulted and humiliated
Palestinian civilians using the designated "safe corridor" to evacuate
Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip, heading to the south.
One eyewitness account stated that an Israeli soldier ordered a
Palestinian man to strip while awaiting checkpoint approval. When
another Palestinian questioned the soldier's actions, he was fatally
shot in the head with onlookers, including his family, barred from
providing assistance or recovering his body.
In a distressing series of events, accounts emerged of Israeli
soldiers subjecting displaced women to degrading treatment and
humiliation in the designated safe corridor. Reportedly, two displaced
women were ordered at gunpoint to undress in front of hundreds of
onlookers before being permitted to redress and continue their journey
southward.
Additionally, in the northern Gaza Strip, a woman who was five-months
pregnant recounted an incident where an Israeli officer ordered her to
take her clothes off and threatened her with rape if she did not comply.
More recently, circulating video footage, purportedly recorded by the
Israeli military, depicts numerous Palestinian men detained and
humiliated in the northern Gaza Strip.
The men were predominantly displaced individuals seeking refuge in
residential buildings and UNRWA-run schools amid Israeli bombardment.
They were shown shirtless and stripped
down to their underwear, with their hands raised behind their heads.
Israeli soldiers had lined them up on the street and taken photos and
videos of them.
The videos were shared widely by Israeli media outlets and soldiers
who have disseminated dozens of videos and pictures on their social
media accounts, particularly since the ground invasion. In videos posted on TikTok and Instagram, they openly mock Palestinians as they celebrate the invasion of their neighbourhoods and beaches.
In other "scenes of victory", they planted Israeli flags on vital
facilities and headquarters, residential buildings, courthouses and
universities.
Contrary to the initial Israeli narrative locating the mass detention
campaign in the Shujaiya neighbourhood in the east of Gaza City, and in
Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, subsequent revelations
disclosed that the incident took place in Jabaliya in the northern Gaza
Strip.
Israeli sources said those detained were members of Palestinian armed
factions. However, testimonies of eyewitnesses and members of the
detainees' families collected by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor's team on
the ground and other organisations and journalists confirmed that they
were unarmed civilians, including teachers at the UNRWA-run schools (who
are typically security-checked multiple times before and during their
work period with the United Nations), journalists, and university
students.
Settler-colonial violence
The initial misinformation, later corrected, is not only a result of
Israel's attempts to demonise Gaza residents but is also indicative of a
persistent endeavour to present an image of victory to its citizens
and, most importantly, to its western allies.
It aims to provide supposed "proof" that its bloody military
campaign, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and
displaced hundreds of thousands more, was in fact meant to subjugate all
Palestinians into subordination, and not simply “eradicate Hamas”.
Violence within settler colonialism is a peculiar breed. This brand
of violence goes beyond mere dominance or cultural erasure; it aspires
to reign over and obliterate not just communities, but the very essence
of individual psyches. At its core, it seeks to humiliate. Israel
employs a systematic strategy of humiliation to psychologically impact
and break down Palestinian individuals and communities.
The objective is to instil feelings of shame and degradation, and potentially induce enduring psychological
effects that erode Palestinian steadfastness and resistance. Despite
being a consistently applied policy for the past seven decades, it has
not succeeded in deterring the Palestinian population.
An essential question for Israel is to reflect on the implications of
internalising and normalising practices that involve humiliating fellow
humans and taking pride in such actions. This systemic violation of
human dignity and justice demands a critical examination of its impact
on Israeli societal norms and values.
Israel and its western backers like to compare its genocide in Gaza to the Allied campaign in Dresden.
But this is a false narrative. Unlike the Allies, who did not attempt
to humiliate the people of Dresden, Israeli violence, particularly in
its destructive power and evident desire to humiliate, is akin to the
atrocities and humiliation witnessed during Kristallnacht.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.