Leaked video from inside the Sde Teiman detention centre showed Israeli
soldiers raping Palestinian prisoners [photo credit: Keshet 12]
Israeli Channel 12 then released leaked footage
of soldiers raping a Palestinian prisoner behind their shields at Sde
Teiman. The prisoner was said to have been hospitalised with injuries,
including a torn rectum, broken ribs and ruptured bowels.
In stark contrast to the blanket coverage given to the rape
allegations against Hamas which played such a pivotal role in justifying
the genocide after October 7 - and have since been debunked - this actual documented story of Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian has largely been ignored by Western media.
In Israel, however, where the army’s Chief Military Rabbi had at one time declared
it permissible for Jewish soldiers to rape non-Jewish women during
wartime, a lively debate has been taking place about whether raping
Palestinian detainees should or should not now be official state policy.
“The only thing that is a problem for me here is that it's not a
regulated policy of the state to abuse the detainees, because, first of
all, they deserve it, and it's great revenge" said Yehuda Schlesinger
from Israel Hayom newspaper on Channel 12's morning show.
Meanwhile the war crimes have kept coming thick and fast.
On Sunday an Israeli airstrike on a school
functioning as a shelter in Gaza City killed at least 30 people and
injured dozens, one of seven strikes on schools in the last seven days.
The next day Netanyahu's far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich,
who has been pumping out genocidal statements since long before October
7, explicitly argued that the extermination of two million Palestinian civilians - roughly half of whom are children - would be justified.
Netanyahu's new official spokesman, Dr. Omer Dostri, also began his post by openly advocating
war crimes in Gaza - the "voluntary" deportation of Palestinians and
the settlement of the occupied territory by Israelis. "As great and
significant as the risk to the lives of IDF soldiers may be, it is no
longer possible to avoid the need to decisively defeat Hamas and occupy
the Gaza Strip," Dr Dostri wrote in the conservative Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon.
He added: "More than killing terrorist operatives and senior leaders,
more than destroying buildings and infrastructure, more than capturing
prisoners – the extremist Islamic enemy will be struck down and fall to
the ground when Israeli settlements are built on the ruins of its territory.”
Israel’s justification for its crimes is always the same, that they
are targeting Hamas. When two Al Jazeera journalists were killed last
week in the Shati refugee camp Israel declared they were Hamas operatives. When 30 people were killed in the school in Gaza City on Sunday Israel said it was a Hamas command and control centre.
But no evidence is normally ever brought forward to support these
claims and even when it is, such as when Israel attacked the Al Shifa
Hospital, the proof that is offered is decisively unconvincing.
And even if such claims were true, under international humanitarian
law Israel would still be obliged to take all feasible precautions to
spare civilians. Bombing a civilian target when 80% of the victims are
children still constitutes a war crime.
By continuing to send offensive weapons to Israel the US and UK governments continue to aid and abet these crimes.
Pressure has been mounting on the British government to suspend arms sales to Israel and on Friday the Daily Mail reported
that UK civil servants had frozen all applications for new arms export
licences to Israel, pending a review ordered by Foreign Secretary David
Lammy.
Then on Monday Middle East Eye quoted UK officials as saying
there has been "no change" in the British approach to export licences.
“It’s political smoke and mirrors. They’re trying to give the impression
they’re going to halt weapons sales, but they actually have little or
no intention of doing it,” said Andrew Feinstein, a London-based activist who specialises in the investigation of the arms trade.
Israel’s key armourer remains the United States where Biden continues
to gaslight the public by professing his ‘concern’ and ‘frustration’
about Israel’s conduct while at the same time pretending there is no
genocide, that Israel has agreed a ceasefire, that it is not blocking
aid and that it has the legal right to bomb civilians in self defence.
But slowly the wheels of justice are turning.
Two separate tribunals continue to wind their way through the Hague:
South Africa's genocide case against Israel at the International Court
of Justice and the case at the International Criminal Court which in May
saw applications issued for arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes
against humanity against Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as
well as three Hamas leaders, two of whom are now believed dead.
The critical element in the ICJ case is to prove intent to eradicate,
at least in part, the Palestinian civilian population of Gaza. As
examples pile up of Israel attacking ostensible Hamas targets while
paying little, if any, attention to citizen casualties, this is looking
increasingly likely.
The ICC case is even more worrying for Netanyahu and Gallant as it
looks to be only a matter of time before ICC prosecutor Karim Khan
brings new charges for the indiscriminate bombardments that have
decimated so many neighbourhoods in Gaza, as well as the kind of
disproportionate strikes like those on the three schools where even
though Hamas fighters may have been present, the means used and the
location targeted resulted in a wholly disproportionate cost to
Palestinian civilians.
There is a clear legal precedent for what should happen next.
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor is currently serving a 50
year sentence in Frankland maximum security prison near Durham for
sending arms to the Revolutionary United Front rebels in Sierra Leone
during the 1991-2002 civil war in which some 50,000 people died.
For supplying offensive weapons to Israel to commit systematic war
crimes in Gaza, should Western leaders, chief among them Joe Biden and
Sir Keir Starmer, not deserve to face justice in exactly the same way?
The AD newsletter will take a short break and be back on 27 August. We will continue our All New AD Podcast Countdown through August with our #1 announced on 4 September.
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