How Ben-Gvir turns Palestinian detainees’ torture in Israeli dungeons into a public spectacle
Ben-Gvir is simply supplying what social media influencers call “content” to his constituents for entertainment.
One of the most sensitive issues in Palestinian society is the treatment of detainees in the Israeli rape-and-torture dungeons. Long before October 7, Israeli dungeons were full of innocent Palestinians hauled off the streets or from their beds after illegal invasions of their homes by Israeli police in the middle of the night. A significant number of the detainees are never charged but still end up spending years or even decades in incarceration, courtesy of the inhumane Israeli system that exists primarily to inflict all manner of cruelties upon the Palestinians, to break their will and force them to leave their ancestral lands so that Europeans and North Americans can steal their homes and orchards.
According to figures published by the Israeli human rights organisation HaMoked in September this year, 11,040 Palestinians were languishing in the Israeli dungeons, including 3,577 administrative detainees imprisoned without charge or trial.
Nearly 2,000 detainees were released in October as part of a prisoner exchange, but thousands remain incarcerated in absolutely horrific conditions. None other than Ben-Gvir, the Israeli Minister of National Security, has been publicly broadcasting the torture and abuse his administration is meting out to Palestinians under his direct supervision.
Ben-Gvir, an extremist Jewish supremacist who refers to the Palestinian detainees exclusively as “terrorists,” shared a video from inside Ketziot Prison in the Negev on Twitter on Friday in which he personally supervises the torture of Palestinian detainees seen lying on the floor, heads down, with their feet tied together and hands behind their backs.
The Biblical psychopath, smiling at the camera, boasts, “This is how we treat them. The only thing left is to execute them.”
He goes on to add: “All the Hamas elite members are on the ground, as they should be. They get only the minimum — no jam, no chocolate, no TV, no radio. We took everything from here. But there’s still one thing missing: the death penalty law.”
For most Israelis, every Palestinian is an elite member of Hamas. It is the same country whose head of state, Isaac Herzog, famously claimed, “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible.”
Before the genocide, children made up half of Gaza’s population.
Last week, Ben-Gvir had filmed another video in an Israeli dungeon.
He knocked on the door of a prison cell before telling the camera that the “terrorists” inside have been instructed to fold their hands behind their backs, get down on their knees, and face away from the door every time there’s a knock on the door. He then proceeds to open the Judas hole, and the three Palestinian detainees are seen in the position he described.
Ben-Gvir gleefully boasted to the camera about the inhumane treatment he has ensured for Palestinians, whom Israelis are taught since childhood to see as subhuman cattle unworthy of a dignified life.
Ben-Gvir, who has a legitimate claim to be regarded as the perfect distillation of a profoundly sick and extremely genocidal Israeli society, has repeatedly called for the Knesset to pass a law allowing Palestinian detainees to be shot in the head. “The Palestinian prisoners must be killed by shooting them in the head, and until passing this law, we will give them little to live on,” he proclaimed last year.
Ben-Gvir has been nothing if not true to his sadistic promise. All Palestinians who have come out of Israeli dungeons have appeared emaciated beyond recognition. Some of them had to be rushed immediately to hospital soon after stepping off the bus, so weak and lifeless were they as a result of the brutal treatment in Israeli dungeons.
In August, Ben-Gvir was filmed threatening the popular Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, who has been incarcerated since 2002. “Whoever messes with the people of Israel, whoever murders our children, whoever murders our women, we will obliterate them,” Ben-Gvir tells Barghouti in the video. “You will not defeat us.”
Barghouti’s family had a hard time recognising him due to the barbaric treatment to which he had been subjected. “The latest reports we heard about the great leader Marwan Barghouti is that they broke three of his ribs,” Mohammad al-Ardah, a released detainee, said of Barghouti.
The torture has been so severe that 74 Palestinians have died inside Israeli dungeons since the start of the genocide on October 7, 2023. Walid Khaled Ahmed, the youngest murdered Palestinian, was merely 17 when the Israelis beat him to death.
This savagery against detained Palestinians has the full support of the Israeli public. It was highlighted during the case of Islam al-Sarsawi.
Al-Sarsawi, 42, from the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood in northern Gaza, was raped to death in the notorious Sde Teiman dungeon in the Negev. His rape was captured on camera, and when the rapists were taken to a police station for questioning, huge protests erupted in support of them, with protesters demanding the accused be released without charge. Israeli police ultimately released them without filing charges. The pro-rape protesters also went scot-free.
Following al-Sarsawi’s rape, torture, and death, multiple demonstrations took place in Israel advocating for the Israelis’ “right to rape” Palestinians. Hanoch Milwidsky, a parliamentarian from Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, went on to defend rape as a torture tool when dealing with Palestinians, while journalist Yehuda Schlesinger openly lamented on Israeli TV that raping Palestinians was not an official government policy.
One of the rapists, Meir Ben-Shitrit, went on to become a minor celebrity in the Israeli media, featuring in TV shows. Meir Mazuz, a leading Israeli rabbi, blessed the soldiers who gang-raped al-Sarsawi, telling the rapists: “You beat the enemy, so what? It’s all good… Don’t we have the right to do it?… In any other country, they’d get medals… Don’t fear the goyim.” The Israelis’ demands in the ubiquitous “right to rape” protests on the streets were reflected in surveys. A staggering 65 percent of Israeli Jews supported gang-raping Palestinians.
Stunningly, the Israelis are furious at those who leaked the video of al-Sarsawi’s rape and murder, not at the rapists! On Thursday, the Israeli military launched a criminal probe into the leaking of the video. In all fairness, in a society so enamoured with rape and rapists, this was an inevitable development.
In this milieu of open public support for the torture and murder of incarcerated Palestinians, Ben-Gvir — who remains extremely popular in Israel; his party, the aptly named Otzma Yehudit or Jewish Power, would win eight seats in the Knesset if Israelis voted today — is simply supplying what social media influencers call “content” to his constituents for entertainment.
This is the level of evil with which Palestinians are dealing.
Unfortunately, paid subscriptions have nearly dried up over the past few months. They are a lifeline, especially after this happened. If you’re able, please consider a paid subscription here or on Ko-fi or Patreon. You can also buy me a coffee or two at the link below. Thank you!
Now,.pretend that Russia or anyone other country that the Empire doesn't like were doing anything even remotely comparable...
Despite being the killers rapists murderers torturers and thieves for decades they still cry victim in the western MIC media.