On torture camps – Amos Harel in Haaretz:
‘The resurrected affair will enable the government to distract the public, or at least the public that watches Channel 14 News, from the unpleasant reality in the Gaza Strip. After more than two weeks the cease-fire is faltering amid circumstances very different from those promised by Netanyahu. Hamas has not been totally defeated and has re-established its military and civilian control in the half of the Strip not controlled by the army. The organization betrays no signs that it intends to cede its territory to a multinational force that has yet to be formed.’
(…)
‘However, the details of the abuse of the Palestinian detainee paint a sickening picture and the allegations have yet to be refuted.
Furthermore, fabrications and exaggerations have been concocted in this affair on an industrial scale. The Palestinian prisoner did not belong to the Nukhba force, the murderous elite unit of Hamas, as has been asserted. He was a local policeman. And the defendants are not combat soldiers, as lawmakers and journalists have described them, but prison guard whose job is to guard detainees in wartime.
The main problem, which has been completely ignored in the debate over the affair, is that apart from that specific incident, the Military Advocate General's Office has been careful in most cases not to poke its nose into investigations of the war. The atmosphere in the wake of the atrocities of the Hamas massacre on October 7 did not allow for a detailed investigation of incidents, as had sometimes happened even in the case of very small operations in Gaza in the past.
Still, after two years of war, justice has not been made in incidents involving massive killings of civilians, particularly permissive rules of engagement (or deviations from them), firing at hospitals and targeted shooting of medical teams and media personnel.
As regards the war prisoners, no findings have been issued from the fairly limited investigations into the harsh conditions at IDF and Israel Prison Service facilities since the start of the war. Certainly, no disciplinary or criminal measures have been taken against those involved. This is the case despite strong evidence provided by the prisoners themselves and reports issued by international organizations. According to Palestinians, at least 80 prisoners died in Israeli detention centers during the war (most of them in the first few months) under suspicious circumstances.
But we don't need to rely only on foreigners or Palestinians. Here is what a reservist serving at Sde Teiman told Haaretz in May: "Sde Teiman, as anyone who has been there knows, is a sadistic torture camp. Detainees entered it alive and left in bags."’
Read the article here.
The ceasefire is not a ceasefire, the defeat is not a defeat, the prison camp is a torture camp, Gaza is half a mass grave, but Bibi is still here.
