Among candidates for U.S. sanctions, Israel’s Prison Service should be next on the list. This is apparently the realm where all the sadistic instincts of the minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, find their outlet.
On October 26, large forces of the Prison Service’s Keter unit, a tactical intervention unit, accompanied by dogs, one of them unleashed, stormed into the prison. The wardens and the dogs went on a rampage, attacking the inmates whose screams left the whole prison in a state of terror, Abu Halil recalls. The walls were soon covered with inmates’ blood. “You are Hamas, you are ISIS, you raped, murdered, abducted and now your time has come,” said one warden to the prisoners. The blows that followed were brutal, the inmates were shackled.
The beatings became a daily affair. Occasionally the guards demanded of prisoners that they kiss an Israeli flag and declaim, “Am Yisrael Chai!” – “The People of Israel live.” They were also ordered to curse the prophet Mohammed. The usual call to prayer in the cells was prohibited. The prisoners were afraid to utter any word starting with the sound “h” lest the guards suspect they had said “Hamas.”
On October 29, the inmates of Abu Halil’s cell requested a squeegee to wash the floor. The response to that was to send the terrifying Keter unit into their cell. “Now you will be like dogs,” the guards ordered. The prisoners’ hands were cuffed behind their back. Even before they were shackled, they were ordered to move only with their upper body bent over. They were led to the kitchen, where they were stripped and forced to lie one on top of the other, a pile of 10 naked prisoners. Abu Halil was the last. There, they were beaten with clubs and spat on.
A guard then started to stuff carrots into the anus of Abu Halil and other prisoners. Sitting at home now, reciting his story, Abu Halil lowers his gaze and the flow of words slows down. He’s embarrassed to talk about this. Afterward, he continues, dogs hunched over them and attacked them. They were then allowed to put on their underwear before being led back to their cell, where they found their clothes thrown into a heap.
Something something something when they love their children more than they hate us. And now they make sure there is another generation with nothing to hope for and nothing else to lose, and who pass on intergenerational trauma to their children.
By the way, this prison system is run by Ben Gvir.
Friendly reminder that Israelis helped run Abu Ghraib
However, similarities between the torture perpetrated against Palestinians now and against Iraqis 20 years before in Iraq come as no surprise. Israel and the torture techniques its intelligence services pioneered over decades of occupation played an important and largely overlooked role in the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison scandal, most notably through the use of sexual humiliation and rape.
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Among the contractors interrogating prisoners were employees of the private security firm CACI. One of the interrogators, Eric Fair, was stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison and in the restive city of Fallujah in 2004. He said interrogators in Iraq were taught to use a torture device known as the “Palestinian chair” by the Israeli military during a joint training exercise.
Awaiting the Sheryl Sandberg documentary about this sexual violence.
Funny story. Columbia’s student journalists were corralled and detained in the Pulitzer Prize building, to prevent them from recording or publishing events on campus during the last few days.
