Living

Cruel and Usual: Torture of Palestinians Revealed

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Another wall for wailing: Construction of what Israeli officials like to call a “fence.”

It’s not enough that an insane wall is being erected by Israel’s Jewish state to try to seal off Palestinian Arabs. The latest report by Jewish human-rights groups B’Tselem and HaMoked (Center for Defence of the Individual) reveals patterns of torture of Arab detainees.

Hey, our own chicken-stomper Lynndie England was a piker compared with the Israelis, if the report’s accounts are true. Palestinian detainees enjoyed such Pilate exercises as the “frog crouch” and the “banana position,” along with curses, threats, and the rest.

Israeli society is devalued by this activity, of course. Don’t believe the propaganda foisted on Americans by the right-wing lobbyists of AIPAC and the ADL. Plenty of Jews, especially in Israel, lament the Israeli-Palestinian death dance. Check out novelist David Grossman‘s commentary, which I’ve noted previously. Writing in 2002 after Israeli officials joyously seized a shipload of explosives proving the violent intentions of Palestinians, Grossman lamented:

“But what proof has been obtained here? Proof that if you oppress a people for 35 years, and humiliate its leaders, and harass its population, and do not give them a glimmer of hope, the members of this people will try to assert themselves in any way possible? And would any of us behave differently from the Palestinians in such a situation? And did we behave any differently when for years we were under occupation and tyranny?”

The death dance continues. And in this game of musical chairs, according to the new report, people are strapped to them.

Highlights