Who Owns the Word "Terror"?
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The fall of the al-Assad regime pulled back the curtain on Syria’s notorious Sednaya prison, and an appalled world shook with fury at the murderous brutality that went down in there.
Yet over in Israel, similarly cruel and sadistic treatment of prisoners has somehow escaped scrutiny. Until last August, when the highly esteemed Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem published a report titled Welcome to Hell.
The report chronicled systemic inhumane subjugation of Palestinians: arbitrary violence, sexual assault, starvation, sleep deprivation and denial of medical treatment. Many prisoners are kept handcuffed, except for once a week when they are allowed a five-minute shower. Some have had arms amputated as a result of infections. The guards abuse prisoners with “pepper spray, stun grenades, wooden clubs, metal batons, gun butts, brass knuckles and tasers.”
“I had broken ribs and was injured in my right shoulder, my right thumb, and a finger on my left hand,”one prisoner testified. “I couldn’t move or breathe for half an hour. Everyone around me was screaming in pain, and some inmates were crying. Most were bleeding. It was a nightmare beyond words.”
Thirty-six-year-old paramedic Walid Khalili said that when soldiers removed his blindfold at the Sde Teiman facility, he saw he was in a large building “like a warehouse,” with chains hanging from the ceiling. Dozens of detainees in diapers were suspended from the ceiling, with chains attached to their square metal handcuffs. Personnel at the facility then suspended him from a chain, so his feet were not touching the ground, dressed him in a garment and a headband that were attached to wires, and administered electric shocks.
So widespread are the abuses “that there is no room to doubt” they belong to “an organized, declared policy,” the B’Tselem report concludes. The commander of Ketziot, quoted in the report, reveals the logic of the programmatic sadism: “As far as we are concerned, the detainees are all terrorists.”
Don’t forget that Israelis are children of the Holocaust. They have an intense existential fear at the very heart of their existence. And the land of Israel is their last stand, the only place they feel secure.
But still, why do they keep building settlements ... refuse to share the land? Why do they flout international law, UN Security Council resolutions and the ICC? Why do they build walls, steal water, have a two-tiered justice system, and use starvation as a weapon of war? Why do they allow messianic settlers to go berserk in the West Bank?
And why do they have yellow number plates for Israeli cars that can move freely throughout the land, and green plates for Palestinian cars not allowed to leave the West Bank?
An entire world, built on division: Green Man, Yellow Man.
We’ve been demonizing freedom fighters for centuries.
When the Mau Mau rebelled against British imperialism, we called them baboons, barbarians and terrorists.
When the Algerians rebelled against French colonization, we called them bandits, rebels and terrorists.
When the Viet Cong rebelled against the South Vietnamese government and its American backers, we called them gooks, commies, and terrorists.
When black South Africans rebelled against apartheid, we called them communists, radicals and terrorists.
Now we’re doing it again in Palestine.
But this time the tables are turning. Young people fucking hate it. The global South won’t stand for it anymore. The International Legal System is accusing us of war crimes and genocidal intent. Soon the whole world will be asking: “Who’s the terrorist, and who’s the freedom fighter?”
And Western Civilization better have a better answer.
Help us buy airtime to run this spot on CBC, FOX, and CH 14 Tel Aviv here.
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