The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has published a major new report documenting how the Israeli prison system has become “a network of torture camps,” where physical, psychological and sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners is normalized and routine.
The report, titled “Welcome to Hell,” collects the testimony of 55 Palestinians who were detained by Israeli authorities since October 7 and later released, almost all without charges. This comes as a group of U.N. experts condemned the widespread torture of Palestinians and as Israel’s Channel 12 News aired shocking footage of Israeli soldiers sexually abusing a prisoner at the Sde Teiman army base, where thousands of detainees from Gaza are held.
Sarit Michaeli, the international advocacy lead for B’Tselem, says the abuse in Israeli prisons is “systemic, ongoing and state-sanctioned,” reflecting the cruelty and thirst for revenge among a growing number of Israelis. “They would like to have a completely open field in terms of what they can do to Palestinians,” says Michaeli.
You can find the full report of testimonies here
Again, your argument makes literally no sense. If you read the actual reports describing in detail every aspect, from law to practice, of Apartheid in Israel, you would understand the reality of Apartheid both codified in law and practiced on-the-ground.
Second, stop acting like criticism of Israel committing crimes against humanity and settler Colonialism is antisemitic. Anti-zionism is not antisemitism. Israel, and their actions, has not and never will represent all Jewish people. Jewish people who criticize Zionism, which has been the case since it’s inception, are not antisemitic or ‘self-hating jews.’ This conflation is genuinely antisemitic, and promotes actual antisemitism. Nazis love that conflation, because they can point at Israel and contribute all their crimes against humanity to the entirety of all Jewish people. Which is completely ridiculous. So stop with the conflation.
Third, yes, because the ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinian population has been central to Zionism, a Settler Colonialist ideology, since the late 1800’s. This is not conjecture, this is historical fact researched in depth by many historians, many even Israeli, with many sources, including official declassified Israeli documents.
You have a completely revisionist understanding of the history of Palestine. I suggest you try to prove yourself wrong by reading some works by historians if you feel so certain about what you think you know.
The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha
A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe
The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim
The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy
New Historian Aricles on One vs. Two State Solution:
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
There is no ethnic cleansing when that ethnic population in the area went from 500k to 5 million.
You say this ethnic cleansing started in the late 1800s? You are the one with a completely revisionist idea of history. When Jews immigrated to the area in the late 1800s they were first met with hostility towards them. Their land often pillaged by Arab marauders. All while they were starving and struggling to carry water on camel back to their settlement.
There was no settler colonialism in the late 1800s. Even the first wave of settlers faced hostility from the Palestine-Arabs.
They’ve made it their own prison even before they attempted to invade and destroy Israel on 1948.
Ethnic Cleansing is about displacement first and foremost, please read the definition before you try to argue against it. Population growth isn’t antithetical to ethnic cleansing. The poverty is deliberately caused by the occupation in the OPT. The link between poverty and population growth are well known. Hostility towards the new Zionist settlers only arose due to the expulsions.
The Concept of forcible transfer the native Palestinians population was central to Zionism since the 1880s when Palestine was chosen as the location. During the British Mandate, around a 100,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced by land purchases (unlike previous land purchases, where peasants would normally continue working and living on the land). Ben-Gurion used Partition as a tactic to dissuade the British from considering a Bi-National Secular State, and instead create a causi-belli for the beginning of a Jewish ethnostate within Palestine. The Nakba, or Plan Dalet, was deliberately planned for over a year. That ethnic cleansing campaign is directly responsible for the Palestinian Occupied Territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza. The 1967 war was a deliberate tactic for Israel to take control of those areas and begin the never ending occupation, once those policies were practiced on the Palestinian population that remained in the Green Line after the Nakba.
Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate.
1967 war: Haaretz, Forward
Israel Martial Law and Defence (Emergency) Regulations practiced in the occupied territories after 1967
Take a break from arguing with strangers on the Internet about how it’s actually the Palestinians fault for being ethnically cleansed. If you’re genuinely interested in the history go read the works of historians, I’ve already referenced plenty.