Guess What? It Can Get Worse, a Lot Worse!

My thoughts on Israeli soldiers' right to rape Palestinian prisoners

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

On April 2, I published How Much Worse Can It Get? in response to GOP Rep. Tim Walberg’s comment that the US should not be spending a dime on humanitarian aid to Gaza and that Israel should get the conflict over quickly Hiroshima/Nagasaki-style. As Israel’s relentless assault has demonstrated daily for the past ten months to all but the willfully deaf, dumb and blind, Walberg’s ignorance pales in comparison to the utter depravity to which both Zionist Israel and the United States along with the collective West have sunk.

Recent reports by the UNHCR, UNRWA and B’Tselem among others have exposed the widespread abuse, torture, sexual assault and rape of Palestinians in Israeli prisons, 53 of whom have died as a result (not to mention those who have suffered amputations and severe deterioration in their physical, mental and psychological health.) Most alarming is the case, last week, of a man who had been so brutally gang-raped by 9 (some reports say 10) military guards at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev Desert that he was unable to walk when taken to hospital with a severe anal injury, ruptured bowel, broken ribs, and lung damage. On July 29, a horde of right-wing, flag-waving protestors, including members of the Knesset, stormed the facility on the following Monday before moving in angry swarms to a military base 60 kilometers away to where the rapists were held for questioning. Watch one of several disturbing videos here if you have the stomach for it.

While the attempt to break into the military base and secure the soldiers’ release was condemned by Lieutenant General Halevi, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant more as an unpleasant disruption than outright lawlessness, several leading right-wing politicians defended the “heroic warriors” and “our best heroes”, as if it the rapists were victims of an egregious injustice. (Not to be forgotten: Israel has the most moral army in the world.) On Twitter/X, National Security Minister Ben-Gvir expressed outrage not over the crime of rape, but over the existence of an incriminating video recording of the assault! (True to diabolical form, Ben-Gvir has confirmed—that’s right confirmed, not denied—the abominable conditions in Israeli prisons and detentions centres, and called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners in order to prevent over-crowding.)

The incident immediately sparked rallies in Israel in support of the right to rape Palestinians as well as debate over whether such rape should be legalized. Some members of the government went so far as to suggest that “everything” should be legitimate. (I shudder to think exactly what “everything” includes.) In a discussion on Israeli television, journalist Yehuda Schlesinger advocated making the rape of Palestinians in Israeli prisons an official state policy:

Because first of all, they deserve it, and it is great revenge that we need to give them. And, secondly, maybe it will also serve us a little more as a deterrent. It is just a shame that we don’t do it in an institutionalized way as a part of regulations for torture of prisoners.

Either he’s never heard of international law or the Geneva Conventions or, more likely, he simply couldn’t care less since when has Israel ever given, or been made to give, a rat’s ass about international law and the Geneva Conventions?

As usual, US spokespeople have expressed their grave concerns and given assurances that the State Department “will look into it” while explicitly trusting Israel to investigate the matter swiftly and fully. And guess what? Israel’s preliminary investigations were so swift and full that already on July 30 2 of the accused soldiers were let go, and on August 4 two more were released. To see just how repentant and chastised Meir from Unit 100 is watch this video.

In western mainstream media, do we hear anything approximating the horror, outrage and shock over allegations of systematic rape by Hamas on October 7, acts that were not only unsubstantiated at the the time but have since been debunked? Do we see any attention-grabbing, gut-wrenching headlines in mainstream media and lurid pieces in the New York Times like Jeffrey Gettleman's Screams with Words, or any breaking-news specials on CNN? Of course not, because who cares about another “Hamas terrorist” who got what he deserved? And hey, this sort of stuff happens all the time in war.

If raping prisoners is not bad enough, if that’s not going beyond extremes, on Saturday morning Israel bombed a school during morning prayers on the here-we-go-again pretense that the school harboured a Hamas command centre and killed—correction: they obliterated at least 100 men, women and children to the extent that no body parts could be identified or pieced together as having once belonged to a particular human being. And what did the United States do? It went ahead with sending Israel the $3.5 billion that was approved on Friday so that Israel can defend itself. I can hardly wait for what Matthew Miller, John Kirby, Vedant Patel, or Kamala Harris has to say! Though I’d best not blink or I’ll miss it!

The international community, or dare I say humanity as a whole, has degenerated into hapless parents who first stand idly by as their kids build a fire in the middle of the living room and roast kittens on a skewer, then hand them more newspaper and matches because, well, the holy little terrors will figure out when it’s time to call it quits, so why spoil the fun! How much worse do things have to get before people start screaming bloody murder at the top of their lungs? Before we explode in a furious rage? Before we raise holy hell? Because if we don’t, Israel will keep on massacring, starving, terrorizing, ethnically cleansing, assassinating, raping, provoking and escalating until ... until what, for crying out loud? Israel exterminates the last Palestinian? They drag everyone into a world war? God finally gets fed up with the human race and lets us feel the full force of his wrath?

I hate like hell to say this, but when I ask myself how much worse can the world get, I can’t help but think of these lines from one of my favorite Keb’ Mo’ songs:

Lord, have mercy,
Lord, what have I done?
I got a bad, bad feeling
that the worst is yet to come.

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