Sick and Twisted

My thoughts on Trump's message to Hamas in the context of the UN Human Rights Council's March 13 report, “More than a human can bear”

Earlier this month, Trump posted the above message to Hamas on his social media platform, ordering the release all of the hostages “now, not later” and the return “all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered or it is OVER for you”. Crafted in Trump’s typical literary style was this gem: “Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted!”

If Hamas is as “sick and twisted” as Trump accuses for holding the bodies of dead hostages due, by the way, to a. Israel’s continual ceasefire violations and obstructionist negotiating tactics, and b. for doing what Israel has always done with the bodies of Palestinian prisoners in their possession, then I cannot help but ask:

How sick and twisted is it for Israel to deliberately target women and children, whose deaths account for at least 59%¹ of identified fatalities, in heavy air and artillery attacks on private homes, densely populated residential buildings, overcrowded refugee camps and “safe zones” where women and children as well as the elderly, disabled and unarmed, are most vulnerable?

How sick and twisted is it to specifically target women and girls on the presumption that, according to General Giora Eiland, they are the mothers and grandmothers of Hamas and, according to Eliyahu Yossian from the Misgav Institute for National Security, “The woman is an enemy, the baby is an enemy, and the pregnant woman is an enemy”?

How sick and twisted is it to completely destroy hospitals and clinics that used to offer sexual, reproductive and maternal healthcare; to render maternity wards, emergency obstetric and neo-natal care units nonfunctional, thereby causing not only serious medical complications for mothers during and after childbirth, but also increasing the likelihood of maternal morbidity, neonatal death, miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth, and infertility?

How sick and twisted is it to starve the population of Gaza, thereby purposefully endangering pregnant and lactating women, and impeding the normal physical, mental and psychological development of babies and children; to severely restrict or completely cut off the supply of clean drinking water, formula milk, medicine, menstrual products, diapers; to make access to basic sanitary facilities, such as toilets and bathrooms, an all-out assault on human dignity and a breeding ground for infections and disease that will have deleterious long-term effects on female health?

How sick and twisted is it to label Hamas a “rapist regime” when Israeli soldiers, security officials and guards subject Palestinian women to online sexual harassment and humiliation campaigns, verbal and physical abuse as well as repeated, prolonged and invasive strip searches, sexual touching and photographing during arrest and detention in front of male soldiers; when women and girls, even pregnant women and women who have recently given birth, are forced to remove their head coverings and undress all the while being insulted, degraded, harassed, beaten, groped and threatened with rape and gang rape or the killing of their children if they resist?

How sick and twisted it is when Palestinian men and boys are forced to undress in public or in front of their families and to march, sit, lie half-naked or naked in degrading, subordinate positions while being photographed or filmed; when they are subjected to torture as well as physical, verbal, mental and sexual abuse such as the beating, kicking, squeezing and pulling of their genitals as well as anal rape using electric probes, sticks, broomsticks, vegetables with the sole purpose of humiliation and emasculation?

How sick and twisted is it for a gang of ten Israeli soldiers in Sde Teiman detention centre to assault a Palestinian prisoner so brutally that several ribs were fractured, his lung punctured, his rectum ruptured to the extent that he required surgery? How sick and twisted is it for a mob of right-wing activists to protest the soldiers’ arrests, for leading Israel politicians to defend the rapists as heroic warriors and for members of the Knesset as well as Israeli media to call for the legalization of rape against Palestinian prisoners?

I could go on about the 12,000 women who’ve been widowed, the 38,000 children who’ve been orphaned, the highest number of child amputees per capita. But because you can read the UN report for yourself—if you have the stomach—I must ask how sick and twisted is it for Zionists Jews to believe that, because they are chosen (or self-chosen) by God to sit at the top of the chain of being, they are free to murder, maim, displace, dispossess, intimidate, terrorize, torture, humiliate, harass, imprison and dehumanize the Palestinian population, and never face any legal or moral consequences? How sick and twisted is it for any people to believe that they and their war crimes are above the law?

One last thing. How sick and twisted is it for President Trump to order the apprehension, detention and deportation of Mahmoud Khalili for having organized pro-Palestinian, anti-genocide protests at Columbia University, and to threaten the same treatment for any “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity”? How sick and twisted is it for Trump and any other head of state, politician, authority, celebrity or self-styled moralist, to equate peaceful, moral opposition to a 17-month-long, live-streamed genocide against the Palestinian population with terrorism and anti-Semitism?

The above-listed actions along with the many cases documented in the 49 pages of the March 13 UN Human Rights Council Report, “More than a human can bear”: Israel's systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since 7 October 2023—the 21^st Century’s non-fiction version of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—are not only utterly sick and twisted. These acts are committed by people who are pathologically psychotic, criminally insane, damaged, deranged and deformed beyond repair and redemption.

I don’t know about you, but I am SICK to death of the whole rotten bunch and I am TWISTED with rage and disgust! And I wish on every guilty party nothing but their just, commensurate and swift comeuppance in their lifetime!

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1. Note that any figures quoted in this essay are estimates at best, and most probably under-estimated.