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haaretz
'If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is,' Says Israeli Newspaper of North Gaza Siege
"If this process doesn't stop immediately, hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli."
Oct 30, 2024
The editors of Israel's oldest newspaper on Wednesday published an editorial decrying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza amid a ferocious Israeli offensive there that's killed more than 1,000 people over the past three weeks.
"For three and a half weeks, Israeli forces have been besieging the northern Gaza Strip," the editors of the left-wing newspaper Haaretz wrote in Wednesday's lead editorial. "Israel has almost completely blocked the entry of humanitarian aid, thereby starving the hundreds of thousands of people who live there. Information emerging from the besieged area is only partial, because ever since the war began, Israel has barred journalists from entering Gaza."
"Israel says it told the residents that they needed to leave northern Gaza, and even now, they can still move southward on routes the army has designated for this purpose," the editors noted. "Thus the residents, many of whom have already been uprooted two or three times or even more from the places to which they have fled the terrors of war, are now being asked to move again. Yet Israel has refrained from giving the displaced any guarantee that they will be able to return once the war ends."
"Given this," they added, "it's no wonder that grave suspicions have arisen that Israel is effectively perpetrating ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza and that this operation is intended to permanently empty this area of Palestinians."
"This suspicion fits with both the principles of the 'Generals' Plan' being pushed by Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland—a plan Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has denied implementing—and the demands of the Jewish supremacist parties in the governing coalition that are openly pursuing a policy of mass expulsions and the renewal of Jewish settlement in northern Gaza," the editorial states.
Last week, senior Israeli officials including members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet and far-right Knesset lawmakers gathered near the Gaza border for a conference dedicated to the ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Jewish recolonization in the embattled Palestinian enclave.
"We came here with one clear purpose: to settle the entire Gaza Strip... Every inch from north to south," settler leader Daniella Weiss told attendees of the rally, which was backed by Netanyahu's Likud party. "Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza."
As the Haaretz editors noted:
Ethnic cleansing is both a moral crime and a legal one. Criminal law treats mass expulsions as both a war crime and a crime against humanity. Horrifyingly, some members of Benjamin Netanyahu's government want to commit these crimes. As soon as the war began, they began calling for "erasing Gaza" and for perpetrating a "second Nakba." But many Israelis made light of such statements, and the law enforcement system, headed by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, refrained from dealing with this incitement to commit crimes.
Now, we can see the results: Israel is sliding into ethnic cleansing; its soldiers are carrying out the criminal policies of the messianic, Kahanist right; and even the opposition on the center and center-left isn't making a peep. This consensus behind ethnic cleansing is shameful, and every public leader who doesn't demand an end to the de facto expulsion is supporting this crime and has become a party to it.
"If this process doesn't stop immediately," the editors stressed, "hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli."
Israel was founded in 1948, largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the Nakba, or "catastrophe." Zionist militias—the two most violent of which were led by future Israeli prime ministers—utilized terror tactics including massacres and a death march to force the Indigenous Arabs from their homeland.
Israeli ethnic cleansing continued over the following eight decades and, according to critics, currently involves home demolitions and expulsions in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, systematic land theft, and pogroms and other violent attacks by Jewish settler colonists backed—and sometimes joined—by Israel Defense Forces troops.
United Nations officials and international human rights groups said this week's Knesset vote to ban the life-saving U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) will exacerbate Israeli crimes in Gaza, including ethnic cleansing.
"Efforts to eliminate UNRWA are illegal under international law and will only amplify the genocide and ethnic cleansing Israel is enacting in Gaza while also undermining long-term prospects for peace," the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, said Tuesday. "The Israeli government is not only deliberately blocking humanitarian and medical aid to people who are starving and dying, it is undermining support for Palestine refugees and the international legal framework protecting their rights."
On Monday, Francesca Albanese, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on Palestine, published a
report "contextualizing the situation within
a decadeslong process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence in Palestine."
Albanese's report was released a day after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who supports the "total annihilation" of Gaza and said that killing 2 million Palestinians would be "justified and moral"—reiterated his call for Israeli annexation of the entire West Bank and the expulsion of the occupied territory's Palestinians.
Israel's policies and practices in Gaza—where more than 150,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023—are the subject of an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
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Rights Groups List 50+ Calls for Gaza Genocide on Israel's Channel 14
"Incitement to war crimes is part of the Channel 14 poison machine, and its aim is to create a forever war here," said one campaigner.
Sep 25, 2024
Since the October 7 attack, Israel's right-wing Channel 14 has broadcast over 50 statements by presenters, panelists, and guests advocating or defending genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and more than 150 calls for war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to a report published Tuesday by an Israeli newspaper.
Haaretzreported that the Israeli human rights groups—Zulat for Equality and Human Rights, Hatzlacha: Movement for the Promotion of a Fair Society, and the Democratic Bloc—have compiled a list of genocidal statements and incitements to war crimes made by individuals appearing on Channel 14 since October 7.
The groups have written to Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara requesting a criminal investigation into the station for "systematic and widespread incitement." The organizations want Channel 14 sanctioned and fined.
"On October 7, the terrorist organization Hamas committed war crimes and crimes against humanity," attorneys Michael Sfard, Alon Sapir, and Einat Gaier—who are representing the groups—told Haaretz. This caused "massive grief, deep sorrow, and burning and understandable fury."
"Israeli society is deeply traumatized, and this trauma will take years to heal," the lawyers continued. "This is exactly the type of ground upon which moral monstrosities are liable to flourish, and are flourishing."
The Haaretz article lists each incident in which genocidal statements have aired on Channel 14, with one program, "The Patriots," appearing repeatedly on the list.
On October 12, former Israeli lawmaker Moshe Feiglin—who has quoted Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, while arguing for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—said on "The Patriots" that "if the goal of this operation isn't destruction, occupation, expulsion, and settlement, then we've done nothing."
Two days later on the program, presenter Nave Dromi said that "there are no innocents" in Gaza.
"In 1948, they brought the Nakba on themselves," she added, referring to the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Jewish militias during the foundation of modern Israel. "Now they'll have a second Nakba, but for real, to finish the job."
The following day, October 15, Channel 14 aired a prerecorded message from Israeli singer Eyal Golan, who asserted that "Gaza should be totally wiped out, not one person should be left there."
Golan's message was cited in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Israeli State Attorney Amit Aisman is also considering a criminal investigation of Golan's remarks.
The human rights groups and Haaretz documented many other instances of on-air calls for indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, shooting civilians, and to "just exterminate" Palestinians.
Channel 14 personalities were aware of the legal implications of these statements. Following the ICJ's January order for Israel to avoid genocidal acts—which the country's far-right government has been accused of ignoring—Israeli journalist Shimon Riklin said on air that a law professor "warned me before the broadcast that if I say these things on the show I could be sued in The Hague."
"But I want you all to know that since October 7, one of the things that helps me to sleep is when I see all kinds of buildings flying through the air in Gaza, I enjoy it," he said. "Let's have more! Destroy as much as possible, so they won't have anywhere to go back to. Hang on a second, The Hague is calling... Hello?"
That same day another Israeli journalist, Itamar Fleischmann, argued on air that "the more humane solution is to starve" Palestinians in Gaza.
"And the choice is up to the civilians there," he added. "You want to keep starving? Keep supporting Hamas... That's why in my view, the Israeli interest is starvation in Gaza and a humanitarian disaster in Gaza."
At least dozens of Gazans, mostly children, have starved to death amid Israel's siege of the embattled enclave, where more than 147,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured by Israel's nearly yearlong onslaught.
"Incitement to war crimes is part of the Channel 14 poison machine, and its aim is to create a forever war here," Zehava Galon, a former left-wing Israeli lawmaker and president of Zulat for Equality and Human Rights, told Haaretz.
In a social media post, Zulat for Equality and Human Rights said Tuesday that "we specifically present here evidence of a serious crime being committed on Channel 14 and it needs to be stopped immediately."
Channel 14 "turned these statements into a systematic agenda," the group added. "An urgent investigation is required so that this incitement cannot be legitimate and allowed in Israel. It's time for the instigators to pay the price."
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'Insane Torture': Israeli Soldiers Confirm Horrific Abuse of Palestinians at Sde Teiman
"Teeth were broken, bones were broken," said one soldier. "You notice how easy it is to lose your humanity," said another.
Aug 16, 2024
An Israeli newspaper on Friday published interviews with Israel Defense Forces reservists and medical staff who witnessed the "day-to-day torture" of Palestinian prisoners at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in the Negev Desert, where dozens of detainees have died and others were allegedly raped.
The Israelis described seeing torture and abuse of Palestinians detained in Sde Teiman, who included everyone from Hamas fighters to innocent civilians, and ranged in age from children to octogenarians.
"We said, 'It's torture.' But you don't get into it; you change the subject immediately."
"What's happening there is total dehumanization. You don't really relate to them as if they're real human beings," said one public hospital physician who worked at Sde Teiman. "In the end it's no less than torture. There are ways to administer even poor treatment, or even to torture a person, without crushing cigarettes on them."
One female former medical staffer said that "the place was totally unimaginable, I had never considered anything like it."
"My first thought was: What have I done?" she said, describing prisoners being forced to relieve themselves in diapers and take their meals through straws.
"The conditions there were described as torture," she added. "Maybe. In many senses, yes, I agree with that. Maybe even insane torture."
A 37-year-old male reservist said some of the worst abuse was committed by members of Force 100, the unit of the nine Israelis recently arrested for allegedly gang-raping a Sde Teiman prisoner.
"They took... guys aside and really laid into them," he said. "I think that each time teeth were broken, bones were broken... And there was also a dog."
Former Sde Teiman prisoners have described dogs attacking and performing "vile acts" on them.
Another IDF reservist said that "when you come to the camp, the first thing that hits you is the smell... of dozens of people who have been sitting in close quarters for more than a month in the same clothes and in insane heat."
"They let them shower for a few minutes around twice a week, but I don't remember ever seeing that they gave them a change of clothes, in any case not on my shifts," he added.
The Haaretz interviewees said that much of the abuse occurred in the open.
"It wasn't something that was done in the dark," the 37-year-old reservist said. "Everyone saw what was going on... It's not something that was done behind the back of the commander of the camp."
"Most of the guys were just fine with what was happening," he continued. "There were some who were a little bothered by it, and there were others who were bothered by it at the start and then they toed the line with the system."
"There were people who in conversations suddenly mentioned the word 'torture,'" he added. "And then we said, 'It's torture.' But you don't get into it; you change the subject immediately."
Some of those interviewed by
Haaretz expressed misgivings about what they did or saw at Sde Teiman.
"When I was there, I wrestled with myself about whether to stay on and try to do the right thing, the best I could as a moral person, or whether I should just get up and declare that I refused to take part in it," said one male reservist and student. "I came out with a heavy feeling of guilt."
Another reservist said, "The more distance I have from the place, the more my eyes have opened up."
"What most disturbed me was to see how easily and how quickly ordinary people can disconnect themselves and not see the reality right in front of their eyes when they're in the midst of a shocking human situation," he added.
There were also rare moments of mercy.
"Sometimes the military police gave the minors candy, like in the evening, before sleep," the 37-year-old reservist said. "One time a detainee started to cry. He was older, 60 years old. So the duty officer tried to speak to him and cheer him up a little."
But more often, guards were "filled with rage," said one reservist, who added that "there's a desire for revenge."
"What most disturbed me was to see how easily and how quickly ordinary people can disconnect themselves and not see the reality right in front of their eyes."
One reservist said that "there was a female officer who gave us a briefing on the day we arrived. She said, 'It will be hard for you. You'll want to pity them, but it's forbidden. Remember that they aren't people."
"You notice how easy it is to lose your humanity in a second, how easy it is to come up with justifications for treating people as if they're not people," he added.
One 27-year-old female reservist said that upon arriving at Sde Teiman—where she was welcomed with popcorn and cotton candy—she was alarmed to find that "good people whom I know talked about being cruel and abusive to people, like they were talking about something routine."
"The dehumanization frightened me," she said. "I couldn't understand how a group of young people who were around me every day underwent such a dangerous process in such a short time."
Another reservist said that some Sde Teiman staff—especially the volunteers—were "sadists" who "really enjoy beating up Arabs."
The
Haaretz interviews add to a growing body of evidence of torture and other war crimes perpetrated by Israelis against Palestinian prisoners at Sde Teiman and other lockups.
Former Palestinian detainees and Israeli personnel have described beatings, rape and sexual torture by male and female soldiers, routine amputations due to constant shackling, burnings, electrocutions, attacks by dogs, ice-water dousings, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, constant loud music, and other abuse.
The Israeli military is investigating the deaths of at least 36 Sde Teiman detainees, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
On Friday, Alice Jill Edwards, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, said that "there are no circumstances in which sexual torture or sexualized inhuman and degrading treatment can be justified."
"I am troubled by recent attempts by Israeli citizens—including reportedly one member of Parliament—to intervene violently after the arrests of soldiers on these abuse charges," she said of the recent storming of Sde Teiman and another base by a far-right mob in response to the arrests of the alleged rapists.
"Criminal proceedings into all allegations must proceed unhindered," Edwards added. "No one is above the law. No one is immune from prosecution for torture."
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