Failing to restore military or strategic deterrence, Tel Aviv is invested in restoring the element of fear that was breached on Oct. 7, writes Ramzy Baroud.
Israeli soldiers in eastern Rafah in Gaza, May 2024. (IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
By Ramzy Baroud
MintPress News
On Oct. 25, Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin told Arutz Sheva-Israel National News that “Muslims are not afraid of us anymore.”
It might sound odd that Feiglin saw the element of fear as critical to Israel’s well-being, if not its very survival.
In actuality, the fear element is directly linked to Israel’s behavior and fundamental to its political discourse.
Historically, Israel has carried out massacres with a specific political strategy in mind: to instill the desired fear to drive Palestinians off their land. Deir Yassin, Tantura and the over 70 documented massacres during the Palestinian Nakba, or Catastrophe, are cases in point.
Israel has also utilized torture, rape and other forms of sexual assault to achieve similar ends in the past, to exact information or to break down the will of prisoners.
U.N.-affiliated experts said in a report published on Aug. 5 that “these practices are intended to punish Palestinians for resisting occupation and seek to destroy them individually and collectively.”
Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza has manifested all these horrific strategies in ways unprecedented in the past, both in terms of widespread application and frequency.
In a report entitled “Welcome to Hell,” published on Aug. 5, the Israeli rights group, B’tselem, said that Israel’s detention “facilities, in which every inmate is deliberately subjected to harsh, relentless pain and suffering, operate as de-facto torture camps.”
A few days later, the Palestinian rights group Addameer published its report, “documented cases of torture, sexual violence, and degrading treatment,” along with the “systematic abuses and human rights violations committed against detainees from Gaza.”
If incidents of rape, sexual assaults and other forms of torture are marked on a map, they would cover a large geographical area, in Gaza, in the West Bank, and Israel itself — mostly notably in the notorious Sde Teiman Camp.
Considering the size and locations of the Israeli army, well-documented evidence of rape and torture demonstrates that such tactics are not linked to a specific branch of the military. This means that the Israeli army uses torture as a centralized strategy.
Such a strategy has been associated with the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister. His aggressive statements, for example, that Palestinian prisoners should be “shot in the head instead of being given more food,” are perfectly aligned with his equally violent actions: the starvation policy of prisoners, the normalization of torture and the defense of rape.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog with Ben-Gvir in 2022. (Kobi Gideon / Government Press Office of Israel, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
But Ben-Gvir did not institute these policies. They have predated him by decades and were used against generations of Palestinian prisoners, who are granted few rights compared to those enshrined by international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention.
But why does Israel torture Palestinians on such a large scale?
Israeli wars against Palestinians are predicated on two elements: a material and a psychological one. The former has manifested itself in the ongoing genocide, the killing and wounding of tens of thousands and the near destruction of Gaza.
The psychological factor, however, is intended to break the will of the Palestinian people.
Majority of Israeli Jews believe prison rape suspects shouldn't face criminal chargeshttps://t.co/SW30UXyTkS
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) August 18, 2024
Law for Palestine, a legal advocacy group, published a database of over 500 instances of Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, inciting genocide in Gaza.
Most of these references seem to be centered on dehumanizing the Palestinians. For example, the Oct. 11 statement by Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog that “there are no innocent civilians in Gaza” was part of the collective death sentence that made the extermination of Palestinians morally justifiable in the eyes of Israelis.
Netanyahu’s own ominous biblical reference, where he called on Israeli soldiers to seek revenge from Palestinians, stating “Remember what Amalek has done to you,” was also a blank check for mass murder.
Netanyahu addressing a joint session of U.S. Congress on July 24. (C-Span screen shot)
While choosing not to see Palestinians as humans, as innocent, as worthy of life and security, Israel has granted its army carte blanche to do as it saw fit to those, in the words of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, “human animals.”
The mass killing, starvation and widespread rape and torture of Palestinians are a natural outcome of these shocking dialectics. But the overall purpose of Israel is not simply to exact revenge, though the latter has been quite crucial to Israel’s desire for national recovery.
By trying to break the will of the Palestinians through torture, humiliation and rape, Israel wants to restore a different kind of deterrence, which it lost on Oct. 7.
Failing to restore military or strategic deterrence, Tel Aviv is invested in psychological deterrence, as in restoring the element of fear that was breached on Oct. 7.
Raping prisoners, leaking videos of the gruesome acts, and carrying out the same horrific deed, again and again are all part of the Israeli strategy — that of restoring fear.
But Israel will fail simply because Palestinians have already succeeded in demolishing Israel’s 76-year matrix of physical domination and mental torture.
The Israeli war on Gaza has proven to be the most destructive and bloody of all Israeli wars. Yet, Palestinian resilience continues to grow stronger because Palestinians are not passive but active participants in the shaping of their own future.
If popular resistance is indeed the process of the restoration of the self, Palestinians in Gaza are proving that, despite their unspeakable pain and agony, they are emerging as a whole, ready to clinch their freedom, no matter the cost.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. His other books include My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Baroud is a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
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Did Bibi dissable the “Iron Dome” on January 7th in order to save his reign ? Just asking…
Em:
“Time for the Israeli’s to take a good long, hard look in the mirror!” That’s good advice. An Israeli psychiatrist once observed that “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.” In much the same way, “Israelis will never forgive the Palestinians for Gaza.”
Joe:
Will you please name the Israeli psychiatrist (for my personal edification) who once observed that “The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz” and identify the publication/source.
Torture is perfectly legal in the Zionist Torture Gulag.
Rape is perfectly legal in the Zionist Gulag.
Starvation is perfectly legal in the Zionist Regime.
Genocide is perfectly legal in the Zionist Regime.
All these things are perfectly legal. Just as they were under the Third Reich.
All this is funded, enabled, financed and facilitated by pro genocide western regimes and the bought and paid for presstitute hacks of the lying corporate media.
The irony is that Israel’s barbaric behavior is stoking antisemitism world wide.
Very true. Instead of instilling fear in their “Arab” enemies, as they call them, they are instilling global revulsion. They are increasing Israel’s enemies around the world, well beyond the Middle East. I cannot even imagine what proper militaries around the world are thinking as they watch them kill civilians with weapons that were gifted to them by big daddy America.
How I DESPISE this lot!
The World is not afraid of the Israelis any more. BDS and the many manifestations of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, in many, many countries in Europe, South America, Africa, etc. demonstrate that the Zionist discourse of fear is over, passe, kaput.
Free Palestine! Hell with Biden’s so called phony peace plan.
THE MOST SALIENT FACTUAL HISTORIL SELF-EVIDENT TRUTH POINTS TO THE ACTUAL WORKS OF PERSECUTION AND DISCRIMINATION OF JEWS BY EUROPEANS – DO THESE SOUND ARABIC TO YOU – DID ANY OF THESE ABOMINATIONS TAKE PLACE IN AN ARAB COUNTRY OR IN PALESTINE? ABSOLUTELY NOT. HOLOCAUST IS A EUROPEAN CRIME; GHETTOES ARE A EUROPEAN CRIME; POGROMS ARE A EUROPEAN CRIME; CONCENTRATION CAMPS ARE A EUROPEAN CRIME; NAZISM IS AN ABOMINABLE EUROPEAN IDEOLOGICAL CRIMINAL PRACTICE; ANTI-SEMITISM IN BOTH SPECIFIC TERMS AND GENERAL CONTEXT IS AS EUROPEAN CRIME LASTING FROM CENTURIES ON END WHILE IN ARABIA JEWS AND ARABS LIVED TOGETHER IN PEACE TO FREELY, JUSTLY, AND LAWFULLY PROSPER AS EQUALS! EURONAZISS ARE THE EXECRABLE CRIMINALS WHO’VE MISTREATED, ABUSED, PERSECUTED, AND MARKED JEWS AS ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE IN ORDER TO SUBDUE AND KILL THEM AT WILL. PALESTINIANS ARE TOTALLY INNOCENT – ZIONIST JEWS SHOULD BE BLARING THEIR “NEVER AGAIN” IN GERMANY, THE EUROPEAN UNION, AND ENGLAND WHERE THE NAZIS STILL THRIVE WITH IMPUNITY – ZIONISTS: GO BOMB EUROPE! YOUR GENOCIDE OF INNOCENT PALESTINIANS IS HORRIFIC RAGE FOR HOLOCAUST REVENGE AGAINST EUROPEANS WHO OPPRESSED AND PERSECUTED THE JEWISH PEOPLE FOR CENTURIES AND CENTURIES ON END – I SPEAK FROM WHAT I KNOW! MY GREAT GRAN’MOTHER’S NAME IS RUBENSTEIN – SHE EMIGRATED FROM GERMANY TO SETTLE IN ITALY WHERE MY GRAN’MOTHER WAS BORN AND WHERE MY GRAN’FATHER AND SHE GOT MARRIED AFTER WORLD WAR I. ARABS AND PALESTINIANS ARE TOTALLY INNOCENT OF ANY CRIME AGAINST JEWS – TO THE CONTRARY, ZIONISTS ARE THE PERPETRATORS OF SAVAGERY WHO HAVE BEEN BRUTALIZING AND DEHUMANIZING PALESTINIANS FOR THE WRONG REASONS FOR MORE 76 YEARS SINCE THE YEAR 1948! OCTOBER 7 2024 IS A JUSTIFIABLE FREEDOM FIGHTING RESPONSE OF RESISTANCE TO ZIONIST OPPRESSION THAT LEFT INNOCENT PALESTINIANS WITH NO OTHER RECOURSE BECAUSE ALL THEIR HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS HAD BEEN CONTINUOUSLY VIOLATED SINCE 1948! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! GAZA AND THE WEST BANK MUST BE UNIFIED AND JERUSALEM AS THE OFFICIAL CAPITAL OF THE NEW FREE, SOVEREIGN, INDEPENDENT, AND SELF-DETERMINED: FREE PALESTINIAN STATE! PERIOD! THE TIME IS NOW! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! ZIONISTS: GO BOMB EUROPE TO CARVE YOURSELVES A STOLEN LAND SOAKED IN INNOCENT HUMAN BLOOD – EUROPEAN NAZIS BLOOD AND NOT INNOCENT PALESTINIAN BLOOD! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! ***
What would the Soviet victors of WWII have thought of that? They bore the biggest brunt against Nazi Germany and did not exact revenge on the German nation. Russia has historically been an Orthodox Christian nation, and I doubt the Soviets believed in revanchism like the US and UK.
And I’m not sure why you had to yell.
All caps shouting – skipped right past…
Israel’s Resorting to Rule by Fear
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Israel is akin to a family business, and as such operates as a nepotistic hierarchy, wherein democracy, as understood by the hoi polloi worker bees, plays no part.
This business model is insolvent and must be liquidated!
The underlying psychology for why the pot is always calling the kettle black – people guilty of the very fault they identify in others; is that “content of character” is the trait with universal potentiality, in all of us, which, obviously the Israeli President, Yitzhak Herzog did not even have the awareness of when on Oct. 11 he made the statement that “there are no innocent civilians in Gaza.”
It is the corollary of other all too familiar bigoted statements, for example: that the Jews control the world, therefore, there are no innocent, indigent Jews.
The Israeli president, fifty-six years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King (MLK), by a lone, paranoid, wanton bigot, has not yet in himself even evolved enough as a ‘humane being’ to have an iota of the wisdom of MLK to be cognizant of the fact that all of us, are in essence, beings with the blind potential for acting out like “human animals”!
Time for the Israeli’s to take a good long, hard look in the mirror!