Kamala Approves Support for Biden’s Israel Policy; Palestinian Prisoner Abuse
Why would it excite you to swoon and give sustained applause to a political leader for snapping at and scorning protesters who, whatever you think about them, are actually doing it with good faith because out of conviction and belief, they have every right to protest the political leaders who have been arming this war, they’re anti-war protesters.
Tonight: One of the most bizarre political spectacles I have ever seen in my life is that Kamala Harris continues to campaign for president and media figures and liberals continue to absolutely swoon for her, despite the fact that she has not uttered a single word about anything that she believes – anything beyond a few vague bromides about her support for abortion and LGBT. It is the ultimate campaign based on nothing, believing that she can win by attracting enough votes from people whose brains are equally empty and do not need to hear anything that she actually believes and about any substantive policy disputes. Most amazingly, there seem to be very few – if there are any – corporate journalists who appear to even be slightly perturbed by any of this. A presidential candidate who, three short months before the election, continues to refuse to do any interviews or issue any statements about what she believes, about literally anything, let alone about the multiple domestic and foreign crises already pending.
Last night, however, Kamala Harris appeared to give a scripted speech in Michigan, and one of the first times that she expressed any genuine emotion during the campaign, other than grinning lightly about her own good fortune, came when pro-Palestinian protesters, largely Arab and Muslim voters from that area, angry about the incessant bombing campaign of Gaza that have affected many of their families and killed many of their relatives, went to Kamala’s event to protest the White House support and its ongoing support, arming and financing of the Israeli war in Gaza. Kamala for the first time showed real, visible anger over this, of all things, as she spewed scorn and contempt on the protesters, telling them that they should shut their mouths unless they wanted Trump to win.
All of this presents a major problem for many liberals, who have been lying to themselves and to their followers by trying to pretend that Kamala has different views than Biden when it comes to supporting and financing Israel, that she’s somehow more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, based on absolutely no evidence that she is or that she does. And even in the face of a mountain of evidence that she’s every bit as pro-Israel as Biden or Josh Shapiro or Tim Walz, and always has been. To shield Kamala, though, from any anger over how she just treated pro-Palestinian and antiwar protesters, these liberal influencers began outright lying by insisting that Kamala said she’s more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than Clinton, she is more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than Biden and even by claiming, based on nothing, that Kamala said, she was open to an arms embargo against Israel in order to force them to end the war. That’s what they claimed that Kamala had said.
In a way, their lying performed a public service because they provoked the first-ever substantive statement by anyone on behalf of Kamala Harris’s campaign, namely, her top national security adviser and spokesman, who issued a clear and emphatic statement this morning that Kamala absolutely opposes an arms embargo on Israel and is fully devoted to the defense of the Israeli state.
That is the first time anyone has shared her views on anything – other than that one time when her campaign announced that she repudiates multiple progressive uses she ran on when seeking the Democratic nomination in 2020, such as single-payer health care and a ban on fracking and several other things – and in doing so with this statement, her campaign gave the lie to this left-liberal fantasy to falsely depict her as one to chart a different course than Biden or Trump. When it comes to Israel generally and its war in Gaza specifically. We still don’t know what Kamala Harris thinks about the imminent war in the Middle East. The one we talked at length with last night with Professor John Mearsheimer, or what she would do in response to such a war. But at least the statement this morning finally extracted an admission that she fully supports Israel and is committed to their defense in its ongoing war in Gaza.
Then: The Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, issued a report this week documenting extreme and pervasive abuses in Israeli prisons, where they have Palestinian detainees, including prisoners who were in prison since before October 7, who never received any trial of any kind, who are from the West Bank and not Gaza, and whom even the Israeli government admits had nothing to do with the October 7 attack or with Hamas. This new report comes as Israel is rocked by truly horrifying reports, and even by video, of the use of anal rape by IDF soldiers on detainees, again, once in prison with no trial, followed by the explicit defense of anal rape as a weapon of war or a weapon of vengeance and torture by members of the Israeli Knesset and prominent media figures alike.
We speak about this report, as well as the broader sentiments in Israel regarding war and Palestinians, that set the groundwork for these abuses with Sara McNeely of B’Tselem. Given the time differences in Israel, we taped the interview yesterday. We found this discussion quite thoughtful and thought-provoking, and believe you will as well.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Kamala Harris, ever since she became the presumptive Democratic nominee, and now basically confirmed Democratic nominee, when Joe Biden was driven out of the race against his will, has done a lot of things. She has appeared at scripted rallies where she gives scripted speeches. She has appeared at all sorts of fundraising events, but the one thing she has not done is speak without a script. She has not sat down, for example, for an interview with a journalist where a journalist could say to her: Vice President Harris, there’s all of these crises that are brewing. What is your view on them? How would you handle these? Would you do anything different than what Joe Biden did? Would you do anything? Would you continue the same? Just basic questions that every single presidential candidate in my lifetime has repeatedly had to answer.
And yet so far, she has completely managed to avoid any of those questions, and there’s no pressure on her, basically, from her Democratic Party base, to tell them in exchange for their vote, anything that she actually believes, more amazingly – I don’t know if amazingly, is the right word. Revealingly? – there is very little pressure from the corporate press to do so as well. You would think journalists just pretending to be journalists and performing the journalistic function would want to show the public, hey, we at least are going to do the theater of being journalists, so, we’re going to observe that; it’s very strange that Kamala Harris won’t say anything about what she believes three months out of the election, and we’re going to start denouncing that and insisting that she – No, there’s almost none of that.
So last night, Kamala went to a rally in Detroit, Michigan, and among the people who have noticed that she has thus far said anything meaningful are the numerous Muslim and Arab voters on whom the Democratic Party likely relies in order to win the state of Michigan, who have been very clear that they will not give their votes to the Democratic Party presidential ticket unless it demonstrates some kind of a commitment to reversing the US funding and support for the Israeli bombing of Gaza. And they went to Kamala Harris’s rally last night to exercise their constitutional right to protest and, obviously, a lot of people are saying, why didn’t they go to the Trump rally? The reason is obvious. It’s the Biden-Harris administration that has been funding and arming and defending this war for the last 10 months, not the Trump campaign. He’s been out of office since 2020.
If you ask me, do I think that Donald Trump has any different views or would do anything differently than Joe Biden or Kamala Harris? I would say no. I said that last night when I was talking to Professor Mearsheimer. He also explained the reasons why he didn’t think so, either, that the Israeli lobby is so powerful that the embedded dogma that we support Israel in everything they do not just support them, but arm them and finance them, is so embedded it would almost require some kind of political war for a president to uproot it. But these are the people who actually care about the war in Gaza, not the people who have been pretending for 10 months online to strike a radical pose, or to profit from attracting more traffic by talking about the war in Gaza as they’re so angry about it.
Here’s what people who actually believe what they were saying about the Gaza war would do. They showed up at Kamala Harris’s event to demand answers, and here’s how she treated them:
Kamala Harris: […] You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.
Something that – I don’t know if a lot of people noticed it – but there’s this white woman in the lower left-hand corner. She’s to Kamala Harris’s right. I don’t know if you’re seeing the image the exact way I am. So, imagine Kamala Harris facing forward. She’s to Kamala Harris’s right. She’s a white woman in the front row. And she starts doing these signs with their hands, like kind of like, “Yeah, you said it.” These people are insane. This is like, the only thing for which Kamala Harris has ever demonstrated any passion is, like, spewing contempt and hatred on the ability of pro-Palestinian protesters to be heard by dictatorial saying, “How dare you? I’m speaking now.” And these white women behind her just swooning and going crazy.
Anyway, that ovation goes on. I mean, even if you don’t care about the Palestinian cause, even if you don’t care about the war in Gaza, that Biden and Harris have been funding and arming, if you don’t care in the slightest, why would it arouse you to that extent? Why would it excite you to swoon and give sustained applause to a political leader for snapping at and scorning protesters who, whatever you think about them, are actually doing it with good faith because out of conviction and belief, they have every right to protest the political leaders who have been arming this war, they’re anti-war protesters. And this is the Democratic Party: they just swoon for these kinds of personality things, all these, you know, cultural kind of claims online about “Kamala Harris doesn’t take anything from anyone.”
She did say right before that, look, if you want to be heard, you can be heard, but not now, I’m speaking. But then when they continued to protest, as of course they should, that’s what she did.
Before I get to the outbreak, I just want to show you something. I watched people celebrating this all online all day and, again, this is the first time I’ve seen any sort of anger, that kind of passion from Kamala Harris when she just told these leftist anti-war protesters who are Arab and Muslim, to eff off, basically, to shut their mouths because she’s speaking. And there is this passage in the novel “Animal Farm,” written by George Orwell, in the mid-20th century. For those of you who don’t know, is a parody of how tyranny and authoritarianism function. The novel begins when there’s a farmer who rules over the animals on the farm, including pigs and treats them very poorly with a lot of repression. Several of the pigs convinced the other pigs and the other animals to overthrow that farmer and promise that once they do so, they will all be treated well. They’ll all be treated equally.
Instead, what happens is the pigs start to take on the exact same behaviors as the farmer. They start sleeping in human beds. They start eating food that the rest of the pigs don’t eat. It’s an obvious metaphor for how tyranny works, and how promises of equality are exploited in order to empower the leaders who promised them. And in the novel, once the pigs took over, everybody was very happy at first but then they started to notice that the pigs in charge, including the pig named Napoleon, who was the leader of the revolution, took over and began running things once they drove Farmer Jones away and his second in command, Squealer, they started noticing that they have all these privileges that most pigs don’t have. They get to eat all this fine food. They even started wearing clothes and sleeping in beds with pillows and blankets while the pigs just continued to exist how they were.
As a result, they started getting agitated about that. They started to say, wait a minute, why is this going on? Why do you get these privileges and we don’t? And so, in the novel, Squealer, who was the second in command to Napoleon of this new leadership, stood up and tried to address them about why it is that they should stop with their complaints. And this is what the book says:
I mean, it is remarkable how perfectly that tracks what Kamala Harris did in response to this Palestinian protest, where she was saying, Look, I know you’re agitated, but the only thing you need to know is that if you continue to question me, Farmer Jones is going to come back, that bad man, Farmer Jones Donald Trump, is going to come back. And then the crowd just went wild. It’s like, yeah, we don’t need to hear anything from you about your views all we need to know is that if you don’t win and we don’t hear from you, Farmer Jones is going to come back. It’s almost verbatim.
Obviously, Kamala Harris wasn’t thinking about this. She is not using “Animal Farm” as an instruction manual. The reason it tracks it so perfectly is because Orwell had observed how authoritarian and tyrannical leaders behave, what their mentality is and how they try to appease a restless mob that starts to notice their corruption. They do so by telling them that if they don’t stop questioning the leadership, something worse or somebody worse is going to come back. And that’s exactly all the Democrats are running on: if you don’t just submit to us, get in line, shut up, Farmer Jones will come back.
This creates a serious problem for a lot of people on the left – the left wing of the Democratic Party, I mean, not the real left – because they have spent, as we’ve done over many times, 9 or 10 months, screaming “genocide,” suggesting that people shouldn’t even vote for President Biden because even though you should vote for the lesser of two evils with whom you don’t agree, genocide is a bridge too far, all of that. People gained so much benefit from that. They got all this attention from doing that, from screaming genocide, they were put on shows, they attracted a huge amount of traffic to their shows and therefore all kinds of profit and, basically, they also improved their branding. They kind of struck this radical cause and it was always totally predictable that they were going to, once the election approached, forget about all that stuff in Gaza they don’t really care about it and even start lying on behalf of the Democrats. I knew that was going to happen. Not only I, but a lot of other people predicted that that was going to happen but to watch them just lie so flagrantly in order to tell people, “Oh, I know Kamala Harris just heaps scorn on pro-Palestinian protesters and that may not be great, but don’t worry, she’s actually really good on Palestinian issues.”
Here’s what Emma Vigeland did. She’s the co-host of a Democratic Party YouTube show called “The Majority Report.” She tweeted this fabrication:
That was completely invented. Kamala Harris never suggested or indicated she was open to an arms embargo. That is an outright lie. It’s a fabrication designed to deceive confused leftists who are like, wait a minute, why is this person that we were told was so great, heaping scorn on pro-Palestinian protesters? It looks a lot like the Democrats we were told not to like. This doesn’t look like anything different to us. And so, they say, no, no, she did that, but she secretly on the side told them she’s open to an arms embargo.
And here’s what The New York Times article that was cited to make that claim actually said:
Except for American liberals like that, everyone understood that Kamala Harris did not in any way intend to indicate that she was for something as polemical and controversial and radical in the American context as an arms embargo. I can’t imagine what would happen if Kamala Harris got into office and announced an embargo on sending more arms to Israel. It’s inconceivable. It’s so obvious she would never do that. Nothing in her life, in her entire existence, indicates that she would pursue a policy at the expense of her own political interests, to anger the Democratic Party and AIPAC, in order to stand on some principle. When has she ever done that in her life? Never.
She sat there for the last 10 months by Joe Biden’s side and never uttered a peep of dissent as he gave Israel all those arms and all that money to fuel the war in Gaza, as he isolated the U.S. at the U.N. to protect Israel. And, although it’s not common for vice presidents to express dissent to the president, she’s free to and on an issue of conscience like this, if you actually think it’s a genocide, she could have and never has and still hasn’t now that she herself is the presidential nominee and not the vice presidential nominee. And because there was this little rustle of lies coming from left liberals, like the one we just showed you, fabricating the claim that Kamala Harris said she was open to an arms embargo, we finally, after all this time, got a definitive, concrete statement from Kamala Harris’s team about one belief that she has on one issue. They were eager to immediately debunk any idea that Kamala Harris would in any way pursue a different policy on Israel, let alone impose an arms embargo.
Here is what Phil Gordon, her national security adviser in the White House, tweeted today.
At best, that’s just an echoing of Biden’s rhetoric and policy. But in fact, since they’re running a campaign and don’t comment on anything, the fact that that was the one thing they felt compelled to say – We don’t support an arms embargo against Israel, we would never deprive Israel of arms, we’re always going to send Israel the arms they want – It shows you where their priorities are. She heaps scorn on pro-Palestinian protesters and then immediately issued a statement saying how steadfast her devotion to Israel was.
By the way, just in case there’s any confusion about this, this is how everyone in the world except American liberals understood it. Here from Haaretz today.
I believe there was a New York Times article that made that clear as well, but in any event, it’s all over the place because everyone can read English and understood that she was never saying she was opening to an arms embargo. And in case there was any attempt to try to lie about her record, her vice president or national security advisor came out today and for the first time, put her actual view on the record that she would never deprive Israel of the weapons it demands from the United States.
All of this is happening while this war in Gaza, what these people have been calling a genocide for 10 months – and I think you certainly make a plausible case for that word. I like to argue over semantics and I explained many times why I view this as morally reprehensible, one of the worst humanitarian crises, one of the worst crimes against humanity, certainly in the century – it’s still going it hasn’t stopped, even though a lot of people who pretended to care so much about it have stopped talking about it as election approaches.
Honestly, I didn’t even know there were school buildings still standing in Gaza but apparently there was and the Israelis found one. It was being used as a haven for refugees, of which most of the Gaza population are since they’ve been all expelled and transferred and ordered to evacuate many times on foot. And so, they’re all refugees, basically internally displaced in that what you can sort of call a society though it’s basically destroyed from the foundations up. And, of course, Israel’s justification, “the Israeli military said that the attacks were intended to destroy Hamas command and control centers inside the school compounds. The military claimed that it had taken steps to, quote, “mitigate the risk of harming civilians”.”
Earlier, this week, AIPAC succeeded in removing yet another member of Congress for insufficient support for Israel. She’s Cori Bush, the Democrat of Missouri, a couple of months ago. They also did the same to Jamaal Bowman, the Democrat from New York. They poured many millions of dollars into just removing any member of Congress who was insufficiently supportive of Israel. They have a unique record. And when Cori Bush was defeated, she gave a speech in front of a lot of her supporters saying, “Look, let’s be very clear about what happened here. The reason this happened is because AIPAC rules our politics. And she said, “I’m coming for you AIPAC, I’m coming to tear down your kingdom.” And when Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, was asked by the media about the White House’s views of those comments, here’s what she said during a follow-up on Cori Bush:
Journalist: A follow-up on Cori Bush gave a speech last night, after the results came in and she said to AIPAC which spent heavily against her, “I’m coming to tear your kingdom down.” Does the President have an opinion on that statement?
Karine Jean-Pierre: So, look, the President has always been very clear. And very recently, after, the assassination attempt of the last president, about lowering rhetoric, right, lowering political rhetoric and the importance of doing that. It is important, important that we, be very mindful of what we say. This kind of rhetoric is inflammatory and divisive and incredibly unhelpful. And, look, we’re going to continue to condemn any type of political rhetoric in that way, in that vein. And so, it is important to be mindful in what we say and how we say it. But, we cannot have this type of inflammatory, divisive language in our political discourse. Not now. Not ever.
So, Karine Jean-Pierre stands up and says, “We’re denouncing Cori Bush for what she said about AIPAC. This is extremely unhealthy rhetoric. We denounce it. We oppose it.” And they use Karine Jean-Pierre to be the one to denounce Cori Bush because she’s a good face for that.
Before the Biden administration began, Karine Jean-Pierre worked for the progressive group MoveOn and she had long been an outspoken critic of AIPAC, a very harsh, outspoken critic of AIPAC before she was offered a job for $170,000 or whatever, the position of White House press secretary, to come and defend AIPAC from Cori Bush, just a few years ago, right before the Biden administration started, she was an outspoken critic of AIPAC exactly what Cori Bush was doing here.
That’s what she said just three or four years ago about AIPAC.
I’m not naive. I understand that when people get new jobs, they have to constrain what they believe. They have to modify how they say things because the job of White House press secretary does require you to defend the White House’s view. But how somebody can just sell their soul like that so blatantly and flagrantly? Honestly, think about how soulless you have to be to do what she just did. Just four years ago, you were making your views of AIPAC very starkly clear, in fact, condemning them more aggressively than Cori Bush did when she was defeated as a result of AIPAC’s $15 million that they poured into that race to remove them from Congress. And Karine Jean-Pierre was saying essentially the same thing as Cori Bush was four years ago but now to keep her job in the White House, to keep her place in the mainstream, political, elevated circles, she’s willing to not only say the exact opposite of what she actually thinks right to your face. She’s willing to volunteer to be the face that the White House sends forward to attack Cori Bush for using “inappropriate” and “dizzying, dangerous rhetoric” to condemn AIPAC. I don’t know how you do that. I don’t understand people who are capable of that. It’s not like if you left the White House, you’d be unemployed. She would have more job offers than ever. She was doing fine before the White House.
Isn’t there any of limit to what people are willing to offer themselves up to do for a cause in which they’re willing to voluntarily serve. The willingness to renounce all your actual views and pretend that you have the opposite views, and even denounce a Black woman who was a member of Congress, still is, for saying exactly what you were saying four years ago, just because you’re willing to do anything for a paycheck, anything for a job in Washington – these people have no souls. I was going to say their souls are rotted but they don’t have any. They’re sociopaths. That is what a sociopath will do: anything without limits, for their own benefit, their own advancement. And that’s what you’re seeing here.
But as I say, at least, in all of this, we finally got an actual genuine emotion from Kamala Harris –hatred for people protesting the war in Israel – and an actual believable statement about what Kamala Harris would do, which is she will always send arms and money to Israel to ensure that they can win whatever rewards they want to start or pursue or have to fight against, quote, “Iran and its Iranian backed groups” in that region, which to her means Hezbollah and Hamas at a minimum. So there you have it.
A scandal is starting to bubble up in Israel over the fact that there have been very credible reports and even videotaped evidence showing the use of anal rape as a weapon used by IDF soldiers on the Palestinian captives and detainees that have disappeared into camps with no trial, no real due process. These people aren’t found guilty of anything. They just pick them up and sweep them off the street. A lot of them end up being released because the Israelis even admit that they were guilty of nothing. Obviously, if they’re releasing them, that’s an admission that they’re not like hardened terrorists or anything. A lot of them there are there before October 7, many of them are not from Gaza, but from the West Bank. So, in my view, even if someone is guilty of a heinous crime, raping them in prison when they’re already helpless and detained is a sick, demented and degenerate thing to do. It’s obviously a war crime. It’s a crime against humanity. And there is ample evidence that shows that this not only is occasionally being done in Israeli prisons, but it’s being done systematically, deliberately and consciously by IDF soldiers who believe they have the right to anally rape detainees.
As this scandal is building up, there are many people on mainstream Israeli television not denying that this happened, but saying, you know what? Yes, it is happening and it should happen because we have the right to do it. These people deserve it. I know it sounds like an exaggeration if you haven’t seen the videos, but that really is what’s happening.
There’s an Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, that is composed of Israeli citizens, both Jewish and Arab alike, and they’ve been a longtime human rights organization, with a lot of credibility around the world. They released a report this week entitled “Welcome to Hell. The Israel Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps.”
The expression “Welcome to Hell” comes from what one of the IDF soldiers told a Palestinian detainee as soon as they arrived there. I just want to give you a couple of passages from this report. This report was very comprehensively researched and the evidence is confirmed. They interviewed all kinds of Palestinian detainees and confirmed it with other sources. And this is what they say:
This report is based on interviews B’Tselem conducted with prisoners, as well as relatives of individuals who are still incarcerated. All the witnesses – women and men, whether older or younger, from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the State of Israel – were released from prison after October 7. They were held in various military and civilian prison facilities in Israel and the West Bank.
So, the fact that they were released after October 7, obviously, is an admission that they weren’t hardened terrorists and likely did nothing wrong or the Israelis would not release them. The report goes on.
The testimonies were collected by B’Tselem field researchers, usually in person, or over the phone in a handful of cases. All the testimonies were given in Arabic and translated into Hebrew and then into English. The testimonies were verified and cross-referenced against other testimonies and reliable reports. Some witnesses wished to remain anonymous and their testimonies are being published without identifying details, which B’Tselem retains. The quotes appearing here are taken from some of the testimonies we collected as we prepared the report. In some cases, they have been shortened for easier reading.
Just before the war started, the overall number of Palestinians incarcerated by Israel and classified as “security prisoners” was 5,192, with about 1,319 held without trial as “administrative detainees.” In early July 2024, there were 9,623 Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli prisons and detention facilities, 4,781 of whom were detained without trial, without being presented with the allegations against them, and without access to the right to defend themselves. In the months since the war started, thousands more Palestinians have been arrested, held for varying periods of time, and released without charges.
Various testimonies revealed repeated use of sexual violence, in varying degrees of severity, by soldiers or prison guards against Palestinian detainees as an additional punitive measure. The witnesses described blows to the genitals and other body parts of naked prisoners; the use of metal tools and batons to cause genital pain; the photographing of naked prisoners; penises being grabbed; and strip searches for the sake of humiliation and degradation.
The testimonies also reveal cases of gang sexual violence and assault committed by a group of prison guards or soldiers. One particularly grave testimony, quoted at length below, reports the attempted anal rape of a Palestinian detainee by several prison guards. Similar incidents were mentioned in other testimonies.
The denial of medical care and improper treatment of patients often led to horrific outcomes, causing long-term injuries. One example can be found in the testimony of a prisoner held in the Sde Teiman military detention facility, whose leg had to be amputated as a result of injuries caused by soldier violence, harsh incarceration conditions, inadequate treatment, and indifference and negligence on the part of the facility’s personnel.
Among the Israeli prison system’s special units, the Initial Reaction Force (IRF), known in Hebrew as Keter, featured prominently in the testimonies given to B’Tselem. Two witnesses referred to it as the “death squad.”
Let me just say there’s no security risk in these prisons at all. If you see any video of it, just the video of the prisoners and how they’re kept, they’re shocking. They’re bound, they’re stripped, they’re lying on the floor. None of this is being done for security reasons. You don’t have to anal rape prisoners for security reasons or beat them in the genitals.
The collection of testimonies in B’Tselem’s possession shows the IRF has been heavily involved in the torture and physical, sexual and mental abuse of prisoners since 7 October. (B’Tselem, August 5, 2024)
Here is a video from the Israeli Channel 12 this week, which is a mainstream Israeli channel, one of the most watched. And here they were reporting on a video that surfaced that appears to show an anal rape by IDF soldiers on a Palestinian prisoner. And you can just see here, as they lie in the ground, the extraordinarily repressive and humiliated and degraded state they’re purposely kept in there, just lying on the floor with lights on, on their stomachs, with their heads down, with their hands, tied behind their backs. Video. Israeli Channel 12. August 6, 2024.
It’s in Hebrew, but you can see they take one of the prisoners lying on the floor. Multiple soldiers force him over. He has his hands behind his back and then under a shield, they quite clearly appear to be rectally raping the prisoner. A lot of reports have surfaced about this incident. Several of the soldiers were actually detained and now you have Knesset members and other, members of the far right in Israel actually going to the prison base to demand their release, the release of the IDF anal rapists. And yet, people on Israeli television are explicitly defending this.
I want to show you this one – and it’s not obviously everybody in Israel defending it, a lot of people in Israel are horrified and in shock, but there are a lot of people who are not actually defending it. And they brought one of these people onto Israeli Channel 12. And here’s what happened.
Interviewee: I told my friends that I don’t give a rat’s ass about what they do to a guy like that, because […]
Interviewer: What? Is that what you really think?
Interviewee: Unequivocally, yes.
Interviewer: Wait, wait, wait. Soldiers who are suspected of the criminal offense of rape of a prisoner, it doesn’t interest you? Does the morality of our soldiers not interest you?
Interviewee: No.
Interviewer: By the way, they’re not soldiers. In fact, they’re not soldiers.
Interviewee: They’re criminals. Again, I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do to that Hamas man. I always remember. First of all, the only thing that is a problem for me here is that it’s not a regulated policy of the state to abuse detainees, but because, first of all, they deserve it, and it’s great revenge that we need to give to them. And secondly, maybe it will also serve us a little more as a deterrent. That is the moment the other side, who we need to remember, Josh, we need to remember it well and never lose our focus or cold down, these people tied 30 of our daughters on trees on October 7, and they did to them acts that are not less severe. I don’t even want to make a comparison, severe in an extreme way. So, first of all, they deserve it. It’s a very appropriate revenge. It’s just a shame that we don’t do it in an institutionalized way, as part of regulations for torture of prisoners, because the next guys who think about doing another October 7 will say, do you see what they’re doing in Israel? Don’t even think about it.
So, he said the only thing he regrets about the use of anal rape on detainees, who he says deserve it, even if they have not been convicted, is that the Israeli state should legalize it and regulate it. As opposed to leaving it to the soldiers to do on their own, it should be an official policy of the state to anally rate prisoners as a form of torture, deterrence and revenge. Anyone who says that is an absolute sick degenerate. And of course, they’re calling for the legalization of classic war crimes now. And as I said, it’s not like he’s some weird guy that they invited or some random guy. He’s a known television pundit, but he’s defending a policy that many IDF soldiers are also defending. Right-wing members of the Knesset went to an Israeli military base to use physical force and violence to break in, to try and free those Israeli soldiers who were charged with doing that.
Here is the State Department spokesman, Matt Miller – speaking of people who have corroded and rotted souls – who was asked about this in a briefing yesterday and here’s what he said with the little smirk he always wears.
Journalist: Going back to Israel. Israeli media today released a video showing Israeli soldiers raping a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman detention camp. The footage was very disturbing. I know you have commented on the reports about this detention center before, but we now have new evidence, which is video. Have you seen that video? And do you have anything to say on that and also the reports of, you know, rape in Israeli prisons?
Matt Miller: Yeah. So, we have seen the video and reports of sexual abuse of detainees are horrific. They ought to be investigated fully by the government of Israel, by the IDF. Prisoners need to be treated – prisoners’ human rights need to be respected in all cases and when there are alleged violations, the government of Israel needs to take steps to investigate those who are alleged to have committed abuses and, if appropriate, hold them accountable. And it is appropriate that the IDF, in this case, has announced an investigation, has arrested a number of people, who are alleged to have been involved and I won’t speak to the outcome of that investigation, but it ought to proceed swiftly. And if they’re determined to be in violation of criminal laws or violations of the IDF’s code of conduct, and of course, they ought to be held accountable.
Journalist: Actually, this is not the first rape incident we have been hearing about Israeli prisons and an Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, on Monday, released a report saying that statement is only the tip of the iceberg and that, you know, Israeli detention centers turned into a network of torture camps for Palestinians. The report cited testimonies from 55 Palestinian detainees. So, I know the Israelis are investigating this, but do we just support an independent investigation into those allegations?
Matt Miller: So, I would have to look at what the specific independent investigation people are calling for, and pass judgment on the merits. But, look, there ought to be zero tolerance for sexual abuse, rape of any detainee. Period. That’s a fundamental, it’s a fundamental belief of the United States, and if there are detainees who have been abused, if there are detainees who have been sexually assaulted or raped, the government of Israel and the IDF need to fully investigate those actions and hold anyone responsible accountable to the full extent of the law.
Journalist: Just a final one on that. You know, what is your reaction to Israelis, including politicians and lawmakers, protesting, actually, the arrest of Israeli soldiers who are suspected of abuse and rape. And, you know, we have also seen comments from Israeli lawmakers trying to justify the, you know, rape of Palestinians. Have you seen those remarks?
Matt Miller: So, obviously, with respect to the last question, there is no justification for rape of anyone. As I said, there must be […]
First of all, just compare, if you will, the endless global reaction to claims of rape and the use of rape by Hamas on October 7. It just went on and on and on. Sheryl Sandberg, the billionaire from Facebook, produced a massive video about it. All the celebrities came forward. The media repeatedly covered it forever. Even though the evidence of it has always been in doubt in terms of the scope of it or how much it happened. The New York Times published an article they had to clarify or correct in several important instances when purporting to corroborate those claims. But leaving that aside, look at the reaction to it and all you can really get from the US government is “We don’t support this,” “We think it should be investigated.”
Do you think the Israeli government, having spent the last ten months openly mocking the Biden administration, openly defying everything that they’ve said, making very clear that the U.S. government will continue to fund them and arm them, they will not listen to a single thing the United States cares about or wants, that the Israeli people do whatever they want. Do you think they care in the slightest about someone like this is getting up and saying, “We expect the Israelis to investigate and we hope that people will be held accountable?”
It’s stunning the amount of evidence that has emerged just in the last two weeks about how systemic this sexual assault is, the deliberate systemic use of it by Israeli soldiers on Palestinian prisoners.
