By: Randy Alonso Falcón on March 14, 2024
Israeli soldiers stand next to a truck full of bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainees, in Gaza. Photo: Moti Milrod, Haaretz,
Like the colonial hordes of yesteryear or the imperial legions of these times, humiliation is a weapon of choice for the invading Israeli army. It is consubstantial with the racist and supremacist breath of Zionism professed by the Israeli government and armed forces.
An investigation just published by the BBC reveals how Palestinian medical staff at Nasser Hospital in Gaza were insulted, stripped naked in front of their patients, beaten, forced to kneel for hours and doused with cold water by Israeli troops during the occupation of the health facility last February.
At least 49 of the health workers were detained for days, One of them, Dr. Ahmed Abu Shabha, told the BBC that he was imprisoned for a week, during which time an Israeli soldier broke his hands with blows and gagged dogs were thrown over his body. “I thought I was going to be executed,” he said.
And although Shabha returned to his own, there are several whose fate is unknown. The International Committee of the Red Cross has reported receiving dozens of calls from relatives of people who were then at Nasser hospital and are currently missing.
“Who will reward me for all the beatings and humiliation I have been through, which you did to me when you knew I was not involved in anything?” the BBC recounts one of the doctors asking the Israeli officer who told him of his release without charge after days of illegal detention.
The British media corporation’s report sheds new light on the humiliating practices of the aggressor army. But it was not even necessary to wait for the journalistic investigation; in Tik Tok, the fashionable social network, there has been for months a sample of the aberrant actions of the Israeli soldiers.
Sadism on the networks
Throughout the four months of bombardment and brutal aggression by the Zionist army against the Palestinian people in Gaza, Israeli soldiers have used social media to mock the destruction in Gaza, the indiscriminate bombardment and the very existence of the Palestinian people.
In one video, an officer dedicates a controlled explosion of Palestinian homes to his daughter who is having a birthday.
In another, an Israeli soldier gives a thumbs-up to the camera as he drives a bulldozer down a street in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, pushing a battered car toward a destroyed building.
“I have stopped counting how many neighborhoods I have wiped out,” reads the caption of the video posted on his personal TikTok, accompanied by a militaristic anthem.
In a demolished house, some military men recorded a tiktok to the Israeli song This Was My Home, where they mock what was, at one time, the home of a Palestinian family. They use a destroyed armchair, the television unusable.
Another of the soldiers, who is also a DJ, used his mixing desk to play the remix of the song Shtayim, Shalosh, Sha-ger, (Two, three, release) while showing images of bombardments of different points in Gaza. In the widely shared video, soldiers dance in front of the camera and, when the word “launch” is heard, the video switches to a shot of a building being detonated.
Other footage shows Palestinian prisoners who were hand-tied and blindfolded having to hold Israeli flags and being taunted by their soldiers. Videos have also been released showing torture and executions.
Looting as a hobby
Stealing jewelry and bicycles or displaying bras: the selfies of shame of Israeli soldiers in Gaza.
Like the colonial hordes of yesteryear, like the imperial legions of these times, the Zionist army not only humiliates but also plunders.
The selfies and snapshots that Israeli soldiers have posted on social media reveal another dimension of a military operation that has left more than 31,000 dead, most of them women and children.
After blowing up Al Asraa University last January, the Israeli soldiers who carried out this act worthy of obscurantism ransacked a museum inside the university complex that treasured some 3,000 objects, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported at the time.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, for its part, reported the testimony of a reserve doctor, who said that his forces stole cell phones, vacuum cleaners, motorcycles and electric bicycles and then boasted about the loot on social networks.
A report by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med), based in Geneva, Switzerland, has cited testimonies of Palestinian citizens aggrieved by the vandalism actions of the Zionist entity’s occupation forces.
Thabet Salim, 40, said that after his arrest, along with his two children, the soldiers stole all the gold and money he had in his home in the Zaytoun neighborhood in southern Gaza City.
“The amount of money the soldiers took from my house is worth more than $10,000 (…) and almost the same amount of gold from my wife and my eldest son’s wife,” he said.
Muhammad Gharbiyya, who lives in the Shujaiya neighborhood of the same city, told Euro-Med that Israeli forces forcibly took his jewelry after violently breaking into his family’s home earlier this month.
Hussein Al-Tanani, a resident of the Gaza neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan, said his home was raided by Israeli forces, who took a computer and money.
Alia Al-Najjar, 34, told reporters that she recognized some of her own gold jewelry in one of the videos released by the soldiers. Among the items Al-Najjar saw was a bracelet she bought with her first teacher’s salary.
Another Israeli uniformed man is shown in a video while displaying a silver necklace he promised to give to his girlfriend.
In addressing this phenomenon, the Israeli media justifies that they do not do it to satisfy physical needs or out of greed, but as “an expression of the drive for revenge and symbolizes the meaning of absolute victory.”
A “victory” they symbolize with the destruction or burning of Palestinian property for no reason.
“The fact that they film themselves bragging about their war crimes while laughing and thinking that it is totally normal is the paroxysm of the dehumanization of the Palestinians,” Inès Abdel Razek, director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD), denounced to The Independent. “This is just the tip of the iceberg of genocide. Imagine all that is not on film,” she remarked.
In the midst of this dance of plunder and sadism, Benjamin Netanyahu says that the Israeli army “is the most ethical in the world”, while it mercilessly bombs Palestinian localities in the middle of Ramadan, and the United States repeatedly vetoes the Resolutions calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Like vultures, like pigeons.
(Sources: Al Mayadeen, Palestine Today, el Pais, BBC, El Independiente, Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med))
Source: Cuba en Resumen, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English