Aug 19, 2024

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):

A new poll published at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies has reportedly found that 65 percent of Israeli Jews oppose criminal charges for IDF troops accused of gang raping a Palestinian prisoner to the point of severe injury, preferring only internal measures within the Israeli military be taken instead. Only 21 percent believed the accused rapists should be criminally prosecuted, with the remaining 14 percent unsure.

Middle East Eye reports:

“A new poll has suggested a majority of Israelis believe the prison officials accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee should not face criminal charges and just be disciplined by the army.

“Late last month, nine Israeli soldiers were arrested for the alleged rape of a Palestinian detained in Sde Teiman, a facility in southern Israel’s Negev desert.

“Since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October, many Palestinians detained by Israeli forces have said they were sexually abused by troops at Sde Teiman.

“However, no one had been arrested for the abuse until 29 July, when military police raided the facility, clashed with the soldiers and took them into custody.

“The incident created a backlash in Israel, with a far-right mob, that included an MP and minister, storming the detention centre and a military court in protest against the arrests.

“Five of those detained were released to house arrest on Tuesday, pending a potential decision by the army to file indictments.

“On Sunday, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) revealed that 65 percent of Israeli Jews thought that the five should be punished only by the army and not face criminal charges.”

Israel has seen demonstrations that have become known as “right to rape” rallies ever since the arrests, with protesters demanding the accused rapists be allowed to walk free without any consequences for their actions.

Earlier this month an Israeli reporter named Yehuda Schlesinger sparked outrage with an appearance on Israel’s Channel 12, during which he not only supported the accused rapists but called for the IDF to formally implement raping Palestinian prisoners as a matter of state policy.

One of the accused was invited on to Israel’s Channel 14 to defend himself and tell his side of the story, while wearing a mask to hide his identity.

To be clear, this is for a widely witnessed gang rape for which there is hard video evidence.

Israel is a deeply sick society, with a deeply sick attitude toward rape. A 2011 poll published by Haaretz found that 61 percent of Israeli men don’t view forced sex with an acquaintance as rape, and that only seven percent believe marital rape is a thing.

Rape is abundant in the Israeli military and is almost never punished — an important thing to keep in mind when Israelis tell pollsters that IDF troops should only face internal disciplinary measures as opposed to criminal charges. In 2022 The Jerusalem Post reported that 1,542 incidents of sexual assault complaints were received by the IDF in the year 2020, and that of these, only 31 indictments were filed.

During the initial right-to-rape protests in Israel, The New York Times outdid itself with the unbelievably obfuscatory headline “Unrest at Army Bases Highlights a Long Battle for Israel’s Soul”, with neither the headline nor the sub-headline making any mention of rape at all. California State University professor Asad Abukhalil quipped on Twitter, “The headline is actually accurate if you understand that Israel’s soul is rape.”

And he has a point. Rape is deeply interwoven throughout the fabric of Israeli society. In a sense, Israel is rape.

The phrase “every accusation is a confession” has been thrown around a lot since October, and for good reason. People who are deeply messed up and dysfunctional inside don’t typically have the internal resources and creativity to come up with accusations out of thin air, so they tend to just accuse people they don’t like of whatever they have going on inside themselves. If you ever have to deal with a malignant narcissist or sociopath in your personal life, you can often understand their behavior a lot better by mentally reversing the accusations they level at people and interpreting them as confessions about themselves.

Israel and its defenders shrieked and hollered so fervently about unsubstantiated rape rumors on October 7 because they themselves have a perverse relationship with sex and bodily sovereignty. Which should not be surprising given that Israel itself is a state that is built on the notion that you can simply take what you want from people because it is owed to you. The entire society is based on this premise.

This has nothing to do with Jewishness or Judaism. It’s just the attitude any population will develop if they are indoctrinated from birth into believing it’s their right to take things that belong to other people, which is precisely what was done to the Palestinians when a modern apartheid ethnostate was dropped on top of them out of nowhere by western colonizers and their western backers.

Just like the ongoing mass atrocity we are witnessing in Gaza, this fondness for rape is just one of the many, many symptoms of the injustice and abusiveness that the state of Israel is founded on and built from.

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