Netanyahu justifies Israel's torture method!





Netanyahu justifies Israel's torture method!

-Dr. Abdul Ruff

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Israel is no democracy except that it also conducts elections to  retain legitimacy for  occupying  Palestinian territories at will, for underrating terror attacks on Palestinian populations, killing even children. 

In fact Israel is well fit to be called a terrocracy for it does in Mideast. However, neither Israel nor its major capitalist ally USA approves that kind of definition which puts both in dirty colors.  One cannot call them rouge states for what they do to Palestinians, including their little children.  In fact, the CIA-Pentagon duo names countries like Iran that do not fall in line with US dictates, not promote US imperialism as their  key foreign policy.

In order to showcase its prowess to Arabs, Israeli regime considers its prerogative to attack and kill the Palestinians and confiscate their lands for illegal colony activities for foreign j Jews, backed by Israel’s enlightened ally USA.

With US backing, Israel ignores and even hates international law and adores its own racist judiciary that shields all crimes being committed by the Zionist regime. Tel Aviv just ignores the outcries by the Human rights agencies, including in Israel over Zionist crimes, torture and force feeding.

Not only in Palestine but even indoors Israeli government dealt blows to human concerns. Zionism   imposes silence on the protesters by brute methods. However, its treatment of Palestinians is too cruel. This explains why the Arab spring was not allowed to enter Israel.

Israel illegally pursues force-feeding technique to diffuse the crisis in prisons where Palestinians are ill treated, forcing them to undertake fasting undo death.  

With a silent UN, discredited UNSC, Israel butchers people of Palestine, besieged by Israel-Egypt blockades, meant to terrorize the Palestinians, especially youth, seeking work outside since Palestine does not have jobs and those in jobs not get salary because Israel retains all taxes it collects in Palestine and use the money to bully PLO. Israel’s force-feeding technique has become a standard method to silence the Palestinians.

Neither USA not UN has any objections!

Israel employs brute methods to punish the Palestinians, arrested including on fake charges.  Netanyahu's justification for pushing forward a bill to legalize force-feeding reveals a contradiction in his logic. Miri Regev, Israel's Minister of Culture and Sports, supports torture. She is not alone. Joining her is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and nearly all ministers and members of Israeli Knesset in his coalition have followed suit.

Although almost half of the Knesset members opposed to the bill, Netanyahu's Israeli government supports torture, and thus, is by no accounts different than the governments of Egypt, Syria and many of its neighbours in the Middle East. It is shameful that  so-called democracies like Israel pursue such shameful  polices.

Israel, apparently, is not a wooden hut in the jungle, as so many of its pundits would have us think. Of course, the Knesset's legislation on this matter is not unique, even in the midst of Western liberal democracies.

Among the countries that deploy force-feeding against hunger strikers is also Israel's "enlightened ally", the United States.

By torture, world is referring specifically to the recently passed law legalizing force-feeding, which according to the World Medical Association, the Red Cross, and the United Nations, is considered a cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment, and a flagrant violation of international law.

While the US even under a “democrat” President Obama has been force-feeding inmates in Guantanamo for many years now, this practice actually has deep roots in the American imagination. At the beginning of the 20th century, the suffragette Alice Paul, who was incarcerated for demanding women's right to vote, embarked on a hunger strike in prison, and was subsequently force-fed by government officials.

The Hollywood feature film Iron Jawed Angels captures the horror parallel to some prisoners' accounts. It documents the struggles of the women's movement and force-feeding as is a horrific form of torture.

Israel's new law is not, at least for the time being, directed against its own citizens, but rather against over 5,750 Palestinian political prisoners from the occupied Palestinian territories. About 400 of these prisoners have been held in administrative detention without trial - some for up to eight, ten and eleven years.

The presumption of innocence, which is supposed to underlie all progressive and democratic judicial systems, should have been applied to them. It was not. And there goes the "wooden hut" metaphor.

Over the past years, many Palestinian political prisoners have embarked on hunger strikes as a form of non-violent protest against the authorities, and currently it is estimated that over 180 prisoners are on strike.

However, examination of Netanyahu's justification for pushing forward a bill to legalize force-feeding reveals a contradiction in his twisted logic.

The administrative detainees are being held in prison contrary to international law and contrary to the principle of due process. These men have not been granted the fundamental right to a fair trial, because prisoners like Muhammad Allaan, who has been on hunger strike for 60 days, are not considered by the Israeli authorities to be fully human, namely, individuals who bear rights.

At the same time, though, Netanyahu's justification for advancing a force-feeding law stems from the moral imperative requiring us to save human lives.

The contradiction is that on the one hand, the Palestinian political prisoners are treated as sub-human. But on the other hand, justification of the law has to be portrayed as fully human. However, there is one aspect of this legislative move that is consistent: the desire to harm outspoken Palestinian subjects and to violate their basic right to bodily integrity. But the contradiction between the sub-human and human is not the sole logical distortion espoused by the Israeli legislators who supported the bill.

It is crucial to highlight that in their struggle against Israel's violation of their basic right to due process, the prisoners launched a hunger strike, which is a recognised form of non-violent protest.

Ironically, the way the Israeli government has chosen to deal with this non-violent protest against its own anti-democratic practice of administrative detention is by instituting yet another serious violation of international law: torture - one of the most severe forms of dehumanization.

Not all, however, is dark. As the great philosopher Hannah Arendt teaches, even in the most difficult times, one encounters human action that sheds light on the darkness.  Dr. Leonid Eidelman, chairman of the Israeli Medical Association, called upon all Israeli doctors to refuse to perform force-feeding even if the law requires them to do so.

Force-feeding of hunger strikers, Eidelman argued, breaches the principles of preventing damage and maintaining the patient's autonomy over his or her body, thus violating the physicians' code of ethics. The code of ethics, he intimated, is above the law. Eidelman is right. The question now is whether all Israeli doctors will heed his call for civil disobedience and refuse to obey the law. The chances, unfortunately, are extremely slim.

Israel does not listen to international law, global outcries against the Zionist crimes and not even the nation’s conscience. Israel is too arrogant!

Essentially a fascist who killed as  many Palestinians as possible during his three terms as PM, Netanyahu cannot but justify Israel's torture method – after all the Israeli torture method has been perfected by hawkish leaders like him.

Israeli regime still counts on USA and all other anti-Islamic forces for unconditional support to its crimes against humanity, including fake Muslims in Mideast and elsewhere who have no sympathy for the Palestinians.

Since the USA controls and regulates the entire world, its multiple militaries in all countries, intelligence wings, police troops, media, remote systems, other technological machines, etc, weak nations like Palestine cannot hope to get justice for the Zionist crimes.

Unfortunately, global media are harming the genuine interests of Palestinians because they are Muslims – the prime target of western Islamophobia.

Hopefully, Palestine authority would go ahead with legal action against Israeli arrogance and its perpetual crimes against humanity in Mideast. There is no need to trust the criminals in Tel Aviv or their paid US agents operating as Zionist lobbyists.


 














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