I Went to Gaza. What I Saw Was a Holocaust
https://novaramedia.com/2024/10/18/i-went-to-gaza-what-i-saw-was-a-holocaust/
Unutterable destruction.
by susan abulhawa
Editor’s note: This article was commissioned by the Guardian US as part of its Rise against fascism series, which was published in September. It was spiked by editor-in-chief Katherine Viner following a disagreement about the author’s use of the term “holocaust” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza – the Guardian suggested she amend it to “genocide” and she refused. The context of the incident is documented in this report.
Novara Media has decided to publish the piece in full, including the term “holocaust”, following consultation with several scholars of genocide and Jewish history.
The author spells her name in lower case.
Content note: This piece contains explicit references to torture and sexual assault.
United Nations Resolution 3379 defined Zionism as “a form of racism” because at its core it is a supremacist ideology that seeks to privilege Jews at the expense, even detriment and demise, of non-Jews (the resolution passed in 1975 and was revoked in 1991 following pressure from Israel and the United States). Regardless of how one defines Zionism, it manifests, among other myriad ways, in the subjugation or displacement of indigenous Palestinians.
For the past 12 months, Israel has been implementing a long-held colonial fantasy of not only “finishing the job,” but doing so with a gleeful sadism that echos the social media posts of Tzipi Navon, Sara Netanyahu’s close advisor and office manager, who called for residents from Gaza who participated in the [7 October] massacre to be tortured live on broadcast television: “First removing the nails from the hands and feet … cut off [their] genitals and let [them] see [their testicles] fried in canola oil and [force them] to eat them … Keep the tongue to the end, so that it pleases us with its screams, the ears so that [they] can hear [their] own screams and the eyes so that [they] can see us smile.”
Polling data from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies suggests that a majority of Jewish Israelis do not think that soldiers accused of torturing Palestinians should face criminal charges.
In a rare moment of candour, the New York Times reported UN findings of systematic torture, including sexual torture. According to the UN’s report, Israeli soldiers have allegedly kept Palestinian captives in severely overcrowded prison cells, subjected them to sleep deprivation and forced nudity, threatened them with gang-rape, and penetrated or electrocuted male and female prisoners’ genitals and anuses with electrified batons and other objects. Released Palestinian hostages and Palestinian civilians in Gaza have reported being mauled and sexually assaulted by trained dogs. A lawyer who has been granted rare access to a Palestinian captive inside an Israeli detention centre reported the activation of a fire extinguisher inside the body of a 27-year-old man through a hose inserted into his rectum.
Many of those who were kidnapped, including prominent surgeons such as Dr Adnan Al-Bursh, director of the orthopaedic department at Al-Shifa Hospital, may have died after torture. Some emerged from Israeli gulags with such trauma that they have reportedly suffered memory loss; some were unable to speak; all of them broken by unspeakable torment in Israeli captivity. And they were the lucky ones who got out.
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Article continues at https://novaramedia.com/2024/10/18/i-went-to-gaza-what-i-saw-was-a-holocaust/
Discontent Deepens Among Guardian Staff Over Palestine ‘Double Standard’
