On the morning of Monday, July 29, a contingent of Israel's military police—the agency responsible for policing the security forces—arrived at Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base in the Negev Desert that now serves as a detention center for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. The military police had come to arrest nine military reservists who serve at the site, which whistleblowers have raised concerns about for months.
The soldiers were wanted for their involvement in the sexual abuse of a prisoner who was hospitalized weeks earlier with severe rectal injuries. Almost immediately, Israeli politicians took to the airwaves to denounce the arrests, proclaiming the accused soldiers to be heroes on account of their torture of Palestinian prisoners, and leading a mob of their supporters to break into Sde Teiman to protest the arrests. It was not just any mob, but one that included government ministers, members of parliament and soldiers in uniform.
Later that day, similar scenes were repeated at the Beit Lid military base, where the soldiers had been transported for questioning. Although breaking into or out of a prison is considered a serious violation of Israeli law, thus far not a single individual has been arrested, or even questioned.
The Sde Teiman prison camp has elements of both Abu Ghraib, the U.S. torture center in Iraq, and a Gestapo interrogation center. Among the documented abuses, based on testimonies of both former prisoners and prison staff, are torture; severe malnutrition and dehydration; amputations after the prolonged use of zip-ties that have been deliberately tightened to block circulation to hands and feet; and surgeries performed without anesthetic and by unqualified medical students. Several dozen Palestinians have been killed at the camp, through torture or denial of basic needs such as medication for chronic illness.
It bears recollection that the war crime of torture is considered legal, in "very exceptional cases," in Israel and has been confirmed as such by its supreme court—most notably in 1987. Moreover, Israel considers Palestinians to be unlawful combatants who are not entitled to the protections offered by customary law on such matters. And additionally, Israel's most senior leaders have engaged in a systematic campaign of demonization and dehumanization of Palestinians, and of those suspected of membership in Hamas in particular, which amounts to a license to torture, rape and kill.
The arrested soldiers were essentially told to do as they please with Palestinians and assured that, per standard practice, there would be no consequences of any sort. At one level one can therefore understand the astonished response of the accused rapists when told they would be arrested for conduct that has been officially sanctioned on a systematic basis.
The case also reflects deeper changes within Israel. Its military has, to put it mildly, admittedly never had a reputation for discipline, but it functioned as the central institution of the Israeli state and society...