[News] Israel is in a death spiral. Who will it take down with it?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-death-spiral-who-take-down>
Israel is in a death spiral. Who will it take down with it?
Jonathan Cook <https://www.middleeasteye.net/users/jonathan-cook>
Published date: 7 August 2024

*Israel's zealots are ignoring the pleas of the top brass. They want to
widen the circle of war, whatever the consequences*
------------------------------

There should be nothing surprising about the revelation that troops at Sde
Teiman, a detention camp set up by Israel
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel> in the wake of Hamas’s 7
October attack on southern Israel, are routinely using rape
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/palestinian-detainee-raped-sde-teiman-returns-detention>
as a weapon of torture against Palestinian
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/palestine> inmates.

Last week, nine soldiers from a prison unit, Force 100, were arrested for
gang-raping a Palestinian inmate with a sharp object. He had to be
hospitalised <https://www.addameer.org/news/5382> with his injuries.

At least 53 prisoners are known to have died
<https://press.un.org/en/2024/db240731.doc.htm> in Israeli detention,
presumed in most cases to be either through torture or following the denial
of access to medical care. No investigations have been carried out by
Israel and no arrests have been made.

Why should it be of any surprise that Israel’s self-proclaimed “most moral
army in the world” uses torture and rape against Palestinians? It would be
truly surprising if this was not happening.

After all, this is the same military that for 10 months has used starvation
as a weapon of war
<https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state>
against the 2.3 million people of Gaza
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/topics/israel-war-gaza>, half of them
children.

It is the same military that since October has laid waste
<https://www.npr.org/2024/06/01/g-s1-1780/gaza-israel-infrastructure-water-schools-hospitals>
to all of Gaza’s hospitals, as well as destroying almost all of its schools
and 70 percent of its homes. It is the same military that is known to have
killed over that period at least 40,000 Palestinians, with a further 21,000
children missing
<https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/over-20000-children-estimated-to-be-lost-in-gaza>
.

It is the same military currently on trial
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/icj-rule-israel-allies-put-on-trial-genocide>
for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court
in the world.

If there are no red lines for Israel when it comes to brutalising
Palestinian civilians trapped inside Gaza, why would there be any red lines
for those kidnapped off its streets and dragged into its dungeons?
Sexual violence

I documented some of the horrors unfolding in Sde Teiman in these pages
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/israel-torture-chambers-message-directed-us-palestinians>
back in May.

Months ago, the Israeli media began publishing testimonies
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-04/ty-article/.premium/doctor-at-idf-field-hospital-for-detained-gazans-we-are-all-complicit-in-breaking-law/0000018e-a59c-dfed-ad9f-afdfb5ce0000>
from whistleblowing guards and doctors detailing the depraved conditions
there.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has been denied access
<https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/07/un-report-palestinian-detainees-held-arbitrarily-and-secretly-subjected>
to the detention camp, leaving it entirely unmonitored.

The United Nations published a report
<https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/opt/20240731-Thematic-report-Detention-context-Gaza-hostilities.pdf>
on 31 July into the conditions in which some 9,400 captive Palestinians
have been held since last October. Most have been cut off from the outside
world, and the reason for their seizure and imprisonment was never provided.

The report concludes that “appalling acts” of torture and abuse are taking
place at all of Israel’s detention centres, including sexual violence,
waterboarding and attacks with dogs.

The authors note “forced nudity of both men and women; beatings while
naked, including on the genitals; electrocution of the genitals and anus;
being forced to undergo repeated humiliating strip searches; widespread
sexual slurs and threats of rape; and the inappropriate touching of women
by both male and female soldiers”.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/israel-torture-chambers-message-directed-us-palestinians>

The message of Israel’s torture chambers is directed at all of us, not just
Palestinians

There are, according to the investigation
<https://twitter.com/UNHumanRights/status/1818566984792977546>, “consistent
reports” of Israeli security forces “inserting objects into detainees’
anuses”.

Last month, Save the Children found that many hundreds of Palestinian
children
<https://www.savethechildren.net/news/physical-abuse-infectious-disease-spreading-conditions-palestinian-children-israeli-military>
had been imprisoned in Israel, where they faced starvation and sexual abuse.

And this week B’Tselem, Israel’s main human rights group monitoring the
occupation, produced a report - titled “Welcome to Hell
<https://www.btselem.org/publications/202408_welcome_to_hell>” - which
included the testimonies of dozens of Palestinians who had emerged from
what it called “inhuman conditions”. Most had never been charged with an
offence.

It concluded that the abuses at Sde Teiman were “just the tip of the
iceberg”. All of Israel’s detention centres formed “a network of torture
camps for Palestinians” in which “every inmate is intentionally condemned
to severe, relentless pain and suffering”. It added that this was “an
organized, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities”.

Tal Steiner, head of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, which
has long campaigned against the systematic torture of Palestinian
detainees, wrote last week
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-07-30/ty-article-opinion/.premium/we-warned-about-harsh-treatment-at-sde-teiman-the-torture-there-has-backing-from-high-up/00000191-030c-dfce-a991-bf7d5cfa0000>
that Sde Teiman “was a place where the most horrible torture we had ever
seen was occurring”.
Can of worms

In short, it has been an open secret in Israel that torture and sexual
assault are routine at Sde Teiman.

The abuse is so horrifying that last month Israel’s high court ordered
officials to explain
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-15/ty-article/.premium/israels-top-court-to-state-explain-why-sde-teiman-doesnt-operate-according-to-the-law/00000190-b7b6-db47-abb0-bff71d060000>why
they were operating outside Israel’s own laws governing the internment of
“unlawful combatants”.

The surprise is not that sexual violence is being inflicted on Palestinian
captives. It is that Israel’s top brass ever imagined the arrest of Israeli
soldiers for raping a Palestinian would pass muster with the public.

Instead, by making the arrests, the army opened a toxic can of worms.

The arrests provoked a massive backlash from soldiers, politicians, Israeli
media, and large sections of the Israeli public.

Rioters, led by members of the Israeli parliament, broke into Sde Teiman.
An even larger group, including members of Force 100, tried to invade
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/sde-teiman-israeli-soldiers-under-arrest-raping-palestinian-prisoner>
a military base, Beit Lid, where the soldiers were being held in an attempt
to free them.

The police, under the control of Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler leader with
openly fascist leanings, delayed arriving to break up the protests. Ben
Gvir has called <https://thecradle.co/articles-id/25699> for Palestinian
prisoners to be summarily executed - or killed with “a shot to the head” -
to save on the costs of holding them.

The consensus in Israel is that any abuse, including rape, is permitted
against the thousands of Palestinians who have been seized by Israel in
recent months

No one was arrested over what amounted to a mutiny as well as a major
breach of security.

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, helped whip up popular
indignation, denouncing the arrests and describing the Force 100 soldiers
as “heroic warriors”.

Other prominent cabinet ministers echoed him.

Already, three of the soldiers have been freed
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/3-suspects-in-sde-teiman-abuse-case-released-after-new-evidence-presented/>,
and more will likely follow.

The consensus in Israel is that any abuse, including rape, is permitted
against the thousands of Palestinians who have been seized by Israel in
recent months - including women, children and many hundreds of medical
personnel <https://archive.ph/ZKjh0>.

That consensus is the same one that thinks it fine to bomb Palestinian
women and children in Gaza, destroy their homes and starve them.
Rape permitted

Such depraved attitudes are not new. They draw on ideological convictions
and legal precedents that developed through decades of Israel’s illegal
occupation. Israeli society has completely normalised the idea that
Palestinians are less than human and that any and every abuse of them is
allowed.

Hamas’s attack on 7 October simply brought the long-standing moral
corruption at the core of Israeli society more obviously out into the open.

In 2016, for example, the Israeli military appointed Colonel Eyal Karim as
its chief rabbi, even after he had declared Palestinians to be “animals”
<https://www.timesofisrael.com/controversial-pick-for-idf-chief-rabbi-once-said-women-incapable-of-court-testamony/>
and had approved the rape
<https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4827240,00.html> of Palestinian
women in the interest of boosting soldiers’ morale.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-israel-torture-executions-babies-die-sexual-abuse-crimes>

War on Gaza: Torture, executions, babies left to die, sexual abuse… These
are Israel’s crimes

Religious extremists, let us note, increasingly predominate
<https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/israel-military-religion/>
among combat troops.

In 2015, Israel’s supreme court dismissed a compensation suit from a
Lebanese <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/lebanon> prisoner that
his lawyers submitted after he was released in a prisoner swap. Mustafa
Dirani had been raped
<https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4615479,00.html> with a baton
15 years earlier in a secret jail known as Facility 1391.

Despite Dirani’s claim being supported by a medical assessment from the
time made by an Israeli military doctor
<https://www.jpost.com/israel/report-idf-doctor-says-dirani-was-raped>, the
court ruled that anyone engaged in an armed conflict with Israel could not
make a claim
<https://www.inss.org.il/publication/legal-rules-and-anti-terrorism-warfare-the-case-of-mustafa-dirani-revisited/>
against the Israeli state.

Meanwhile, human and legal rights groups have regularly reported cases
<https://x.com/HediViterbo/status/1818201582246236311> of Israeli soldiers
and police raping and sexually assaulting Palestinians, including children.

A clear message was sent to Israeli soldiers over many decades that, just
as the genocidal murder of Palestinians is considered warranted and
“lawful”, the torture and rape of Palestinians held in captivity is
considered warranted and “lawful” too.

Understandably, there was indignation that the long-established “rules” -
that any and every atrocity is permitted - appeared suddenly and
arbitrarily to have been changed.
On a precipice

The biggest question is this: why did the Israeli military’s top legal
adviser approve opening an investigation into the Force 100 soldiers - and
why now?

The answer is obvious. Israel’s commanders are in panic after a spate of
setbacks in the international legal arena.

The ICJ, sometimes referred to as the World Court, has put Israel on trial
for committing what it considers a “plausible” genocide in Gaza.

[image: Palestinian men have been rounded up and stripped by Israeli forces
in Gaza before being taken to an undisclosed location (Screengrab/X)]
Palestinian men have been rounded up and stripped by Israeli forces in Gaza
before being taken to an undisclosed location (Screengrab/X)[image:
image.gif]

Separately, it concluded last month that Israel’s 57-year occupation is
illegal and a form of aggression against the Palestinian people. Gaza never
stopped being under occupation, the judges ruled
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/icj-clears-fog-hiding-western-support-israel-rogue-state>,
despite claims from its apologists, including western governments, to the
contrary.

Significantly, that means Palestinians have a legal right to resist their
occupation. Or, to put it another way, they have an immutable right to
self-defence against their Israeli occupiers, while Israel has no such
right against the Palestinians it illegally occupies.

Israel is not in “armed conflict” with the Palestinian people. It is
brutally occupying and oppressing them.

Israel must immediately end the occupation to regain such a right of
self-defence - something it demonstrably has no intention to do.

International law, the entire rationale for the ICJ and ICC's existence,
stands on a precipice. Israel's genocide threatens to bring it all crashing
down

Meanwhile, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC),
the ICJ’s sister court, is actively seeking arrest warrants
<https://edition.cnn.com/videos/tv/2024/05/20/amanpour-icc-karim-khan-arrest-warrants-hamas-netanyahu.cnn>
for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister,
Yoav Gallant, for war crimes.

The various cases reinforce each other. The World Court’s decisions are
making it ever harder for the ICC to drag its feet in issuing and expanding
the circle of arrest warrants.

Both courts are now under enormous, countervailing pressures.

On the one side, massive external pressure is being exerted on the ICJ and
ICC from states such as the US <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/us>,
Britain <https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/uk> and Germany that are
prepared to see the genocide in Gaza continue.

And on the other, the judges themselves are fully aware of what is at stake
if they fail to act.

The longer they delay, the more they discredit international law and their
own role as arbiters of that law. That will give even more leeway for other
states to claim that inaction by the courts has set a precedent for their
own right to commit war crimes.

International law, the entire rationale for the ICJ and ICC’s existence,
stands on a precipice. Israel’s genocide threatens to bring it all crashing
down.
Stalling the ICC

Israel’s top brass stand in the middle of that fight.

They are confident that Washington will block at the UN Security Council
any effort to enforce the ICJ rulings against them - either a future one on
genocide in Gaza or the existing one on their illegal occupation.

But arrest warrants from the ICC are a different matter. Washington has no
such veto. All states signed up to the ICC’s Rome Statute - that is, most
of the West, minus the US - will be obligated to arrest Israeli officials
who step on their soil and to hand them over to The Hague.

Israel and the US had been hoping to use technicalities to delay the
issuing of the arrest warrants for as long as possible. Most
significantly, they
recruited the UK
<https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/jul/10/america-is-pressuring-uk-to-block-iccs-netanyahu-arrest-warrant>,
which has signed the Rome Statute, to do their dirty work.

It looked like the new UK government under Keir Starmer would continue
where its predecessor left off by tying up the court in lengthy and obscure
legal debates about the continuing applicability of the long-dead,
30-year-old Oslo Accords.

A former human rights lawyer, Starmer has repeatedly backed Israel’s
“plausible” genocide, even arguing that the starvation of Gaza’s
population, including its children, could be justified as “self-defence
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HQYfsUAf3s>” - an idea entirely alien to
international law, which treats it as collective punishment and a war crime.

The UK government announced late last month that it would drop Britain's
legal objections at the ICC. That has suddenly left both Netanyahu and the
Israeli military command extremely exposed

But now with a secure parliamentary majority, even Starmer appears to be
baulking at being seen as helping Netanyahu personally avoid arrest for war
crimes.

The UK government announced late last month that it would drop Britain’s
legal objections
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/26/uk-wont-challenge-icc-arrest-warrant-request-for-netanyahu-gallant>
at the ICC.

That has suddenly left both Netanyahu and the Israeli military command
extremely exposed - which is the reason they felt compelled to approve the
arrest of the Force 100 soldiers.

Under a rule known as “complementarity
<https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/NR/rdonlyres/20BB4494-70F9-4698-8E30-907F631453ED/281984/complementarity.pdf>”,
Israeli officials might be able to avoid war crimes trials at The Hague if
they can demonstrate that Israel is able and willing to prosecute war
crimes itself. That would avert the need for the ICC to step in and fulfil
its mandate.

The Israeli top brass hoped they could feed a few lowly soldiers to the
Israeli courts and drag out the trials for years. In the meantime,
Washington would have the pretext it needed to bully the ICC into dropping
the case for arrests on the grounds that Israel was already doing the job
of prosecuting war crimes.
International isolation

The patent problem with this strategy is that the ICC isn’t primarily
interested in a few grunts being prosecuted in Israel as war criminals,
even assuming the trials ever take place.

At issue is the military strategy that has allowed Israel to bomb Gaza into
the Stone Age. At issue is a political culture that has made starving 2.3
million people seem normal.

At issue is a religious and nationalistic fervour long cultivated in the
army that now encourages soldiers to execute Palestinian children
<https://www.newstatesman.com/world/middle-east/2024/08/what-a-surgeon-saw-in-gaza>
by shooting them in the head and chest, as a US doctor who volunteered in
Gaza has testified.

At issue is a military hierarchy that turns a blind eye to soldiers raping
and sexually abusing Palestinian captives, including children.

[image: Israeli protesters outside the Sde Teiman detention facility demand
the release of Israeli soldiers arrested on suspicion of abusing
Palestinian prisoners, 29 July 2024 (Reuters)]
Israeli protesters outside the Sde Teiman detention facility demand the
release of Israeli soldiers arrested on suspicion of abusing Palestinian
prisoners, on 29 July 2024 (Reuters)

The buck stops not with a handful of soldiers in Force 100. It stops with
the Israeli government and military leaders. They are at the top of a
command chain that has authorised war crimes in Gaza for the past 10 months
- and before that, for decades across the occupied territories.

This is why observers have totally underestimated what is at stake with the
rulings of the ICC and ICJ.

These judgments against Israel are forcing out into the light of day for
proper scrutiny a state of affairs that has been quietly accepted by the
West for decades. Should Israel have the right to operate as an apartheid
regime that systematically engages in ethnic cleansing and the murder of
Palestinians?

As the Israeli media has been warning for some time, sections of the army
are effectively now turning into militias that follow their own rules

A direct answer is needed from each western capital. There is nowhere left
to hide. Western states are being presented with a stark choice: either
openly back Israeli apartheid and genocide, or for the first time withdraw
support.

The Israeli far-right, which now dominates both politically and in the
army’s combat ranks, cares about none of this. It is immune to pressure. It
is willing to go it alone.

As the Israeli media has been warning for some time, sections of the army
are effectively now turning into militias
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-03-19/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-war-in-gaza-exposes-a-disintegrated-israeli-army/0000018e-5309-d282-a19f-7fd999950000>
that follow their own rules.

Israel’s military commanders, on the other hand, are starting to understand
the trap they have set for themselves. They have long cultivated fascistic
zealotry among ground troops needed to dehumanise and better oppress
Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But the war crimes proudly
being live-streamed by their units now leave them exposed to the legal
consequences.

Israel’s international isolation means a place one day for them in the dock
at The Hague.
War machine cornered

The ICC and ICJ rulings are not just bringing Israeli society’s demons out
into the open, or those of a complicit western political and media class.

The international legal order is gradually cornering Israel’s war machine,
forcing it to turn in on itself. The interests of the Israeli military
command are now fundamentally opposed to those of the rank and file and the
political leadership.

The result, as military expert Yagil Levy has long warned
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-01-22/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-israeli-army-must-act-before-some-of-its-soldiers-turn-into-lawless-gangs/0000018d-324a-db91-afbd-7b6e60030000>,
will be an increasing breakdown of discipline, as the attempts to arrest
Force 100 soldiers demonstrated all too clearly.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/icj-clears-fog-hiding-western-support-israel-rogue-state>

The World Court has just cleared the fog hiding western support for
Israel’s crimes

The Israeli military juggernaut cannot be easily or quickly turned around.

The military command is reported to be furiously trying to push Netanyahu
into agreeing on a hostage deal
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-08-02/ty-article/israeli-defense-chiefs-believe-netanyahu-isnt-interested-in-gaza-deal-top-official-says/00000191-14a0-d4cf-afb5-5cf5a8aa0000>
to bring about a ceasefire - not because it cares about the welfare of
Palestinian civilians, but because the longer this “plausible” genocide
continues, the bigger chance the generals will end up at The Hague.

Israel’s zealots are ignoring the pleas of the top brass. They want not
only to continue the drive to eliminate the Palestinian people but to widen
the circle of war, whatever the consequences.

That included the reckless, incendiary move last week to assassinate
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/breaking-ismail-haniyeh-assassinated-iran>
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran - a provocation with one aim only: to
undermine the moderates in Hamas and Tehran.

If, as seems certain, Israel’s commanders are unwilling or incapable of
reining in these excesses, then the World Court will find it impossible to
ignore the charge of genocide against Israel and the ICC will be compelled
to issue arrest warrants against more of the military leadership.

A logic has been created in which evil feeds on evil in a death spiral. The
question is how much more carnage and misery can Israel spread on the way
down.

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*
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