[Pnews] Israel’s Dystopic Prison Initiative

[Prisoner News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/06/israels-dystopic-prison-initiative/


  Israel’s Dystopic Prison Initiative

by Yoav Litvin <https://www.counterpunch.org/author/yoarlit0099/> - 
October 6, 2017

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Israeli economy 
<http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/Economy/Pages/ECONOMY-%20Sectors%20of%20the%20Economy.aspx> 
is composed of several sectors that include industries such as hi-tech, 
biotech, agriculture, communications and tourism, among others. It is a 
relatively young, diversified and growing neoliberal economy that has 
managed to stay afloat while many have shrunk, barely survived or 
collapsed entirely due to debt, market fluctuations and crashes.

As a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and 
Development (OECD), Israel 
<http://www.oecd.org/israel/economic-survey-israel.htm> is highly ranked 
for health care and life-satisfaction but is plagued by poverty, housing 
crises and stark inequality.

Yet it is in the war, security and incarceration industries that Israel 
truly excels.

Israel is one of the world’s main arms dealers. It has a shady history 
<https://972mag.com/who-will-stop-the-flow-of-israeli-arms-to-dictatorships/114080/> 
of selling weapons to some of the most brutal regimes and militias. For 
decades, Israel’s arms industry has fueled wars and crises throughout 
the globe, which has resulted in thousands of victims. Only recently, 
Israeli weapons sales to Myanmar 
<https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/1.810390> were the subject of 
intense debate and condemnation due to the ongoing ethnic cleansing of 
the Rohingya people carried out by the Burmese regime.

Israel is also a leader in security services. American police and other 
security forces regularly receive training in Israel 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/09/15/police-israel-cops-training-adl-human-rights-abuses-dc-washington/>, 
despite, or likely because, of its long history of occupation, 
repressive practices and human rights abuses.

Israel has served as an inspiration 
<https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.790273> for the most regressive 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/zionist-white-supremacist-alliance-trumps-white-house>, 
xenophobic and oppressive policies and ideologies. In fact, American 
President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/20/making-israel-greater-again-justice-for-palestinians-in-the-age-of-trump/> 
have very similar visions 
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/16/trump-and-netanyahu-prodigal-sons-of-capitalism/> 
for a future dominated by ethnocentric, hyper-militarized, privatized 
and corporate-controlled economies that benefit their rich friends at 
the expense of the commons, with an emphasis on a continued 
impoverishment of the global south and disenfranchisement of black, 
brown, indigenous and immigrant communities.

Recently, the Israeli government announced a dystopic initiative. 
According to Walla News <https://news.walla.co.il/item/3101734>, 
Minister of Internal Security Gilad Erdan and the President of Bar-Ilan 
University Arie Zaban are collaborating on a “university teaching 
prison”, in the same format as university teaching hospitals 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_university_hospitals>.

The prison will be managed by the Israeli Prison Service 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israel-prison-service> and 
academics from Bar Ilan University will have free reign to conduct 
“experiments” and other ventures (unspecified). Erdan added that he 
believes the new university prison will “inspire other countries”.

This new venture is in line with Israel’s continued economic interest 
<https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5014926,00.html> in 
imprisonment and wall-building. After all, it has decades of experience 
with the mass incarceration 
<https://imeu.org/article/israels-mass-incarceration-of-palestinians> of 
Palestinians, has built a 422 mile-long annexation wall 
<http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/12/visual-activism-activestillsphotographsthebarrierwall.html> 
that cuts off and impoverishes the Palestinian population of the West 
Bank while stealing many of its vital resources, and is actively 
maintaining the largest modern open air prison – Gaza.

Erdan’s and Zaban’s initiative is cynical and dystopic on multiple 
levels. First, it appears that its goals are primarily economic, not 
humanitarian. This means that profit will be placed before people, i.e. 
human rights. The notion of turning an entire subclass of society, the 
incarcerated, into an “industry” that should be studied and experimented 
on in an academic setting is, in fact, the normalization and even 
glorification of modern-day slavery, and ultimately caters to the 
private prison industry.

Second, “experiments” conducted in a prison setting have a very dark 
history, including the infamous case of Jewish prisoners in German camps 
during World War 2, e.g. Josef Mengele in Auschwitz. A recent case 
<https://www.democracynow.org/2015/7/16/torture_impunity_and_the_american_psychological> 
that involved a collaboration between an academic association (the 
American Psychological Association), the US Department of Defense and 
the CIA clearly demonstrated the dangers of such ventures.

Finally, the academicization of imprisonment focuses on- and promotes 
resolving the symptoms of a diseased society, instead of working on 
healing its pathology. In contrast to the provably effective approaches 
of prevention, decriminalization, humane rehabilitation and mental 
healthcare, Israel’s new and inherently immoral venture seeks to perfect 
and model the profit-making industry of mass incarceration and maximize 
the exploitation of imprisoned populations, at the expense of their 
human rights.

/*Yoav Litvin* is a Doctor of Psychology/ Behavioral Neuroscience./

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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