‘Unspeakable horrors’: Palestine diplomat draws parallels between Hiroshima bombing, onslaught in Gaza
Ambassador at the Permanent General Mission of Palestine in Japan, Waleed Siam, highlighted of the ‘unspeakable horrors’ of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing and the onslaught in the Gaza Strip during an Alternative Peace Ceremony in Japan yesterday. Palestinians and Hibakusha – survivors of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb – both face efforts to erase them, he said. Gaza has been left in ruins following 10 months of Israel bombardment, with all vital infrastructure destroyed.
Aug.6, 2024
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Israel systematically abusing Palestinian detainees in ‘torture camps’, says B’Tselem
Israeli rights group concludes the government is committing torture that amounts to a war crime and even a crime against humanity
Aug. 5, 2024
Israeli authorities are systematically abusing Palestinians in torture camps, subjecting them to severe violence and sexual assault, B’Tselem said on Monday.
In a new 118-page report, the Israeli rights group accused the government of conducting a policy of institutionalised abuse and torture against all Palestinian detainees since 7 October.
Torture was recorded in civilian and military detention facilities across Israel, leading to the death of at least 60 Palestinians while in Israeli custody in less than 10 months.
The systematic nature of the abuse across all facilities left “no room to doubt an organised, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities”.
The report, titled “Welcome to Hell”, is based on 55 testimonies from former detainees from the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and citizens of Israel, the overwhelming majority of them held without being tried.
The interviewees described the abuse in “horrifying detail and chilling similarities,” said B’Tselem.
According to the report, the torture prisoners faced included: “Frequent acts of severe, arbitrary violence; sexual assault; humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation; forced unhygienic conditions; sleep deprivation, prohibition on, and punitive measures for, religious worship; confiscation of all communal and personal belongings; and denial of adequate medical treatment.”
The torture targeted detainees for being Palestinian, regardless of their origin and political views, the report explained.
Those abused included prisoners held before the war erupted on 7 October, as well as nearly 4,800 held arbitrarily without charge or trial.
Continue reading at www.middleeasteye.net
‘Raped by female soldiers’: Palestinian in leaked Sde Teiman photo speaks out
The man in the famous photo, Ibrahim Salem, spent eight months in Israeli detention, where rape, electrocution and beatings were routine
By Mohammed al-Hajjar
Aug. 8, 2024
Blindfolded, arms behind his head and standing by the barbed wire fence of the Israeli Sde Teiman detention camp.
It was one of the first photos leaked from the notorious army base, where thousands of Palestinian prisoners were held without charge and routinely tortured.
The man in the picture, Ibrahim Salem, was released last week after nearly eight months of detention.
He told Middle East Eye that the photo, first published by CNN, was just the tip of the iceberg of his horrific experience in detention, which included rape, electrocution and frequent beatings.
“Most of the prisoners will come out with rectum injuries [caused by the sexual assault],” Salem, 36, told Middle East Eye.
The prisoners will tell each other it is haemorrhoids, he added, but most are just avoiding admitting they had been raped, sometimes by female soldiers.
In the following eyewitness account, Salem recalls his ordeal, starting from his arrest at a hospital in Gaza until his release.
Continue reading at www.middleeasteye.net
Gaza detainee tortured to death at Israel’s Sde Teiman facility
Aug 6, 2024
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Gaza’s official death toll is a lie. The casualty numbers are far, far higher
Jul 31, 2024
The reported death toll in Gaza is way too low by every imaginable metric. We need to be stressing this – all the more so when Israel’s apologists are vigorously engaged in a disinformation campaign to suggest that the figures are inflated.
On 6 May, 7 months into Israel’s slaughter, there were reported to be 34,735 dead. That was an average of 4,960 Palestinians killed each month.
Today, nearly three months on, the reported death toll stands at 39,400 – or an increase of 4,665.
It should not need a statistician to point out that, were the rise linear, the expected number of deaths would stand by this point at around 49,600.
So, even by the simplest calculation, there is a large shortfall in deaths – a shortfall that needs explaining.
Continue reading at www.jonathan-cook.net
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