Moshe Feiglin<\/p>\n
On October 25, Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin told<\/a> Arutz Sheva-Israel National News that \u201cMuslims are not afraid of us anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n It might sound odd that Feiglin saw the element of fear as critical to Israel\u2019s well-being if not its very survival.<\/p>\n In actuality, the fear element is directly linked to Israel\u2019s behavior and fundamental to its political discourse.<\/p>\n Historically, Israel has carried out massacres with a specific political strategy in mind: to instill the desired fear to drive Palestinians off their land. Deir Yassin, Tantara and the over 70 documented massacres<\/a> during the Palestinian Nakba, or Catastrophe, are cases in point.<\/p>\n Israel has also utilized torture, rape and other forms of sexual assault to achieve similar ends in the past, to exact information or to break down the will of prisoners.<\/p>\n UN-affiliated experts said<\/a> in a report published on August 5 that \u201cthese practices are intended to punish Palestinians for resisting occupation and seek to destroy them individually and collectively.\u201d<\/p>\n Israel\u2019s ongoing war in Gaza has manifested all these horrific strategies in ways unprecedented in the past, both in terms of widespread application and frequency.<\/p>\n In a report<\/a> entitled \u2018Welcome to Hell\u2019, published on August 5, the Israeli rights group, B\u2019tselem, said that Israel\u2019s detention \u201cfacilities, in which every inmate is deliberately subjected to harsh, relentless pain and suffering operate as de-facto torture camps\u201d.<\/p>\n A few days later, the Palestinian rights group, Addameer, published its own report<\/a>, \u201cdocumented cases of torture, sexual violence, and degrading treatment\u201d, along with the \u201csystematic abuses and human rights violations committed against detainees from Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n If incidents of rape, sexual assaults and other forms of torture are marked on a map, they would cover a large geographical area, in Gaza, in the West Bank, and Israel itself \u2013 mostly notably in the notorious Sde Teiman Camp<\/a>.<\/p>\n Considering the size and locations of the Israeli army, well-documented evidence of rape and torture demonstrates that such tactics are not linked to a specific branch of the military. This means that the Israeli army uses torture as a centralized strategy.<\/p>\n Such a strategy has been associated with the likes of Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel\u2019s national security minister. His aggressive statements<\/a>, for example, that Palestinian prisoners should be \u201cshot in the head instead of being given more food\u201d, are perfectly aligned with his equally violent actions: the starvation policy of prisoners, the normalization of torture and the defense of rape.<\/p>\n But Ben-Gvir did not institute these tortuous policies. They have predated him by decades and were used against generations of Palestinian prisoners, who are granted few rights compared to those enshrined by international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention<\/a>.<\/p>\n But why does Israel torture Palestinians on such a large scale?<\/p>\n Israeli wars against Palestinians are predicated on two elements: a material and a psychological one. The former has manifested itself in the ongoing genocide, the killing and wounding of tens of thousands and the near destruction of Gaza.<\/p>\n The psychological factor, however, is intended to break the will of the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n Law for Palestine, a legal advocacy group published<\/a> a database of over 500 instances of Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, inciting genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n Most of these references seem to be centered on dehumanizing the Palestinians. For example, the October 11 statement<\/a> by Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog, that \u201cthere are no innocent civilians in Gaza\u201d, was part of the collective death sentence that made the extermination of Palestinians morally justifiable in the eyes of Israelis.<\/p>\n Netanyahu\u2019s own ominous biblical reference, where he called on Israeli soldiers to seek revenge from Palestinians, stating<\/a> \u201cRemember what Amalek has done to you\u201d, was also a blank check for mass murder.<\/p>\n While choosing not to see Palestinians as humans, as innocent, as worthy of life and security, Israel has granted its army carte blanche to do as it saw fit to those, in the words<\/a> of Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, \u201chuman animals\u201d.<\/p>\n The mass killing, starvation and widespread rape and torture of Palestinians are a natural outcome of these shocking dialectics. But the overall purpose of Israel is not simply to exact revenge, though the latter has been quite important to Israel\u2019s desire for national recovery.<\/p>\n By trying to break the will of the Palestinians through torture, humiliation and rape, Israel wants to restore a different kind of deterrence, which it lost on October 7.<\/p>\n Failing<\/a> to restore military or strategic deterrence, Tel Aviv is invested in psychological deterrence, as in restoring the element of fear that was breached on October 7.<\/p>\n Raping prisoners, leaking videos of the gruesome acts, and carrying out the same horrific deed, again and again, are all part of the Israeli strategy \u2013 that of restoring fear.<\/p>\n But Israel will fail, simply because Palestinians have already succeeded in demolishing Israel\u2019s 76-year matrix of physical domination and mental torture.<\/p>\n The Israeli war on Gaza has proven to be the most destructive and bloody of all Israeli wars. Yet, Palestinian resilience continues to grow stronger, because Palestinians are not passive, but active participants in the shaping of their own future.<\/p>\n If popular resistance is indeed the process of the restoration<\/a> of the self, Palestinians in Gaza are proving that, despite their unspeakable pain and agony, they are emerging as a whole, ready to clinch their freedom, no matter the cost.<\/p>\n Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Papp\u00e9, is <\/em>Our Vision for Liberation<\/a>: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak Out. His other books include <\/em>My Father was a Freedom Fighter and <\/em>The Last Earth. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is<\/em> www.ramzybaroud.net<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n