Behold Israel! The great civilised democracy! Unless you are Palestinian.
This is a sobering excerpt from an interview with Sarit Michaeli, international advocacy lead for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
‘SARIT MICHAELI: Yes, Amy. Well, I think the most important thing to clarify in terms of our response to this is that Israel is not going to hold an investigation into the conduct and into the policies in its detention centers, for the pure reason, for the obvious reasons that these are policies. They’re not the actions of rogue elements, as I said. They’re not the actions of individuals who are going against the grain. They are dictated by the management of the Israeli prison system and by the government. They are supported by these bodies. And therefore, the only options for investigations are individual cases that are either so egregious that it would be impossible for the authorities to ignore them because of international pressure or in cases where there is some sort of documentation. And that is generally, I think — when you look at the Israeli investigations, that is generally the way the Israeli authorities work. The small, isolated, token investigations cover up for broader policies.
And in this specific case, I think, from our perspective, we have, A, not appealed — we have not requested Israeli investigations; B, we do not expect any Israeli investigations to fundamentally alter the situation. What we do expect is the international community to take action. And in the report, we’ve appealed to all nations and also to all relevant international institutions to look into the situation, to make it — to make it stop. Specifically, we’ve also appealed to the International Criminal Court, because these offenses that we list in our report are war crimes. They also, we would argue, reach the magnitude of crimes against humanity. And this is the responsibility of the international community, including the United States government, to address. It’s not just an intra-Israeli issue. Certainly, the Israeli government in its current standing — I mean, it’s pretty blatantly obvious that if the Israeli government is not able to hold an investigation into such serious allegations of horrific abuse without a mob of right-wing fanatics rushing, storming into two military bases, then it’s blatant that Israel isn’t going to be able — willing or able to address this broader policy of torture, you know, by order, essentially, against Palestinians since October 7th.’
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/8/welcome_to_hell_btselem_israel_torture