• 35 Posts
  • 97 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
Cake day: October 15th, 2023
  • Dreamer@lemmy.mltoWorld News@lemmy.ml•Inside Israel's torture camp for Gaza detainees
    9·
    9 months ago

    Inside the military base, the Palestinians were held in clusters of around 100. According to the testimonies, they were handcuffed and blindfolded the whole time, and permitted to rest only between midnight and 5 a.m.

    One of the detainees in each cluster, whom the soldiers chose because he knew Hebrew and was given the title “Shawish” (a slang term for a servant or subordinate), was the only one without a blindfold. The former detainees explained that the soldiers guarding them had green laser flashlights that they used to mark anyone who moved, changed position because of pain, or made a sound. The Shawish brought these detainees to soldiers standing on the other side of the barbed wire fence surrounding the facility, where they were punished.

    According to testimonies, the most common punishment was being tied to a fence and having to raise their arms for several hours. Whoever lowered them was taken away by the soldiers and beaten.

    “We were tortured all day,” Nidal told +972 and Local Call. “We knelt, head down. Those who didn’t succeed were tied to the fence, [for] two or three hours, until the soldier decided to let him off. I was tied up for half an hour. My whole body was covered in sweat; my hands became numb.

    “You can’t move,” Lubad recalled of the rules. “If you move, the soldier points a laser at you and tells the Shawish, ‘Get him out, raise his hands.’ If you put your hands down, the Shawish takes you outside, and the soldiers beat you. I was tied to the fence twice. And I kept my hands up because there were people around me who were really getting hurt. One person came back with a broken leg. You hear the beating and screaming on the other side of the fence. You are afraid to look or peek through the blindfold. If they see you looking, it’s a punishment. They will take you out or tie you to the fence too.”

    Another young man released from detention told the media after returning to Gaza that “people were tortured all the time. We heard screaming. They [soldiers] said to us, ‘Why did you stay in Gaza, why didn’t you go to the south?’ And I told them, ‘Why should we go to the south? Our homes still stand, and we are not connected to Hamas.’ They told us, ‘Go down to the south — you celebrated [the Hamas-led attack] on October 7.’”

    In one case, Lubad said, a detainee who refused to kneel and lowered his hands instead of keeping them raised was taken behind the barbed wire fence with his hands cuffed. The detainees heard beatings, then heard the detainee cursing a soldier, and then a gunshot. They don’t know if the detainee was actually shot, or whether he is alive or dead; in any case, he did not return for the rest of the time that those we spoke to were held there.

    To think that someone would be defiant even in those horrid conditions and the least favorable of positions. A man tied up, posed no realistic threat, yet executed. The mask of arrogance betrayed by fear. I wonder if Goliath too feared David.

  • Dreamer@lemmy.mlOPtoWorld News@lemmy.ml•The ‘second Nakba’ government seizes its moment
    8·
    9 months ago

    A few questions:

    Does that mean that democratic countries like America and Ireland are Zionist in principle because everyone has equal rights and an equal say in the government, including Jews?

    What do you mean by homeland? Are you referring to any general location on the planet or are you specifically referring to Israel which was formed by ethnically cleansing the local indigenous population into a minority?

  • Dreamer@lemmy.mlOPtoWorld News@lemmy.ml•The ‘second Nakba’ government seizes its moment
    12·
    9 months ago

    It’s probably a mix. To my knowledge, there are three broad categories we can place Israeli citizens in regarding Netanyahu and Zionism:

    1. Pro-Netanyahu / Right Wing Zionists
    2. Anti-Netanyahu / Any wing Zionists
    3. Anti-Netanyahu Anti-Zionists

    To be clear for anyone else reading this: Zionism is the idea that there needs to be an ethno-state in the occupied territories with Jewish supremacy. Anyone that believes in a single state where everyone has equal rights even if it means that Palestinians become a majority is not a Zionist. If this was not the case, Zionists would not have been systematically expelling Palestinians to ensure a Jewish majority and supremacy.

    Group #1 and group #2 make up the majority of Israeli citizens. Group #3 is a minority that is often branded traitorous. Just because Netanyahu killed democracy in some aspects, it does not mean that he is going against what the majority of Israeli citizens want with regards to Palestinians because they are either Zionists or indifferent. They might not want the Palestinians to be violently bombed and instead might opt for control or slow silent deaths through starvation or occupation. What they definitely do not want is for 5 million Palestinians to join them and become citizens with equal rights.

  • Dreamer@lemmy.mltoWorld News@lemmy.ml•Palestine Crisis Megathread III
    4·
    9 months ago

    This conflict has spanned for decades and has spread so far. Learning about every little thing has been overwhelming enough. Finding a way to organize that information is no easy task either. This comment will be used as an anchor to showcase a plethora of information regarding the conflict, both in background and the present. I still don’t know if it should be organized by news source or events themselves; maybe it will be a mix.

  • Dreamer@lemmy.mlOPtoWorld News@lemmy.ml•Israel hits Bethlehem in Christmas raids on occupied West Bank
    171·
    9 months ago

    “Media Bias/Fact Check rarely conducts original fact checks as many other sources are faster and do a better job. We primarily rely on fact-checkers affiliated with the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).”

    Source: Media Bias Fact Check

    Writers at the Poynter Institute, which develops PolitiFact, have stated that “Media Bias/Fact Check is a widely cited source for news stories and even studies about misinformation, despite the fact that its method is in no way scientific.” In 2018, a writer in the Columbia Journalism Review described Media Bias/Fact Check as “an armchair media analysis” and characterized their assessments as “subjective assessments [that] leave room for human biases, or even simple inconsistencies, to creep in”.

    Source: Wikipedia