Mouin Rabbani Profile picture
Jul 30, 2024 37 tweets 5 min read Read on X
THREAD: I’m interrupting my review of Arab-Israeli wars, which I will resume next week, to comment on a current development:
On the morning of Monday 29 July, a contingent of Israel’s military police – the agency responsible for policing the security forces – showed up at Sde Teiman, an Israeli military base in the Negev Desert that now serves as a prison camp for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
The military police had come to arrest nine of the soldiers – apparently all reservists – who serve at the camp. They were wanted for their involvement in the gang rape of a prisoner who was subsequently taken to the camp’s infirmary with severe rectal injuries.
(Normally I would add something about innocent until proven guilty, but on those exceedingly rare occasions when the Israeli authorities arrest an Israeli in uniform for offences against Palestinians, this can be considered incontrovertible proof they are guilty as sin).
The soldiers resisted arrest, and a stand-off between them and the military police contingent erupted. Almost immediately, Israeli politicians took to the airwaves to denounce the arrest operation,
proclaiming the rapists to be heroes – precisely because they had gang-raped a Palestinian prisoner – and called upon their supporters to flood Sde Teiman to prevent the soldiers from being taken into custody.
After protracted negotiations the soldiers agreed to be led away by the military police and were transported to the Beit Lid detention facility near Tulkarm in the northern West Bank.
But no sooner had the military police and their detainees left than a mob broke into the prison camp to protest the arrests. Not just any mob, but one that included government ministers, members of parliament, soldiers in uniform, and various others.
Later that day similar scenes were repeated at the Beit Lid prison. Although breaking into or out of a prison is considered a serious violation of the law, thus far not a single individual has been arrested.
The Sde Teiman prison camp has elements of both Abu Ghraib, the US torture center in Iraq, and a Gestapo interrogation center. Among the documented abuses, based on testimonies of both former prisoners and prison staff,
are torture, including electric shocks, severe beatings, and various forms of disorientation; severe malnutrition and dehydration; amputations after the very prolonged use of zip-ties that have been deliberately tightened to block circulation to hands and feet;
denial of basic medical care; denial of toilet facilities; surgeries without anaesthetic; surgeries performed by unqualified medical students to gain experience; and very much else.
You may have read the highly credible accounts emanating from Sde Teiman or seen images/videos of former prisoners incarcerated there. Several dozen Palestinians have been killed at the camp, through torture or denial of basic needs.
It bears recollection that the war crime of torture is considered a legal practice in Israel, and has been confirmed as such by its supreme court, most notably in 1987.
Secondly, Israel considers Palestinians to be unlawful combatants who are not entitled to the protections offered by customary law on such matters.
And additionally, Israel’s most senior leaders have engaged in a systematic campaign of demonization and dehumanization of Palestinians, and of those suspected of membership in Hamas in particular, which amounts to a license to torture, rape, and kill.
The arrested soldiers were essentially told to do as they please with Palestinians and assured that, per standard practice, there would be no consequences of any sort.
At one level one can therefore understand the astonished response of the rapists when told they would be arrested for conduct that has been officially sanctioned on a systematic basis.
The case also reflects deeper changes within Israel. Its military has, to put it mildly, admittedly never had a reputation for discipline, but it functioned as the central institution of Israeli state and society.
Israel has on this basis been described as an army with a state rather than a state with a military. But that is beginning to change. As Geoffrey Aronson has argued, recent years have seen the emergence of a new class of Israeli politicians,
most notably National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who in contrast to many of their predecessors did not enter and succeed in politics on the strength of a military career,
but rather built successful careers through opposition to and delegitimization of Israel’s security establishment. Their preferred armed force is not a regular army, but rather militias and mobs of brownshirts. And that’s what we saw on 29 July.
It’s not so much a turning point as visible evidence that the process is alive, well, and rapidly gaining momentum. That it should burst onto the scene in defense of gang rape should therefore not come as a particular surprise.
There are many other notable elements to this issue, not least of which would be the observation that every accusation is a confession. Another would be that Government ministers and members of parliament rank somewhat higher in the pecking order than falsely-accused UNRWA staff.
Yet one angle that is particularly interesting has to do with Israel’s concerns about sustaining its impunity with respect to its dealings with the Palestinian people.
As @reider has pointed out, Israel’s Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, in his condemnation of the riots asserted that military police investigations are essential to protect Israeli soldiers “at home and abroad”.
@reider “Abroad”, @reider points out, “obviously meaning The Hague” where the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ) are based.
@reider Thanks to efforts initiated by the United Kingdom, which argued that the ICC should only prosecute Palestinians, the Court is now permitting multiple challenges to its jurisdiction over Israeli crimes perpetrated in the occupied Palestinian territories.
@reider A particularly specious set of arguments has been put forth by Germany, arguably the most experienced state when it comes to the crimes enumerated in the Rome Statute.
@reider One of Berlin’s arguments is that the ICC should not pursue arrest warrants until Israel has completed the commission of its crimes against the Palestinian people and considers its business concluded.
@reider The other argument concerns “complementarity”, the principle according to which the ICC can and will only pursue prosecutions where national judiciaries fail to conduct such procedures themselves.
@reider In its paeans to Israel’s judiciary, Berlin conveniently neglects that every independent study of Israel’s judiciary with respect to crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians has concluded that the primary role of this apparatus has been to enable, legitimize,
@reider and whitewash the crimes concerned. Even were this not the case, the way ICC complementarity works is that the national judiciary would have to credibly investigate and, if appropriate, prosecute and convict the same individuals for the same crimes they stand accused of by ICC.
@reider In other words, Germany’s desperately furious efforts to defend that other genocidal regime will prove of little use to Netanyahu and Gallant.
@reider But Halevi, a representative of Israel’s traditional military elite – let’s call him an Israeli Prussian – sees the writing on the wall, and he and his fellow officers don’t want to share Netanyahu and Gallant’s fate. So they are creating an argument for complementarity.
@reider In a rational society Halevi would be hailed for his foresight and criticized for waiting so long to act.
@reider But a society where government ministers, members of parliament, uniformed soldiers, and a mob of brownshirts riot at two separate locations on a single day in defense of gang rape cannot be considered rational. END

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More from @MouinRabbani

Dec 31, 2024
THREAD (Jimmy Carter, Part 1): Former US president Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100. In his later years he was widely admired by Palestinians, and broadly detested by Israelis, some of whom are exuberantly celebrating his death on this platform. It’s a very different picture than that which existed during his presidency.
Carter was elected to office in 1976, ousting Gerald Ford, who had assumed the presidency in 1974 when Richard Nixon was forced to resign on account of the Watergate scandal. Perhaps on account of Carter’s previous obscurity, it was a surprisingly close election. Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon, thus ensuring the latter wouldn’t be held accountable for Watergate (Nixon never faced the prospect of accountability for his infinitely more serious crimes in southeast Asia) sealed Ford’s fate with many voters. Ford was additionally weakened by a strong challenge for the Republican nomination by Ronald Reagan, representing the radical right of the party, and by presiding over Washington’s final defeat and ignominious withdrawal from Vietnam on 30 April 1975.
In the Middle East, Carter was an unknown quantity. That was certainly not the case with the outgoing administration. Henry Kissinger, appointed National Security Advisor during Nixon’s first term and additionally Secretary of State during his second, retained both positions until late 1975 and the latter for the remainder of Ford’s presidency. By the time of his 1977 exit he had dominated the US foreign policy agenda for almost a decade. A Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, Kissinger was, largely on account of his identity, viewed as irredeemably pro-Israeli. He often was, but this was primarily because he believed Israel served US interests – in the Middle East, in the Cold War, and during an era of revolutionary challenges to US power in the Third World. And secondarily because embracing Israel was a useful arrow in his quiver for his relentless bureaucratic warfare against Beltway rivals.
Read 37 tweets
Dec 25, 2024
THREAD (Syria Part I): I started writing a thread about recent developments in Syria, and ended up delving into the country’s very long history. This first instalment attempts to summarise aspects of Syria’s history until the First World War. For those interested, I’ve here and there included references to a number of accessible texts for further reading. These are included in brackets at the end of the relevant paragraphs.
With the unanticipated, rapid collapse of the Syrian government between 27 November and 8 December 2024, sixty-one years of uninterrupted Ba’thist rule over the country has come to a sudden end. The repercussions are expected to be seismic, first and foremost for Syria, but also for the wider region, with potentially geopolitical ramifications. How did we get here?
Roughly the size of New England in the United States or China’s Hubei province, Syria is the product of some of the world’s oldest civilisations. Its capital, Damascus, sitting astride the Barada river, is a leading candidate for the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth. Syria’s second city but at various points its most prominent urban center, Aleppo, situated along the Quwayq river, is among the few competitors for this title, and is believed to be permanently settled since the sixth millennium BCE.
Read 43 tweets
Dec 16, 2024
THREAD: There’s much to be said about recent developments in Syria, the background and context, the implications and repercussions.
Indisputably, the Syrian government was, like its neighbors Iraq and Israel, and many others in the region, brutally repressive, not only within but also beyond its borders.
While far from solely responsible, the Syrian government, its methods, and its quixotic pursuit of total and unconditional victory over any and all opposition forces are central to understanding the bloodbath that consumed the country since 2011 and left Syrian society in ruins. Syrians are rejoicing for a reason, in fact for very good reasons, even if many also confront their country’s future with trepidation.
Read 13 tweets
Dec 5, 2024
THREAD: It is a persistent fad among Israel flunkies to invoke Palestinian toponymic surnames that reference foreign territory to make the argument that these individuals have no business living in their homeland. Thus, surnames like Masri (“Egyptian”), Mughrabi (“Moroccan”), Kurdi (“Kurdish”), Halabi (“Aleppine”), Baghdadi, Hijazi, Hourani, Irani, etc. are presented as proof positive the individuals concerned are not really from Palestine, cannot therefore claim rights within it, and should permanently depart to the territory identified in their surname.
There are needless to say multiple fallacies with this approach. A toponymic surname may well indicate foreign origins, but not necessarily so. It could also have originated because the family, or a prominent ancestor, had a particular connection with that territory on account of e.g. commerce, a government posting, or military service. Or because a prominent individual from that territory married into a local family, giving it its current name.
But let’s assume that in all cases where a toponymic surname references foreign territory, all members of that family originally hail from those lands. So what? Does it mean anything if that family established itself in Palestine generations if not hundreds of years ago? And in the specific context of the point Israel flunkies think they are making, shouldn’t it mean something if these families arrived in Palestine well before the first Zionist settlers arrived in Palestine from Europe at the turn of the twentieth century?
Read 8 tweets
Nov 22, 2024
THREAD: Encounter with the Thought Police (Remarks delivered at the Fletcher School's Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies)
It’s a real pleasure to be speaking again at the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at the Fletcher School. I’m particularly grateful to its Director, Professor Nadim Rouhana, and his colleague Amaia Arregi for bringing us together.
My talk today is about the regional dimensions of the Gaza Crisis. But before turning to this subject I’d like to say a few words about something more local.
Read 15 tweets
Nov 13, 2024
THREAD: The mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, today released a 12-page report on the events in Amsterdam during the past week. It provides the most detailed account we have thus far, and corrects some details in my earlier posts on the matter. For example, and contrary to what I reported, the police did in fact arrest a few Israeli hooligans (ten in total), but appear to have quickly released them as well.
The above notwithstanding, Halsema like virtually every other Dutch politician continues to frame the disturbances within the broader framework of the long history of anti-Semitism rather than the specific one of opposition to continued Israeli participation in international sports competition while the state engages in genocide against the Palestinian people, or more directly of Israeli hooligans running amok in the streets of Amsterdam. As if the Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans were singled out because they are Jewish, rather than on account of their violent and vile conduct. As if Israelis were singled out not because they were presumed to be visiting Maccabi supporters but because of Jew hatred.
The report does provide evidence of anti-Semitic expressions, primarily by a taxi driver, and then goes on to conflate any and all hostility to rampaging Israeli hooligans and indeed to Israel and its genocide with anti-Semitism. (According to the report, Israel's foreign minister went one further, and in a telephone call with Halsema invoked the Holocaust).
Read 14 tweets

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