Over the first four days of Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange, Israel arrests 133 Palestinians while releasing 150.

But the worry for Palestinian prisoners does not end after their release. The majority of those freed are usually rearrested by Israeli forces in the days, weeks, months and years after their release.

Dozens of those who were arrested in a 2011 Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange were rearrested and had their sentences reinstated.

Many of the women and children released during the truce have testified to the abuse they experienced in Israeli prisons.

Several videos have also emerged in recent weeks of Israeli soldiers beating, stepping on, abusing and humiliating detained Palestinians who have been blindfolded, cuffed and stripped either partially or entirely. Many social media users said the scenes brought back memories of the torture tactics used by United States forces in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2003.

  • paintbucketholder@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    I’m not defending the tactics used by the Israeli military.

    At the same time, they’re using tactics that are pretty similar to the tactics used by the United States in Iraq and in Afghanistan - yet even back then, despite all the opposition took America’s military interventions, we didn’t see people around the world claim that America was committing genocide or that America was s terrorist state.

    Yet those labels are constantly applied to Israel.

    Why do you think there’s this difference?

    • ???@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Just because no one said that about America doesn’t mean this one isn’t genocide. Just because one nation got away with it in the past does not make this any less genocide than it is.

      Most likely the difference is political. No one could stand in the face of the US when it bombed Iraq, but it’s 2023 now and we know better. It took decades to build a strong case against genocide in Israel. It’s not a word people toss around lightly.

      • paintbucketholder@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Just because no one said that about America doesn’t mean this one isn’t genocide. Just because one nation got away with it in the past does not make this any less genocide than it is.

        That’s right.

        However, if incredibly different standards are being used depending on the nation in question, that certainly raises suspicions that people are not actually criticizing the act (a military intervention to combat a terrorist organization), but rather the nation itself.

        If two countries can have the exact same experience (a terrorist attack that killed hundreds of its citizens), react to that in the exact same way (a military intervention determined to root out there terrorist organization at any cost, willingly accepting that thousands of civilians are being killed as “collateral damage”), but one gets accused of committing genocide while the other one gets celebrated (remember “Mission Accomplished” or the spontaneous celebrations when bin Laden was killed?), doesn’t that warrant the question why identical actions get treated so differently?

        It took decades to build a strong case against genocide in Israel. It’s not a word people toss around lightly.

        America occupied Iraq and Afghanistan for decades. Why wasn’t the same “strong case” never built against America? Why are people accusing Israel of genocide for killing thousands, but nobody has ever bothered accusing America of genocide for causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands?

        You say that America is to powerful, that nobody could stand in it’s way - but that shouldn’t have stopped human rights organizations from saying that America is committing genocide, that shouldn’t have stopped the UN from accusing America of genocide, that shouldn’t have stopped people to demonstrate in the streets with Iraqi or Afghan flags demanding “free Afghanistan.”

        Why did none of that happen?