Episode 031: A Culture of Rape and Violence

Trigger warning: Rape, sexual assault, coercion. This week, we cover the phenomenon of rape, sexual assault, and psychological warfare threatening rape and sexual assault employed by Apartheid Israel against Palestinians, whether they be political prisoners, male or female, younger or older, friends and family of political prisoners, or simply Palestinians on the land of Palestine. Lara notes how this phenomenon is nothing new and goes back decades to the Nakba of 1948 and the founding of the state of Israel when these violent tactics were employed against Palestinians by Zionist militias, in a manner fully consistent with the express beliefs of Zionist leaders like David Ben-Gurion, during documented massacres in order to intimidate and threaten the indigenous population to flee their homes. Lara also ponders the intersection between the celebration of the military, advanced weaponry, and mandatory service, which is at the center of Israeli society and the propagation of rape culture. She concludes that rape and sexual assault (or the threat of it) is used as a tactic in a systemic matter by the colonizer against the colonized reinforcing the colonial violence central to settler colonialism, the inequality at the heart of the Apartheid system, and the dehumanization required to sustain both forms of oppression. Michael covers recent stories illustrating the connection between Israel and human trafficking as well as the emergence of Israel as a “safe haven” for Jews fleeing prosecution in the US for sex-related crimes. There are not many jokes in this episode.

To consult the sources used in the preparation of this episode, please see:

Books/Videos:

Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales, by Dylan Howard

Articles:

1. Israel officer raped Palestinian woman in exchange for a work permit (Middle East Monitor)

2. Sexual harassment and violence against Palestinian women in Israeli prisons (Jerusalem Fund)

3. New IDF Chief Rabbi says soldiers can rape Arab women during wartime to boost morale (Bishop Accountability)

4. Creation of State (The Jewish Museum of the Palestinian Experience)

5. Ben-Gurion’s uncensored diary revealed: 'Pester and motivate the refugees to move eastward' (Haaretz)

6. The Cultural and Legal Reproduction of Poverty: Abortion Legislation in Israel (Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion)

7. Imprisonment of women and girls (Addameer)

8. Gender Based Discrimination Regarding the Right to Health in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Physicians for Human Rights Israel)

9. Palestinian women political prisoners systematic forms of political and gender-based state violence (Addameer)

10. Sexual torture of Palestinian men by Israeli authorities. (Reproductive Health Matters)

11. Police officers in Jerusalem accused of conducting illegal strip searches of minors (Haaretz)

12. Israel’s strip searches at airports ‘illegal’ (Al Jazeera)

13. Sexual Violence as a War Weapon in Conflict Zones: Palestinian Women’s Experience Visiting Loved Ones in Prisons and Jails (Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work)

14. How Jewish American pedophiles hide from justice in Israel (CBS News)

15. Diaspora pedophiles increasingly use Israel as ‘a haven,’ activists charge (Times of Israel)

16. Extradition From Israel (International Criminal Police Review)

17. Israel failing to do minimum to fight human trafficking, U.S. says (Haaretz)

18. The American government Is funding human trafficking (The New Republic)

19. Facts about human trafficking in the U.S. (DeliverFund)

20. Sexual violence in the Holocaust: Perspectives from ghettos and camps in Ukraine (Heinrich Boll Stiftung)

21. Even in death, Palestinians suffer obscene indignities (Tehran Times)

22. Palestinian women haunted by abuse in Israeli jails (Middle East Eye)

23. Sexual violence, women’s bodies, and Israeli settler colonialism (Jadaliyya)

24. Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (United Nations: Committee Against Torture)

25. Why is Obama's DOJ prosecuting a torture victim? (The Hill)

26. Gang rapes in Israel: A spike in cases or business as usual? (Jerusalem Post)

27. Israeli cops forced a Palestinian woman to confess a false rape claim. Then the rapist struck again. (Haaretz)