Nicholas Kristof’s latest column is a brutal reminder that “believe survivors” often becomes negotiable the moment the survivors belong to an inconvenient population. Palestinians describe sexual torture and abuse in Israeli custody, while the governments that loudly condemned Hamas’s sexual violence now seem to have misplaced their moral vocabulary.
And yet in wrenching interviews, Palestinians have recounted to me a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children — by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.
There is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes. But in recent years they have built a security apparatus where sexual violence has become, as a United Nations report put it last year, one of Israel’s “standard operating procedures” and “a major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians.” A report out last month, from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based advocacy group often critical of Israel, concludes that Israel employs “systematic sexual violence” that is “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy.”
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One reason these abuses don’t receive more attention is threats by Israeli authorities, who periodically warn prisoners on release to keep quiet, according to Palestinians who have been freed. Another reason, Palestinian survivors told me, is that Arab society discourages discussing the topic for fear of hurting the morale of prisoners’ families and undermining the Palestinian narrative of defiant and heroic detainees.
“Never again” does not work as a slogan if it comes with footnotes and favored exceptions.
There's no practical difference between leaders who order rapes, and leaders who don't forbid them. Turning a blind eye to sexual violence -- or, worse, ordering the silencing of victims and witnesses -- guarantees that rapes will happen. Saying "Well, I didn't actually give orders for people to be raped" is as weak a defense as "I was only obeying orders."
This goes, incidentally, not just for Israeli leaders, but for authorities in other environments where sexual violence is endemic, such as, allegedly, ICE detention camps. The mechanisms at work seem very similar.