Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
Hm. WaPo, Haaretz (2), Al J.
It's kinda interesting that both Haaretz and ALJ describe the victim in this case as "he" -- were it one, I might think translation issues, and that's still possible, but it's a lot less likely. There's a lot of demographic reasons for a lot of violence against prisoners to target men, and I've seen 'gang-rape' used to describe the situation, but doesn't exclude the Abu Ghraib or Oncale-style sexualized-violence-as-humiliation option. Which is still bad!
At least from the public reporting, the accused soldiers were arrested. While some (and/or some other soldiers stationed at the facility?) resisted, they didn't do so very long or very successfully. A separate problem came about when external protestors, including some Israeli politicians, started protesting outside the base and then pushed their way inside, before being redirected back out. This is absolutely embarrassing for a military power, but it's more shoving contests gone dumber than a serious riot.
I think some of the right-wing protest comes about because there have been a number of high-profile exaggerated examples of IDF abuse, but a lot of the criticisms of treatment in other cases do have real foundation. Whether the underlying allegations here are Oncale-style abuse or more conventional gang-rape of a prisoner, they're going to need serious investigation to prove whether they happened or not.
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