Israel’s Many Hostages

Some are articulating that Israel has been holding Palestinian prisoners as hostages. susan abulhawa:

there is now extensive evidence of systematic rape and sexual torture of Palestinian hostages by Israelis, including soldiers, doctors, and settlers. not only is western media not covering this, but they continue to allow debunked allegations of mass rape on October 7 to go unchallenged.

I quoted Jafar Jafari in 2023:

Most of the Palestinians — mostly women and children — being released as part of the apparent deal were never tried. They were detained indefinitely without trial. Calling them prisoners is dubious, in fact ‘hostages’ may well be a better term. What do you call women and children who are captured by foreign gunmen and held without trial?

This is just one of the many layers of hostages imperial Israel holds.

Even when those people are “released” to the West Bank or Gaza, they are still a sort of hostage. Their lives are constantly threatened by its apartheid occupation.

Many of its own citizens live in fear. If they speak too loudly, they too will be targeted. (Israel utilized military orders against Palestinians in the Galilee and elsewhere until 1966.)

Countries in the region are threatened by its weapons; it has attacked Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Qatar, Yemen and Tunisia and the Global Sumud Flotilla just recently.

Lebanon and France. France’s ICC remarks on Netanyahu’s possible immunity was Israeli demand in Lebanon cease-fire talks, Israeli source says.

Through the US, the other 14 members of the UN Security Council have been held hostage.

Arguably, anyone with a pager.

Or a cell phone.

Students who feel compelled to wear masks so they can’t be doxxed and endanger their economic future.

US citizens wanting to do Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, being made to say they won’t do so if they want government services.

This is related to assaults on the First Amendment, itself becoming a hostage, transforming into the Israel First Amendment.

All living under the threat of media assault if they meaningfully step out of line.

Most still live in layers of myths around Israel, media-driven mental prisons.

Now, Big Tech electronic fences are set up, keeping certain ideas and images from being free.

US politicians, on the take, have become willing commodity captives.

Some apparently held by sexual blackmail.

It threatens all its neighbors and indeed the entire world with its nuclear weapons and its nuclear blackmail.

In some ways, the hostage prisoners in its jails are the ones who most see it for what it is.

There is no real freedom from imperial Israel — really the United States of Imperialism — other than for it to cease to be as it is.