British Writer: The Atrocities Allowed by the West in Gaza Will Soon Knock on Its Door

SadaNews - A report published by the British newspaper The Guardian and prepared by the newspaper's columnist Owen Jones detailed horrific accounts of physical and psychological torture and intentional medical neglect inside Israeli prisons from former Palestinian prisoners, all without facing a single charge.

The report mentioned that the number of Palestinians held without charges is approximately 2,800 detainees, following a law passed after the October 7 attacks that allows Israeli soldiers to indefinitely detain anyone they suspect, according to the report's authors William Christo and Sihem Tonti.

The Agony of Loss

It was noted that prisoner Naseem Al-Radi (33 years old) was released on Monday with one eye, after the guards “farewelled” him by tying his hands, throwing him to the ground, and punching and kicking him severely, causing a direct kick to his eye.

Al-Radi spent, according to the report, more than 22 months in Israeli prisons, including 100 days in an underground cell, and lost over a third of his weight, all without any significant charges, having been arrested in a school where he sought refuge with his family on December 9, 2023.

Despite what he endured in prison, Jones states that Al-Radi experienced “the worst torture” in Gaza when he tried to contact his wife but found her unresponsive, discovering she had been martyred along with their children except for one due to an Israeli bombing.

He said, “I was happy that my release day coincided with my daughter Saba’s third birthday. I had planned to give her the best gift to compensate for her first birthday that we could not celebrate due to the war, but Saba went with my family, and so my joy went with her.”

Systematic Torture

Al-Radi described to The Guardian the various types of torture he experienced in prison, confirming that the guards “used tear gas and rubber bullets to intimidate us, along with insults and curses.”

He added that “the guards would suddenly enter the cells, tie our hands and feet, and then start beating us mercilessly, and beatings were not exceptions but part of a systematic torture regime.”

According to the report, guards would hang Palestinian prisoners on walls, spray them with cold air and water, and sometimes throw pepper spray on the detainees, noting that many of them suffered from skin or fungal diseases due to the harsh conditions inside the cells.

“Palestinians are screaming, warning of what the West will soon face. When you have a media-political class that relishes and rejoices in the death of our children, do you think they will care about your children?”

The newspaper quoted Muhammad Al-Asali, a 22-year-old university student, who stated that he contracted scabies during his detention, saying, “There was no medical care, and we tried to treat ourselves using floor disinfectant on our wounds, but it worsened the situation.”

The report quoted Iyad Qadih, the public relations director at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, which received the detainees, saying that signs of beatings and torture were evident on their bodies, such as bruises, fractures, wounds, and drag marks on the ground along with marks from the restraints that tightly bound their hands.

The Retribution of the West

In a separate article, Jones stated that what Israel has committed in Gaza with Western support is not only a crime against the Palestinians but a crime that reshapes the West itself, morally and politically, exposing the complicity of its civilization with extermination.

Jones warned in his article that the horrors and crimes committed in Gaza, facilitated, overlooked, and normalized by Western governments and media elites, will return and reflect on the West itself in the form of a rise in fascism, the erosion of the international system, and the application of repression and dehumanization locally.

Jones pointed to past horrific warnings, citing French thinker Aimé Césaire, who said colonialism “corrupts the colonizer before the colonized, stripping the colonizer of civilization, awakening dormant instincts of greed, violence, and racial hatred.”

Césaire added that the horrors of Western imperialism, through its violence and dehumanization of victims, ultimately rebounded to hit Europe itself in the form of fascist ideology, what the German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt termed “imperial backlash.”

Jones addressed the readers saying, “Trust that the atrocities allowed by the West in Gaza will soon knock on its doors.”

The article relayed Palestinian analyst Muhammad Shahada’s words that “Palestinians are screaming warning of what the West will face later. When you have a media-political class that relishes and rejoices in the death of our children, do you think they will care about your children?”

Anticipated Consequences

The question now, in Jones's view, is: What will bounce back on the West from the “fields of death” in Gaza? pointing out that the region has become a “laboratory for violence and extermination,” according to Israeli researcher Shmuel Lederman.

In this context, Jones noted Australian journalist Anthony Loewenstein's warning that Israel always tests its inventions on Palestinians and then exports them, including spyware, facial recognition technologies, drones, and AI-supported targeting systems.

“Every repressive technology and method of dehumanization that Israel inflicted on the Palestinians in Gaza with Western support will come back to affect the West itself.”

The writer also asserted that the far-right in Europe and around the world, which has seen a surge in demonstrations against immigrants recently, views Israel as a “ethnic state” to emulate and a model for a civilization waging a “just” war against Islam.

He pointed out that European far-right leaders have already begun calling for the application of the Israeli model to stop immigration and deport immigrants from Europe, including Vox party in Spain and Geert Wilders's party in the Netherlands.

Jones noted that every “extermination” - in Gaza or elsewhere - requires the dehumanization of its victims, as Israeli leaders have described Palestinians as “human animals” and “monsters,” and called for “wiping Gaza off the face of the earth,” in a language that expresses systematic racist doctrine.

According to Jones, this will have dire consequences for the West, as the strategy of dehumanization has begun to be used domestically, as the West has demonized and punished its citizens who protested against the war in Gaza amidst the rise of the far-right whose members consider Muslims and the left (like the anti-fascist group Antifa) their enemies.

The writer concluded that what is being committed in Gaza will not remain confined there, as every repressive technology and method of dehumanization that Israel practiced against the Palestinians in Gaza with Western support will come back to affect the West itself, warning that dark history always repeats itself when people choose to ignore its lessons.

Source: The Guardian