[Salon] Weaponising humiliation - ArabDigest.org Guest Post

Weaponising humiliation Summary: with the world’s attention focussed on the Ukraine war and Donald Trump’s efforts to end it on terms that will appeal to Vladimir Putin - an unlikely gambit but one he hopes will secure him the Nobel Peace Prize - a shocking report about the IDF’s conduct has had limited press coverage. Released yesterday by the UNHRC the introduction to a report from the Independent International Commission of Enquiry on the Palestinian Occupied Territories notes: the disproportionate violence against women and children resulting from Israel’s method of war….It describes the destruction of Palestinians through reproductive violence and harms resulting from the Israeli Security Forces’ deliberate attacks on sexual and reproductive health care facilities and the collapsed health care infrastructure in Gaza. The report continues: The Commission also examines the sharp increase in sexual and gender-based violence perpetrated by members of the Israeli Security Forces and settlers online and in person across the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including rape and other forms of sexual violence. And adds: It also examines how sexual and gender-based violence has taken different forms when committed against male and female members of the Palestinian community in order to dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people in whole or in part. The report references the bombing in December 2023 of the Al Basma IVF Centre in which more than 4000 embryos were destroyed. At the time Israel said it would investigate why the centre was attacked. To date no answers have been provided. But Israel was quick to denounce yesterday’s report saying it had made “unfounded allegations.” The facts fly in the face of that claim. The centre was bombed and destroyed. It was not a legitimate military target. Rather its destruction was part of a systematic and genocidal attack: The Commission concludes that the destruction of the Basma IVF clinic was a measure intended to prevent births among Palestinians in Gaza, which is a genocidal act under the Rome Statute and Genocide Convention. The Commission also concludes that this was done with the intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, in whole or in part, and that this is the only inference that could reasonably be drawn from the acts in question. The report notes the destruction of health facilities and hospitals in Gaza, paying particular attention to the catastrophic impact on pregnant women which is creating “unimaginable misery.” It said that “the prolonged physical and mental suffering caused by reproductive harms to pregnant, post-partum and lactating women amount to the crime against humanity of (sic) other inhumane acts and the war crime of wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health.” An Israeli soldier posted a picture of himself with a fetus preserved in formalin. The image is believed to have been taken in Al Basma IVF Centre, the largest fertility clinic in the Gaza Strip, where 4,000 embryos were destroyed in December 2023 [photo credit: @ytirawi] Other crimes committed by the IDF include the wilful killing of civilians by sniper fire, the rape and sexual abuse of male internees in detention and the sexual humiliation of women, girls, men and boys. It cites a culture of impunity that was encouraged by members of the Israeli cabinet including the then National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Both men spoke in defence of five soldiers who were arrested after the rape of a male detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman camp came to light. It quotes Smotrich decrying the “terrible injustice” the soldiers were facing while Ben-Gvir referred to them as Israel’s “best heroes.” The soldiers were charged only with GBH while the physical evidence of the rape was ignored. When the matter was raised in the Knesset the report quotes the response of Likud’s Hanoch Milwidsky: When asked if it was legitimate to “insert a stick into a person’s rectum”, Milwidsky responded: “If he is a Nukhba [Hamas militant], everything is legitimate to do. Everything.” Alex Hobson in a New Lines Magazine article reflects on the degree to which both Trump and Netanyahu trade in “humiliation entrepreneurship” which involves a transferral of their own personal humiliations into shared national humiliations that demand the humiliation of the other and justifies and exonerates the infliction of extreme cruelty in so doing. In Trump’s case his humiliation was the impeachments, his election loss and the numerous criminal cases brought against him while for Netanyahu it was the 7 October attack. Hobson writes: The convergence of Netanyahu’s and Trump’s fantasies and illusions represented a culminating moment in the merging of strategy with the emotional currency of humiliation and outrage. The two leaders’ shared fantasy is that Israel, with U.S. support, can ethnically cleanse Gaza through destructive vengeance for Al-Aqsa Flood and the near-total devastation wrought by 16 months of bombing, which human rights organizations have dubbed a genocide. Their shared illusion is that the U.S. and Israel can, in tandem, exert their will over the Middle East without any concern for the animosity, resentment and resistance that their deeds and words stir. Both men strive to project a ‘hard man’ masculinity. When Trump the abuser of women talks about his launch of a global trade war he smoothly incorporates language associated with women and girls who survive abuse. “We have been abused for a long time and we will be abused no longer” said the president about tariffs he holds to be “unfair.” In depicting Palestinians as Amalek Netanyahu invoked the bible 1 Samuel 15:3: "Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have... slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." The UN report has a section on “Masculinity, nationalism and militarization” that confirms Hobson’s thesis that humiliation is a powerful weapon of war be it Ukraine, a world trade war or the genocide of Gaza. That is true particularly when used against women and girls: Women’s bodies and sexuality are often perceived as linked with the dignity of the nation and other negative gender stereotyping, such as the collective’s honour and emasculation. Several experts have noted that allegations of sexual violence against Israeli women on 7 October 2023 have resulted in attempts to rebuild Israeli national masculinity through aggression and in retaliation for the attacks carried out by the military wing of Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. True to form - and stereotype - Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the report while labelling the UNHRC an “anti-Semitic, rotten, terrorist supporting body… attacking Israel with false accusations including unfounded allegations of sexual violence.” The investigation conducted by the Commission of Enquiry is forensic in its detail and took statements from multiple witnesses and victims. You can find the full report here (warning the content is disturbing.)