Published date: 15 April 2026 09:04 BST | Last update:2 hours 10 mins ago
Israeli prison guards have violently assaulted Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti three times over the past month, according to his lawyer.
A campaign calling for Barghouti’s release on Tuesday described the incidents as “brutal attacks”. It said they took place while he was in solitary confinement in Megiddo and Ramon prisons, in northern and southern Israel respectively.
Barghouti was tortured “using various tools of repression and beatings, causing multiple injuries and bleeding across his body without medical treatment,” the campaign said.
It added that the prominent political figure has faced a “systematic series” of attacks that have continued since the start of Israel’s genocide on Gaza.
Israeli human rights lawyer Ben Marmarelli, who said he visited Barghouti on Sunday, detailed the alleged abuse in a post on X, describing the situation as “deeply alarming”.
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He said that on 24 March, prison guards entered Barghouti’s cell with a dog, forced him to the ground, and set the dog on him repeatedly.
Barghouti was also assaulted during his transfer from Megiddo to Ganot prison the following day.
‘These are not isolated incidents. They form a clear pattern of escalating abuse’
– Ben Marmarelli, Human rights lawyer
On 8 April, he was severely beaten in Ganot and left bleeding for more than two hours. A subsequent request for medical treatment was denied.
“These are not isolated incidents. They form a clear pattern of escalating abuse: violence, medical neglect, and treatment that places him at immediate risk,” Marmarelli said.
He added that his most recent legal visit took place “under absurd conditions”, with the two forced to shout through glass to hear each other because prison phones were not working.
“This is what a legal visit looks like today: basic conditions denied, communication obstructed, and even the most elementary human and professional standards ignored.”
According to Marmarelli, despite the conditions, Barghouti remained mentally sharp and engaged with events outside prison.
“He had a great deal to say. Above all, he wanted to know more about his family and the Palestinian people, What is happening in Palestinian and Israeli scene I tried to tell him everything I know.”
Prominent figure
Barghouti, a senior figure in Fatah, has been imprisoned since 2004.
Israel targeted him for his leading role in the 2000–2005 Second Intifada.
He is serving five life sentences plus 40 years after being convicted over attacks that killed five Israelis. Barghouti refused to mount a defence during his trial, saying he did not recognise the court’s legitimacy.
Opinion polls have consistently suggested that Barghouti would win the Palestinian presidency if elections were held and he were permitted to run.
He is widely viewed as one of the few remaining unifying Palestinian leaders, despite Fatah’s deep association with the unpopular Palestinian Authority.
The 66-year-old has long been held in solitary confinement and has faced intensified assaults alongside other prominent Palestinian detainees since October 2023.
Palestinian testimonies reveal how sexual violence, including rape using objects and dogs, is approved by ‘highest levels’ of Israeli leadership
Soldiers lock a gate at Sde Teiman detention facility after Israeli military police arrived as part of an investigation into the suspected abuse of a Palestinian detainee on 29 July 2025 (Reuters)
Published date: 11 April 2026 11:53 BST | Last update:1 day 21 hours ago
Sexual torture of Palestinian detainees from Gaza in Israeli prisons is an “organised state policy”, endorsed by the “highest, political, military, and judicial authorities”, a new report has revealed.
The report, seen exclusively by Middle East Eye, is based on testimonies from Palestinian former prisoners gathered by the rights watchdog Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
It reveals how the scope of sexual violence of Palestinian prisoners, including rape using objects and trained military dogs, constitutes an “organised state policy”, aided and abetted by Israeli institutions and leadership.
One former detainee, a 42-year-old woman from north Gaza who was held in the notorious Sde Teiman detention centre, said she was bound naked to a metal table and repeatedly raped by two masked soldiers over the course of two days.
She recalled that she was left shackled, naked and bleeding throughout the night before the soldiers returned the next day to continue raping her.
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She said she wished for death and likened her experience to “another genocide behind walls”.
Throughout her ordeal, she was filmed. Soldiers later showed her the footage while she was hung by her wrists under interrogation, threatening to publish the videos if she did not “cooperate”.
Amir, a 35-year-old Palestinian man also held at Sde Teiman, recounted how soldiers forced him to strip naked, before their dogs urinated on him and raped him.
He described how the dog “penetrated my anus in a trained manner while I was being beaten”.
“This continued for several minutes. I felt profoundly humiliated and violated.”
Khaled Mahajna, an attorney with the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, described how a soldier in Sde Teiman inserted a fire extinguisher nozzle into a Palestinian prisoner’s anus and then discharged its contents into his body, resulting in severe internal injuries and intense pain.
‘Etched into their memory’
Another former prisoner, 43-year-old Wajdi, recounted being shackled to a metal bed and repeatedly raped by soldiers and a trained dog.
“I felt severe pain in my anus and screamed, but every time I screamed, I was beaten. This continued for several minutes, while soldiers filmed and mocked me, Wajdi said.
“The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding.”
He said he was then untied and raped by the dog. Later, another soldier forced his penis into the victim’s mouth and urinated on him. Over the following days, the abuse continued, with repeated rapes carried out by multiple soldiers.
“This case is particularly devastating because it reflects an accumulation of almost every form of torture, physical, psychological, and moral, layered with systematic humiliation,” Khaled Ahmed, a Euro-Med field researcher, told MEE.
“It also includes the deliberate use of multiple perpetrators and trained dogs as instruments of sexual violence. The result is not a single act of abuse, but an extended pattern of cruelty designed to destroy dignity, bodily integrity, and any sense of safety. These are acts that defy comprehension.”
Victims said the attacks were filmed and often conducted in “well-equipped institutional logistical settings… intentionally designed to enable torture and sexual violence”. The report said this evidenced the institutionalised nature of the violence.
Ahmed, who conducted some of the interviews with the victims, said the process was “by no means an easy task”.
“The soldier left after ejaculating inside me. I was left in a humiliating position. I wished for death. I was bleeding”
-Wajdi, former prisoner
“The details the survivors described and the way they relived the emotions and events were overwhelming,” Ahmed told MEE.
He described how some interviewees broke down in crying fits while recounting their stories, noting that the participants’ fear of reprisals and social stigmas around sexual abuse stopped some of them from speaking altogether.
“But what we noticed was that all of them spoke about what happened as if they were seeing it in front of them,” Ahmed told MEE.
“They remembered every detail, as though the scene had been etched into their memory and could never leave it.”
Ahmed said that most of the victims he spoke to were men, as women who experience sexual violence face a much deeper and more complex stigma in Palestinian society, “making it nearly impossible for a woman or her family to disclose that she has been assaulted”.
He noted that, while the sexual violence used against men and women is largely similar, women’s bodies in particular were used as a means to blackmail men.
“We documented several cases of sexual assault against women due to their familial ties to wanted individuals,” Ahmed said.
‘A complex crime’
Euro-Med monitor concluded that the testimonies are not isolated incidents but stand as evidence “of a policy supported by senior civilian and military leaders, either through direct orders or by tacit approval and a climate of impunity”.
It said that the scale of the abuse was made possible by legislation, military directives and emergency regulations, such as the “Unlawful Combatants Law”, which vastly expanded detention powers without judicial oversight and stripped detainees of any legal protections.
These legal mechanisms turbocharged enforced disappearances of Palestinian detainees and transformed Israeli detention centres into unaccountable “black holes” in the aftermath of 7 October 2023. Notable among them is Sde Teiman prison, where multiple reports have found torture, rape and murder to be rife, while the Red Cross and lawyers are denied access.
The report insists that responsibility for the abuse does not stop with its perpetrators; it is facilitated by the collusion of medical and legal personnel and the Israeli judicial system.
Euro-Med reported that doctors have helped to obscure incidents of torture by hiding the perpetrators’ identities, burying the victims’ injuries in medical records and issuing them “fit for interrogation” certificates.
Meanwhile, the Israeli justice system has shielded perpetrators by restricting evidence given by victims and witnesses, and reclassifying serious incidents as minor offences, resulting in the dismissal of charges.
In Israel, raping Palestinian prisoners is justified. Leaking the footage is betrayal
In March, the Israeli military announced it was dropping charges against five soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman, despite leaked CCTV footage showing soldiers surrounding the detainee as he was pinned against a wall.
The report said that these abuses breach the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, as they have caused serious harm to group members and are aimed at preventing births within the group – “all within a larger objective of partially or fully destroying the Palestinian community in the Gaza Strip”.
It emphasised that responsibility for these crimes extends “beyond the direct perpetrators, encompassing leadership and institutions that shelter them”.
Numerous reports by rights groups and investigations by news sites, including MEE, have extensively documented the widespread use of sexual violence and rape of Palestinian detainees across the Israeli prison system.
A United Nations inquiry accused Israel of using sexualised torture and rape as “a method of war… to destabilize, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people”.
Ahmed emphasised that the proliferation of sexual violence in Israeli prisons serves a specific purpose, “because it encompasses almost all types of torture”.
“It keeps the victim trapped in a cycle of violence, unable to escape it, even after the violence has practically stopped,” Ahmed said.
“It continues to accompany the victim throughout their life. The survivor keeps experiencing both physical and psychological pain, and in many cases feelings of shame, humiliation, self-blame, inferiority, loss of dignity, and a lack of safety.”
He noted that the trauma does not stop with the victim, but spreads to their family and community.
“Especially in a conservative society where anything related to sexual assault is seen as an attack on the dignity of the entire family. It is a complex crime that deeply impacts and fractures the very fabric of society.”
Israel denies withholding supplies for Gaza’s more than 2 million residents
MADRID, April 12 (Reuters) – A second flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza was due to set sail on Sunday from the Spanish port of Barcelona to try to break the Israeli blockade.
About 30 boats planned to leave the Mediterranean port city laden with medical aid and other supplies on the Global Sumud Flotilla, and more vessels are expected to join along the route towards Palestine.
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The Israeli military halted the roughly 40 boats assembled by the same organisation last October as they attempted to reach blockaded Gaza, arresting Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and more than 450 other participants.
MISSION TO ‘OPEN HUMANITARIAN CORRIDOR’
Israel, which controls all access to the Gaza Strip, denies withholding supplies for its more than 2 million residents. Yet Palestinians and international aid bodies say supplies reaching the territory are still insufficient, despite a ceasefire reached in October which included guarantees of increased aid.
Liam Cunningham, an actor who starred in the Game of Thrones television series who is supporting the flotilla but not taking part, told Reuters: “Every kilogram of aid that is on these ships is a failure because all these people on these ships giving up their time to help their fellow human beings are doing what their governments are legally obliged to do.”
The World Health Organization has said that even during armed conflicts, states are obligated under international humanitarian law to ensure that people are able to reach medical care in safety.
“This is a mission that aims to open a humanitarian corridor so the aid delivery organisations can arrive,” Saif Abukeshak, a Palestinian activist and member of the flotilla’s organising committee, told Reuters.
Swiss and Spanish activists on last year’s flotilla said they were subjected to inhumane conditions during their detention by Israeli forces – an allegation that was rejected by an Israeli foreign ministry spokesperson.
Reporting by Graham Keeley; Additional reporting by Silvio Castellanos, Horaci Garcia, Nacho Doce, Albert Gea, Michele Spatari and Amy McConaghy; Editing by David Holmes
US officials were aware that a statement from Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on the US-Iran ceasefire that was issued on Tuesday included a truce in Lebanon as part of the deal, according to media reports.
The New York Times reported that the US had already seen and signed off on Sharif’s statement before he posted it. The initial post included a header that said “Draft – Pakistan’s PM Message on X,” causing speculation that the statement was actually written by the US, though a White House official denied that President Trump drafted it.
A diplomatic source familiar with the negotiations leading up to the ceasefire announcement told ITV News that Iranian and Pakistani officials ended the talks with the understanding that the US was aware that the truce also applied to Lebanon, contradicting claims from Trump and Vice President JD Vance that it did not.
Vance claimed it was a “misunderstanding” on the part of the Iranians that the ceasefire included Lebanon and said it would be “dumb” for Tehran to allow the negotiations to collapse over the issue, though he also insisted the deal includes a halt to Iranian attacks on Israel and the US’s Gulf allies in the region.
Israel not only continued its attacks on Lebanon, but it also dramatically escalated the bombardment, launching a new military operation dubbed “Operation Eternal Darkness” and killing hundreds of people across the country. According to NBC News, Trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scale down the attack, but heavy Israeli strikes continued on Thursday.
Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Thursday that he instructed his government to open negotiations with the Lebanese government, though there’s no sign he plans to halt the bombing campaign.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi affirmed in a statement on Wednesday that the ceasefire must include Lebanon or the deal will be off. “The Iran-US Ceasefire terms are clear and explicit: the US must choose—ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both,” Araghchi wrote on X. “The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the US court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitments.”
A vendor displays morning newspapers at his roadside stall in Islamabad on April 8, 2026.
(Photo by Aamir Qureshi/AFP via Getty Images)
A foreign policy expert told Common Dreams that Israel’s unprecedented attack on Lebanon, backed by the US, “appeared to be a direct attempt to blow up the ceasefire, and it worked.”
A Pakistani official said Wednesday that despite Israel’s unprecedented attack on Lebanon, it is still part of the ceasefire agreement that Pakistan’s prime minister helped to mediate the previous day, even as Israel and the US insist otherwise.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who played a key role in brokering the deal announced on Tuesday, said that “Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY.”
But within hours of the agreement, Israel launched what it said was its largest military operation against Lebanon yet, which killed at least 254 people and wounded 1,165 others, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The Israel Defense Forces acknowledged that the assault included attacks on many civilian areas.
Contrary to the mediators, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahudeclared that the ceasefire “does not include Lebanon.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt followed suit, confirming that the US’s position was also that “Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire,” adding that “that has been relayed to all parties involved.”
But Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Rizwan Saeed Sheikh, said on Wednesday afternoon that this was not the agreement the parties reached on Tuesday.
He told CNN anchor Becky Anderson that the deal announced by his prime minister, which included Lebanon, “could not have been more authentic” to what the two parties agreed to, and that it was still the prime minister’s understanding that Lebanon was included.
He added that this was another instance in which a ceasefire “could be disrupted” by Israel’s actions. He also noted that “there have been instances in the past where ceasefires have been disrupted,” a possible reference to Israel’s routine violations of its previous ceasefire with Lebanon and the current one with Gaza, and its repeated assassinations of Iranian negotiators as they’ve sat down for talks with the US.
The US-Iran ceasefire is less than 24 hours old, but Israel’s attack on Wednesday has already thrown it into peril. Iran responded to the attacks on Wednesday by once again closing the Strait of Hormuz after briefly reopening the critical waterway in accordance with the deal. Iran is also reportedly considering withdrawing from the ceasefire altogether and resuming strikes against Israel.
President Donald Trump has appeared eager to declare victory and move on from the war, which has further tanked his already plummeting support at home and sparked a global economic crisis.
But Janet Abou-Elias, a researcher with the Democratizing Foreign Policy program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told Common Dreams that Israel’s goals are very different.
She explained that Israel was largely sidelined from the talks that culminated in Tuesday’s ceasefire and that within Israel’s internal politics, the agreement is being portrayed as “catastrophic.”
She noted that Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition to Netanyahu’s government, has portrayed it as “the worst political failure in our history,” and accused the prime minister of failing to achieve his goals.
“What we’ve seen since looks like Israel acting to undermine a diplomatic process over which it had lost influence,” Abou-Elias said.
She said that Israel’s attack on Lebanon on Wednesday, which it has referred to as Operation Eternal Darkness, “appeared to be a direct attempt to blow up the ceasefire, and it worked.”
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, at least 1,701 civilians have been killed in US-Israeli attacks against Iran since the war was launched on February 28.
After Wednesday’s bombardment, Lebanon’s Health Ministry reported that the death toll in the country was now up to at least 1,739 since the war began on March 2.
“At this point, any durable end to this conflict, even a temporary one, requires Washington to rein in Israel,” Abou-Elias said. “Trump has the leverage to do it. What’s unclear is whether he has the political will to use it.”
The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets.
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United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk is seen at the UN Office in Geneva on September 16, 2025.
(Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the new law “raises serious concerns about due process violations, is deeply discriminatory, and must be promptly repealed.”
The top United Nationshuman rights official was among those who on Tuesday urged Israel to repeal legislation it passed the previous day legalizing the hanging of Palestinians convicted of terrorism-related killing of Israelis—a law critics contend will not apply to Israelis who commit similar crimes.
The law passed by the Israeli Knesset states that Palestinians must be hanged within 90 days if convicted of nationalistic killings in a military court. While the legislation does not allow pardons, it gives judges discretionary power when it comes to sentencing Israeli citizens convicted of similar crimes, and observers say it’s highly unlikely that any jIsraeli would ever be hanged under the law.
Experts argue the 90-day provision and lack of appellate process are violations of international humanitarian law.
“It is deeply disappointing that this bill has been approved by the Knesset,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Tuesday. “It is patently inconsistent with Israel’s international law obligations, including in relation to the right to life. It raises serious concerns about due process violations, is deeply discriminatory, and must be promptly repealed.”
“The death penalty is profoundly difficult to reconcile with human dignity, and it raises the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people,” he added. “Its application in a discriminatory manner would constitute an additional, particularly egregious violation of international law. Its application to residents of the occupied Palestinian territory would constitute a war crime.”
While proponents of the law—some of whom, like Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, celebrated its passage—say they believe it will deter Palestinians from killing Israelis, studies in the United States, the only Western democracy that actively executes people, have repeatedly shown that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime.
Palestinians and their defenders have also warned that the law could open the door to mass executions, including of anyone found to have killed Israelis during the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, for which Israel retaliated with an ongoing assault and siege that has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing.
“Trials for crimes related to October 7 are supremely important, but they must not be anchored in discrimination,” said Türk. “All victims are entitled to equal protection of the law, and all perpetrators must be held accountable without discrimination.”
Other human rights defenders also condemned the new Israeli law and called for its repeal.
“The Israeli parliament’s adoption of a racist law authorizing the hanging of Palestinian prisoners is the very definition of apartheid,” the Washington, DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement Tuesday. “Even the South African apartheid government never adopted a death penalty law so explicitly racist.”
Taking aim at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza—CAIR continued, “The Netanyahu regime is completely out of control because our nation continues to bankroll its crimes, from the de facto annexation of the West Bank to the genocide in Gaza, to the ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon, to the occupation of Syria, to the illegal war with Iran that it triggered, to the closure of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.”
“Congress is not just failing to act, it is actively advancing more military support while treating that US taxpayer funding as automatic, even as these abuses escalate,” the group added. “Every member of Congress—especially Democratic leaders of the House and Senate—must condemn these crimes, including the racist execution law, and announce their opposition to any further military funding for the Israeli apartheid regime.”
More than 9,500 Palestinians are currently locked up in Israeli prisons, including 350 children and 73 women, according to advocacy groups. Palestinian and Israeli human rights defenders say detainees face torture, starvation, and medical neglect behind bars, causing many deaths.
Former prisoners as well as Israeli staff and medical personnel say they have witnessed torture at prisons including Sde Teiman, the most infamous of Israel’s lockups, with victims ranging from children to the elderly.
Israeli physicians who worked at Sde Teiman described widespread serious injuries caused by 24-hour shackling of hands and feet that sometimes required amputations. Palestinians taken by Israeli forces recounted rapes and sexually assaults by male and female soldiers, electrocution, maulings by dogs, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, and other torture.
A former Palestine Action-linked prisoner has been arrested under the Terrorism Act by masked police in a dawn raid on her home, weeks after she was released on bail.
Footage circulated online appeared to show 21-year-old Qesser Zuhrah, who had recently been granted bail after spending 15 months on remand, being arrested at her home by police officers at around 6:30am on Monday morning.
In the footage, a masked officer informs her that she is being arrested under Section 44 of the Serious Crimes Act, the offence of encouraging others to commit crimes, and Section 1 of the Terrorism Act, encouraging others to commit an act of terrorism.
In the video footage, officers inform her that she is being taken to Hatfield police station.
Zuhrah can be heard asking why the police officers are masked.
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Counter Terrorism Policing told Middle East Eye: “Officers from Counter Terrorism Policing South East arrested a woman at her home address in Watford this morning.”
It said it was looking into why the arresting officers were wearing masks.
Zuhrah was already facing charges in connection with a raid on Israeli-owned arms factory in August 2024. She is part of a group of two dozen activists arrested over the incident known as the Filton 24.
Free the Filton 24, a campaign group supporting the defendants, reported that the arrest came after she allegedly posted an Instagram story calling for people to take “direct action”.
Met Police accused of reversing Palestine Action policy to fit previous arrests
Palestine Action, a direct-action group protesting against Israeli war crimes, was proscribed by the British government in July 2025, months after Zuhrah’s first arrest. The government is appealing a Hugh Court ruling that the ban was unlawful.
Zuhrah was one of eight Palestine Action-linked prisoners who launched a 73-day hunger strike over their detention conditions. Zuhrah went 46 days without food and was hospitalised multiple times.
Last week, she spoke at a news conference with three other hunger strikers, alleging mistreatment in prison.
Zuhrah, who was also held HMP Bronzefield, said she was left immobile on her cell floor for 22 hours with worsening chest pains, 40 days into her hunger strike.
She also reported that throughout her imprisonment, she was subjected to prolonged periods of solitary confinement and segregated from other prisoners.
Zuhrah was released in February along with 22 co-defendants after charges of aggravated burglary in connection with the break-in at the Elbit Systems plant were dropped
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Chris Hedges
Gaza is only the start. The new world order is one where the weak are obliterated by the strong, the rule of law does not exist, genocide is an instrument of control and barbarism is triumphant.
The war on Iran and the obliteration of Gaza is the beginning. Welcome to the new world order. The age of technologically-advanced barbarism. There are no rules for the strong, only for the weak. Oppose the strong, refuse to bow to its capricious demands and you are showered with missiles and bombs.
Resources – as the Venezuelans know – are openly stolen. Food, water and medicine, as in Palestine, are weaponized.
Let them eat dirt.
International bodies such as the United Nations are pantomime, useless appendages of another age. The sanctity of individual rights, open borders and international law have vanished. The most depraved leaders of human history, those who reduced cities to ashes, herded captive populations to execution sites and littered lands they occupied with mass graves and corpses, have returned with a vengeance.
They spew the same hypermasculine tropes. They spew the same vile, racist cant. They spew the same Manichaean vision of good and evil, black and white. They spew the same infantile language of total dominance and unrestrained violence.
Killer clowns. Buffoons. Idiots. They have seized the levers of power to carry out their demented and cartoonish visions as they pillage the state for their own enrichment.
“After witnessing savage mass murder over several months, with the knowledge that it was conceived, executed and endorsed by people much like themselves, who presented it as a collective necessity, legitimate and even humane, millions now feel less at home in the world,” writes Pankaj Mishra in “The World After Gaza.” “The shock of this renewed exposure to a peculiarly modern evil – the evil done in the pre-modern era only by psychopathic individuals and unleashed in the last century by rulers and citizens of rich and supposedly civilized societies – cannot be overstated. Nor can the moral abyss we confront.”
The subjugated are property, commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure. The Epstein Files expose the sickness and heartlessness of the ruling class. Liberals. Conservatives. University presidents. Academics. Philanthropists. Wall Street titans. Celebrities. Democrats. Republicans.
They wallow in unbridled hedonism. They go to private schools and have private health care. They are cocooned in self-referential bubbles by sycophants, publicists, financial advisers, lawyers, servants, chauffeurs, self-help gurus, plastic surgeons and personal trainers. They reside in heavily guarded estates and vacation on private islands. They travel on private jets and gargantuan yachts. They exist in another reality, what the Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank dubs the world of “Richistan,” a world of private Xanadus where they hold Nero-like bacchanalias, make their perfidious deals, amass their billions and cast aside those they use, including children, as if they are refuse. No one in this magic circle is accountable. No sin too depraved. They are human parasites. They disembowel the state for personal profit. They terrorize the “lesser breeds of the earth.” They shut down the last, anemic vestiges of our open society.
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life,” as George Orwell writes in “1984.” “All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”Subscribe
The law, despite a few valiant efforts by a handful of judges — who will soon be purged — is an instrument of repression. The judiciary exists to stage show trials. I spent a lot of time in the London courts covering the Dickensian farce during the persecution of Julian Assange. A Lubyanka-on-the-Thames. Our courts are no better. Our Department of Justice is a vengeance machine.
Masked, armed goons flood the streets of the United States and murder civilians, including citizens. The ruling mandarins are spending billions to convert warehouses into detention centers and concentration camps. They insist they will only house the undocumented, the criminals, but our global ruling class lies like it breathes. In their eyes, we are vermin, either blindly and unquestionably obedient or criminals. There is nothing in between.
These concentration camps, where there is no due process and people are disappeared, are designed for us. And by us, I mean the citizens of this dead republic. Yet we watch, stupefied, disbelieving, passively waiting for our own enslavement.
It won’t be long.
The savagery in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza is the same savagery we face at home. Those carrying out the genocide, mass slaughter and unprovoked war on Iran are the same people dismantling our democratic institutions.
The social anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls what is happening “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is “geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalization, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers.”
Oh, the critics say, don’t be so bleak. Don’t be so negative. Where is the hope? Really, it’s not that bad.
If you believe this you are part of the problem, an unwitting cog in the machinery of our rapidly consolidating fascist state.
Reality will eventually implode these “hopeful” fantasies, but by then it will be too late.
True despair is not a result of accurately reading reality. True despair comes from surrendering, either through fantasy or apathy, to malignant power. True despair is powerlessness. And resistance, meaningful resistance, even if it is almost certainly doomed, is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It confers agency. It is the only action that allows us to use the word hope.
The Iranians, Lebanese and Palestinians know there is no appeasing these monsters. The global elites believe nothing. They feel nothing. They cannot be trusted. They exhibit the core traits of all psychopaths — superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and the inability to feel remorse or guilt. They disdain as weakness the virtues of empathy, honesty, compassion and self-sacrifice. They live by the creed of Me. Me. Me.
“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane,” Eric Fromm writes in “The Sane Society.”
We have witnessed evil for nearly three years in Gaza. We watch it now in Lebanon and Iran. We see this evil excused or masked by political leaders and the media.
The New York Times, in a page out of Orwell, sent an internal memo telling reporters and editors to eschew the terms “refugee camps, “occupied territory,” “ethnic cleansing” and, of course, “genocide” when writing about Gaza. Those who name and denounce this evil are smeared, blacklisted and purged from university campuses and the public sphere. They are arrested and deported. A deadening silence is descending upon us, the silence of all authoritarian states. Fail to do your duty, fail to cheerlead the war on Iran, and see your broadcasting license revoked, as the Chair of the F.C.C. Brendan Carr has proposed.
We have enemies. They are not in Palestine. They are not in Lebanon. They are not in Iran. They are here. Among us. They dictate our lives. They are traitors to our ideals. They are traitors to our country. They envision a world of slaves and masters. Gaza is only the start. There are no internal mechanisms for reform. We can obstruct or surrender.
The World Council of Churches’ new campaign called “From Condemnation to Consequences” aims to pressure governments to hold Israel accountable for its deepening occupation of the West Bank and its accelerated program of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Scenes showing the widespread destruction of buildings and infrastructure caused by Israeli attacks during the Gaza genocide in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. February 22, 2026. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
Last week, the World Council of Churches (WCC), headquartered in Geneva, launched a month-long campaign titled “From Condemnation to Consequences.” The program calls its member churches—clergy leaders and lay alike—to hold Israel accountable for its failure to fulfill its obligations under international law.
George Sahhar, Advocacy Officer in the Jerusalem Liaison Office of the World Council of Churches, tells Mondoweiss. “When attention is focused on the war in the Middle East, we want the world to see that human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians continue, and that annexation is ongoing and deepened.”
During a webinar introducing the March 4-31 campaign, Kenneth Mtata, WCC Program Director for Life, Justice and Peace, said, “[O]ur campaign needs to remain focused on the commitments that the churches have made together, with all their partners, to see how we move from the statements and condemnation of the occupation and annexation of Palestine, and to try to translate this into concrete changes and transformation.”
“When attention is focused on the war in the Middle East, we want the world to see that human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians continue, and that annexation is ongoing and deepened.” George Sahhar, Advocacy Officer in the Jerusalem Liaison Office of the World Council of Churches
In short, the World Council of Churches, comprised of 356 member churches representing more than half a billion Christians around the globe, has acknowledged that offering “thoughts and prayers” alone is not enough to address Israel’s decades-long occupation and its accelerated program of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
In an alert to be published by Kairos Palestine later this month, Dalia Qumsieh, human rights lawyer and Founder/Director of Balasan Initiative for Human Rights, insists, “Churches are called to realize their power and leverage in action, with a full understanding that statements don’t stop bulldozers, condemnations don’t restore stolen lands and resources, and prayers alone cannot restore families who were uprooted from their ancestral lands. Only solid action will.”
The WCC’s appeal to members in the pews—“reach out to your elected officials [and] your faith leaders to call for renewed efforts for a just and sustainable resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict”—is an implied acknowledgement that with few exceptions heads of church around the globe have not yet responded to the pleas of Palestinian Christians to stand with them in solidarity, to act with courage and conviction in naming the realities that Palestinians are suffering: genocide, ethnic cleansing, and settler violence.
The campaign, organized by the WCC’s Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), grounds its advocacy in decisive finding by the WCC (such as this) and the International Court of Justice’s provisional findings regarding Israel’s violations of international law and the responsibility of states to prevent genocide and to punish states committing genocide.
“We call on states, churches, and international institutions,” campaign material reads, “to impose consequences for violations of international law, including targeted sanctions, divestment, and arms embargoes. Full support must be given to the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and UN mechanisms both regarding investigations of crimes on all sides as well as initiatives towards a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis.”
Campaign resources include stories from the field, factsheets, and talking points to prepare people to approach decision- and policy-makers with a clear explanation of the legal framework and explicit asks.
Peter Makari, Global Relations Minister related to the Middle East and Europe for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ, tells Mondoweiss, “After over two years of genocide, renewed U.S. and global efforts are needed to press our elected officials who support and enable Israel’s many years of denial of Palestinian rights. The consequence of a lack of accountability has resulted in devastating consequences for Palestinian lives and rights.”
In a further move, the World Council of Churches sent a delegate to the People’s Congress for The Hague Group meeting in Amsterdam last week. The group focused on widening the work of civil society to insist that states meet their legal obligation to end Israel’s program of genocide: instituting sanctions, closing ports to weapons, ending corporate and institutional complicity, and furthering accountability across courts, contracts, campuses and communities.
“The People’s Congress is an important space for civil society to collectively design its defense of international law and human dignity,” said WCC’s Mtata. “Churches and people of faith have an obligation to stand in solidarity with the suffering and resist impunity. Our presence here is part of a broader commitment to justice, accountability and, hopefully, to a just and peaceful coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis.”
While civil society organizations in the U.S. are bringing people out into the streets in the tens of thousands to resist the current administration, to advocate for Palestinians and, now, to end the U.S./Israeli war on Iran, it remains to be seen if this nascent program of the WCC moves an increasing number of church leaders and grassroots Christians to name the realities Palestinians are suffering and to make their voices heard.
Israel’s new war with Iran coupled with slaughter in the Gaza Strip — where Israeli military operations have killed more than 600 Palestinians since a “ceasefire” supposedly went into effect last October, adding to the tens of thousands killed during the previous two years — has diverted attention from events in the West Bank.
That diversion is fine with those intent on cementing Israeli control there and continuing the subjugation or displacement of the 3.8 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Among the measures that Israel has taken toward that objective during the past few months is legislation in the Knesset making it easier for Israelis to purchase land in the West Bank. More recent actions by the Israeli cabinet have furthered that same goal as well as extending Israeli control over certain holy sites and portions of the West Bank that, according to the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to administer.
At least as significant in creating facts on the ground has been violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents. That violence has surged since the beginning of the assault on the Gaza Strip, with the perpetrators evidently taking advantage of the diversion of international attention to Gaza and now Iran. The increase in violence continues. Nearly 700 Palestinians were displaced by settler violence and intimidation this past January — the highest monthly figure since the Gaza offensive began in October 2023.
The Israeli government is an accessory to the settler violence. It has done little to discourage it and more often condones it. Units of the Israeli Defense Forces have even participated in it.
The Israeli activity in the West Bank is illegal and recognized as such by most of the international community. It is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilian populations. By settling its own citizens in Palestinian territory that Israel conquered in a war that it initiated in 1967, it is especially violating Article 49 of that convention, which expressly prohibits the transfer of any of the conquering nation’s civilian population to the territory it occupies.
The United States, through multiple administrations of both parties, has paid lip service to the concept of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while doing little to impede Israeli actions in the West Bank that have been putting that solution out of reach. The Trump administration has carried these tendencies even farther. The administration’s posture is personified by the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an outspoken Christian Zionist whose statements appear designed less to uphold U.S. interests in the face of Israeli actions than to support religious rationales for Israeli expansionism.
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In a further move along this line, the embassy that Huckabee heads announced last week that it will start opening “pop-up” consular offices in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This move can be seen as part of the same policy that during Trump’s first term saw the closing of a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that had long been one of the chief channels for U.S. relations with the Palestinians.
Notwithstanding the administration’s assertion that last week’s announcement does not represent a policy change, delighted Israeli officials and dismayed Palestinians each saw it as a significant statement that bestows a U.S. stamp of legitimacy on the settlements. It would be difficult to justify the move as merely a matter of administrative convenience. The first settlement to receive one of the pop-up consulates is only eight miles from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, where consular services already are available.
The administration says it opposes Israeli annexation of the West Bank. The White House said so just last month. But that opposition refers only to formal, openly declared annexation. What matters more is the de facto annexation that has been going on for years. The administration policy toward that is not opposition but instead a condoning of it and, as the move regarding the consulates illustrates, active support for it.
Although some of the most extreme Israeli figures, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have called for formal annexation of most of the West Bank, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in no hurry to make such a declaration because it is getting almost everything it wants from the de facto annexation. A formal declaration would make it more difficult for that government to deflect international criticism of its actions in the West Bank. It would no longer be able to string along the international community with the fiction of a possible two-state solution and instead would have to defend its apartheid policies within what it says itself are its national boundaries.
With moves such as the opening of consulates in the settlements, the United States is associating itself ever more closely with the Israeli expansionist project and its inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. This is contrary to U.S interests, partly because it puts the United States ever more conspicuously on the wrong side of legality, morality, and international opinion.
Moreover, oppressed Palestinians will not forever be submissive. The long history of this conflict has already seen two intifadas, which have taken violent as well as nonviolent forms, and there could be more. The conflict will continue to be a prime source of instability in the Middle East. Besides inhibiting any U.S. effort to “pivot” away from the region, the close association of the United States with the oppressive policies of Israel makes the United States more of a target for terrorism or other reprisals.
Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security Policy.
Scenes showing the widespread destruction of buildings and infrastructure caused by Israeli attacks during the Gaza genocide in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. February 22, 2026. (Photo: Omar Ashtawy/APA Images)
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