If you were horrified by October 7, but are not more horrified by what Israel has been doing to Palestinians for more than half a century in its prisons, then you are either in a state of deep ignorance – or in deep denial.
If you cannot see the causal connection between the barbaric abuses of Palestinians generation after generation and the crimes committed on October 7, then you have no understanding of human nature. You have no inner awareness of how you would act had you, your father and your grandfather been tortured in an Israeli prison, a trauma passed down through families little differently than hair color or build.
The scenes filmed at Megiddo. The images of emaciated men, broken from their beatings in prison. The disappearance of hundreds of doctors into Israel’s torture chambers. The video of a Palestinian man being raped by Israeli prison guards. The findings by Israeli and international organizations that this is going on systematically. The horrors are staring us in the face. But too many of us are looking away, reverting to the magical thinking of our babyhoods in which, when we cover our eyes, the world disappears.
The horrors of Israel’s prison system aren’t new. They have been going on for decades. What’s new is that Israel has intensified the abuse. It now relishes atrocities it previously hid away like a dark secret.
Israel is lost. It is deep in a black, genocidal hole. The question is, are you going to allow yourself to be sucked into the same void? Are you going to keep covering your eyes? Does the torture end just because you prefer not to see it?
