Thursday, December 09, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.
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Ofer Prison, north of Jerusalem, December 9 - Human Rights groups accused Israel's military today of inhumane treatment of Palestinian detainees, including such unnecessarily harsh measures as simply presuming that prisoners who talk, dress, act, and have anatomy in the manner of males are in fact males.
Amnesty International, Btselem, and Human Rights Watch, among others, issued a joint statement Thursday charging that the Israel Defense Forces, in violation of all things sacred and acceptable, assume the gender of every single inmate or detainee, a policy that underscores the cruel nature of the occupation and the urgent need to end it.
"This sadistic practice continues despite robust public awareness of the need to accommodate non-cisgender people," the statement read, in part. "We acknowledge our disappointment, but not our surprise, given Israel's established reputation for mistreatment of Palestinians." The document also cited the IDF's practice of not allowing Palestinians to stab Israelis, and even of applying lethal force in thwarting Palestinian attempts to kill Jews.
Progressive organizations followed up the letter with an online drive to get activists outside Israel to convey to their governments the importance of addressing the crucial issue of misgendered Israeli prisons, perhaps conditioning military aid to the beleaguered Jewish State on the implementation of a robust, independently-verified gender inclusiveness program in all military detainment facilities.
Palestinian activists embraced the statement and its overseas ripples. "Uh, yeah, that's uh, terrible," objected a spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoner Affairs. "Truly horrifying. Can't believe they'd be so, uh, evil. I can't imagine the horror our brave martyrs-to-be face day in, day out in those prisons. Sounds like pure torture. Somebody ought to do something."
A Hamas representative told reporters the movement would probably wait to declare another Day of Rage over the issue. "It's just that our schedule is so full of Days of Rage in the next few months," he lamented. "We wouldn't want to dilute the power of each Day of Rage, and its impact on the occupier, by holding another one in so short a time. An issue of this, er, importance deserves its own discrete... treatment."
The spokesman then requested more specifics about the phenomenon of "misgendering," and, upon receiving explanation, wondered aloud why the supposedly cruel IDF didn't do what he and his movement would have done, namely to hurl the identifying-as-female detainee from the nearest ten-story rooftop. "Something doesn't add up here," he cautioned.
