Sexual Assaults as (Public) Spectacle
Sexual assaults constitute one of the most prominent features of violations against Palestinian youth, compared to elderly individuals who are subjected to such abuse less frequently. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights revealed, through a series of testimonies, a systematic and organized practice of sexual torture, including: rape, forced stripping, forced filming, and sexual assault involving instruments and dogs24. Social media platforms were flooded with numerous images taken and published by soldiers depicting cases of forced collective stripping of Palestinians upon arrest25, such as the widely circulated image of civilians detained in a Gaza school and photographed naked26. In comparison to the first image, in which soldiers did not force detainees to remove their underwear, less than a month after the beginning of the genocide, a video circulated showing Israeli soldiers after they had completely stripped a group of workers near Gaza and assaulted them by dragging, beating, and spitting on them27. This type of filming recalls images of detention camps, where the Palestinian body is transformed into an exposed body stripped of individuality and privacy. Although these images carry significant legal value as evidence against the violations committed by Israeli soldiers, most perpetrators showed no hesitation in publishing them, a consequence of decades of impunity and absence of accountability and punishment28.
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