When Israel re-arrested Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank town of Dura, the detainees faced familiar treatment.
They were blindfolded, handcuffed, insulted and kept in inhumane conditions. More unusual was that each man had a number written on his forehead.
Osama Shaheen, who was released in August after 10 months of administrative detention, told Middle East Eye that soldiers brutally stormed his house, smashing his furniture.
“The soldiers turned us from names into numbers, and every detainee had a number that they used to provoke him during his arrest and call him by number instead of name. To them, we are just numbers.”
This comment conflates jail and prison as if they’re the same thing, and they are not. It’s an important distinction.
I know you were making a joke, but it is foolish to believe for one second that this wasn’t done intentionally as a form of dehumanization and public humiliation.
Yes, it really matters. Both things matter. Do we have to make “Israel war crime” tier lists before determining if we should care about something? It’s all awful. And it’s all inter-related anyway. This is the type of dehumanization that allows IDF soldiers to murder so many women and children without remorse.
And I could see someone who does not have an understanding of history, and the historical context around this level of dehumanization, could not fully grasp the symbolism here.
But yes, this is something that we 100% should be talking and worrying about.
Jails and prisons are for the sake of the argument practically the same thing in that both meet all of these criteria. I am not saying that we shouldn’t pay attention to this or catalog it and prosecute the perpetrators, I’m simply saying that the argument of the previous poster was extremely flawed.