WASHINGTON, Jul 01 (APP): The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a prominent Washington-based Muslim advocacy organization, Monday called on the Biden administration to take action following new reports of Israeli torture of Palestinian detainees.
Upon his release on Monday– without any charges — from Israeli detention, Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital Director Muhammad Abu Salmiya reported that Palestinians in Israel’s prisons were facing daily abuse.
“There was almost daily torture. Cells are broken into and prisoners are beaten. Several inmates died in interrogation centers and were deprived of food and medicine,” Abu Salmiya said.
He said even medical staff were responsible for abuse and neglect, with some detainees’ limbs amputated due to poor medical care. He said detainees survived on nothing but bread for two months.
A lawyer, who visited one Israeli detention center, said the “situation there is more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo”.
CNN and the New York Times have reported on rape and sexual assault at the same detention center.
Last month, CAIR said it made a similar demand after growing reports of the systematic torture of Palestinian detainees by Israeli forces after a Palestinian journalist from Gaza described the torture, abuse and rape that he and other detainees were subjected to at an Israeli detention camp.
“The Biden administration must take concrete action to end the widely-reported torture and abuse of thousands of Palestinian detainees being held by the genocidal Israeli government. These ongoing human rights abuses are made possible by the Biden administration’s complicity in the Israeli genocide and by decades of systematic dehumanization of the Palestinian people. Both the torture and the dehumanization must end.”
On Sunday, CAIR condemned both newly-revealed Israeli use of Palestinian civilians as “human shields” and recorded remarks by a top Israeli official calling for the summary execution or starvation of Palestinian prisoners.
In video aired exclusively by Al-Jazeera, Palestinian prisoners were shown being forced to search homes for bombs or tunnels, and while Israeli troops sought protection from being fired on, they forced handcuffed and nearly-naked prisoners to search buildings.
Over the weekend, CAIR’s New York chapter said a false claim by the far-right Israeli government’s new consul general that New York is under threat of “Muslim occupation” would likely lead to more hate crimes targeting ordinary Muslims and Arab-Americans.
Last week, CAIR condemned Israel’s blocking of Palestinian mothers from accompanying their children who left Gaza to Egypt for cancer treatment.
CAIR also slammed the Biden administration’s reported planned release of 500-lb bombs that were part of a weapons shipment to Israel put on hold in April.
Earlier, CAIR condemned a genocidal threat by the Israeli government to return Lebanon to the “stone age” as reports from Gaza reveal that doctors have been forced to perform amputations without anesthesia on victims of Israel’s bombing campaign.
A new report has exposed an Israeli war crime last year in which 11 Palestinian men in Gaza were executed in front of women and children. Survivors said the Israeli soldiers left a “bloodbath” in their wake. At that time, CAIR called for a United Nations investigation of the “summary executions” of unarmed Palestinian men in front of their family members.
Another report by the Norwegian Refugee Council has confirmed that 83% of Palestinians displaced from Rafah by Israel have no access to food, 52% have no access to dignified shelter, and 57% have no access to safe water.
Also on Sunday, CAIR said a new report by Scripps News and Bellingcat showed that Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza was seeking to erase Palestinian culture.
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