THE Guardian newspaper reported yesterday that officials from Gaza’s health ministry had told it that at least 135 mutilated bodies of Palestinians returned by Israel to them had been held at the notorious Sde Teiman military base in the Negev desert.
This military camp hit the headlines last year when photos and testimonies were published showing Palestinian detainees held in cages, blindfolded and handcuffed, shackled to their beds and forced to wear nappies.
The response of the Israeli authorities to the world outrage caused by these revelations was to launch a criminal investigation into the deaths of 36 Palestinians held at Sde Teiman, an ‘investigation’ that is still continuing while the torture and murder of prisoners in the base and other Israeli prisons carries on and increases.
The director general of the Gaza health ministry, Dr Munir al-Bursh, and a spokesperson for the Nassar Hospital, where the bodies are being examined, said that document tags inside the body bags ‘clearly indicate the remains were held at Sde Teiman’.
Doctors at the Nassar hospital told the Guardian that their official examinations ‘clearly indicate that Israel carried out acts of murder, summary executions and systematic torture against many Palestinians.’
The documented findings included ‘clear signs of direct gunfire at point-blank range and bodies crushed beneath Israeli tank tracks.’
The body of 34 year-old Mahmoud Ismail Shabat, from northern Gaza, had marks of hanging around his neck and legs crushed by tank tracks.
According to his brother, who identified his body: ‘What hurt us the most was that his hands were tied, and his body covered with clear signs of torture.’
Shabat’s mother said: ‘Where is the world? All our hostages returned tortured and broken.’
Naji Abbas, a director at the Physicians for Human Rights, told the Guardian that the unprecedented number of Palestinians dying in Israeli prisons and camps along with verified evidence of deaths from torture and medical neglect along with the findings from returned bodies ‘leave no doubt, an independent international investigation is urgently needed to hold those responsible in Israel accountable.’
One thing is certain, the Labour government of Keir Starmer is not going to hold the Zionist regime and its torturers responsible.
While these crimes against humanity are being exposed to the world, Starmer and his loyal ministers are carrying out a campaign of weaponising the lying claim that anti-Semitism is rife in the NHS and that all signs of support for Palestine and opposition to Zionist genocide will be crushed.
Starmer’s ‘anti-Semitism review’, led by Labour peer and avid Israeli supporter Lord Mann, will be extended from the NHS across the entire country according to reports. Any worker showing signs or expressing support for Palestinians could face being sacked under Starmer’s proposed review.
Already, Starmer’s government has engaged in a campaign against those held in jail accused of taking action against Israeli arms manufacturers in the UK.
On Monday, dozens of activists being held on remand for alleged offences relating to Palestine Action activities are threatening to start a hunger strike over their prison conditions which include restrictions on their personal mail and phone calls designed to censor their contact with their supporters and advisors.
Of the 33 prisoners who are due to take part in the hunger strike a number have been held on remand for over a year awaiting trial.
The hunger strike is due to start on November 2nd, the anniversary date of the infamous 1917 Balfour Declaration which handed Palestine over to the Zionist Federation, directly leading to millions of Palestinians being driven off their land, and today bearing responsibility for the genocidal murder of over 68,000 Palestinians in Gaza by the Zionist state that has the full support of Starmer’s government.
Now is the time for the working class to exert its power and end this complicity with genocide by demanding the TUC call a general strike to bring down the Starmer government, replacing it with a workers government.
This will immediately give all the support required for the victory of the Palestinian revolution and the establishment of the independent State of Palestine. This is the way forward.