The horrors of Israel's prisons are further proof of Israel's state of depravity

As Gaza takes a breath while turning to face unfathomable loss, destruction and uncertainty, the collective West, led by the US, is in the throes of resuscitating Israel.

The state has largely been on life support as it continues its genocide in Gaza by other means, while carving up more and more land in the West Bank and defying every known international law or convention with complete impunity.

The so-called "ceasefire" provides cover, but the sheer horror of what has unfolded - and continues still - is overwhelming. As Israelis are scandalised by delays in the handover of up to a dozen bodies after their government denied approval for heavy equipment to enter Gaza, Palestinians hold mass burials of unidentified bodies returned by Israel. 

As a means of fomenting further terror, the bodies bore clear signs of torture and summary execution, with fingers cut off, organs removed and hands tied behind their backs, while Israel continues to prohibit the entry of DNA testing kits that might enable families to identify their mutilated kin.

In the Martinican poet and politician Aime Cesaire's 1950 masterpiece, Discourse on Colonialism, he summons, of all people, the French philosopher Descartes, who affirms "the charter of universalism, that 'reason... is found whole and entire in each man'", meaning, in this context, that humans cannot be divided by race or ethnicity.

What we continue to witness in Gaza is an attempt to tamper with the very core of the human condition - to unhinge its universality through mass propaganda and the mutilation of thought processes that, under different conditions, would immediately grasp the sheer perversity and injustice of what is being presented.

Systematic torture

The extreme asymmetry and disproportionality of Israel's responses to Palestinian resistance, and to Palestinian life itself, have long functioned not only to inflict as much terror and destruction as possible, but also to serve as fundamental tools for normalising the systematic violation of every known legal convention with total impunity.

The scale of Israel's live-streamed genocide has rendered Israeli practices of kidnapping civilians and holding them indefinitely almost invisible

The use of overwhelming force is meant to justify itself and portray the enemy as a "terrorist" that must be met with every available weapon, even though this "enemy" is almost entirely civilian, with children in particular being prime, deliberate targets.

The actual Palestinian fighters - up to 30,000 in guerrilla units armed with light weapons, rockets and repurposed unexploded ordnance - face a nuclear power with a standing army in the hundreds of thousands, plus an air force and a navy, and the backing of the US, the UK and other allies.

Likewise, the asymmetric nature of this "war" makes the contrast between the two sides in their treatment of prisoners all the more stark.

Despite the display of moral superiority by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Israeli parliament - built on the ruins of Khirbet al-Umma - it bears remembering that the hostages repatriated to Israel were all male Israeli soldiers, considered by the Palestinian resistance to be prisoners of war.

Even in the face of Israel's relentless and unprecedented bombing campaign and the complete blockade on food, medicine and humanitarian aid, these prisoners of war appeared to have been treated as well as they possibly could under the circumstances.

By contrast, civilian Palestinian hostages returning to Gaza and the West Bank, or forced into exile - as has always been the case in these exchanges - appear to have been to places that cannot truly be described in words. When asked by Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu-Azoum what it was like, one returnee simply said: "Inferno."

Palestinian returnees recount the names of those who did not make it out alive, tortured to death or left to die from lack of medical attention. They share how their interrogators described the ways their wives, children and parents had been killed, only to find out upon release that they were still alive. Others, meanwhile, discover that their families had all been killed, and there was nothing left to return to.

While names like Tazmamart, Tadmor and Abu Ghraib resonate with memories of torture, disappearance and unbridled state repression in Morocco, Syria and Iraq, respectively, the Israeli carceral system has yet to be fully revealed and documented. When that happens - with further accounts from places like Sde Teiman, Ketziot and the Moscobiyya - bottomless depths of cruelty, torture and methodical psychological warfare will take their place among the annals of human depravity.

Although the initially stated goal of al-Aqsa Flood operation was to attack Israeli bases and take hostages for an exchange deal, the scale of Israel's response over these past two years of live-streamed genocide and utter devastation has rendered Israeli practices of kidnapping civilians and holding them indefinitely without trial almost invisible, even though it is a systematic, daily practice, always poised in preparation for a possible exchange with the Palestinian resistance.

Complete control

The Israeli carceral system, with its military courts, detention without charge, lack of any recourse to appeal, and conditions that include routine torture - both physical and psychological - systematic sexual abuse, complete lack of medical care, insufficient nutrition and all other manner of illegal practice, is absolutely central to Israel's colonisation of Palestine and is utterly shocking in its normalisation.

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Along with land confiscation and settlement ("creating facts on the ground"), the carceral and legal regime under which more and more areas of Palestinian life have become "illegal" has taken on an ever more outsized role in Israeli terror campaigns against Palestinian life.

As Harvard scholar Sara Roy recounts in a message from a friend in Gaza: "If they could take the air from us, they would."

Like accountants of misery and death, the Israeli state system always has its eye on the bottom line. As it abducts doctors, nurses and other medical personnel, and refuses visiting health workers entry visas, while preventing the entry of medicine and medical equipment, more Palestinians become incapacitated or die.

Similarly, these Israeli arbiters of life and death have, since imposing the blockade of Gaza in 2007, measured the caloric intake of Palestinians - setting the limit just beyond malnutrition so as to prepare for a famine to come, should an opportunity present itself.

Such calculations are made in every instance of the complete control of Palestinian life and movement.

Global complicity

None of Israel's mechanisms of domination could function without the participation of hundreds of thousands of Israelis from every stratum of society.

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This includes conscripts in the occupation forces, health professionals, academics, media workers and heavy-machine operators contracted to destroy neighbourhoods, institutions, roads and infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank.

The momentum seen in the Italian general strike, mass arrests in the UK, and the charged New York mayoral race must be built upon to forge new alliances

The same holds true for Israel's external partners - first and foremost the US, but also the UK, Germany, the UAE and several others - whose complicity sustains its genocidal machinery.

The momentum seen in the Italian general strike, mass arrests in the UK in solidarity with Palestine Action, and the charged New York mayoral race must be built upon methodically: to forge new alliances, create more organisations and work individually or collectively to confront complicit institutions, disrupt business as usual, and find every possible means of bringing war criminals to justice.

The alternative, needless to say, would be a world in which governments test the waters by acting with ever greater impunity, signalling a complete breakdown of even the most minimal guardrails that citizenship anywhere might still offer.

The continuing resuscitation and rehabilitation of Israeli society, as the tip of the US imperial spear, will only further suffocate us. Everything must be done to keep the oxygen of freedom circulating.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.