Israel’s Mask Falls Yet Again in Vile Treatment of Sumud Flotilla Activists

International institutions have acknowledged that the Israeli army has killed tens of thousands of civilians, including children and women in its bombing campaigns against Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and others. While these institutions have so far been unable to prevent the continued killing of children, they have demonstrated an important ability to expose Israel and strip away the masks behind which it has long hidden. Israel now stands before the International Court of Justice in proceedings brought under the Genocide Convention, while its leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, face arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court. The legal process has not yet stopped the bloodshed, but it has placed Israel’s conduct before the conscience of the world.

The latest example of this exposure is what the Israeli army did to the activists of the Global Sumud Flotilla after detaining them. The activists, who had sailed towards Gaza in an effort to break the siege and deliver humanitarian aid, were shown bound by their hands and feet, while Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, appeared at the scene with the Israeli flag, as the national anthem played. Rather than conceal the degradation, he turned it into a spectacle. Many of the activists, despite their detention and humiliation, challenged both the racist minister and the army with chants of “Free Palestine”.

Israel’s conduct revealed a deeper and more dangerous truth that the occupation does not see before it equal human beings, but only subjects to be subdued, humiliated and punished. It does not distinguish between an international doctor, a humanitarian volunteer, or even the sister of a head of state. Among those detained was Dr Margaret Connolly, the sister of Irish President Catherine Connolly, who had joined the flotilla out of a sense of moral and humanitarian duty towards Gaza. Her detention showed that, in the eyes of the barbaric Israeli system, no status, nationality, age, profession or moral purpose is sufficient to protect a person who stands with Palestine. Israel acts as though humanity is reserved for itself alone, while all others may be bound, insulted, dragged, deported or displayed as trophies before extremist ministers. This is the logic of a state that has placed itself above law, above accountability and above the shared moral obligations that bind nations and peoples. One can only shudder to imagine how they treat Palestinians, who are not seen as human in Israelis’ eyes, behind closed doors, if they can subject the sister of a head of state to such humiliation while the cameras are filming. 

Even more abhorrent is the fact that the army and the pillars of the deep state in Israel were resentful and angry with Ben-Gvir, not because he stood over detained activists in a scene of open humiliation, but because he filmed and broadcast the inhumane scene to the world. This, for them, was the scandal that should have been avoided. The problem was not the abuse itself, but the exposure of the abuse.

The whole scene revealed a truth that Israel has long tried to hide, on the advice of Henry Kissinger to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during the First Intifada when images spread of Israeli soldiers crushing the bones of young Palestinians. Kissinger’s message to Israel was do what you want to the Palestinians, but not in front of the cameras.

This has been the pattern for decades. Israel killed, insulted, and plundered with impunity, and allowed its soldiers and settlers to dance over the suffering of living and dead Palestinians. All of this was tolerated, justified, or buried under the language of security. What became intolerable was not the cruelty itself, but its documentation. Killing behind the camera was treated as permissible. Filming the scene and allowing the world to witness it was treated as the true offense.

What the apartheid state practices in front of the cameras is only a small sample of the reality endured by Palestinians under the abhorrent Israeli occupation. The world’s cameras have documented crimes of a scale and brutality that belong among the darkest chapters of modern history, ironically surpassing the horrors committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. In Gaza, children have been shot, buried under rubble, starved, orphaned, and turned into targets. The horror is not only in the killing, but in the manner of it. The coldness, the clinical repetition, the humiliation, and the sense among the perpetrators that Palestinian life can be taken without consequence.

In this darkness, the courage of those who sailed with the Global Sumud Flotilla carries profound moral meaning for Palestinians and the rest of the world. Among them was Bangladeshi-descent activist Jubair Khan, who risked his life to stand with Gaza and challenge a siege that has become a wound on the conscience of humanity. For Palestinians, such acts are not forgotten. Those who leave behind safety, family, and comfort to sail toward a besieged people deliver a message that Palestinians are not alone, and that humanity has not entirely surrendered to fear, silence, or convenience. Palestine honours those who gave their all, and those who were prepared to sacrifice for the dignity of others. We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all activists Israel has illegally detained.

When we see these atrocities being committed, we ask ourselves, as Palestinians, how are we expected to coexist with a political order and military machine that does not treat us as human beings? This is a question our children often ask, and we as parents are left to wonder how this generation will grow up carrying memories and wounds that even mountains would refuse to bear. With what mentality, and in what way, will our children deal with those who killed, displaced, violated all that is sacred, shed blood, demolished homes, robbed people of freedom, usurped the land, expelled its people, and deprived four generations of the right to live in dignity?

The tragedy is not only that Palestinians have suffered. It is that their suffering has been made systematic, repeated, filmed, denied, justified, and then repeated again. Yet every image that escapes censorship, every witness who speaks, every activist who sails, and every child whose name is remembered tears another piece from the mask Israel tried so hard to maintain. Israel may still possess armies, prisons, ministers, and weapons. But before the eyes of the world, the moral truth is becoming impossible to bury.
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The writer is Ambassador of Palestine to Bangladesh