Human rights defenders on Tuesday renewed calls for the U.S. government to end American complicity in Israel’s “horrific war crimes” after the publication of videos purportedly recorded and shared by Israeli soldiers showing the torture and dehumanization of Palestinian men, some of them naked, in the illegally occupied West Bank.
U.S.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) were among the groups that condemned the videos, which show armed and uniformed Israeli troops and possibly settlers beating, kicking, stomping, and dragging bound, blindfolded, and naked Palestinian men, forcing them to shout “long live Israel,” and draping them in the Israeli flag.
“The footage of Israeli soldiers torturing Palestinian men in the West Bank is horrific,” JVP said on social media. “The Israeli military has brutally abused Palestinian prisoners for decades. As the Israeli military wages a genocidal war in Gaza, its soldiers are no longer hiding this abuse from the public.”