According to researchers and civil society organizations, the brutal torture of Palestinian prisoners—including rape and sexual violence—is not a new phenomenon, having been documented for decades. However, since October 2023, detention conditions and the level of brutality in Israeli prisons have significantly worsened.
The striking feature of this period is the emergence of a disturbing element: Israeli guards carrying out torture while laughing and showing enjoyment. Numerous victim testimonies mention the laughter of perpetrators. This raises the question: under what societal conditions is violence seen as entertainment?
Beyond prisons, dozens of Israeli soldiers have filmed and distributed videos of themselves destroying homes, killing civilians, and looting victims' property with glee. Some videos gathered by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit show a French-Israeli soldier bragging about torturing prisoners and believing viewers "would laugh" at the footage. The positive reactions from Israeli society and mainstream media to these acts indicate that violence is no longer a necessary evil but something celebrated.
The phenomenon of "shooting and crying"—a propaganda narrative from Prime Minister Golda Meir's era, suggesting Israelis were forced to kill but felt sorrow—has disappeared. Analysts say that after the Second Intifada and especially the 2007 Gaza blockade, Israeli society gradually stopped pitying the psychological distress of its soldiers, instead glorifying their killing efficiency.
In 2004, demographer Arnon Soffer, a proponent of the blockade policy, declared: "We will have to kill, kill and kill. All day, every day." Though he worried about psychological effects on soldiers, the direction was set: society increasingly cared less about the consequences of violence on itself and focused solely on eliminating Palestinians.
Scholars argue that gleeful violence is not an ethnic or religious trait but the predictable outcome of a settler-colonial state, where victims are radically dehumanized. Palestinians are treated as "garbage," while Israelis are "hyperhumanized" as entities beyond the constraints of law and morality. Each successful act of violence—gaining more land without punishment—is viewed as a reward, fostering a psychology of enjoyment.
According to the author, a society that applauds such barbarism cannot reform itself. The only solution is to remove the rewards Israel gains from violence: weapons revenues, economic ties with the EU, and Western political support. Comprehensive economic isolation is needed to force Israeli society onto a new path where genocide is taboo rather than celebrated. If the world does not act, shame will belong to the states complicit in this violence.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
