اخبار فلسطين – وطن نيوز
فلسطين اليوم – اخبار فلسطين اليوم
W6nnews.com ==== وطن === تاريخ النشر – 2026-05-21 09:30:00
Palestinian Information Center: The scenes broadcast by Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir to the activists of the “Resilience Fleet” were not just individual behavior issued by an extremist right-wing minister. Rather, within hours, they turned into a major international issue that reopened a long file of accusations related to the mentality of abuse and humiliation within the Israeli system, whether against the Palestinians or even against foreign sympathizers. The clip, which showed activists handcuffed, with their heads on the ground, amid screams, insults, and political display from Ben Gvir, not only created a wide diplomatic crisis with several Western countries, but also revealed the extent of the contradiction between the image that Israel is trying to market of itself, and the acts of arrogance, genocide, and systematic humiliation. What is notable about the widespread anger in the international reactions is that it was not limited to traditional diplomatic statements, but rather reached the summoning of Israeli ambassadors in a number of Western capitals, including France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada, in a step that reflects the extent of the embarrassment that the video caused to Western governments in front of their public opinion. 🔴: Today, the despicable and extremist Israeli Minister of National Security, Ben Gvir, entered the prison where activists of the “Global Resilience Fleet” were detained, and he published this clip from there and wrote: “Welcome to hell… Summer camp has ended.” The topic is currently causing an international uproar and even the Foreign Minister commented on it pic.twitter.com/6epKUIV63h — MOATH | Moaz (@M0ATH) May 20, 2026 European officials described the scenes as “shocking,” “humiliating,” and “violate human dignity,” while Madrid called for urgent European sanctions to be imposed on Ben Gvir, in a continuous and successive development that reflects a shift in European political language toward the Israeli government. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez went beyond mere condemnation when he announced that his country would raise the file within the European Union institutions, indicating that the issue had transcended its humanitarian dimension to turn into a political and moral test of Europe’s relationship with Israel. What actually shocked the West? The irony is that what the activists of the “Resilience Fleet” were subjected to is not new to the Palestinians or human rights organizations, but it seemed shocking when it happened in front of public cameras, with such superiority, arrogance, provocation, and human insults, and against activists, many of whom hold Western nationalities. The official West, which for many years ignored the testimonies of Palestinian prisoners about the torture they are subjected to in Israeli occupation prisons, systematic humiliation and even rape, found itself this time facing direct images that are difficult to justify or ignore, especially since those who appeared in the video are not fighters, but rather civilian solidarity activists who came to break the siege on Gaza. This is precisely why the issue has become so serious. Because it conveyed a small picture of Israel’s mentality and what it practices against the Palestinians and the prisoners. From the Fleet of Resilience to Israeli Prisons, this attack also brought back the spotlight on what has been happening inside Israeli prisons for years, especially since the Zionist war of genocide on Gaza after October 2023. According to statements by the spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, it has been verified that Israel has killed about 90 Palestinian detainees inside Israeli prisons as a result of torture, ill-treatment, neglect, and inhuman violations. UN and human rights reports spoke of Palestinian detainees in Israeli prisons being subjected to multiple types of violations, including violent physical torture, starvation, and deliberate medical neglect, in addition to sexual violence and humiliating assaults, as well as long-term restraints, sleep deprivation, beatings, dragging, and psychological humiliation, in practices that human rights bodies said reflect a systematic pattern of inhumane treatment inside Israeli detention centers. Most importantly in the ongoing transformation, accusations related to torture, humiliation, and violations inside Israeli prisons are no longer limited to the Palestinian narrative or the reports of human rights organizations, which Israel has always faced with skepticism and denial. Rather, they have increasingly begun to find their way into the Western media itself, with deep political connotations. When influential Western newspapers and media institutions, some of which have historically been known for their closeness to the Israeli narrative or their extreme caution in approaching this issue, begin publishing testimonies and reports talking about torture, sexual violence, starvation, and humiliation inside detention centers, this reflects a gradual shift in the nature of the debate taking place within the West about Israel, and threatens to erode part of the immunity it has enjoyed for decades. Continuing tremors within the Western media. Influential journalistic institutions are approaching in an unprecedented manner the issues that Israel has succeeded in keeping for decades within the margins of the Palestinian narrative or human rights reports that are being questioned politically and in the media. The discussion about violations inside Israeli detention centers is no longer limited to the statements of humanitarian organizations or the testimonies of Palestinian prisoners. Rather, it is gradually finding its place in the widely influential Western press, with implications that go beyond the human rights dimension to the level of transformation in the political and moral mood within the West itself. In this context, reports and investigations published by prominent Western and Israeli newspapers sparked a wide debate about the nature of what is happening inside Israeli prisons, and the extent of the violence practiced against Palestinian detainees since the war on Gaza. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz spoke in an unusual tone about the transformation of a number of Palestinian prisoners into “skeletons,” and linked this sharp deterioration in their conditions to the policies led by Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir inside the prisons, including starvation, abuse, and the systematic tightening of detention conditions. In the United States, American writer and journalist Nicholas Kristof sparked a storm of controversy after publishing testimonies of former Palestinian detainees who spoke of violations described as horrific, including torture, sexual violence, and systematic humiliation. The importance of these testimonies was not only in their content, but also in the fact that they were issued through Western media platforms that had a wide influence on public opinion and decision makers. The danger of these transformations lies in the fact that they indicate a decline in the ability of the traditional Israeli narrative to contain criticism or isolate it within a narrow legal framework, as accusations related to torture, humiliation, and collective punishment have begun to gradually creep into the heart of public Western debate, after long years of political and media protection that Israel has enjoyed. This is what makes the scenes of abuse against “Freedom Flotilla” activists more than just a passing incident, but rather part of a broader picture that has begun to form globally about the nature of the system that manages war, prisons, and sieges at the same time. Ben Ghafir: an exception or a system? Some Israeli and Western circles are trying to present Ben Gvir and others as an exception and an extreme case separate from the “Israeli state,” but the recent international reactions raise a different question: Is the problem in the person of the minister, or in the political environment that brought him to the heart of power? He does not work outside the government, but rather occupies one of the most sensitive ministries, enjoys the support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his policies inside prisons, checkpoints and Jerusalem have been repeated for years without real accountability. 🚨Ben Gvir is at the heart of a political and media storm after the harassment of “Resilience Fleet” activists… and international anger exacerbates Israel’s isolation #Israël pic.twitter.com/0UTCd9XWxC — Diwan (@DiwanDaily) May 20, 2026 That is why observers believe that what appeared in the “Resilience Fleet” video is not an individual deviation, but rather an intense expression of a political and security culture based on deterrence. With humiliation and a show of strength in front of the Palestinians and those in solidarity with them. In a remarkable intervention on his page, the X platform, the specialist in Israeli affairs, Ihab Jabareen, provides a critical reading of this idea. Jabareen says: “So Ben Gvir is not like Israel… according to Sa’ar, and Smotrich is not like it… according to Lapid, and Netanyahu is not like it… according to the opposition because he is the ‘hijacker of the state’, and the settlers and the hilltop youth are not like Israel… according to Netanyahu, and the Haredim do not represent “the Israeli” because they do not enlist, and the army soldiers do not represent “Israel’s values” whenever a new scandal emerges in a church in southern Lebanon, and the opposition does not represent it… according to the government, And the judiciary is nothing like it… according to the right, and the demonstrators in Tel Aviv do not represent Israel… according to the coalition, and the international community treats “the actions of the Israeli government” as if they were something separate from Israel itself and what it represents… Ok… where can there be a “curse” like this?!). This reveals that the crisis is no longer limited to the discrepancy between political currents, but rather has turned into an open internal conflict over the definition of the entity itself. Between Ben Gvir and Smotrich on the one hand, and Netanyahu on the other, and between the military establishment, the police, the judiciary, the settler movements, and the religious right, there does not appear to be a difference in vision as much as a conflict over who has the right to define “Israel” and who actually represents it. What is striking about this fragmentation is that it does not produce natural pluralism as much as it reveals a state of continuous exchange of accusations of stripping “representative legitimacy,” where each party accuses the other of not embodying the image of the state or reflecting its essence, while everyone practices, to similar degrees, the same logic of the arrogance of power and its tools, including structural violence, institutional hegemony, and the reproduction of the discourse of superiority and control. Thus, the dispute does not appear to be mere contradictions within a political system, but rather a reflection of a single structure that has multiple centers but intersects in its behavior, where the roles between the political, security, and religious overlap in producing a single approach based on organized arrogance and conflict management as a permanent condition for existence. In this context, the question is not only who represents “Israel,” but whether this entity still maintains the possibility of a coherent definition for itself, or whether it has become closer to a system contested by centers of power from within, while in actual practice it is united around a single pattern of hegemony, which reproduces itself no matter how much the faces and discourses change. Image crisis or legitimacy crisis? The current crisis is not only related to Israel’s media image, but also affects the legitimacy of its entity before the world. The Western debate about Israel no longer takes place only within the framework of media image or political reputation management, but is also gradually moving towards redefining its position within the Western moral and political system itself. The continuous accumulation of images of the genocidal war on Gaza, with its accompanying continuous mass killing of civilians, widespread targeting of children in full view of the world, violations inside prisons, and scenes of public humiliation, in addition to the arrogance of settlers in the West Bank and their attacks on Palestinians and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, contributed to moving Israel from the position of “an ally whose criticism is carefully managed” to “a file that imposes mounting moral pressure within the Western structure,” which places governments The West is facing a growing contradiction between the discourse of human rights and the practice of political alliance. This transformation was not an emergency moment. Rather, it revived the memory of an association burdened with shocking images that preceded the war of genocide, but they returned to gain a more significant presence in public consciousness, such as the attack on the coffin of journalist Sherine Abu Aqla at her funeral, the burning of the Dawabsha family, the storming of the Ibrahimi Mosque, and the Sabra and Shatila massacres, in addition to documented scenes of Israeli soldiers and settlers dealing with killing and humiliation as a normal practice or even a topic. To brag. With the accumulation of these facts, current events no longer seem separate, but rather an extension of an extended structure of behavior that reproduces itself in different forms over time. #Photos | With direct participation from Ben Gvir, the occupation forces abused the activists of the “Resilience Fleet” after kidnapping them from their ships heading towards Gaza. pic.twitter.com/WclJZnjCmT — Palestinian Information Center (@PalinfoAr) May 20, 2026 This transformation did not come only from within official institutions or traditional media, but was deepened by a broad and unprecedented Western popular movement that took to the streets, universities, and alternative media platforms, and re-placed the Palestinian issue at the heart of public debate, outside the monopoly of the traditional official narrative. This movement is no longer marginal, but has become a pressing factor on political and media elites, gradually pushing them to reconsider the limits of unconditional support for Israel, especially with the widening gap between what is visually presented in field practices and traditional Western political discourse. In this context, bolder media voices emerged within the United States in criticizing Israel, including American journalist Tucker Carlson, who described it as “the most violent country in the world,” and accused it of fueling chaos in the Middle East, in addition to criticizing the continued unconditional American support for it. These transformations, in the media as well as in the street, reflect a gradual transition from the stage of “critical conservatism” to the stage of “public accountability,” deepening the pressure on Western governments that find themselves facing a public opinion that no longer accepts the contradiction between declared values and actual policies. Thus, Israel is no longer just a political issue in Western foreign policy, but rather has begun to turn, in some contexts, into a moral burden that confuses the internal balance of Western discourse itself, and reveals the limits of the ability of political and media systems to manage a growing contradiction between strategic commitments on the one hand, and the growing demands for justice and human rights on the other. A revealing moment. The importance of the “Resilience Flotilla” incident lies in the fact that it did not add a new incident as much as it retransferred an old image to the level of direct vision. Thus, the suffering of the Palestinians moved from the circle of human rights reports and documented testimonies to the public international scene that does not need means of explanation or interpretation. The image that sparked a wave of anger in Europe is nothing but an intense and limited reflection of what the Palestinians describe as an extended reality that is repeated daily inside prisons, checkpoints and under siege, for decades of unequal conflict. In this context, the current crisis does not appear to be a separate event or a passing diplomatic dispute, but rather a new episode in a visual and moral accumulation that now links separate incidents within one broader narrative. Each incident of this type is no longer read on its own, but rather as part of a recurring pattern that reproduces images of humiliation and excessive force, thus entrenching in international consciousness a sense that what is happening are not circumstantial exceptions, but rather a structure of behavior that is repeated in different forms over time. This is why this moment seems to be a particularly revealing moment, not because it reveals something new, but because it removes the layers of justification and interpretation that separated the discourse from reality. With the expansion of the circulation of images and scenes, and the accumulation of international reactions, the mentality of force and subjugation has become more exposed to global public opinion, to the point that it can no longer be confined within the discourse of “democracy” and “security,” after the scenes of humiliation themselves have become a fixed part of the narrative that pursues Israel in the international space.
