When Israel re-arrested Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank town of Dura, the detainees faced familiar treatment.
They were blindfolded, handcuffed, insulted and kept in inhumane conditions. More unusual was that each man had a number written on his forehead.
Osama Shaheen, who was released in August after 10 months of administrative detention, told Middle East Eye that soldiers brutally stormed his house, smashing his furniture.
“The soldiers turned us from names into numbers, and every detainee had a number that they used to provoke him during his arrest and call him by number instead of name. To them, we are just numbers.”
This is no longer a boring dystopia
The right-wing religious nutters in Israel read plenty of NKVD and SS manuals.
Writing a number on someone with a marker is not branding. This is stupid. The IDF is committing actual atrocities, and this article is about writing a number on people with a marker and referring to them by that number. Relatively humane prison systems refer to people by their inmate number as well.
What is even going on? This is literally a distraction from the actual terrible things regularly occurring. Think about it this way: within the horrifyingly violent context of Palestine right now, here is an entire article that could be headlined: “IDF Uses New Weapon Against Palestinians: A Marker.” See how absurd that is when there are much more important events occurring?
Who wrote this? The IDF?
They did not hold a prison number sign. Or a piece of clothing with a number. They were marked with the number on their forehead.
No prison system kidnaps people and throws them in a “jail” without process, writes a number on their forehead, tortures them for months and then releases them because they were innocent.
And I do not mean a combination of those things.
I mean not one of those things is done in a prison.
A French 7
I just call that the correct way to write a seven
As someone living in “Israel” im not shocked, I wouldn’t be suprised if they put it on their forearms next time
For fuck sake, how blatant does it need to get before people recognize this for what it is?
You mean admit to it? They can just continue refusing.
The people who are willing to recognize it for what it is have already done so.
Yea but a number drawn with a sharpie would fade away. Have you thought of some more permanent way of inking those numbers in their skins? Not to mention that the forehead is a bit too much, it might make the guards uncomfortable. Have you considered someplace a bit more discreet, like maybe the wrist? /s
I have a theory that people that willingly post links from this site are doing it on purpose to cause more harm to Palestinians. Hear me out.
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No other news source has confirmed this act.
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Everyone in the comments are assuming the literal and first dictionary definition of branding by physical mutilation.
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People that actually read the article are pointing out that the headline is misleading but they are getting drowned out by pedantic discussions of semantics when it’s clear the implication is physical mutilation.
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There is so much heinous actions committed by the IDF but here we are talking about made up news. See where this is going?
There is something fucky going on.
Everyone in the comments are assuming the literal and first dictionary definition of branding by physical mutilation.
Why do you keep insisting this childish bullshit that no-one has argued for?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brand
a(1)
: a mark made by burning with a hot iron to attest manufacture or quality or to designate ownership
(2)
: a PRINTED mark made for similar purposes
b(1)
: a mark put on criminals
No other news source has confirmed this act.
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the domiannace of the big news outlets by zionists is well documented.
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notice how Israel has killed all the journalists and the sites that do report carefully use passive lagnuage for israeli actions and active and adverserial language for anything lebanese or gazan people do. Its obvious bias and controlled jouranlism. So why would you think them not covering something is meaningful?
Maybe you are just lookinbg for confirmation of your own bias?
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… branding detainees with numbers, check… now, what’s next on Hitler’s to do list?
—Bibi, apparently
It’s not a brand. It’s a mark with a marker. And I think even Bibi and his legions of assholes might be sensitive about tattoos and actual brands.
wow what a distinction.
first of all Bibi is a Hitler apologist. the only thing he’s sensitive about is the existence of brown people.
seconds of all it’s the same exact shit. the point isn’t the method, it’s the dehumanization.
This seems vaguely familiar but I can’t quite put my forearm on it.
Isn’t this the mark of the beast that Christians are so scared of?
No, because the mark of the beast is voluntarily added and does not differ per person because it is more of a logo that represents who they follow. A MAGA hat is closer to the mark of the beast
Very good point. MAGA hats it is, then.
Christians will be excited about this and make them want to support Israel even harder. The whole point in supporting Israel is to manifest the end times prophecy from the book of revelations.
It’s not a brand. It’s marker. like they do to runners in some race. With all the other horrid shit Israel does to folks in Gaza, this is pretty small beer and hardly worth the electrons to post it.
If your local police force rounded up all the males in a minority group and wrote the processing numbers on their foreheads do you think it might make the news?
If my local police were bombing schools and hospitals, their writing numbers on people with sharpies might just get (rightfully) overlooked.
At the time maybe, but a lot of smaller details such as this will become much more important later on when the dust settles. So, why not write it up now so that ot can be revisited later on. It’s not as if there’s a limit to the number of acticles they can publish.
The optics of it still ain’t good cuh.
Yeah no one is saying that markers are inhumane, this is clearly a post drawing parallels between Nazi Germany and Nazi Israel
Writing the number on their foreheads is flat out dehumanising. How is that in any way contentious?
I wonder why this seems to be the only news org posting this. It seems we know there are camps in the West Bank where people are being detained, and we know the conditions are brutal, but the numbers on the forehead is a very specific extra detail that I can’t seem to find any other sources on numbers being written on foreheads. Did MEE just get the exclusive scoop or what?
Well if all you are used to is your establishment talking heads in narrow lockstep then it might be off putting. It isn’t at all damning for a single outlet to report on something. Especially when working somewhere so dangerous to be.
In reality this is, as others seem to be at pains to point out, a minor addition to the mountian of nightsoil. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to fabricate such a lightweight appendix if it is likely to undermine reporting on more serious events.
Calling it branding isn’t entirely out of scope with the normal usage of the word either. It just is slightly problematic in that we are now conditioned to expect the very worst of humanity from some of the IDF soldiers so our minds expect hot irons.
They couldn’t turn the world today into a movie because the writing would be called too lazy and ham-fisted to be realistic.
“The Nazi analogies were so over the top, like we get it, they’re bad people… It’s insulting to the audience.”
—average review
“You’re watching it wrong! Those are protagonists!”
—US government in the comments
I’m telling you, this Earth show jumped the shark last decade.
No, the humanity show did. We’ll be cancelled long before the Earth will.
Sure, the Earth channel has other shows but Humanity has become the main pull of the channel such that it’s pretty much the Earth show. I’ve tried watching some of the other stuff Earth puts out but it hasn’t held my attention like Humanity has, even if the last few seasons have been absolute dogwater.
It was those damn writer’s strikes!
It would take somebody with a rye wit.
Is that an intentional bread pun? I’m not getting the relation.
Mmmmm,… rye wit.
I know a Holocaust survivor who is horrified by everything going on in Israel and Palestine. I also am related to deceased Holocaust survivors and their children, grandchildren, cousins, etc. all seem to think this situation is pretty awesome. They call the Palestinians animals and other terrible things and talk like it’s all political and say that people who disagree with them are brainwashed and unintelligent.
I can’t be 100% certain, but I think I now understand what it was like to sit at a table with burgeoning Nazis and Nazi-supporters and I’m sad to say that I failed the test. Yes, I argued, I disagreed, and I walked away, but I’m starting to get why everyone didn’t just attack the Nazis in Germany. What do you do when you recognize a Nazi but that Nazi helped raise you and didn’t seem to be a Nazi until they suddenly doubled down on the wrong choice?
Institutionalized segregation always leads to conflict. Nations onlynrecover once they abandon that segregation. Israel and Palestine need to come together into one nation as unrealistic as that might seem.
Remember when they almost achieved peace nearly 30 years ago and then an ultra-Orthodox Jew murdered the Israeli prime minister? He was probably a member of Hamas.
\s
That sounds really tough man I’m sorry. Thank for you at least sharing your perspective. It’s an important perspective to keep in mind. This stuff gets oversimplified, and often, ironically, by disregarding the element of human relationships.
“It’s clobberin time”
I know, but when you’re in the actual situation then you start asking yourself “am I really gonna hit my 80-something year-old great-aunt?” And you start realizing that the cops are definitely gonna get called and then there’s gonna be even more Nazis around you and that the new ones have a trigger-happy reputation.
I love my mother dearly and would not hesitate to slap her across the face if she called any human an animal. My grandmother I might not hit but I’d certainly cuss out.
