Nesrine Malik’s incisive piece (In Israel’s prisons, torture and death have become a norm that it barely tries to hide, 13 July) lays bare the fact that all the illegal detentions, deaths, torture and sexual abuse in Israeli prisons are not aberrations from a legal system, but deeply embedded in the practices and intentions of the state. She mentions the psychological dimension to deliberately eroding the capacity of Palestinian civil society to exert any kind of autonomy.
As mental health practitioners, working alongside our Palestinian co-professionals, we have long recorded the ways in which practices of degradation, humiliation and debilitation constitute attacks on minds and relationships as well as bodies. They are designed to undermine the fabric of family, social and community life, and to destroy those systems of connectivity upon which all citizens, especially children, are dependent if they are to flourish. The carceral system is part of a set of state interventions which not only detain, murder, maim and mutilate Palestinian bodies, but also conduct an unrelenting assault on their growth, dignity, personhood and identity.
Malik is right to highlight the extent to which western governments and most mainstream media act as if it is the “extremist fringes” rather than the state itself that should be criticised or sanctioned. In doing so, they fail to heed the pronouncements from Israeli government representatives themselves and do a profound disservice to the victims of this violent, racist and unrestrained regime.
Gwyn Daniel
UK and International Palestine Mental Health Networks
Thank you once again for Nesrine Malik’s continued efforts to draw attention to the brutality that has been inflicted on the Palestinian people. While Andy Burnham has acknowledged that the British government’s response to the Israel bombardment and mass killing in Gaza “didn’t get it right”, there have since been innumerable atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, even after a ceasefire was declared.
Sanctions on illegal settlers who attack and kill Palestinians will not be enough – the Israeli government provides them with immunity, leaves the people of Gaza camped amid devastation and detains thousands of Palestinians without trial in reportedly dreadful conditions. The UK and Europe need to act far more decisively regarding trade with Israel and take meaningful steps to ending the illegal occupation of Palestine.
Phil Gaunt
Dumbarton
