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The Interview: Sarit Michaeli
The Israeli human rights group to which the journalist there referred is the same one that I referred to earlier, which is the report they released this week, called “Welcome to Hell.” One of the international coordinators and spokespeople of that group, Sarit Michaeli, joined me yesterday for an interview, not only about this report but about just the broader political, moral and emotional sentiments that have emerged in Israel since October 7, whether those are continuing to go to an increasingly dark place or are starting to be pulled back and restrained. What do the Israelis think about these reports and the prospects of a major escalation, potentially with Iran and other groups, that the US is on the brink of escalating into? She's an Israeli human rights investigator, but she's also an Israeli citizen, and this group and she vehemently condemn October 7. They have nothing to do with Hamas and no affection for Hamas at all. But there are also Israelis who are just like a lot of Americans during the war on terror, deeply ashamed and horrified and angry by what their government is doing and the way in which is just a complete direct betrayal and contradiction of all the values they thought that country stood for. So, I sat down with her yesterday for what, I hope you will agree, was a really interesting and informative interview.
G. Greenwald: Sarit, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us today. It's great to speak with you.
Sarit Michaeli: Absolutely.
G. Greenwald: Okay, so as you probably don't need me to tell you, anytime a group issues a report documenting abuses by the Israeli government or in any way criticizes Israel, they're immediately accused of sort of being on Hamas's side, or maybe you're funded by Iran or Qatar, or you're a group of terrorizing terrorist sympathizers. Especially we hear that in the West from people not familiar with the groups they're talking about. So, before we get into the report, can you describe a little bit about B’Tselem and what its composition is, who funds it and what its background is?
Sarit Michaeli: Yes, absolutely. B’Tselem is an Israeli human rights organization. Israeli, in the sense that we're part of Israel's civil society. We've been around since 1989, looking primarily at the responsibility of Israel for the violation of the rights of Palestinians. But we are a staff that's made up of both Israelis and Palestinians, all of them united in our support for the universal, principles of human rights, but primarily a focus on doing field research, field investigations, researching and uncovering a whole range of topics and then doing advocacy both in Israel and internationally in order to change this reality. About B’Tselem’s funding, about business background. B’Tselem stems from, as I said, Israel's civil society and we are quite similar to most other Israeli human rights organizations in the sense that we're funded primarily by institutional donors, many of them are foreign and very supportive governments of democracies in the West.
We come from this background of liberal Israeli thought and politics that used to be quite prevalent when we were established in the ‘80s and today, I would say, when the dominant discourse in our society is very much a right-wing, I would even say a far-right discourse, now we're far more extreme and far more minority than we have been but we still […] base of support from thousands, tens of thousands of Israelis – we’re not a membership organization, so they don't pay membership dues – but they send us small donations. They send us supportive emails. They share our values. Those Israelis are Israeli citizens, Israeli Jews and also Palestinian citizens of Israel. So, I think over the years, we've gained the reputation of an organization that is willing to tell the truth, [which] exposes wrongs, treats or focuses primarily on our own government, on our own country's violations and overall is absolutely committed to the truth and to facts.
And I think, as I said, overall, I think certainly internationally, people trust us inside Israel. We're viewed by many Israelis as probably the same things you just described, and by other Israelis as maybe naive, but some would call us terrorists and sympathizers, some would call us self-hating Jews, and some would call us naive. But many people still understand that, within a country that claims it's a democracy, we would argue it very much against this self-identification that has to be self-critical and human rights supporting. And maybe one final thing, in recent years, B’Tselem has begun to describe the situation on the ground throughout our region, between the river and the sea, as an apartheid regime. This, yeah, I'm sure you would not be surprised, has not made us more popular within our own society but I think that in the last year or so, and certainly in the last few months, more and more Israelis are beginning to cotton on to this reality of apartheid.
G. Greenwald: Yeah. And I actually want to get to that in just a little bit, about the reasons for that position. Also, I always think it's so notable how many prominent Israelis, including former defense ministers and members of the intelligence services, including Mossad, have also expressed that view, even though here in the West it's characterized as some sort of taboo view to say that Israel is similar to apartheid state. I hate to even ask, but just kind of to quickly dispense with this, you are a human rights organization and when it came to the attack by Hamas on October 7, and a lot of the barbarism and savagery that was committed inside Israel on that day, both in the report that I want to talk to you about, but also, in general, the position of your group has been to condemn a lot of those acts as barbaric violations of human rights as well. Is that true?
Sarit Michaeli: Absolutely. We were absolutely shocked, but not just morally shocked. We also felt the need to say that this kind of treatment of human beings just erases humanity, but also that it's a crime. So, it's not just a moral abomination, it's also a criminal act. And B'Tselem was supportive of the recent announcement by the press that the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court wishes that the U.N. call for arrest warrants both against Israeli leaders, but also against Hamas leaders. I'm not quite trying to create any sort of balance in this situation. I certainly think the situation isn't balanced or symmetrical, but I think it's important to stick to human rights concepts and to this sacred notion that human beings and civilians have to be protected, that you cannot attack civilians no matter what the circumstances are. And in fact, it also, I think, informs everything we say and do. The recent reports B’Tselem issued on Palestinian prisoners and the way they're mistreated by Israel. Again, people who are absolutely hated by many Israelis but this basic concept of human rights, human dignity, is the way that you have to act, I think informs all of the work that we've been doing since really this horrific day of October 7 and to this day.
G. Greenwald: One of the things that I've noticed is – and I used to notice this back when I was talking about abuses by the U.S. government in relation to the War on Terror, torture and rendition and kidnapping and due process-free imprisonment – a lot of the things the Israeli government is now doing that people would often say, “Oh, well, these are terrorists, they sort of deserve it, they don't deserve basic considerations,” or even – certainly in the Israeli context when I talk about the work you've done in the documentation of abuse of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention camps – the argument is often made, “well, look in war anything is expected,” but also even everything is justified. My question that I always have for people who have that view is if that's your view, namely that anything and everything is justified in the name of war, when you're fighting a kind of enemy that you regard as existential or threatening, even up into including, say, anal rape, it's things we've been hearing, have been occurring in Israeli prisoners to Palestinian detainees, on what basis then do you condemn the acts of Hamas on October 7? In other words, if you take the view that, look, in war, everything and anything goes, and that's just the way it is, and we can't pretend that there are any limitations, what basis do you have, then, for condemning what Hamas did on October 7? I'm curious as to whether that question is confronted or addressed in Israeli discourse, and if so, how is that reconciled?
Sarit Michaeli: Well, I think I should also say, in the interest of describing the reality in this country fairly, that many Israelis – but not the majority probably – are absolutely mortified and shocked by the things that have emerged recently. The news, the stories, the probably quite realistic information that has emerged about the treatment of Palestinian detainees by Israeli soldiers and by the system. So, it's not 100% of the population that I should say, and, again, I think it's – we should be honest about the status of our society that many, many Israelis have, at the very least, expressed a lack of interest or carelessness about this kind of totally unacceptable treatment of prisoners. And, certainly, the human rights argument is going to be the very basic thing of regardless of what a person has done, there are certain rules that we have to adhere to. Also, when it comes to the laws of warfare, it's not just about how you treat prisoners, it's also about how you act and how you engage in warfare. You cannot do anything. The fact that your opponent or your enemy is actually violating international law does not allow you to do the same thing. Those are very basic principles that, from our perspective, have to be applied under all circumstances.
I understand that politically, in our current environment, there have been so many factors that have been at play to just push Israeli society further and further into what we have referred to as a moral abyss. And this isn't just the horrors, the trauma of October 7. It's also a coordinated and deliberate campaign, on behalf of the Israeli far-right to justify any sort of treatment of Palestinians. In our report, we show how, for example, when you talk about the treatment of Palestinian prisoners now in Israeli detention, the seeds of what we are seeing at the moment on the ground where, as we described, the Israeli prison system has been turned into a network of torture camps for Palestinians since October 7. But the backdrop, the seeds, the precursors have been in public view, since the establishment of this current government, since the appointment of Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as [head] of national security. His racist vision is an inspiration for this.
So, I think beyond the totally horrific situation we've all gone through in this country – it's been ten months now since October 7 – the war – I'm not even comparing it to the way we have ravaged, we have destroyed and killed 40,000 Gazans in our war of revenge – is incomparable to what has been going on in Israel since. But there is this basis of trauma [but] I just think it's very important to remember that there's also political campaigning. The Israeli far right is not willing to and has never been willing to grant Palestinians any sort of human rights, regardless of what they have done. And I should say, I mean, the human rights argument is very clear on the treatment of prisoners and certainly on torture and torture, which we argue and show is committed extensively in the Israeli system, is prohibited no matter what the circumstances are, under any circumstances, it's totally prohibited. So, the basic human rights position is that, regardless of what a person has done, they could be guilty of the most horrific crimes, and you're still not allowed to torture them.
But I'm setting aside this argument for a moment. I'm talking about the people we've spoken to with, for this report. So, the witnesses we interviewed are not Hamas suspects, they're not Gazans who were arrested in Israel on October 7 or who were arrested with evidence that they're Hamas people. The main – I don't want to use the word proof – but the indication of this is that Israel released them and because we spoke to them after they were released, so clearly, Israel does not associate or does not claim that they have been perpetrating these types of crimes. Yet, still they have experienced the same kind of treatment that all other Palestinians are receiving in the Israeli prison system. And in fact, we don't know, we don't have the research to prove what is going on in places that house Palestinians that Israel actually has charged or has evidence against for being involved in October 7. We have spoken to Palestinians who describe the general conditions. So, from our perspective, there are these basic moral principles, that we should all do all we can to adhere to.
Then there's the additional, realistic fact that there's also a lot of lies told in order to essentially promote a project that I think a lot of Israelis don't agree with, even Israelis – and I would like to think – who are absolutely furious and angry and wishing for revenge for October 7, don't want to live in a totalitarian fascist country that is planned for us by Itamar Ben-Gvir and his people, and with the approval, of course, of Prime Minister Netanyahu. So, I think that there is still a need to understand that it's not just about punishing people who harmed us. It's also about this massive additional political project.
And maybe just to add one other comment on this, I think it's very much also related to the fact that from the perspective of the Israeli far right, the settlements lobby, etc., the reason they are currently demanding no hostage deal, a continuation of the war indefinitely, is because they have their own agenda. They want to continue to fully occupy Gaza and resettle it. And what they're doing is – and what unfortunately many Israelis are doing – is getting carried away in this cycle, this crazy revenge, process, which is actually planned to lead us in a very, very horrific direction to a terrible outcome.
G. Greenwald: So, I want to delve into the specific revelations in your report and how you went about documenting them. I just want to stick for one more second on a kind of broader moral and ethical questions and the concept of human rights. For me, when I look at what has been the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic for quite a long time, well before October 7 – but it certainly intensified and heightened, become more visible since then – the analogy for me is the War on Terror in the United States – because that was the first sort of focus in my journalistic career for the first ten years – obviously, the 9/11 attack was also a gigantic trauma psychologically and emotionally for Americans. I was in Manhattan on that day. I'll never forget it. It was like it was yesterday. And what ended up happening was that […]
Sarit Michaeli: I was living in New York at the time.
G. Greenwald: Oh, yeah. So, you were probably my neighbor. So, you remember that well, I mean, people I think have now forgotten, people who didn't live through it especially, which every year becomes more and more people. It's kind of shocking, but it's true that that's ancient history. And that was such a trauma on Americans, on the United States, the sort of, you know, it was targeted in New York and Washington, the centers of American power. And over time, very, very quickly, the American government started doing things that I had always thought and been told were completely anathema to American values, to what the United States believes in, what the United States stands for, not just things like torture, and kidnaping people off the streets of Europe and sending them to Syria or Egypt to be tortured and interrogated, all of which was true, but just the very idea that people were being accused and treated as guilty without any trial. So, any attempt that you would kind of make to suggest that this was wrong, you would immediately be faced with the objection, look, these people are terrorists. They deserve whatever they get. And it turned out that the United States, in fact, had detained and imprisoned both in Guantanamo and CIA black sites a large number of people who ended up being innocent, guilty of nothing, and who were released, as you just said. And I think the reason why that could happen, why people weren't open to the idea that they should object to this, is because there was a kind of dehumanization of Muslims in general, like, look, these are people who are savage, these are people who really aren't human anymore. They're kind of subhuman or more barbaric than human beings are and therefore don't deserve the protections of human rights because they've been stripped of their humanity.
One of the passages in your new report says, “The reality described in the prisoner's testimony can only be explained as the outcome of the ongoing dehumanization of the Palestinian collective in Israeli public perception.” Can you talk a little bit about how that has been accomplished and what you mean by dehumanization?
