Skip to content

Part Two:  Ethics Deficit of Israeli Medicine, Accessory to Torture. Supporting Genocidaire and Zionism.

By Abdusamaad (Sam) Karani

Karani (2024) stated, “Throughout history, there has been a disturbing tradition in medicine where torture is used as a tool of oppression. In modern times, torture has become more scientific, often involving the assistance or complicity of psychologists and medical professionals. According to Giovanni (2001), the original function of torture will clarify why doctors have been involved in torture since the first century (as agents of an evil regime). Unfortunately, the history of torture teaches the inventive capacity for inflicting pain and terror on our fellow humans, and similar patterns of violence and humiliation resurface with sinister regularity. Frequently, even modern states proclaiming themselves as bastions of democracy are guilty, and the Americans (U.S.) are a prime example (Guantanamo Bay, Iraq in 2003, and its history of foreign interference). It highlights the troubling history of medicine’s involvement in torture and the collaboration with oppressive regimes.”

Lessons well learned indeed from the Nazi regime, which was arguably the most brutal in the history of inhumanity, and currently equivalently in evil by Israel as a genocidaire of Palestinians. Israeli Zionism makes the Apartheid regime of South Africa look like “schoolboy scouts.”

Moreover, as a common historical occurrence, many evil agents of the state who collaborate as accessories of torture are never prosecuted and too frequently, justice for the victims is denied. Ironically and contradicting “best medical practice,” these are health professionals and medical physicians entrusted with relieving patients’ pain, treating disease, and doing no harm.

The sad reality is that evil state agents refuse to learn from past mistakes and continue to inflict torture on innocent people. They show no moral conflict in their professional ethics and mindset. Instead of hiding, they boldly support evil regimes. This results in repeated patterns of violence and humiliation.

Adding to the list of infamous culprits, criminals, and pariah nation-states is Israel, with its political entity and proxy Zionism and its medical profession supporting torture, abuse, and deaths in the detention of Palestinians. These medical Israeli agents are not merely complicit but actual accessories to genocide. Moreover, these evil agents of death are knowingly assisting killing on a holocaust scale in full world view and collaboration of many nations’ states (many developed western “liberal” democracies and morally deficient Arab Muslim states.) The Western media demonstrates a great colonial penchant and culpability for perpetuating this evil!

It is an indelible shame that one is witness to possibly billions of people claiming to be civilized and decent who are willing to support criminal acts of genocide against the Palestinian people and now the Lebanese, too. Moreover, there can be no claim that “we did not know” as these acts of criminality and killing are in “full view” daily and not under cover of darkness.

This raises the question of what has and is happening to the human spirit to protect the humanity of innocents (especially women and children, as the majority were killed). The apparent lesson is that death and destruction are permissible as a racist act (these are not “whites” being killed) and mainly Muslim Islamophobia (which is actively supported by many Muslims and their nation-states, too.)

Israeli Medicine and Torture

In 2013, Devi questioned the involvement of Israeli doctors in the suspected torture of a young Palestinian detainee who died in custody. The death of a “…Palestinian prisoner in disputed circumstances in an Israeli prison…” reignited the longstanding controversy of physician complicity in torture. Although the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) denied medical professionals’ involvement in torture or abuse, human-rights campaigners say Palestinian prisoners have long suffered from beatings, sleep deprivation, prolonged and painful handcuffing, humiliation, and medical neglect. This is considered torture under international standards.

The fundamental question arises when a medical physician is asked or required to examine a prisoner or detainee patient: The critical ethical concern is what precisely the doctors are assessing and the clinical scenario involved. For example, are they evaluating whether a person can withstand torture to inform of further possible abuse? Whenever a professional agrees to examine a prisoner or detainee, that individual implicitly becomes a “patient client” of the doctor or professional. This “patient” status cannot be dismissed regardless of elaborate language or political rhetoric.

Kathuria (2024) elaborated on this “collusion” by stating that “Israeli doctors share prisoners’ medical information with interrogators to ‘greenlight’ torture, teach interrogators how to inflict pain without leaving physical marks, and even actively engage in acts of torture themselves.” Moreover, A Palestinian, Walid Daqqa, wrote in 2010 from prison, “what happens in [Israeli prisons] is not just detention and isolation of a people considered to be a security risk for Israel, but is part of a general, scientifically planned and calculated scheme to remould Palestinian consciousness.” The latter is psychological torture to create altered consciousness and perception of reality.

A recently freed Director of Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital indicated that both an Israeli doctor and nurse (functioning as a team) participated in the torture of Palestinians held in Sde Teiman, which is a controversial detention centre in the Negev desert (TRTWorld, 2024). Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the released director of Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital, testimony was published in the renowned British Medical Journal (BMJ) on July 10. In June 2024, several media outlets, including The New York Times, published harrowing accounts of the abuse of detainees at the military-run detention centre following October 7, 2023.

All the above is consistent with how the two medical physicians in Apartheid South behaved as complicit and actual accessories of Steve Biko’s death in detention and were regarded as murder by the Apartheid regime. It was because, as medical physicians, they set aside their medical ethics with a moral deficit and willingly served the regime’s interest. Their culpability was established in court (Karani, 2024).

Summary:

In the above brief analysis, there is mounting evidence, as acknowledged by reputable sources, that Israeli medical teams are complicit in and function as actual accessories to the medical torture and deaths of Palestinian detainees under their care. In this context, the ideology of Zionism takes precedence over the ethical medical obligation to provide proper care, hence a moral deficit, as healers of pain and suffering to their patients. With time, more evidence of this complicity and accessories by willing medical agents of evil will be addressed and recorded in history.

Inevitably, the Israeli Zionist regime will dismiss this mounting evidence as fictitious. The moral choice for readers of this essay is whether to trust a regime with a history of lies, political misrepresentation, and an acknowledged genocide or to believe the findings of respected medical journals and testimonies from released detainees. Accepting the former narrative reflects a moral deficit, ethical failure on the reader’s part, and complicit thinking to favour a genocidaire.

Therefore, as the reader ultimately writes the story, hopefully, no moral deficit will prevail. Why? Protecting the human spirit and the humanity of innocents ultimately protects our own humanity

 

1] Abdusamaad (Sam) Karani: www.samkarani.com. Author “The Rats Had Never Left.” Conquering Colonists & Systemic Racism. Decolonize Your Mind.

Psychology Consultant (Canada), Clinical Psychologist (Trained in South Africa), Professor, HOD & Chief Psychologist (Medunsa University, South Africa.

 [1] Abdusamaad (Sam) Karani) (2024): Part One: “Ethics Deficit of Psychologists and Medicine. Beyond Complicity as Actual Accessories During Apartheid.”

[2] Ibid

[3] Devi,  S. (2013): “Israeli doctors accused of collusion in torture.”

The Lancet, Volume 381, Issue 9869, p794, March 09, 2013

[4] Kathuria, Kanav. (2024): “How Israeli prison doctors assist in the torture of Palestinian detainees.” Mondowiess, News and Opinion. https://mondoweiss.net/

[5] TRTWorld (2024): Israeli medical staff ‘beat’ Palestinian detainees: Released Gaza doctor.” https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/israeli-medical-staff-beat-palestinian-detainees-released-gaza-doctor-18185258

[6] Ibid

[7] Karani, (Sam) A. (2024): Part One“Ethics Deficit of Apartheid Psychologists and Medicine. Beyond Complicity as Actual Accessories To Evil.

SAM KARANI