Israel torturing inmates with US cover-up: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Ken O'Keefe, a former US Marine, about Palestinian prisoners’ human rights organizations deciding to form a committee of doctors to look into the health conditions of sick prisoners in Israeli jails.

Here is a rough transcription of the interview:

Press TV: Do you think a special medical committee to ensure the well-being of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails is necessary? Why or why not?

O'Keefe: Well it is the duty of the family members and the Palestinians who have loved ones in the jails. I mean obviously anything and everything that can be done to safeguard them to the best degree possible is necessary.

So I applaud the move, I definitely wish them all the best but let’s be realistic here. The conditions for Palestinians are not going to change in any significant way until we see a very strong change in this world. We are not functioning under international law and so much of what Israel does is blatantly, self-evidently  illegal under international law, some of the most grievous violations possible are occurring there on a daily basis and the real story for me as a Western citizen is my government, my birth nation’s involvement in propping up, supporting financially, militarily Israel, same with European Union nations, all the puppet nations of the world that effectively were within that web of the empire of United States basically give Israel cover for everything.

So Israel can torture prisoners, they can conduct extrajudicial killings, they can literally enforce a policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing - and I mean genocide by the Black’s Law Dictionary definition of the word - this is all possible because it has good friends in our ... governments in the West and ultimately they can continue to get away with bloody murders. So this committee is not going to change that in any significant way but it is in my opinion most definitely the right thing to do. So again I applaud the move but let’s be realistic about what is going to happen from it.

Press TV: When I converse with acquaintances I have back in the States, it seems like a lot of people in the States are in the dark with respect to the human rights violations that Israel commits against Palestinians. How much of it is revealed through US media to the people in America?

O'Keefe: It is absolutely hideous. George Orwell’s 1984 has nothing on current day reality within the mainstream media. It is really stunning just how ignorant so many Americans are because the information they are given is extremely grotesquely biased in favor of Israel. However, there has been a massive change. Let’s make no mistake about it, I would say 15 years ago, 16 years ago pre-9/11 almost no Americans unless they had Palestinian family knew anything at all and today there is a very strong awareness that continues to grow. We see this across university campuses, the Jewish supremacist state of Israel, the Zionist state of Israel is very much on the back foot because more and more people are becoming aware. So things have changed considerably but sadly the ignorance level of the American people is way too high.

Press TV: How can these Palestinian families get recourse for the mistreatment of their loved ones in Israeli detention?

O'Keefe: There really is no just remedy for them. If there is such a grotesque violation where there is a video tape and an audio recording and several witnesses and Israel cannot get away with it because it is already a matter of the public record then yes, they will have some recourse but I think everybody who has any kind of honest and intellectually accurate understanding of the situation for the Palestinians realizes very well that anything and everything can be done to Palestinians that are literally treated as sub-humans and ultimately there will never be justice unless laws enforced in Israel needs to be facing crimes against humanity and war crimes charges amongst others such as torture.  

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