MARIÂNGELA BERQUÓ enfoca a Geopolítica: Israel vs Palestine: Rape as a weapon of War Crime?

Prefácio: Roger Waters talks to Michael Moore about his recent article in the New York Times

Peter Paul RUBENS - 1635/40

Violências sexuais são usadas há séculos como arma de guerra e por isso foram proibidas na Convenção de Genebra.
O horror que o estupro causa e semeia "inspirou" grandes pintores da Renascença ao século XX, cujas obras escolhi para ilustrar esta crônica a fim de descrever esse drama da maneira menos desagradável possível, no prisma de pinceladas que despertam o melhor do ser humano em vez dos horrores que abriga. As obras retratam o mesmo evento, o rapto e estupro das Sabinas, um episódio lendário das história da fundação de Roma narrado por Lívio e Plutarco - os primeiros romanos, sob o comando de Rômulo e Remo, teriam assegurado sua descendência raptando e estuprando as esposas, irmãs e filhas, Sabinas, do povoado vizinho.
O estupro era usado na antiguidade não como arma, e sim para "saciar as necessidades" físicas dos soldados que passavam meses, às vezes anos, longe de suas cônjuges. Os generais, naquela época, respeitavam seus adversários e havia uma honra nas batalhas, na conquista, e no que seguia.
Com o passar dos séculos e das mudanças de mentalidade, a percepção do inimigo conjuntural virou pessoal, estrutural, e com isso, mudou o comportamento dos generais e as ordens, oficiais ou oficiosas, dadas a seus soldados na periferia das batalhas.
Aí o estupro virou crime de guerra indiscutível e inegável;
Crime de guerra usado hoje como arma horrenda silenciosa que emudece suas vítimas invisíveis, humilhadas e conspurcadas para a vida inteira em uma morte-vida, da vergonha passada de geração a geração marcada de sentimentos conflituosos de ódio e amor pelo alvo e o fruto indesejado da agressão.
Normalmente agrupada em uma apelação genérica de "estupro de guerra", a violência sexual em conflitos é uma estratégia militar ou/e política completa. Não é o soldado raso que se bestializa em combate e agride uma mulher ou uma menina que poderia ser sur mãe, irmã, esposa, filha.
Não.
A estratégia do estupro é definida e decidida no alto da hierarquia militar ou/e política. Do mesmo jeito que os chefes dos poderes executivos e militares decidem o bombardeio de um bairro ou um vilarejo, o extermínio de um povo, o gaseamento de uma comunidade, enfim, coisas que Israel faz intermitente e repetidamente na Faixa de Gaza.
O estupro sempre existiu durante guerras.
Porém, só virou instrumento endêmico nos conflitos contemporâneos.

A partir da Segunda Guerra Mundial, quando os soldados da Wehrmacht invadiram a União Soviética estuprando as mulheres que encontravam e os russos revidaram ao tomarem a Alemanha, é muito raro que um conflito escape a essa regra masculina de punirem as mulheres para atingirem os homens no que eles mais amam.
É uma das piores manifestações da bestialidade des/humana.
A violência sexual em conflitos é uma arma covarde, integral. Uma arma que cumpre um objetivo preciso, calculado, planejado em detalhes, como toda investida militar.
Os danos são múltiplos e perniciosos.
O estupro atinge primeiro a vítima, em sua carne, em seu moral, em sua alma, e ricocheteia em seus próximos, em sua família, em sua comunidade, em toda a sociedade.
Famílias inteiras são destruídas, o equilíbrio de uma sociedade é rompido, e nesse processo, exclui e rejeita a vítima, a pauperiza, estigmatiza a criança nascida do crime, e concomitantemente, a humilhação e a vergonha levam à escalada da violência, à fragilização da economia da coletividade, do país atingido, em uma bola de neve que prejudica todo mundo.
É raro que as vítimas sejam ouvidas, cuidadas, moralmente compensadas obtendo justiça.
Pois é raríssimo que os autores dos crimes sejam julgados, apesar de existir um quadro jurídico internacional neste sentido.
Só no terceiro milênio que a ONU reagiu como devia, pelo menos no papel, com as resoluções 1325 e 1820 do Conselho de segurança das Nações Unidas. Elas estabelecem que o uso do estupro e outros tipos de violência sexual em tempos de conflito pode constituir crime de guerra, crime contra a humanidade ou ser elemento constituinte de crime de genocídio.
O primeiro caso julgado foi o de Jean-Paul Akayesu, quando o tribunal penal internacional para Ruanda reconheceu pela primeira vez o estupro de guerra como elemento constitutivo de genocídio. Em seguida, mais de um terço das pessoas condenadas pelo tribunal penal internacional para a antiga Iugoslávia foram condenados por crimes que envolvem violência sexual.
Mas infelizmente, como sempre acontece com julgamentos de crimes de guerra, só africanos e iugoslavos são punidos. As demais denúncias, que envolvem Israel e as potências ocidentais nem são registrados, pois, se fossem, haveria registro, e mesmo sendo engavetados posteriormente, um ou outro órgão de imprensa independente divulgaria.
Portanto, o estupro como arma de guerra continua, atingindo majoritariamente as mulheres, mas em alguns casos, meninos; pré-adolescentes palestinos denunciaram abusos sexuais durante sua detenção em masmorras israelenses pelo crime de jogar pedras em tanques do exército ocupante; mas ficou por isso.
Insidioso, barato, com visíveis repercussões a curto, médio e longo prazo, e protegido pela impunidade que predomina nesta área... a violência sexual em conflito continua sendo o crime perfeito.
E há isralenses influentes que preconizam esta punição contra os palestinos... e não recebem nem tapas na mão. É o que trato abaixo, em inglês, para que haja mais repercussão.

Nicolas POUSSIN - 1636/37

In 2008, the Security Council of the United Nations voted unanimously for a resolution describing rape as a tactic of war and a threat to international security. But perhaps the more important question is: Will the resolution give teeth to efforts to stem sexual violence against women in conflict situations?
In the resolution 1820, the Security Council noted that “women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group.” The resolution demanded the “immediate and complete cessation by all parties to armed conflict of all acts of sexual violence against civilians.”
It was expected that by noting that “rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide,” the resolution would strike a blow at the culture of impunity that surrounds sexual violence in conflict zones and allows rapists to walk without fear of punishment.
Indeed, the resolution stresses the need for “the exclusion of sexual violence crimes from amnesty provisions in the context of conflict resolution processes,” calls upon member states to comply with their obligations to prosecute those responsible for such crimes, and emphasizes “the importance of ending impunity for such acts.”
Ultimately, however, the effectiveness of UN Resolution 1820 in reducing sexual violence and bringing its perpetrators to book are restricted to places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—arguably the epicentre of sexual violence against women today, although not exclusively—as well as Liberia and the Darfur region of Sudan.
Warring groups use rape as a weapon because it destroys communities totally. The perpetrators destroys communities. Punish the men, and punish the women, doing it in front of the men. It has become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in an armed conflict.
Rape has been a dishonourable camp follower of war for as long as armies have marched into battle. In the 20th century, perceptions of rape in war have moved from something that is inevitable when men are deprived of female companionship for prolonged periods to an actual tactic in conflict. The lasting psychological harm that rape inflicts on its victims has also been recognized: Rape is always torture, says Manfred Nowak, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
That is exactly why some influential Israelis preconize the use of this savage weapon against the Palestinians.
What does the UN have to say about it?
No comment, so far.

Edgar DEGAS - 1861/62

Meanwhile, in Israel a prominent rabbi known to have advocated genocide in Gaza also advised that IDF soldiers may rape during wartime, it has emerged.

Rape : Weapon of war in the IDF? Some Israelis may want so.
Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safad in present-day Israel - and a son of the late Mordechai Eliyahu, who served as Israel’s chief rabbi from 1983 to 1993 - approved rape by the military in a 2002 article that has gone largely unnoticed outside Israel because it was written on Kipa.co.il, a popular Hebrew-language website catering for religious Jews, Eliyahu contended that Israeli soldiers would lose their motivation to wage war if they are not allowed to rape non-Jewish women.

The comments were made five years before Eliyahu recommended that Israel should use massive force in Gaza.

In 2007, he said that Israel “must kill 100,000, even a million” people in Gaza if that was necessary to stop Palestinian resistance fighters from firing rockets.

Eliyahu’s 2002 comments on rape were highlighted in a recent Facebook post by Ruhama Weiss, a Jerusalem-based academic.

In a column called “Ask the Rabbi,” Eliyahu suggested that a Talmud law authorized sexual violence under certain circumstances. He was responding to a question – apparently by one of the website’s readers – about whether women could be viewed as “war booty.”

According to Eliyahu, an Israeli soldier should be subject to few, if any, constraints when fighting a war. He wrote to parents, "[When your son goes to war] you shouldn’t be preaching morality to him... Don’t weaken his spirit. If you forbid him from a beautiful woman and he’s enraptured by her outer charms, then he’ll think about her and is likely to get to the point where the Jewish people will be defeated. What will you gain from that?”

Eliyahu interpreted a Talmud scripture as meaning “if it burns in you, take a beautiful woman,” thereby excusing rape during war.

That view is at odds with international law. The International Criminal Court has confirmed that the use of rape in armed conflict is a war crime.

Nevertheless, after justifying the woman’s rape, Eliyahu goes on to blame the victim, wondering if she “may have specially made herself up, in order to take [the soldier] down and incriminate him.” Eliyahu even implied that these rape victims ought to be thankful for not subsequently being killed, or kept in sexual slavery for the rest of their lives.

“Notice her life was spared during wartime,” he wrote. “She isn’t even held captive by sword. He cannot live with her, as one lives with women and then sell her as a slave. He frees her!! Free as a bird!!”

Eliyahu’s advice resembles that which Eyal Krim, now the chief rabbi in the Israeli military, has previously given. Iin 2003, Krim also sanctioned rape during military operations in an “Ask the Rabbi” column for Kipa.co.il.

Last year, his appointment as the army’s chief rabbi was delayed for a week. Angered by his remarks on rape, some left-leaning politicians appealed against his appointment to the Israeli high court; their appeal was rejected.

During that brief delay, Krim received the full-throated support of over 150 army rabbis, as well as government ministers from the Jewish Home party.

In recent years, numerous Jewish Home lawmakers have themselves been accused of sex crimes. Allegations against one such lawmaker have been examined by a forum of rabbis, affiliated with the party. The rabbis decided against calling the lawmaker for questioning.

The head of that rabbinical forum was Shmuel Eliyahu.

Pablo PICASSO - 1962/63

Then there is this Israeli who said in 2014, during Israeli Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, that the best way to fight wars is to rape women. Unfortunately for women and academics everywhere, this remark was made by professor Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University. He said and I quote, " The only thing that will deter is if they kow [the resistents] that either their sister or mother will be raped if they are caught." And aslso went on to justify that this is just how “Middle Eastern culture” is.
I must admit that it was hard not toake that personally, as a woman and as a human being.
Kedar has been a member of the military intelligence and is now a researcher at the Began-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies.
Comforting to know, isn’t it? Not to mention awfully smart.
Completely ignore Geneva Conventions, they’re just hurdles. So are the bodies of the innocents. They’re just roadblocks on the way to a bigger, better Israel. And while you’re at it, take a culture’s sensitivities and use it against them. End the pretence of ‘defending your border’ and come up with a clear cut slogan: we are out to destroy everything about the Palestinians; their lives, their futures, their culture, their existence period.
Clearly, there is no concept of cultural evolution and human rights’ violations involved in this argument.
At the time, the university responded by saying that, “Dr Kedar did not call and does not call to fight terror with anything but legal and moral means.”
The reaction to this statement met with expected and justified outrage from feminist groups from within Israel and beyond – but this is hardly an exclusive feminist issue. This is a humanity issue – a country that is already creating enough pools of blood and incarcerated bodies must show some remorse, if it has any left, at this ridiculous and sickening thought.
Is it not enough that Israel has already indiscriminately bombed innocent women and children and is basically forcing the Palestinians into extinction and, total and complete annihilation that, they now want to use women as a tool for revenge and extend their violent ambitions?
To add to these atrocious crimes against humanities, here is an educational personality, no less, who came up with advice on how to deter resistence against occupiers. Not dialogue, not compassion, not potential ways to bring peace but more violence, and let’s make it gender-based because that will really hurt them.
Are they completely and wholly blind to what rape means and what a violent, unforgivable crime it is? Who is teaching them the rules of war? Whatever happened to sparing women and children? Whatever happened to fair play and justice, even in times of hate and disillusion?
The problem is that the "war" that Israel has been staging in Palestine since 1948 is a war where rules of fair play and human collateral damage hardly matter. So at this point, I do not even have logical comparisons that I can bring the reader’s attention to. At this point, my sensibilities sputter and the only theory that comes to my mind is that maybe Israel has lost all possible sense of ethical treatment of human beings and the principles of what is right and wrong.
The fact is that Israeli administration has already lost its moral compass: so a statement like this coming from a rabbi or a scholar hardly ruffles any feathers of any human rights groups that are already tired of counting the bodies that pile inside Gaza and the lives shattered in the West Bank. Perhaps Israel’s complete and total lack of moral conscience when it comes to abundantly handicapping and Killing Palestinians has wiped all sense of what is humane and appropriate in a state of ‘war’, as they call it. In their blind hatred and racism, they have forgotten that what they are doing is paving way for another Holocaust – and this time they will join the ranks of those who have cost humanity rather than defended it.

PALESTINA

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