Western governments respond to Israel's IDF raping Palestinian detainees and minister's call to starve Palestinians

EU, UK and France urge Israel’s government to distance itself from comments by its finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich don't react to Israel's alleged sexual violence crimes against the Palestinians

Global condemnation has mounted over comments by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday that starving the people of Gaza was morally justified, with the European Union, France and the United Kingdom denouncing his remarks and calling on the Israeli government to retract and condemn them. According to a report in The Guardian, the far-right minister said this week that “no one in the world will let us starve two million people, even though it is morally justified to free hostages.”

According to the report, the European Union responded by stressing that deliberately starving civilians is a "war crime" and asked the Israeli government to "distance itself" from the far-right minister's statements.

France also criticized Smotrich, saying that providing humanitarian aid to the people of the Gaza Strip is "an obligation of Israel under international humanitarian law" since it controls all access to the Strip.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy called on the rest of the Israeli government to withdraw and condemn the statements.

The report said Israel is already under international pressure over the physical, psychological and sexual torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

A video clip aired by Israel's Channel 12 on Wednesday showed soldiers taking a detainee away from surveillance cameras to assault him, and the clip was met with international condemnation.

"We have seen the video, and the reports of sexual assault of detainees are horrific," said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, adding that "there should be no tolerance for the rape or sexual assault of any detainee."

The report said that the Guardian conducted interviews with prisoners released last Monday, and found that violence, extreme hunger, humiliation and other abuses suffered by Palestinian prisoners are widespread in all Israeli prisons. The newspaper included what the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem said in a report that the mistreatment of Palestinian prisoners has become a systematic policy in Israeli prisons.

The paper said that there have been multiple reports (UN and Media) of arbitrary, cruel and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees since the Hamas attack of 7 October – the outside world’s only glimpses of conditions inside the jails, since Israel has denied access to lawyers, family members and Red Cross inspectors.