"[Israeli] soldiers speak about gang rape. They speak about sexual slavery. They speak about using rape as a threat to force Palestinians to leave their homes and their land." Speaking to Palestine Deep Dive's Hala Hanina, Palestinian organiser, writer and member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective Tara Al-Alami breaks down the opening section of the collective's new report, A Predatory State: Israeli Systematic, Sexualised and Gendered Violence Against Palestinians. The report draws on diaries from early settlers and members of Zionist militias involved in the depopulation of Palestinian villages in 1948. In these accounts, soldiers describe sexualised violence used against Palestinians during the Nakba. Al-Alami explains how the report traces, chronologically, what it argues is the continuation of this violence from the Zionist militias of 1948 into the Israeli state’s legal and policing systems.
