AP Reports Israel Exchanges 'Bodies' for 'Bodies' in Gaza. Both Sides, Right?
Hospital officials in Gaza confirmed Israel's return of 30 Palestinian bodies, with AP carefully noting it's unclear if they 'died in Israeli custody' or were 'recovered from Gaza.' This framing neatly sidesteps the well-documented practice of Israel holding Palestinian bodies indefinitely, often used as bargaining chips–a policy condemned by human rights groups. For context, Israel's national
morgue annually receives hundreds of Palestinian bodies since 1967 according to Israeli human rights organizations, many killed in extrajudicial circumstances or dying from neglect in detention. The headline itself presents a sanitized symmetry: two Israeli hostage remains for 30 Palestinian bodies. One might wonder if the AP would frame a prisoner swap quite so neutrally if one side held 100
people and the other held 5. The implicit equivalence masks the systemic violence and power imbalance that put those 30 Palestinians in Israeli custody as mere 'bodies' to be exchanged. How many more 'exchanges' will it take before the world asks what happened to these Palestinian bodies while they were held?