I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately. Last night I was exhausted, in body and mind, but tried to keep my eyes open to follow updates on the Palestinian prisoners’ conditions. My heart and mind were with them completely, in every corner of the horrible Israeli prisons where our heroes continue with persistence, steadfastness, and struggle. Deciding to rebel against the torturous conditions they could no longer endure, the prisoners started a hunger strike on 27 September. [Ed: For more on the hunger strike see here, here and here.]
Around 6,000 detainees inside Israeli prisons are forgotten and treated as if they are less than animals. Israel, who claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East, seems to forget that prisoners are humans and have rights. The Palestinian prisoners are hunger striking for the ninth day hoping that Israel will implement their simple demands. But while they are calling with the loudest voice they can for their rights, Israel is reacting negatively, using every method they can to force the prisoners to give up. Prisoners are being sent to isolation in increasing numbers, family visits are being denied, families threatened, and identity cards confiscated, visits with denied, and belongings and clothing confiscated, beyond the constant, harsh torment they already receive.
Israel is violating international law and nobody is stopping them. Oh, pardon me for forgetting that Israel is beyond any law! Around 285 children are jailed and the world is still silent; nobody will dare to challenge Israel.
I am very emotionally attached to the prisoners’ issue, especially their hunger strike, not only because I am Palestinian but also because I am the daughter of a released prisoner. I was brought up hearing my father’s sad stories, full of suffering and despair, which remain stuck in his memory and never will leave him. My father’s eyes would have never seen the sun if Ahmad Gibreel didn’t manage to make a deal exchanging the three Israeli prisoners he held captive in 1985. My family was watching the news concerning the ongoing prisoners’ hunger strike when Dad started telling us about his imprisonment, which lasted for 15 years. “I witnessed and participated in the longest hunger strike in the history of Palestinian prisoners in 1982, which lasted for 33 consecutive days,” he said. “Three prisoners died and tens of cases were sent to hospital, including about 27 for dehydration, but what else way could we do to pressure them to provide us with the smallest things?”
Thinking deeply about my father’s words, and trying to imagine the awful conditions of the Palestinians inside the merciless Israeli jails, broke my heart. All the unbearable treatment prisoners get is totally unfair and against humanity!
There was a demonstration today in solidarity with these prisoners, whose health is getting worse every day, but who will bravely continue. I was lucky to not have early lectures at university, so I could be there at 9:00 am protesting against the situation of our prisoners. I had some conversations with other women there protesting, too. Most of them were either released prisoners or had sons, brothers, or husbands in prison hunger striking.
One of them was a mother of six kids whose children grew up as if they were fatherless; her husband is spending his 26th year inside a damned Israeli prison. “I was one month pregnant with my youngest girl, who is 25 years now, when my husband was arrested,” she said. “My oldest girl was only seven years old. All my kids do have a father but they became adults without their father around, like orphans.” She kept describing to me how hard it was to be alone without her husband taking care of six children, and how much she suffered and endured to make her husband, sentenced to lifelong imprisonment, proud of his children when he hopefully someday gets his freedom back. “I was very young, only 24 years old, when he went to prison. I stayed in this state of a married woman who has to live without a husband for 26 years for my six children. Thankfully I now have 25 grandchildren,” she said proudly.
Then she burst out crying expressing her worries because she heard that the Israeli army attacked Asqelan prison where her husband is held yesterday, violently attempting to force the impossible: to make the hunger strike end. I couldn’t then hide my tears anymore, despite trying so hard not to let them fall. I didn’t know what to do or say to calm her down. The woman told me that she and all other prisoners’ families have been denied visitation since Hamas was elected. They hear nothing from their imprisoned family members, except rarely, when some miracle happens, like someone from West Bank visiting his relatives imprisoned with her husband, who asks the visitor to convey a message to her that he is doing well.
I couldn’t say anything but prayers that God provides her with patience and that her husband gets his freedom back soon.
My father has always said that prisoners are the living martyrs. I think they really deserve this honor for all the injustice and suffering they endure. This open hunger strike of the Palestinian prisoners will continue until the Israeli army addresses their demands. International solidarity is needed now more than ever. Everyone needs to wake up and do something. We shouldn’t let the torturous conditions of the Palestinian detainees last forever!
Shahd Abusalama blogs at Palestine From My Eyes.
i recommend checking out the powerful graphic at shahd’s blog.
thank you for the very moving post. i agree, they are living maytrs. someday this will be over god speed.
Here is Michael Mansfield, angry that suspected war criminals now cannot be arrested in the UK:
link to guardian.co.uk
11th comment, “ClevelandPD”
Excellent article. Of course, had it been a reader’s comment it would be deleted.
How true.
So now murderers and terrorists are “living martyrs”? Why don’t you pick one example of a Palestinian sentenced to life in prison and explain to everybody why he is a “martyr” and not a criminal.
I think that the fact that these people were tried and convicted by the Israeli court system should establish a rebuttable presumption that they are innocent and the burden is on you to establish that they are guilty of anything other than being Arab in a land coveted by Jews.
Keep dreaming, Israel has an internationally respected justice system that is way ahead any of its neighbors. Why don’t you pick ONE person sentenced for life and explain why he is a “martyr” and not a criminal?
Israeli justice? Oxymoron.
Name us the Israeli Jews imprisoned for killing a Palestinian. If you can name even one, tell us how long his sencence is in comparison to those of the Palestinian counterpart.
Name us the Israeli Jews sentenced to prison for stone throwing at Palestinians. Even, name us the Haredi teenagers sent to prison for throwing stones at fellow Jews in Israel.
“Israel has an internationally respected justice system…”
LOL. Israel’s justice system as it pertains to Jews, maybe. But Israel’s system of law and justice vis-a-vis the Palestinians has been the subject of criticism and condemnation from many international observers, both substantively and procedurally for decades.
“ahead any of its neighbors”
LOL. Why would you consider this a proper metric?? Seriously, do you actually think “so long as I’m better than those shitty countries, I’m okay?” What kind of defective mentality considers such thinking rational?
“Why don’t you pick ONE person sentenced for life and explain why he is a “martyr” and not a criminal?”
Again, it’s not my burden. The fact that Israelis sit in judgment of Palestinians is sufficient for me to conditionally reject the Israelis’ findings. Given the land- and blood-lust of the Israelis through the years, every prosecution of Palestinians by Israelis must be presumed to be a show trial, full of tortured confessions, manufactured evidence and inequitable procedures with the sole aim, not to find justice for the accused, but to advance that land- and blood-lust, unless shown otherwise.
Israel has an internationally respected justice system
Unfortunately, the prisoners Shahd Abusalama is referring to do not have recourse to that system. They are tried, convicted – and sometimes held without trial – by this system: link to yesh-din.org
Please tell me which international bodies have expressed their respect for the Israeli military “justice” system.
Shmuel,
The Israeli military justice system is no better or worse than any other military justice system used by Western countries during war. So what is your point? It is part of the Israeli justice system and as such is respected worldwide.
But back to our point. Pick one so called “martyr” that has a life sentence and let’s see you defend him as such.
It is part of the Israeli justice system and as such is respected worldwide.
No, it is a separate system, operating by entirely different standards (see the Yesh Din link above), and enjoys no respect internationally.
But back to our point.
Your point, not mine.
Shmuel,
Nu, of course in certain aspects is is separate, but that is the case in all Western countries. The Israeli military justice system is no better or worse than any other military justice system used by Western countries during war.
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
your comment implies that use of the military injustice system against Palestinians in the West Bank means Israel is (not ‘was’) at war with them. What army is yours fighting against? Or does breating while Palestinian automatically confer the title ‘enemy combatant’?
And eee, Israel is not in war.
“Israel has an internationally respected justice system that is way ahead any of its neighbors”
You are correct if internationally respected means: respected by the US.
Israel and USA. The countries with shared values.
What is the the shared values?
Both countries agree that muslims must die or rot in prison?
“So now murderers and terrorists are “living martyrs”? Why don’t you pick one example of a Palestinian sentenced to life in prison and explain to everybody why he is a “martyr” and not a criminal.”
Do you think all Jewish concentration camp prisoners from 1933 – 1945 were ‘living martyrs’?
Is this one a murderer, terrorist, freedom fighter or martyr?
link to en.wikipedia.org
Who were the prisoners in concentration camps in the Reich, such as Dachau and Buchenwald? Have a look at the badges:
link to en.wikipedia.org
“People who wore the green and pink triangles were convicted in criminal courts and may have been transferred to the criminal prison systems after the camps were liberated.”
Let’s take a closer look:
Green triangle— “professional criminals” (convicts, ofttimes Kapos, serving in exchange for reduced sentences or parole).
Pink triangle—sexual offenders, mostly homosexual men but rarely rapists, zoophiles and paedophiles.
Then there were:
Double-triangle badges resembled two superimposed triangles forming a Star of David, a Jewish symbol.
Two superimposed yellow triangles, the “Yellow badge”—a Jew
Red inverted triangle superimposed upon a yellow one—a Jewish political prisoner
GREEN inverted triangle upon a yellow one—a Jewish “habitual criminal”
Purple inverted triangle superimposed upon a yellow one—a Jehovah’s Witness of Jewish descent[6]
PINK inverted triangle superimposed upon a yellow one—a Jewish “sexual offender”
So not all green and pink prisoners were liberated in 45. Criminals were treated as they would be in the countries of the Allies. Not that they all agreed what was a crime and what wasn’t. The atheist Soviets had no problem with homosexuality, but the Western allies, as good Christians, saw no grounds for liberating the pink triangle prisoners. They were transfered to another prison and served the rest of their sentence. They kept a criminal record after their release, and even beyond the time homosexuality was no longer considered a crime in Germany and elsewhere. They were lawfully convicted by German courts during the Third Reich. No compensation. This changed only recently, and as one of the effects of reunification. By that time, only 2 or 3 former pink triangle prisoners were still alive. Descendants? Not that I know.
Jewish pink triangle prisoners are a different story. In that case the argument could be made that they didn’t receive a fair trial, whether they were homosexuals or other ‘habitual criminals’. The same argument was more recently made by Dershowitz when Goldstone fell out of favor. All of a sudden he was an Apartheid ‘hanging judge’ who allegedly sentenced Blacks to death because they were black, not because they were murderers.
The Luxemburg Treaty between Israel and West Germany in 1952 declared all Jewish concentration camp prisoners as being entitled to compensation — regardless of why or whether they were convicted in a criminal court, or political opponents, beggars, converts, vagabonds, forced laborers, partisans etc etc, or simply there for no other reason than being Jews.
You can argue that murderers and terrorists were a small minority among the Jewish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. But that’s my impression, too, when we are talking about Palestinian prisoners in Israeli facilities.
But according to you and many others here, be they Jewish or not, all Jewish prisoners in Nazi camps, be it in the Reich or in Poland, be it before or after 38 or 41 (as if there was no difference) are “living martyrs”. And then you poke fun at people who hold the same view about Palestinian prisoners in Israel? Why?
I hate double standards.