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Israel can’t force-feed occupation to those who hunger for freedom

(Image: Carlos Latuff)
(Image: Carlos Latuff)

For more than a month Israel sought to wriggle off a hook that should have snared it from the start. Two children, 17 and 16, were shot dead during Nakba Day protests near Ramallah, in which youths threw stones ineffectually at well-protected and distant Israeli military position.

Hundreds of Palestinian children have lost their lives over the years at the end of a sharpshooter’s sights, but the deaths of Nadim Nuwara and Mohammed Abu Al Thahir in Beitunia were not easily forgotten. Israel was quickly cornered by an accumulation of physical and visual evidence.

Israel’s usual denials – the deaths were faked, video footage was doctored, Israeli soldiers were not responsible, the youths provoked the soldiers, no live ammunition was used – have been discredited one by one. Slowly Israel conceded responsibility, if only by falling into a grudging silence.

A CCTV camera mounted on the outer wall of a carpentry shop provided the most damning evidence: it captured the moments when the two unarmed boys were each hit with a live round, in one case as the youth can be seen walking away from the protest area.

But rather than come to terms with the world as it now is, Israel wants to preserve the way it once was. It believes that through force of will it can keep the tide of accountability at bay in the occupied territories.

There has been no admission of guilt, no search for the guilty soldiers and no reassessment of its policies on crowd control or the use of live fire – let alone on the continuation of the occupation. Instead, 20 soldiers arrived last week at the store in Beitunia, threatened to burn it down, arrested the owner, Fakher Zayed, and ordered he remove the camera that caused so much embarrassment.

According to Israel, the fault lies not with a society where teenage soldiers can choose to swat a Palestinian child as casually as a fly. The problem is with a Palestinian storekeeper, who assumed he could join the modern world.

The nostalgia for a “golden era” of occupation was evident, too, last week in a policy change. Israel has rounded up hundreds of Palestinians in the hunt for three Israeli teenagers missing since June 12. Palestinian cities like Hebron have been under lockdown for days, and several Palestinians youths killed, while soldiers scour the West Bank.

But with the search proving fruitless, Israel’s attorney general approved the reintroduction of the notorious “ticking bomb” procedure.

In doing so, he turned the clock back 15 years to a time when Israel routinely used torture against prisoners. Israel may not have been alone then in using torture, but it was exceptional in flaunting its torture dungeons alongside claims to democratic conduct.

Only in 1999 did the country’s supreme court severely limit the practice, allowing interrogators one exemption – a suspect could be tortured only if he was a ticking bomb, hiding information of an attack whose immediate extraction could save lives.

Now Israel’s law chief has agreed that the Palestinian politicians, journalists and activists swept up in the latest mass arrests will be treated as “ticking bombs”. Israel’s torture cells are back in business.

Israelis have been lulled into a false sense of security by the promise of endless and simple technical solutions to the ever-mounting problems caused by the occupation.

This week, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hoped to find another “fix” for Palestinians who refuse to remain supine in the face of their oppression.

Netanyahu is racing through a law to force-feed more than 100 Palestinian prisoners who are two months’ into a hunger strike. The inmates demand that Israel end the common practice of holding prisoners for months and sometimes years without charge, in what is blandly termed “administrative detention”.

Such prisoners, ignorant of their offence, are unable to mount a defence. And as it becomes ever clearer to Palestinian society that Israel is never going to concede Palestinian statehood, things that were once barely tolerated are now seen as unendurable.

Last week, the heads of the World Medical Association urged Israel to halt the legislation, which in a double bill of compulsion will require doctors to sedate and force-feed prisoners to break their hunger strike.

The WMA called the practice “tantamount to torture”. The legislation violates not only the autonomy of the prisoners but the oaths taken by the doctors to work for their patients’ benefit.

The liberal Haaretz newspaper warned that Israel was rushing headlong towards “a new abyss in terms of human rights violations”. And all this to prevent reality pricking the Israeli conscience: that Palestinians would rather risk death than endure the constant indignities of a life under belligerent occupation.

Israelis have yet to realise the dam is soon to burst. They still believe a technical fix is the way to solve ethical dilemmas continuously thrown up by the longest occupation in modern times.

Israel’s technical solutions work to an extent. They confine Palestinians to ever smaller spaces: the prison of Gaza, the city under lockdown, the torture cell, or the doctor’s surgery where a feeding tube can be inserted.

But the craving for self-determination and dignity are more than technical problems. You cannot force-feed a people to still their hunger for freedom.

Belligerent occupations – especially ones where no hope or end is in sight – engender evermore creative and costly forms of resistance, as the hunger strike demonstrates. A physical act of resistance can be temporarily foiled. But the spirit behind it cannot be so easily subdued.

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

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20 soldiers arrived last week at the store in Beitunia, threatened to burn it down, arrested the owner, Fakher Zayed, and ordered he remove the camera that caused so much embarrassment.

According to Israel, the fault lies not with a society where teenage soldiers can choose to swat a Palestinian child as casually as a fly. The problem is with a Palestinian storekeeper, who assumed he could join the modern world.

What a grotesque farce. The only punishment meted out for the murder of two Palestinian boys is to the store owner whose camera recorded the incident. Keep on killing, but blind the witnesses. And if Palestinian deaths come at the hands of Israel then that is ok, but should it come at the hands of the Palestinians themselves, then they must be forcibly kept alive by the same state which has no problem with killing them in secret. What kind of Kafka-esque nightmare have Israelis made, and how can any of them have the gall to defend such an Orwellian dystopia?

Maybe they already exist, but if not what is needed is a camera that will send the the details/images to a secure site at predetermined intervals.This would put a stop to this behavior by the criminals who both man the idf and it,s upper echelon.

This act by the idf is symptomatic of the depth to which Israeli society and zionism have tumbled.

No way back for Israel.

Very interesting.

Since torture is officially coming back to Israel (anyone doubt it ever left?) I decided to look up “Israeli torture” to see what’s to be expected by Palestinians. There were 1,980,000 results. Here’s one of them from 2013 picked at random:

Physical methods

Repeatedly beating or kicking the prisoner in different parts of the body – head, hands, face, abdomen, back, genitalia – using hands and/or metal tools.

Sometimes the prisoners’ hands were being tied to the wall or to metal bars during the beatings.

Former prisoners also reported to have been beaten deliberately on wounds and injuries caused earlier.

Tying the prisoners’ hands and/or legs together for a long period of time. Former prisoners reported to have been tied to the ceiling through their hands and legs.

Others have been tied and left in the rain or cold weather for a long period of time.

Shaking prisoners violently. This is being done by investigators who change from time to time.

Forcing the prisoner to sit on a small chair – chairs for kindergarten kids – for long hours and sometimes days. This is associated with covering the head with a dirty plastic clothing bag. While the prisoner is in this position, he is exposed to very loud music and deprived of sleep.

Forcing the prisoner to remain standing for a long period of time.

Forcing the prisoner to sleep on the floor without mattress, even during wintertime.

Former prisoners also reported they were forced to sleep while sitting on the floor.

Blindfolding a prisoner and dragging him or her on the stairs.

Spraying gas in the face of a prisoner and using electric shocks against them.

Pulling out the hair of the prisoner.

Pouring cold water on the prisoner while asleep.

Suffocating the prisoner by putting his head in the water and telling him that he will be drowned to death.

Psychological methods

Placing the prisoner on a chair with his head covered whilst meanwhile drops of water hit the head regularly.

Depriving the prisoner from food for a long period of time or providing the prisoner old or spoiled food.

Exposing the prisoner to loud music for a long period of time.

Using military and police dogs to frighten the prisoners. Investigators threaten prisoners the dogs will be unleashed and will attack the prisoner.
Threatening the prisoner will be sexually abused. Former prisoners reported being forced to be nearly naked.

Speaking negatively about the prisoner’s family members and/or threatening the prisoner that their family members will be caused harm. Some former prisoners reported being threatened that their wife would be sexually abused.

Depriving the prisoner from defecating or urinating for a long period of time. Other former prisoners reported being forced to defecate or urinate in front of prison inmates.

Telling the prisoner, wrongfully, that his family will visit him today. Other former prisoners were wrongfully informed that one or more family members passed away.

Spitting in the prisoner’s face.

Forcing the prisoner to verbally abuse his/her religious and national symbols.

Jailing some of the relatives of the prisoner and torturing them in front of the prisoner.

Legal background

The treatment of Palestinian political prisoners and detainees is a violation of Articles 32, 49 and 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention relating to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. The use of torture methods is not in line with Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). According to Conor Foley of the University of Essex and the Human Rights Centre, torture is also prohibited in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), the European Convention on Human Rights (1950), the American Convention on Human Rights (1978) and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (1981).

Additionally, the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984), the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1987) and the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture (1985) reject the use of torture methods.

http://sfbayview.com/2013/torture-in-israeli-jails/