1/2 Enraged Israeli spokes people are a very common sight on Western TV these days, but this exchange between Sky's Kay Burley and Israel's Eylon Levy seem to set a new low.
Speaking to Levy about Israel's decision to handover 150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 50 Israeli children and babies, Burley said she had spoken “to a hostage negotiator” about the discrepancy in the numbers. He made the comparison between the 50 hostages that Hamas has promised to release as opposed to the 150 prisoners that are Palestinians and Israel has said that it will release, [...] Does Israel not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?"
“While this is not completely prohibited under international law, the use of administrative detention is only permitted in exceptional circumstances and subject to stringent safeguards,” Elizabeth Rghebi, the Middle East and North Africa advocacy director at Amnesty International USA, told me.
#BanalityOfEvil [repost] “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story”
About the Palestinian children Israel sent to jail. An edited extract from “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story”, which was recently published by Allen Lane.
“In her work as a doctor with #UNRWA, the UN relief and works agency for Palestinian refugees, Huda saw things that made her afraid for her sons. She had witnessed a soldier shoot a boy who threw a stone at a tank. The soldiers stopped her from going to help him as he fell to the ground. At home in Sawahre, listening to the nightly news of West Bank killings and closures, she had trouble sleeping. She knew Hadi was out throwing stones.”
#BanalityOfEvil [#repost] a reminder of who Israel takes into custody, and that international pressure can shame them into releasing many of this prisoners who's only crime is often being Palestinian.
The original post was from September, Mr. al-Qaisi has been released in October.
#Palestinian-Italian researcher Khaled al-Qaisi, a translator, researcher and student in the Department of Oriental Languages and Civilizations at Sapienza University of Rome, has been detained by #Israeli occupation forces since 31 August.
#translation [reposted] How does a 14-year-old become a "security prisoner"? Far too easily
The first thing that catches the eye in the list of 300 Palestinian prisoners published by the Ministry of Justice, intended for release as part of the prisoner exchange deal, is their young age. The vast majority of them are 18 years old or younger, as required by the terms of the deal. And yet, looking at this list, one cannot help but wonder - how does a 14-year-old become a "security prisoner"?
For example, by throwing rocks at a security vehicle in Jerusalem. Another 14-year-old boy from #Jerusalem is listed only as an "administrative detainee". Arrested for what? It is unclear. Both have no organizational affiliation. Another young Jerusalemite, aged 17, has been sitting in prison for two years for the "crime" of "throwing rocks and causing damage to cars using a stick". This is in a city where settlers regularly attack Palestinian residents until they bleed, suffer serious injuries and prolonged hospitalizations - as a matter of routine - without the police bothering to investigate or arrest anyone. But a Palestinian boy will be jailed for years for causing damage to cars using a stick.
More than anything, this list is dizzying testimony to the central place of detentions and imprisonment in the Israeli occupation and control project over the Palestinians. According to the HaMoked Center for the Defence of the Individual, as of November 2023 Israel holds 6,704 "security prisoners", among them 2,313 prisoners serving sentences, 2,321 detainees not yet convicted in court, and 2,070 administrative detainees held without trial.
Not one of the 300 prisoners on the list has "blood on their hands". Almost all are relatively new prisoners, from the past year or two. The few exceptions who have been jailed longer are 10 women detained since 2015-2017, mostly Jerusalemites and West Bank residents, most of them charged with attempted or actual stabbings of cops and soldiers, some that resulted in no injuries, some in minor to medium wounds.
This is in a judicial system that decided to close the case against a settler who stabbed a Palestinian youth to death, because "his claim of self-defense could not be discounted". However, self-defense under the Israeli apartheid regime is a right reserved for Jews only. While Jews who have rampaged, attacked and even killed Palestinians receive full immunity from the system, the Ministry of Justice list shows that Palestinians can be arrested by the truckload merely on the basis of the “intention” to resist. One of the prisoners, a 45-year-old Jerusalemite woman, has been sitting in prison for over two years because “she was caught in the Old City with a knife. She stated her intention was to carry out an attack”.
So while the Minister of National Security pleads with Jews to arm themselves and distributes weapons in synagogues like candy, Palestinians are apparently expected to get a license even to carry a knife. I do not know under what circumstances this woman stated her intention was to carry out an attack, but I would be happy to refer the Israeli police to the endless number of people who gleefully declare their intention to "kill as many Arabs as possible". I have dozens upon dozens of those in my inbox.
But even the “intention” to act without having committed any concrete action is not the lowest bar set by the indictments of the prisoners on the list. An 18-year-old from Jerusalem “was arrested together with others because he called out Allahu Akbar”. An 18-year-old woman from the West Bank has been jailed for months for “incitement on Instagram”. I do not know what that “incitement” was for which this young woman was arrested, but it bears reminding that in a state where explicit calls for genocide are considered legitimate as part of whipping up national morale, Palestinians, even citizens of Israel, risk arrest over posting a picture on social media of a #keffiyeh alongside a Palestinian flag.
Among the prisoners’ indictments on the list, only a few are related to actual shooting or weapons use (and even in those cases, as stated, there were no fatalities). In the vast majority of cases they involve throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails, shooting fireworks and “disrupting order”.
Clearly #Israel has presented here a specially "soft" list of prisoners that in the absence of fatalities is not supposed to arouse too much public objection, and it is clear that in prison there are also Palestinian prisoners with serious and grave indictments. But this list, which Israel was able to rapidly compile, 300 names, almost all very young, almost all from the past two years, almost all sitting for nonviolent popular resistance (yes, throwing rocks at military or police vehicles is nonviolent popular resistance), should also elicit some reflection on the link between the harsh repression of any expression of popular resistance, and the strengthening of armed and violent resistance groups. That is assuming that the Israeli public will finally grasp the basic fact that as long as occupation and oppression continue, so will resistance.
And following Nadav Frankovich’s piece here, we should also ask ourselves whether it was really worth holding onto those kidnapped women and children in Gaza for a few more weeks just for the right to continue incarcerating a teenager who dared cry “Allahu Akbar”, and many like him.
In response to Gigi Hadid's now deleted post on #IG, Israel's Ynet is outraged that Ahmad Manasra, which was 13 when he was arrested, is described a child. Other accusations Hadid made about the occupation did not go down very well either.
Background:
Manasrah, a resident of Beit Hanina, began serving a sentence of nine and a half years in prison at the age of 14, after being convicted as an accomplice to attempted murder for a stabbing incident carried out by his cousin, in the Pisgat Ze'ev neighborhood (an illegal Israeli settlement in occupied East #jerusalem in 2015, while he was still 13 years old.
Since his arrest, Manasrah's mental state has deteriorated, and he has been diagnosed with severe chronic mental illness that developed during his incarceration. According to a professional opinion in his case, Manasrah's condition requires immediate medical treatment outside of prison.
Amnesty International:
"A month after Ahmad Manasra’s arrest in November 2015, footage of his interrogation was made public. The 10-minute video, reviewed by #amnestyinternational shows Ahmad being interrogated by three men, without the presence of his lawyer or parent in violation of international standards. He appears increasingly distressed as his interrogators continue to shout at him, directing insults and threats. This video is evidence of several violations of Manasra’s rights as a child and as a detainee."
I believe one take away from this story (one of many) is for the international media to ask what were the charges when Israel reports about X Palestinian terrorists taken into custody, or are in prison. Inflating the numbers is part of its tactics of dehumanizing Palestinians.
Add comment