Joe Catron, a solidarity activist living and organizing in Gaza, posted the following photos of an ongoing solidarity hunger strike tent for Khader Adnan in Gaza City:
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and Activestills.org published the following photos of a protest for Khader Adnan outside Ofer prison near Ramallah:
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New York City is protesting for Khader Adnan, TODAY, Wednesday, Feb. 8, from 5.30PM UNTIL 7PM.
125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd (outside State building), Harlem, NY
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/310058675710535/
Please join Existence is Resistance and stand with us to demand the release of Khader Adnan.
As he enters day 53 Khader Adnan is in critical condition.
On the 17th of December 2011 (53 days ago), Khader Adnan began his hunger strike in protest of his ill-treatment in Israeli detention and his arbitrary detention without charge or trial.
Khader Adnan, the father of two daughters and with a third child on the way, is a baker, a Masters student in Economics at Birzeit University, and a political activist. Khader, was arrested on December 17, 2011 by masked soldiers who raided his home in the middle of the night (the village of Arrabe near Jenin in the occupied West Bank). Between the 18th and the 29th of January 2012, he was subjected to almost daily cruel and inhumane interrogations. During interrogations, he was shackled to a crooked chair with his hands tied behind his back in a position that caused him back pain. He said that interrogators threatened him constantly and verbally abused him and his family.
Khader was given a four-month administrative detention order on January 8, 2012. Khader’s interrogation period has ended but he refuses to accept the unjust system of administrative detention [more details], continuing his strike on the principle that such detention is a violation of his rights and identity. Administrative detention, a regular practice of the Israeli occupation, violates the internationally-recognized right to a fair trial. International standards for fair trial must be upheld for all political detainees, including those accused of violence, even under states of emergency. A military judge reviewed the administrative detention order on February 1, 2012 and is expected to inform lawyers of her decision later on this week.
Meanwhile, Khader’s health is deteriorating rapidly and doctors don’t expect him to be able to survive for much longer.
On the 17th of December 2011 (54 days ago), Khader Adnan began his hunger strike in protest of his ill-treatment in Israeli detention and his arbitrary detention without charge or trial (known as Administrative Detention). He is in danger of dying at any moment. His wife, Randa, who saw him for the first time since his detention yesterday described his condition as rapidly deteriorating and that he has lost a third of his weight and his hair.
In Palestine, Khader Adnan’s father joined fellow prisoners and student activists in hunger strikes and protests to call for Adnan’s freedom; meanwhile, an Israeli court upheld his arbitrary detention once more as his strike continued into its 54th day, and fellow prisoners joining the strike were placed in solitary confinement. Amnesty International has joined the global call for justice for Khader Adnan as Palestinian lawyers announced a boycott of the military courts. In occupied Palestine, another protest will take place on February 8 outside Ofer prison near Ramallah, from 12-3 pm.
There is a global call to action for Khader Adnan. At least two US cities will hold protests on February 8, 2012 in solidarity – Chicago and Washington, DC. Please send your action information to samidoun@samidoun.ca for posting.
WHAT: Peaceful Silent Demonstration in solidarity with political prisoner Khader Adnan who has been on Huger Strike in Israeli Prison for 53 days. http://bit.ly/w5qjBf
WHEN: Tomorrow February 8, 2012 at 5:00 PM
WHERE: Dupont Circle, meeting by the fountain
WHY: We ask that you stand in solidarity with Khader and all political protest in a peaceful demonstration tomorrow
WHEN: Tomorrow February 8, 2012 at 5:30 PM
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/events/241690895911976/
WHERE: Israeli Consulate of Chicago
500 West Madison, Suite 3100
Chicago, IL
WHY: Stand in solidarity with Khader and all political prisoners in a peaceful demonstration tomorrow
WHAT TO BRING: Bring Palestinian flags, blindfolds and signs
For more information and to take action, please view the call to action!
by Aaron. Reposted from the International Solidarity Movement.
7 February 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank
On Monday and Tuesday Palestinians rallied for Khader Adnan and all political prisoners before regional offices of the Red Cross, demanding that the organization takes a solid stand for the rights of more than 5000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in Israeli prisons.
TAKE ACTION NOW TO SUPPORT KHADER ADNAN
Al Khalil:
The mood was at once festive and somber Monday, February 6th, when a determined group of family, friends, and solidarity activists rallied in front of the Al Khalil (Hebron) office of the International Committee of the Red Cross, demanding that the organization take a stand for the rights of more than 5000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in Israeli prisons, many without ever having been formally charged or offered legal defense. Organized by the Palestinian Prisoner Society, Monday’s demonstration comes two weeks after Israeli soldiers stormed the Al Quds (Jerusalem) ICRC office to arrest two Hamas government officials taking shelter there and three weeks after another three Palestinian elected officials were arrested.
For the last three months, the Palestinian Prisoner Society has organized a weekly protest to highlight the miserable plight of specific detainees—this week’s political prisoners are Khader Adnan and Razeq Al- Rjoob.
Khader Adnan is protesting his administrative detention in a hunger strike that has extended 52 days, with his health debilitating rapidly. Razeq Al- Rjoob is another political prisoner who has been kept in solitary confinement over eight months.
These men’s stories are not all that bring out protesters, many of whom have lost fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, and friends as well as mothers, daughters, or sisters to Israeli prisons. Badran Jaber had his son, Rasan Badran Jaber, taken from him three months ago when soldiers entered the house, locked him and his wife in one room, and then “demolished all their furniture” and arrested their son.
Palestinians demand a firmer stance for its prisoners – Click here for more imagesLike the men recognized this week, Jaber said his son was detained because he is active in the prisoner rights movement, agitating from inside during an eight year sentence and continuing after his release. Jaber was taken into custody once again without charge or legal recourse. Serving more than one multi-year prison sentence or period of detention without charge is common for Palestinian young men of Hebron, and the West Bank generally, especially for those engaged in civil resistance.
Incredibly in such a public conflict, Jaber maintains that most people internationally “do not know about the administrative detentions” and stated that the Red Cross needs “to [spread] knowledge of what is happening to the Palestinian people.”
With a mandate from the Geneva Conventions (1949) and additional Protocols I & II (1977), the ICRC is charged with holding military, occupying, and national forces to international humanitarian and human rights standards, which include prohibitions of torture, abuse, collective punishment, and forced relocation, and require that detainees be granted (among other rights) adequate food, water, medical care, legal representation, and visitations by family and aid workers.
Barbara Lecq, head of the ICRC’s Sub-delegation for the Southern West Bank was present for the protest and spoke to her organization’s position. Questioned about the protests, she expressed doubts about the feasibility of the crowd’s expectations, but also stated that review of “material conditions” in the lives of prisoners and detainees, especially access to food, water, outside time, and social interaction, is in order. While detentions, she added, are permitted under the Geneva conventions and are “nothing new” to the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt), they “may turn out not to be nice or moral.”
According to Amjad Najjar, media spokesperson for the Palestinian Prisoners Society and head of the Hebron branch, the most recent wave of prisoner civil resistance was inspired in part by similar resistance movements to British authority in Ireland. “We all watched the Bobby Sands documentary,” he said.
At its height the strike has included as many as 2000 prisoners from all political parties and has brought systemic abuse of Palestinian inmates into limelight of international media.
Organized resistance among Palestinian resisters is no new phenomenon. Previous generations of prisoners have fought and won the ability to self-organize and educate, the very same rights taken away by the Netanyahu government.
The PPS itself is the continuation of organizing that took place inside prison, says Najjar, when prisoners recognized the need for prisoners to self-represent as much as possible to outside media. Along with advocacy for prisoner rights, they facilitate visitations and provide legal, educational, and other services for inmates and their families.
While Najjar said, “Our problem is not with the people of the ICRC…we think they are in solidarity,” the PPS campaign to end prisoner abuse is expected to escalate in coming months leading up to Palestinian Prisoner’s Day on April 17th.
Until the ICRC denounces the treatment of prisoners and formally recognizes their status as prisoners of war, the Palestinian Prisoners Society will continue to hold weekly demonstrations.
This coming week a demonstration will take place near the town of Ad Dhahiriya at the Meitar Checkpoint, a main route for Palestinians to visit incarcerated family members. Soldiers have begun conducting frequent strip searches, including of women, in dual harassment of would-be visitors by violating their modesty and cultural and religious prohibitions.
Ramallah:
On Monday the father of Khader Adnan, Musa Adnan, announced that he too would join his 33 year old son in solidarity by partaking in the hunger strike, meeting with Salaam Fayyad in Ramallah.
Amnesty International also commented on Israel’s lack of compliance to international law, denouncing the potential fatal results of Israel’s lack of concern for prisoner rights. In a statement by Amnesty International’s Anne Harrison, Deputy Director of North Africa and the Middle East, she stated:
The Israeli authorities must release Khader Adnan and other Palestinians held in administrative detention unless they are promptly charged with internationally recognizable criminal offences and tried in accordance with international fair trial standards.
Supporters in Ramallah gather at the Red Cross Office in Ramallah in solidarity with Khader Adnan and political prisoners | Photos by Fadi Arouri
According to a statement released by the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainee Affairs, the Ofer prisoner administration has collectively punished 8 prisoners who have joined Khader Adnan’s hunger strike, transferring them to solitary confinement. The prisoners names are Raed al-Sayegh, Muhtaseb al-Assa, Ayman al-Za’qeq, Hassan lafi, Mohammad Shaheen, Ahmad al-Iweiwi, Na’il and Firas al-Barghouthi.
Qadura Fares, the president of the Palestinian Society Prisoner’s Club, announced on Monday that demonstrations and act of solidarity would continue. Prisoner advocates requested a statement from Ofer military court on Monday regarding the extension of Adnan’s administrative detention, only to receive a confirmation from Israel that Adnan still faces at least 4 months of imprisonment, enacted since the order was arbitrarily placed on January 8th.
Ramallah joins the march for prisoner rights – Click for more images
On Monday night supporters gathered in Ramallah’s clock square in light of Adnan’s diminishing health, violated rights, and Israel’s lack of regard or concern. According to local organizer Sabreen Al Dwak, she urged the community on Monday night to say “No to killing our people” in a meeting in Clock Square that evening. The action continued into today as hundreds of Palestinians and supporters gathered in front of the International Red Cross Office in Ramallah and in Clock Square, demanding a firmer stance against Israel’s manipulative and abusive measures of against Palestinian political prisoners.
22 year old Sabreen Al Dwak, local organizer, collapsed during today’s demonstration in Clock Square, Ramallah. She is resuming her hunger strike. | Photo via raya.fm
Al Dwak collapsed during the demonstration as she endured her fourth day on hunger strike in solidarity with the prisoners. Doctors gave her salt, which is commonly employed to sustain such hunger strikes.
She refused further medical care in order continue her hunger strike for prisoner rights. Solidarity activists will continue to camp in Clock Square, on hunger strike, while according to WAFA News, the campers will remain under medical surveillance.
According to the prisoner support and human rights organizationAddameer (‘Conscience’), since 1967 Israeli authorities have arrested 2 in 5 Palestinian men and 1 in 5 Palestinians in generally (700,000), including 10,000 women and many thousands of children. Currently there are more than 200.
These numbers do not include those incarcerated by proxy, through the Palestinian Authority, which has on many occasions been obligated to cooperate with Israeli forces. The steadily worsening conditions for 4500-6000 Palestinian in Israeli prisons at any given time received a severe shock in June 2011, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised collective punishment—including punitive isolation and curtailed access to education, television, books, medical care, family visits, and more—while the single Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit remained in Hamas custody.
Later that year, in September 2011, Palestinian prisoners from multiple factions and prisons announced a “Campaign of Disobedience,” involving a hunger strike, refusal to prison uniforms, and noncompliance with role calls. Even though Shalit was released in October, conditions have not improved and in many cases have worsened, according to an Amnesty International report. Since 1948, over 200 Palestinians have died in prison, from inadequate medical care and food, severe beatings and torture, and other abuse.
For more updates or to take action, people can monitor the ISM website (callouts for action will be posted), respond to Adameer’s call to action, or write an email to the ICRC Jerusalem Office (JER_jerusalem@icrc.org) and demand they take a stand for prisoner rights.
Aaron is a volunteer with International Solidarity Movement (name has been changed).
On the 17th of December 2011 (53 days ago), Khader Adnan began his hunger strike in protest of his ill-treatment in Israeli detention and his arbitrary detention without charge or trial (known as Administrative Detention). He is in danger of dying at any moment. His wife, Randa, who saw him for the first time since his detention today described his condition as rapidly deteriorating and that he has lost a third of his weight and his hair.
TAKE ACTION NOW!
1.Call and demand the release of Khader Adnan, who has not been charged with any crime but instead is being held under Administrative Detention.
Call the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC (1.202.364.5500) OR your local Embassy (for a list, click here).
Call the office of Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs (1.202.647.7209)
Demand that Jeffrey Feltman bring this issue urgently to his counterparts in Israel and raise the question of Khader Adnan’s administrative detention.
2. Organize a protest outside your local Israeli Embassy (for a list, click here).
Post your local actions to the Khader Adnan facebook page here: https://www.facebook.
Help us spread the word with social media after you take action.
Download this photo of Khader Adnan to use for your social media profile pictures and click on the suggested messages below and they will be automatically tweeted.
Tweet Now: Take Action Now for #KhaderAdnan http://samidoun.ca/?p=133 #Palestine #Israel
3. Other Actions
Khader Adnan, the father of two daughters and with a third child on the way, is a baker, a Masters student in Economics at Birzeit University, and a political activist. Khader, was arrested on December 17, 2011 by masked soldiers who raided his home in the middle of the night (the village of Arrabe near Jenin in the occupied West Bank). Between the 18th and the 29th of January 2012, he was subjected to almost daily cruel and inhumane interrogations. During interrogations, he was shackled to a crooked chair with his hands tied behind his back in a position that caused him back pain. He said that interrogators threatened him constantly and verbally abused him and his family.
Khader was given a four-month administrative detention order on January 8, 2012. Khader’s interrogation period has ended but he refuses to accept the unjust system of administrative detention [more details], continuing his strike on the principle that such detention is a violation of his rights and identity. Administrative detention, a regular practice of the Israeli occupation, violates the internationally-recognized right to a fair trial. International standards for fair trial must be upheld for all political detainees, including those accused of violence, even under states of emergency. A military judge reviewed the administrative detention order on February 1, 2012 and is expected to inform lawyers of her decision later on this week.
Meanwhile, Khader’s health is deteriorating rapidly and doctors don’t expect him to be able to survive for much longer.
Khader Adnan, an imprisoned Palestinian activist held under administrative detention, has engaged in an open-ended hunger strike since December 17, 2011. Now at fifty days into his hunger strike, he is facing severe health consequences and has been moved to a hospital, continuing to refuse food in protest of torture, isolation, and the use of arbitrary detention against Palestinians.
Khader Adnan needs international support and solidarity to make it clear to the Israeli occupation that the eyes of the world are on his case and that of his nearly 5,000 fellow Palestinian political prisoners. He is currently in a hospital bed and being force-fed liquids over his objection. Send a letter now to Israeli officials demanding his freedom.
TWEET NOW to share this action alert by clicking here!
Addameer, the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, details the experience of Khader Adnan with the Israeli occupation on their page dedicated to his case. Adnan, a spokesperson for the Islamic Jihad party, is currently held under administrative detention, which is arbitrary detention without charge or trial, based on secret evidence, and renewable indefinitely for repeated periods of up to six months. Khader Adnan was issued a four-month administrative detention order on January 8. This is the eighth time Adnan has been detained, and he has served a total of six years in Israeli prisons – mostly without charge or trial under the administrative detention scheme. 280 fellow Palestinians are also held without charge or trial under Israel’s administrative detention mechanism.
Addameer reports:
Khader was arrested on 17 December 2011, when Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) raided his home outside Jenin at 3:30 am. Before entering his house, soldiers used the driver that takes Khader’s father to the vegetable market, Mohammad Mustafa, as a human shield by forcing him to knock on the door of the house and call out Khader’s name while blindfolded.
A huge force of soldiers then entered the house shouting. Recognizing Khader immediately, they grabbed him violently in front of his two young daughters and ailing mother. The soldiers blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back using plastic shackles before leading him out of his house and taking him to a military jeep. Khader was then thrown on his back and the soldiers began slapping him in the face and kicking his legs. They kept him lying on his back until they reached Dutan settlement, beating him on the head throughout the 10-minute drive. When they reached the settlement, Khader was pushed aggressively out of the jeep. Because of the blindfold, Khader did not see the wall right in front of him and smashed into it, causing injuries to his face.
Following his arrest, he was taken to interrogation, refused medical care and treatment despite Israeli prison officials’ knowledge of his health conditions, subject to physical abuse and mistreatment including being tied to a chair in a stress position, causing extreme back pain, and pulling on his beard so hard that his hair was ripped out. Khader was subjected to abusive language about his family, and refused to speak any further to interrogators, as well as refusing food. In retaliation, he was placed into isolation and solitary confinement, denied family visits, awakened in the middle of the night and strip-searched. He has refused to end his strike, protesting the illegitimacy of his arbitrary detention by an illegal occupation authority as well as cruel and inhumane treatment and abuse.
This is not his first hunger strike – in 2005 he protested his isolation in Kfar Yuna with a 12-day hunger strike. Khader Adnan’s hunger strike has sparked solidarity tents in Gaza and protests in Ramallah. Ten of his fellow prisoners in Ofer prison have joined him in his hunger strike, six fellow Islamic Jihad activists and four imprisoned members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; dozens of prisoners have refused food or participated in civil disobedience inside the prisons in support of Adnan. Students in Gaza are organizing a solidarity hunger strike outside the Red Cross building.
On Tuesday, February 7, Palestinian lawyers will boycott military courts to protest the treatment of Khader Adnan and demand an end to international silence around his case.
Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners participated in a 23-day hunger strike in October 2011, demanding an end to isolation, abuse, denial of family visits, and the long-term isolation of Palestinian leaders such as Ahmad Sa’adat; Israeli promises to end isolation, aimed to secure the end of the strike, proved to be false.
TAKE ACTION!
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges the Palestine solidarity movement in North America and around the world to publicize the case of Khader Adnan and raise up the voices of Palestinian political prisoners. Palestinian prisoners’ struggle for freedom is central to the struggle for a free Palestine.
Addameer has issued a call to action – we encourage you to distribute and act on Addameer’s call, linked here, and also to
Organize a picket or protest outside the Israeli embassy or consulate in your location and demand the immediate freedom of Khader Adnan and all Palestinian political prisoners. Make it clear that the eyes of the world are on the situation of Khader Adnan and demand an end to the use of isolation, torture solitary confinement, and administrative detention against Palestinian political prisoners. Send us reports of your protests at Israeli embassies and consulates at samidoun@samidoun.ca.
Write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to urge them to act swiftly to protect Khader Adnan and all Palestinian political prisoners. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at JER_jerusalem@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Khader Adnan. Make it clear that arbitrary detention without charge or trial is unacceptable, and that the ICRC must act to protect Palestinian prisoners from cruel and inhumane treatment.
Share this alert on Twitter and use the #FreeKhaderAdnan and #KhaderAdnan hashtags. TWEET NOW to share this action alert by clicking here.
The following important article, by Joe Catron, ran in Al-Akhbar English on February 2, 2012. Samidoun encourages all to read, distribute, and consider the implications of this important piece.
“Any movement that does not support its political internees is a sham movement.” – US political prisoner Ojore Lutalo
Political prisoners, their families, and their concerns and causes enjoy massive support in Palestinian society. Palestinians who may have never joined a boycott campaign or acted to break the siege of Gaza routinely demonstrate for the rights of detainees and contribute to support their families. Among political factions, the liberation of all prisoners is a clear point of consensus. Competing parties demand and celebrate the return of each others’ imprisoned members as a matter of course.
Political Prisoner Ameer Makhoul argues that the PLO’s official position on prisoners is, “a recipe for delaying and deferring the liberation of the prisoners indefinitely.”
In addition, he says that, “marginalizing the issue within the overall Palestinian agenda” fails to reflect this overwhelming sentiment.
Unfortunately, the same can be said of the global movement in solidarity with Palestinians and their struggle. Too often, it has treated a concern at the forefront of the Palestinian movement as an inconsequential afterthought, when it has mentioned it all.
Huge mobilizations by detainees, like the October hunger strike that, at its peak, included 3,000 people (and galvanized Palestinian society in support), received only a minimal amount of responses from overseas. Also, the daily struggles of individual prisoners, like the current hunger strike of administrative detainee Khader Adnan, barely elicit any notice.
Why does this matter? Aside from a basic principle of solidarity – backing the priorities of the people we support – these prisoners remind us, and the world, of “the Palestinians’ right, and duty, to resist occupation, colonization and displacement employing all means of struggle,” in Makhoul’s words.
Their perseverance, inside and outside prison walls, testifies to the fact that Palestine needs neither our charity nor our sympathy, but rather deserves our solidarity as it struggles to free itself.
The “internationalization” of prisoner support Makhoul advocates could renew the solidarity movement’s focus on this Palestinian agency. While Israel’s apartheid system includes too many shocking injustices to count, the prisoners are also an electrifying and radicalizing force, whose very existence defies attempts to depoliticize their struggle or reduce it to a humanitarian concern. A mobilized, energized and expanded worldwide solidarity movement would also offer much-needed political backing to them, and the families and communities that regularly mobilize for them.
Many organizations, both Palestinian and international, work to educate a global audience about these issues. Addameer, the Campaign to Free Ahmad Saadat, Defence for Children International, the International Campaign for Releasing the Abducted Members of Parliament, Samidoun, Sumoud, and the UFree Network, as well as media like the Electronic Intifada and the Middle East Monitor, generate tremendous amounts of high-quality information. But while information is a necessary prerequisite, it is ultimately from mobilization that public awareness, as well as political change, emerges.
Putting information to use – building a global campaign to free Palestinian prisoners – will require a strategy to build these organizations and expand their activities, while also engaging broader solidarity networks. Makhoul proposes a National Coordinating Committee, akin to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee, to oversee these efforts. In the meantime, international solidarity activists can and should respond to the current “steadfastness, defiance and struggle” of Palestine and its prisoners.
Recurring popular mobilizations, like Palestinian Prisoners’ Day (April 17) and Gaza’s weekly occupation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), could be replicated, on similar or more modest scales, in cities from New York to Islamabad. (Of course Gaza lacks explicitly Zionist institutions, which might prove to be more opportune targets elsewhere.) Rapid response networks could answer detentions, repression, and resistance by protesting Israeli Embassies, consulates, and missions, as well as foreign governments and international organizations collaborating with Israel.
The prisoners’ struggle can also invigorate existing campaigns. It overlaps neatly with the three demands of the BDS movement: An end to occupation and colonization (including detentions), full equality for Arab and Palestinian citizens (in judicial and correctional matters as well as all others), and the right of return for Palestinian refugees (like those expelled from their homes following release from prison).
BDS organizers have pursued prison profiteers like G4S, JC Bamford Excavators, the Israeli Medical Association, and the Volvo Group. Anti-siege efforts like the Free Gaza Movement and Viva Palestinia, too, could highlight Israel’s prison apparatus as an essential part of the system of militarized apartheid they oppose – and one explicitly intended to crush legitimate resistance.
Being proactive should be the core principle on every front. Many solidarity activists have complained of the disproportionate media attention lavished on Gilad Shalit and his family, but few have taken the time to investigate the global networks built to support them, or to learn the many lessons they have to offer. Giving Palestinian prisoners meaningful solidarity will ultimately require a similar movement focused on making their lives and struggles unavoidable topics of any informed conversation on Palestine.
The Israeli government oversees the world’s most militarized society, and one that cannot sustain itself without massive, ongoing repression, from its border walls to its isolation units. The prisoners illuminate the ugly face of this 21st-century apartheid, while offering a glimpse of the decolonized society that will inevitably replace it. Their struggles stand at the core of the broader movement for a free Palestine. All of us who join their struggle should acknowledge their leadership, appreciate their sacrifice, and offer them our full support.
Joe Catron is a (BDS) organizer in Gaza, Palestine. A citizen of the United States, he joined the October hunger strike with Palestinian prisoners and is currently editing an anthology of prisoner’s stories. He blogs and tweets.
From Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network:
In recent weeks, numerous Palestinian trade unionists and youth activists have been arrested from Jenin, Dheisheh refugee camp, Balata refugee camp, Beit Furik, and other areas in Bethlehem, Nablus and throughout the West Bank. In nighttime raids, Israeli military forces have been entering Palestinian towns and refugee camps and rounding up multiple prisoners, particularly focusing on grassroots community organizers; the majority of those abducted have been trade unionists and youth organizers. These Palestinian activists have been taken for interrogation and arbitrary detention.
These arrest raids are designed to target local Palestinian leaders and grassroots activists, and, in particular, trade union and workers’ organizers. There are currently nearly 5000 Palestinian political prisoners in occupation jails, despite October’s prisoner exchange – reports of new arrests, raids, and attacks have come on a daily basis. In fact, since the prisoner exchange, if anything, these raids have escalated, rapidly driving up the number of Palestinians held in occupation jails and offsetting the achievements of the exchange. It is clear that Israel has stepped up its campaign of mass arrests and local raids.
These attacks on labour organizers and leaders, including Sufyan Isteiti, Jamal Zubeidi and Majid Nueirat, come to demonstrate once more that the Israeli occupation is attempting to crush popular movements in Palestine through arrest raids, mass detentions and interrogations.
Israeli interrogation and detention centres are widely known for torture and abuse. In a video released yesterday on Israeli Channel 2, occupation soldiers are shown beating and abusing a young Palestinian man in detention. While the events portrayed in the video are only a pale shadow of the severe torture and abuse documented by Palestinian prisoners, the video’s revelation must remind us all of the threat to Palestinian labour leaders and grassroots organizers:
It is critical to make it clear that the world is watching, and that these arrest raids carried out under cover of darkness will not continue under cover of silence.
TAKE ACTION!
Samidoun is redistributing the following call from the United Church of Canada, calling for freedom for Palestinian child prisoners:
October 25, 2011
Call for the release of Palestinian children held as prisoners by Israel and for just treatment of all others.
While 1,027 Palestinian prisoners are being released over the next two months, this number does not yet include any of the 164 prisoners who are children; and the approximately 4,345 who are not scheduled for release are subject to treatment that violates international law.
Under the terms of a prisoner exchange, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has been freed in return for the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in two stages beginning October 18 and ending two months later. The first group of 477 includes 27 women but none of the 164 Palestinian children (12–17 years old) in prison. If all the 1,027 are released, there will still be some 4,345 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, many held in violation of international law and basic human rights.
Defence for Children International is an organization with whom the United Church has worked closely in many situations in the world. According to DCI
, whose appeal is supported by UNICEF, over 700 Palestinian children per year are detained with “credible reports of torture and/or ill-treatment” such as night arrests, blindfolding, physical violence, and interrogation, most often for throwing stones. In early September there were 164 children reported to be in detention facilities.
In June, prior to the release of Gilad Shalit, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Palestinian prisoners held by Israel would receive harsher treatment as punishment for the continued captivity of Shalit. The wide range of measures included increasing solitary confinement, strip searches, night raids, cutting back on visits, clothing, and books, and prohibiting children over eight years old from having physical contact with their imprisoned parents. These measures amount to collective punishment, which is specifically prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention. As a result of this policy, over 600 prisoners began resisting with a hunger strike beginning September 27: see Kairos Palestine Statement on Prisoners’ Strike.
See the Diakonia website for more information on international humanitarian law as it applies to the occupied Palestinian territories. For further information on the situation of Palestinian children imprisoned by Israel, including the response of the Israeli government, see the 2011 B’tselem report No Minor Matter.
An end to unjust treatment of Palestinian prisoners is one step toward a just peace in Israel Palestine.
Write to your MP and
Write to the Israeli Embassy and Prime Minister and
Please send your letters to:
Your MP: the House of Commons website has a complete list of MPs’ fax and phone numbers
Send a copy to:
For more information, contact:
The following article, on Palestinian Child Prisoners, was published in The Australian – a widely-read, Australian mainstream media source – on November 26, 2011.
Stone Cold Justice
by John Lyons
The Australian
26 November 2011
You hear them before you see them. The first clue that a new group of children is approaching is a shuffle of shoes and a clinking of handcuffs and shackles. The door to the courtroom bursts open – four boys, all shackled, stare into the room. Four boys looking bewildered.
They wear brown prison overalls and they trail into the room where their fate is to be decided by a female Israeli army officer/judge, who is sitting at the bench, waiting. The look on the face of one of the boys changes to elation when he sees his mother at the back of the court. He blows her a kiss. But his mother begins crying and this upsets the boy. He begins crying too.
We’re sitting in an Israeli military court which is attached to the Ofer prison in the West Bank, 25 minutes from Jerusalem. Mondays and Tuesdays are “children’s days”. Hundreds of Palestinian children from the age of 12 are brought here each year to be tried under Israeli military law for a range of offences. The majority are accused of throwing stones and, as the court has close to a 100 per cent conviction rate, almost all will be imprisoned for anything from two weeks to 10 months. Some will end up in adult jails.
Today, groups of children in threes and fours shuffle in; some cases last only 60 seconds, just long enough for the child to plead guilty and hear their sentence. Sitting in a room 50m away, more children wait. Despite their confessions, many insist that they did not throw stones or molotov cocktails, and the human rights group Defence for Children International estimates that about a third who pass through the system have either been shown or signed documentation in Hebrew – a language they cannot understand.
Inside the courtroom, the army’s public relations unit wants the IDF guide to sit next to me to explain each case. I’m told I can quote him as “my guide” but not name him and we are allowed to photograph some of the older children but not the younger ones. Nor will they allow us to photograph children handcuffed and shackled trying to walk – “absolutely not,” my guide says. The army obviously realises that such a photo would be enormously damaging. After September 11 I’d seen images of alleged terrorists walking like this but I’d never seen children treated this way. It’s not surprising that Israel doesn’t want this image out there – it would look uncomfortably like a Guantanamo Bay for kids.
Several countries, led by Britain, are turning up the heat on Israel over the treatment of Palestinian children – not only the manner of their arrest and interrogation but also the conditions in which they’re kept in custody. MP Sandra Osborne , part of a British delegation that recently visited the military court, said of the visit: “For the children we saw that morning, the only thing that mattered was to see their families, perhaps for the first time in months … A whole generation is criminalised through this process.”
Into this world has walked Gerard Horton an Australian lawyer. Horton was a Sydney barrister for about eight years and his practice included contract disputes, building insurance cases and employment matters. In 2006, while studying for a masters in international law, he volunteered for three months for an organisation that represented Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank. He has worked there ever since.
During his five years at Defence for Children International Horton says the office has increased its evidence-gathering capacity and will only pursue credible allegations based on sworn affidavits. He takes me through the arrest process: “Once bound and blindfolded, the child will be led to a waiting military vehicle and in about one-third of cases will be thrown on the metal floor for transfer to an interrogation centre.
“Sometimes the children are kept on the floor face down with the soldiers putting their boots on the back of their necks, and the children are handcuffed, sometimes with plastic handcuffs which cut into their wrists. Many children arrive at the interrogation centres bruised and battered, sleep-deprived and scared.” The whole idea, he says, is to get a confession as quickly as possible.
DCI has documented three cases where children were given electric shocks by a hand-held device and Horton claims there is one interrogator working in the settlement Gush Etzion “who specialises in threatening children with rape”. Some cases contain horrifying allegations, such as this one from Ahmad, 15 documented by DCI, who was taken from his home at 2am, blindfolded and accused of throwing stones. “I managed to see the dog from under my blindfold,” he says. “They brought the dog’s food and put it on my head. I think it was a piece of bread, and the dog had to eat it off my head. His saliva started drooling all over my head and that freaked me out. I was so scared my body started shaking … they saw me shaking and started laughing … Then they put another piece of bread on my trousers near my genitals, so I tried to move away but he started barking. I was terrified.”
Israel is under pressure to at least allow filming of interrogations. “We want interrogations of children audiovisually recorded,” says Horton. “This would not only provide some protection to the children but would also protect Israeli interrogators from any false allegations of wrongdoing.”
Australian diplomats have shown no obvious interest in the military courts despite our Ambassador to Israel, Andrea Faulkner, being told about the treatment of children a year ago. She refused to comment on the situation for this story. Says Horton: “It is disappointing that of all the diplomatic missions in the region, Australia has been conspicuously silent on the issue of the military courts.”
Horton says the military courts function as a system of control: “The army has to ensure that the 500,000 Jewish settlers who live in occupied territory go about their daily business without interruption from 2.5 million Palestinians… it is no coincidence that most children who are arrested live close to a settlement or a road used by settlers or the army.”
He says it’s an effective system; quite often the children emerge scared and broken. But there is little recourse. From 2001 to 2010, 645 complaints were made against Israeli interrogators; not one resulted in a criminal investigation. “Sometimes if there is a group of children who throw stones and the settlers or soldiers are not clear exactly who has thrown them, the army can go into a village at two or three in the morning and five or 10 kids get roughed up and it scares the hell out of the whole village,” says Horton. He adds that when the army arrests children they usually don’t say why or where they are taking them.
Former Israeli soldiers have formed Breaking the Silence, a group that has gathered more than 700 testimonies about abuses they committed or witnessed. Former Israeli army commander Yehuda Shaul says the army sets out “to make Palestinians have a feeling of being chased”. “The Palestinian guy is arrested and released,” Shaul says. “He has no idea why he was arrested and why he was released so quickly. The rest of the village wonders whether he was released because he is a collaborator.”
Fadia Saleh, who runs 11 rehabilitation centres in the West Bank dealing with the effects of detention, says: “Usually the children isolate themselves, they become very angry for the simplest reasons, they have nightmares. They have lost trust in others. They don’t have friends any more because they think their friends will betray them. There is also a stigma about them – other children and parents say, ‘Be careful being seen with him, or the Israeli soldiers will target you too.'”
