Nesse ínterim, nos EUA, em uma demonstração deplorável de subserviência à AIPAC, os cem senadores enviaram uma carta aberta à ONU criticando o movimento BDS e o alto comissariado para refugiados e solicitando que Israel seja tratado do mesmo jeito que os demais membros. Como se há décadas não fosse privilegiado.
Em defesa de sua assinatura, o democrata Bernie Sanders recorreu a um antigo refrão da AIPAC de apontar países infratores de direitos humanos, tipo tirar lixo de sua porta e pôr na do vizinho.
Enquanto isso, Mahmoud Abbas e Donald Trump se reuniam para nada.
E os torcedores do Celtic da Escócia, mais uma vez, demonstraram que futebol pode rimar com ativismo e solidariedade.The Glasgow Celtic football club supported the Palestinian prisoners on junger strike with large banners and Palestinian flags at a football match on Saturday 6 May.
Celtic won the game agaisnt St Johnstone, 4-1, while its supporters cheered for their team and for the Palestinians' rights lifting banners with the slogans "Freedom and Dignity" and "Hungering for Justice".
The campaign, called #SaltWaterChallenge or #تحدي_مي_وملح, went viral.
It is the turn of Amnesty International Events Copenhagen to challenge you to the salt water challenge in support of and in solidarity with the Palestinian hunger strikers.
Anistia Internacional de Copenhagen desafia você ao #SaltWaterChallenge
Before getting to the point of the hunger striking prisoners, I must mention last week's useless meeting between Palestinian unpopular president Mahmoud Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu's buddy Donald Trump, in Washington. Abbas’ ambassador to the United States, Husam Zomlot, recently said, “When you have a president who from day one commits himself to peace, and invests time and effort in reaching a solution, that’s the definition of a historic opportunity. President Trump has the political capital, the relationships with all the parties involved, and the will to actually achieve this goal.”
It is desperate to believe there is hope with Trump. But whether one agrees with the Palestinian ambassador’s assessment or not, Trump certainly does have more political space to arbitrate this conflict than his predecessor, Barack Obama did. Trump is not likely to face the kind of attacks from the Right Obama did. And if he makes any credible progress, it would be difficult for Democrats and even pro-Israel lobbying groups to stand against him.
But few, aside from Abbas’ government, seem to believe that is what Trump actually intends. His close relationship with Netanyahu and recent actions by both Israel and the United States seem to suggest otherwise.
Besides, there is a fundamental disconnect in the Western approach to the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict": the Palestinians are not struggling for peace; they are struggling for freedom.
Palestine struggle is against second-class citizenship for Palestinian citizens of Israel, the expansion of settlements, land confiscation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem,and the strangling siege in Gaza. In all cases, it comes down to a struggle for freedom and a future where today’s Palestinians and future generations can forge their own future outside the yoke of Israel.
This goes beyond the obvious hypocrisy Netanyahu displays on a regular basis. His occasional statements of support for two states are empty, as he makes clear when he routinely accompanies them with qualifiers such as the need for Israel to maintain control over the Jordan Valley.
Indeed, in Palestine, Israeli desires for peace are nothing more than a preference for Palestinians to acquiesce in their own oppression.
A view reinforced by Israeli overwhelming demands on the Palestinians.
What Donald Trup and most of Westerns fail to understand is that a negotiating frameword cannot treat an occupying power and an occupied people equally as it has been doing for the last 50 years because of Israel's increased strategic importance to the USA, while the Palestinians offer, concretely, little. Not mention the hasbara power of European guilt over the holocaust, that has made the idea of "Never Again", tragically, lose all of its humanism and universalism with the Nakba that followed, immediately, World War II.
Concomitantly with the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, Israelis were induced by the hasbara to fear that Palestinians want not only their own freedom but to control the entire area that was Mandatory Palestine under British rule before 1948 and, therefore, to limit or even eliminate the Jewish presence there today.
All the reasons above come back to the same point: Israeli and Palestinian goals are not the same.
Moreover, Palestinians have noted that settlement expansions has continued apace regardless of any initiative of "peace talks". Thus, they rightfully fear that peace will just bring more dispossession while the world is satisfied with the quiescent region.
It doesn’t really matter, for these purposes, how realistic the fears of either side may be. What matters is the political force that they have. This is why an outside arbiter has always been necessary. But to be effective, such an arbiter must also be cognizant of the realities. Such an outsider must understand that Israel is a highly valued member of the global economy and the global military-industrial complex. It must be dealt with on that level, but even then, any realistic arbiter must also understand that Israel still needs its allies more than its allies need it. That is true for the United States, and for other countries as well.
That arbiter must also understand that, in order to resolve this conflict, Palestinian freedom must be valued as highly as the freedom and rights of any Western people.
Palestinians are certainly aware of the far greater military, diplomatic, economic, and political power Israel has. But they have demonstrated that, although willing to compromise, they are not willing to accept second-class status just because they have the weaker hand.
A successful arbiter shall understand that whatever Israelis argue about Palestinian intentions in the long run, they do not have the right to continue depriving millions of innocent people of the basic rights and freedoms we all Westerns take for granted.
Back to the recent meeting in Washington, even if Zomlot and Abbas are correct about Trump’s intentions, I'm far from sure that the USA's president understands that it is Israel that wants peace and the Palestinians who want freedom. That is an understanding that has generally eluded US leaders from the first. It is hard to imagine that Trump would be the one to break that pattern.
Unless he is as clever as he thinks he is.
To be continued...
Testimony of hunger striker Rami Barghouthi - رامي البرغوثي يروي قصة الاضراب عن الطعام, 2015
As Palestinian prisoners entered 18th day of hunger strike, the day that standing up may become difficult of even impossible, significant Palestinian political leaders declared they would be joining the mass hunger strike. A joint conference held in Ramallah on the same day, declared that imprisoned Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) general secretarya Ahmad As'adat would join the strike along with dozens of leaders form several Palestinian policital factions such as Nael Barghouthi, Hassan Salameh, Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, Abbas al-Sayed, Ziad Bseiso, Basem al-Khandakji, Mohammed al-Malah, Tamim Salem, Mahmoud Issa and Said al-Tubasi.
Leila Khaled, the historic Palestinian resistance icon and active present-day political leader in exile, also announced an open-ended hunger strike in support of the striking prisoners.
She announced the hunger strike at the prisoners’ support tent in Amman, Jordan, in the courtyard of the office of the Democratic People’s Unity Party (Wihda Party) of Jordan. “The prisoners on hunger strike are in direct confrontation with the enemy, but they have only the weapon of the empty stomach,” said Khaled. She urged unity in supporting the strike, saying that “the prisoners are telling us for 20 days to come to the streets and showing us an example of unity,” noting that the prisoners’ struggle is a clear alternative to the path of the official Palestinian Authority leadership, which wants “to sell us the illusion that Trump will resolve our struggle through negotiations. We must uphold the right of return, and the liberation of Palestine, and the establishment of a democratic Palestine on the entire land of Palestine,” she said. “To the heroes on hunger strike in Israeli prison, I join you in this strike from this moment.”
Israeli Prison Service have continued to transfer prisoners, restrict lawyer visits and attempt to coerce prisoners to end their strike by all means at their disposal.
The following day, as Marwan Barghouthi managed to let a message out - 'Israel cannot silence us, nor isolate us, nor break us'. - Israel was seeking foreign doctors to force-feed the hundreds
of hunger-striking Palestinians, because its own medical association has
banned the practice.
And as the Hunger Strike for Dignity aand Freedom was entering its 20th day, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners announced
they will join the strike in the coming days, given the lack of
attention to the demands of the prisoners and the extreme danger faced
by striking prisoners today.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Movement issued a statement,
urging Palestinian, Arab and international action for the strikers as
new repressive measures were announced. “This trend carries with it
preparation for a targeted crime against the prisoners with the
intention of murder. It is clear that we are in the next stage now, that
of repression, abuse, and attempts to break the strike through
threatening the lives of the prisoners. The ongoing preparations
indicate that there is a decision taken against the prisoners to their
deaths at the hands of a gang of fascists in Tel Aviv. This is what
makes this confrontation an extraordinary moment. Dealing with it
requires vision, programs and activities that rise to the level
required,” wrote the prisoners, urging “besieging the embassies of the occupation” around the world.
No dia 05 de maio, na Cisjordânia ocupada, em uma passeata pacífica em Nabi Saleh em solidariedade com os grevistas, e contra o furto de terra e violência dos colonos, os "corajosos" soldados da IDF reprimiram com seus meios de sempre.
No dia 05 de maio, na Cisjordânia ocupada, em uma passeata pacífica em Nabi Saleh em solidariedade com os grevistas, e contra o furto de terra e violência dos colonos, os "corajosos" soldados da IDF reprimiram com seus meios de sempre.
As the world knows, around 1.600 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and
detention centers are hunger striking for freedom since 17 April 2017.
The call for hunger strike came amidst resentment of Israeli’s cruel
policies towards political prisoners and detainees. The hunger striking
prisoners’ demands include: family visits, proper medical care, an end
to Israel’s practice of detaining Palestinians without charge or trial
in so-called administrative detention and stopping the use of isolation.
Here are some facts on Palestinian hunger strikes:
What is the History of Palestinian Hunger Strikes? Hunger
strikes have long been used in different geographical areas as means to
protest and demand basic rights, including the right to vote, the right
to be free from torture and the right to self-determination. The long
history of Palestinian prisoners in mass and individual hunger strikes,
reveals the lack of trust in any judicial process and the lack of fair
trial guarantees they face under the military and civil court systems of
the Israeli occupation. Palestinian prisoners and detainees have resorted to hunger strikes as early as 1968 as
a legitimate peaceful protest to Israeli detention policies and cruel
detention conditions including the use of solitary confinement, denial
of family visits, inadequate medical treatment and torture and other
forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
What are the Medical Risks of Hunger Strikes? Hunger
strikes have associated health risks that can cause physical damage to
the prisoner or detainee, including severe loss of weight, weakness,
tiredness, inability to sleep, hearing loss, blindness, strokes, kidney
failure as well as other organ failures, cardiac arrest, and heart
attack. However, despite these medical risks, through hunger strikes,
Palestinians have been able to obtain basic and fundamental rights and
to improve their detention conditions through hunger strikes.
How do Israeli Authorities Deal with Hunger Strikes? Hunger strikes are often met with violent and coercive repression by Israeli Prison Service and special units, as
well as medical personnel to push detainees to end their hunger
strikes. Following hunger strikes, Addameer has documented several cases
of raids on prison cells, transfers of hunger strikers to isolation
cells, threats of indefinite detention, banning family visitation,
reduction of money spent in the canteen.
What were other coercive measures taken? In
response to the use of hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners and
detainees, Israeli authorities practiced force-feeding during the 1980s.
It was subsequently ceased by order from the Israeli High Court
following several deaths of Palestinian prisoners resulting from
force-feeding. At the time of earlier hunger strikes, Israel practiced
force-feeding of hunger-strikers in order to coerce detainees to end to
their hunger strikes without any legislation to regulate this measure. Several Palestinian prisoners have died as a result of being subjected to force-feeding.
These include Abdul-Qader Abu al-Fahm who had died on 11 May 1970
during a hunger strike in Ashkelon prison, Rasem Halawah and Ali
al-Ja'fari, who died following the insertion of the feeding tubes into
their lungs instead of their stomachs in July 1980 during a hunger
strike in Nafha prison, and Ishaq Maragha, who died in Beersheba prison
in 1983. Recently, a proposal for a legislation by
the Israeli minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan was initiated in
response to the mass hunger strike of 2012 with the purpose of putting
an end to future hunger-strikes and depriving Palestinian detainees and
prisoners of their fundamental right to peaceful protest. The bill was
approved by the Israeli Knesset on the 30th of July 2015.
Since when have Hunger Strikes been used in Protest of Administrative Detention? At
least since the 1990s, Palestinian prisoners have resorted to hunger
strikes as means to protest Israeli arbitrary use of administrative
detention. Administrative detention is a procedure that allows the
Israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely on secret information
without charging them or allowing them to stand trial. There are an
estimated 750 Palestinians placed under administrative detention,
including women, children, and Palestinian Legislative Council members.
In
recent years, Palestinian prisoners and detainees have resorted to
hunger strike to protest and increasing and systematic use of
administrative detention by the occupation authorities. For example, in 2012, Palestinian prisoners and detainees declared a mass hunger strike, which
involved nearly 2000 hunger strikers demanding the end of
administrative detention, denial of family visitations to Gaza
prisoners, isolation and other punitive measures. The 2012 hunger strike
ended with Israel’s temporality limiting the use of administrative
detention. However, few years later, the occupation authorities
increased the use of administrative detention leading to another hunger
strike in 2014 by over 80 administrative detainees asking for an end to the use of the arbitrary policy. The hunger strike ended after 63 days without forcing the Israeli government to limit the use of administrative detention.
Additionally,
several Palestinian administrative detainees embarked on individual
hunger strikes in protest of replacing them under administrative
detention without charge or trial of several times. These individual
hunger strikes included Mohammad Al Qeeq, Khader Adnan, Hana Shalabi,
Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Kayed.
Why do Palestinians Resort to Hunger Strikes? Palestinian
prisoners and detainees resort to hunger strike in order to protest and
have their voices heard outside an unfair legal system which
administers their arbitrary detention and the repression of their
voices. However, Israeli occupation authorities have not managed to
break the will of Palestinian hunger strikers who continue to use their
bodies, in the absence of any adequate judicial remedies, to practice
legitimate disobedience. Hunger strikers defy disciplinary power of
control and domination; the body of the hunger striker thereby
constitutes a medium through which power is shifted and recreated. The
prisoners and detainees refuse to comply with the prison’s structured
system of constrain and privation where they do not have full autonomy
over their bodies. Thus, through hunger strikes, these prisoners and
detainees re-gain sovereignty over their bodies through becoming
decision makers over the prison authorities.
What Are their Demands? Addameer Prisoner Support urges supporters of justice around the world to take action to
support the Palestinian prisoners whose bodies and lives are on the
line for freedom and dignity. Addameer urges all people to organize
events in solidarity with the struggle of hunger-striking prisoners and
detainees. 2017 marks 100 years of the Balfour declaration; 70 years of
Palestinian Catastrophe (al-Nakba); 50 years of brutal military
occupation. This is also the year to hold the Israeli occupation
accountable for its actions and to demand the immediate release of all
Palestinian political prisoners!
Addameer
further calls upon the international community to demand that the
Israeli government to respect the will of hunger strikers who use their
bodies as a legitimate means of protest, which has been recognized by
the World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Malta on Hunger
Strikes as “often a form of protest by people who lack other ways of making their demands known.”
"Don't fall for Israeli character assassination - Marwan Barghouthi is a man of peace.
We are guilty of being Palestinians, of aspiring to freedom, of refusing to surrender to a military and colonial occupation. While the oppressor may not want to acknowledge that injustice and oppression are the cause of provocation and conflict — and that freedom and dignity would pave the way to peace — it is the moral duty of the international community to remind and compel Israel to accept this undeniable truth.
When more than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners go on hunger strike to struggle for their rights, the jailer will use every diversionary tactic in the book to ensure that nobody asks the only relevant question: are their demands just and justified? Let me be the voice of the hunger strikers now, since many of them are in solitary confinement as punishment for having protested their detention conditions peacefully.
They are asking for the end of arbitrary and punitive measures against them, the end of torture and ill-treatment, of medical negligence, of the transfer of prisoners in cruel conditions, especially women, the end of the severe restrictions on their family visit rights and contacts with their loved ones, and respect of their right to education. These demands are not only legitimate; they are grounded in international law.
In a blatant attempt at distortion and misdirection, Israel claims that they “are all terrorists,'' all 6,500 prisoners including 300 children, 56 women, 13 parliamentarians, 28 journalists and the 500 administrative detainees held without charge or trial for indefinite periods of time, the worst form of arbitrary detention.
It claims all 800,000 Palestinian prisoners it has arrested since 1967 are ''terrorists'', the equivalent of 40% of our male population in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. And certainly, all the Palestinian people are ''terrorists'' by virtue of their identity.
Israel is resorting to character assassination against the leader of the hunger strike, my friend and colleague Marwan Barghouti. He was the head of the student council at Birzeit University when I was dean and member of the university council. He is also my colleague at the Palestinian Legislative Council since 1996, where he has proved to be a strong advocate of good governance and human rights, including women's rights.
Even after he was deported by the Israeli occupation in 1987, he frequently met with the negotiations delegation and expressed his full support for a peaceful negotiated settlement. While Barghouti believes in the Palestinian people's right to resist occupation by all available means under international law, he always opposed attacks against civilians. In recent years, he advocated peaceful means and civil disobedience to achieve our freedom.
Barghouti is a Palestinian political leader who was abducted from Ramallah by Israeli occupation army and illegally tried in an Israeli court in Tel Aviv in 2002. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see that his conviction and condemnation to five life sentences and 40 years in prison is unjustified and unwarranted. It is a conviction that says nothing about him and everything about the Israeli judicial system, just as the conviction of Mandela and his sentence to lifetime imprisonment said more about the apartheid regime then about those fighting it.
Israeli courts remain the instrument of a colonial military occupation and its policy of enslavement, intimidation and subjugation. International observers have characterized Barghouti's trial as a travesty of justice, a political show trial in breach of international law.
Eight Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, parliaments around the world, the Non-Aligned Movement composed of 120 states, and European countries including France have called for his release, and highlighted the significance of his role in the pursuit of peace. Last year, Barghouti was nominated multiple times for the Nobel Peace Prize. So what should we believe, the slanderous fabrications of the occupation as a self-proclaimed prosecutor and judge, or people of conscience around the world?
Israel does what it has always done, it repeatedly blames the Palestinians in order to avoid any accountability for its persistent violations of our rights, including the right to self-determination. Israel claims that if prisoners have gone on hunger strike it has nothing to do with Israeli violations, and if they die it is not Israel's responsibility. It claims that if Palestinians protest against their captivity it is because they do not want peace.
Until when will Israel be given a free pass? One would think that by now humanity has determined that slavery, oppression, colonialism, occupation and apartheid are cruel, illegal and morally repugnant. There is no justification under any pretext for perpetrating such crimes. Freedom, dignity and human rights are universal and indivisible, and should be guaranteed to all without preference or discrimination".
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi is a Palestinian legislator and activist, and a PLO Executive Committee Member
When more than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners go on hunger strike to struggle for their rights, the jailer will use every diversionary tactic in the book to ensure that nobody asks the only relevant question: are their demands just and justified? Let me be the voice of the hunger strikers now, since many of them are in solitary confinement as punishment for having protested their detention conditions peacefully.
They are asking for the end of arbitrary and punitive measures against them, the end of torture and ill-treatment, of medical negligence, of the transfer of prisoners in cruel conditions, especially women, the end of the severe restrictions on their family visit rights and contacts with their loved ones, and respect of their right to education. These demands are not only legitimate; they are grounded in international law.
In a blatant attempt at distortion and misdirection, Israel claims that they “are all terrorists,'' all 6,500 prisoners including 300 children, 56 women, 13 parliamentarians, 28 journalists and the 500 administrative detainees held without charge or trial for indefinite periods of time, the worst form of arbitrary detention.
It claims all 800,000 Palestinian prisoners it has arrested since 1967 are ''terrorists'', the equivalent of 40% of our male population in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. And certainly, all the Palestinian people are ''terrorists'' by virtue of their identity.
Israel is resorting to character assassination against the leader of the hunger strike, my friend and colleague Marwan Barghouti. He was the head of the student council at Birzeit University when I was dean and member of the university council. He is also my colleague at the Palestinian Legislative Council since 1996, where he has proved to be a strong advocate of good governance and human rights, including women's rights.
Even after he was deported by the Israeli occupation in 1987, he frequently met with the negotiations delegation and expressed his full support for a peaceful negotiated settlement. While Barghouti believes in the Palestinian people's right to resist occupation by all available means under international law, he always opposed attacks against civilians. In recent years, he advocated peaceful means and civil disobedience to achieve our freedom.
Barghouti is a Palestinian political leader who was abducted from Ramallah by Israeli occupation army and illegally tried in an Israeli court in Tel Aviv in 2002. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see that his conviction and condemnation to five life sentences and 40 years in prison is unjustified and unwarranted. It is a conviction that says nothing about him and everything about the Israeli judicial system, just as the conviction of Mandela and his sentence to lifetime imprisonment said more about the apartheid regime then about those fighting it.
Israeli courts remain the instrument of a colonial military occupation and its policy of enslavement, intimidation and subjugation. International observers have characterized Barghouti's trial as a travesty of justice, a political show trial in breach of international law.
Eight Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, parliaments around the world, the Non-Aligned Movement composed of 120 states, and European countries including France have called for his release, and highlighted the significance of his role in the pursuit of peace. Last year, Barghouti was nominated multiple times for the Nobel Peace Prize. So what should we believe, the slanderous fabrications of the occupation as a self-proclaimed prosecutor and judge, or people of conscience around the world?
Israel does what it has always done, it repeatedly blames the Palestinians in order to avoid any accountability for its persistent violations of our rights, including the right to self-determination. Israel claims that if prisoners have gone on hunger strike it has nothing to do with Israeli violations, and if they die it is not Israel's responsibility. It claims that if Palestinians protest against their captivity it is because they do not want peace.
Until when will Israel be given a free pass? One would think that by now humanity has determined that slavery, oppression, colonialism, occupation and apartheid are cruel, illegal and morally repugnant. There is no justification under any pretext for perpetrating such crimes. Freedom, dignity and human rights are universal and indivisible, and should be guaranteed to all without preference or discrimination".
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi is a Palestinian legislator and activist, and a PLO Executive Committee Member
"Neither Netanyahu nor his ministers, who are suffering from hysteria as a result of the courageous Palestinian prisoners staging a hunger strike, have hesitated to call the prisoner leaders murderers.
The Israeli racism machine has not stopped making proposals characterised by severe cruelty and disgrace, such as the suggestion made by Israeli Minister of Intelligence and Transportation, Yisrael Katz, to execute prisoners. Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, also suggested that the prisoners on hunger strike are left to starve to death, which is what happened with the Irish activists led by Bobby Sands.
With the same degree of disgrace, the Israel Prison Service decided to build a military field hospital that allows it to use the internationally prohibited method of “force feeding” because civilian doctors and their union refuse to commit this crime against the prisoners.
The brave Marwan Barghouthi does not need anyone to defend him. His article in the New York Times skilfully put the occupation in the docks, and he never killed anyone with his hands. The most important question here is: Who did? What is the record of Israeli leaders themselves? Those who are honoured in some international forums and are even awarded peace prizes.
Wasn’t Menachem Begin a murderer, responsible for the Deir Yassin massacres, as well as the other crimes committed by his organisation, Irgun, such as the bombing of the King David Hotel and the killing of Brits, Palestinians and Jews?
Furthermore, he and Yitzhak Shamir added to their record the assassination of the UN mediator, Count Bernadotte, and other international diplomats.
Didn’t the former Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, use his hands and weapon to kill Kamal Nasser, Kamal Adwan, Abu Yousef Al-Najjar and his wife in Beirut? His unit also assassinated the Palestinian leader Abu Jihad in Tunisia.
Wasn’t it Shimon Peres who ordered the Qana massacre, killing women and children in a UN shelter in Lebanon?
Didn’t Netanyahu, Tzipi Livni and Barak all commit war crimes during the successive attacks on the Gaza Strip, which claimed the lives of thousands of martyrs, including hundreds of children? A file of these crimes is now on the ICC’s table.
Do we need to remind the Israeli ministers of Ariel Sharon’s past in the Qibya massacre in 1953, killing the Egyptian prisoners in 1967, and in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which surpassed all other massacres in atrocity in 1982.
The Palestinian people have not and will not forget.
However, the world must remember. It is its duty to support the struggle of the prisoners who are practicing the most peaceful forms of struggle and the noblest form of popular resistance by staging a hunger strike. This is the only weapon they possess while trapped in Israeli prisons.
On Friday, we participated in a demonstration in the Jerusalem villages near Ofer Prison. We tried hard to raise our voices so that the prisoners inside would hear us, although they don’t need to hear us to know that their entire nation is behind them.
We had young boys with us who were born and lived their entire lives, like their parents, under occupation, oppression and discrimination.
These boys are not in need of incitement to become fighters. Their lives and suffering drives them to this, but their presence reminded us that the future generation of hope and victory is growing and maturing, despite the oppression, torture and attempts to spread frustration and despair; despite the escape of those who grew tired of the burdens of the struggle.
The Palestinian fighters are not killers, they fight for freedom and they create life and hope. They are willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their people’s freedom.
I bet the majority of Israeli ministers think of no one else other than themselves, their position and their future wealth.
That is why we are optimistic and they are pessimistic, drowning in their racism".
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, is a physician, activist and politician who serves as genegral secretary of the Plaestine National Initiative (PNI)
The Israeli racism machine has not stopped making proposals characterised by severe cruelty and disgrace, such as the suggestion made by Israeli Minister of Intelligence and Transportation, Yisrael Katz, to execute prisoners. Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, also suggested that the prisoners on hunger strike are left to starve to death, which is what happened with the Irish activists led by Bobby Sands.
With the same degree of disgrace, the Israel Prison Service decided to build a military field hospital that allows it to use the internationally prohibited method of “force feeding” because civilian doctors and their union refuse to commit this crime against the prisoners.
The brave Marwan Barghouthi does not need anyone to defend him. His article in the New York Times skilfully put the occupation in the docks, and he never killed anyone with his hands. The most important question here is: Who did? What is the record of Israeli leaders themselves? Those who are honoured in some international forums and are even awarded peace prizes.
Wasn’t Menachem Begin a murderer, responsible for the Deir Yassin massacres, as well as the other crimes committed by his organisation, Irgun, such as the bombing of the King David Hotel and the killing of Brits, Palestinians and Jews?
Furthermore, he and Yitzhak Shamir added to their record the assassination of the UN mediator, Count Bernadotte, and other international diplomats.
Didn’t the former Israeli Prime Minister and Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, use his hands and weapon to kill Kamal Nasser, Kamal Adwan, Abu Yousef Al-Najjar and his wife in Beirut? His unit also assassinated the Palestinian leader Abu Jihad in Tunisia.
Wasn’t it Shimon Peres who ordered the Qana massacre, killing women and children in a UN shelter in Lebanon?
Didn’t Netanyahu, Tzipi Livni and Barak all commit war crimes during the successive attacks on the Gaza Strip, which claimed the lives of thousands of martyrs, including hundreds of children? A file of these crimes is now on the ICC’s table.
Do we need to remind the Israeli ministers of Ariel Sharon’s past in the Qibya massacre in 1953, killing the Egyptian prisoners in 1967, and in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which surpassed all other massacres in atrocity in 1982.
The Palestinian people have not and will not forget.
However, the world must remember. It is its duty to support the struggle of the prisoners who are practicing the most peaceful forms of struggle and the noblest form of popular resistance by staging a hunger strike. This is the only weapon they possess while trapped in Israeli prisons.
On Friday, we participated in a demonstration in the Jerusalem villages near Ofer Prison. We tried hard to raise our voices so that the prisoners inside would hear us, although they don’t need to hear us to know that their entire nation is behind them.
We had young boys with us who were born and lived their entire lives, like their parents, under occupation, oppression and discrimination.
These boys are not in need of incitement to become fighters. Their lives and suffering drives them to this, but their presence reminded us that the future generation of hope and victory is growing and maturing, despite the oppression, torture and attempts to spread frustration and despair; despite the escape of those who grew tired of the burdens of the struggle.
The Palestinian fighters are not killers, they fight for freedom and they create life and hope. They are willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their people’s freedom.
I bet the majority of Israeli ministers think of no one else other than themselves, their position and their future wealth.
That is why we are optimistic and they are pessimistic, drowning in their racism".
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, is a physician, activist and politician who serves as genegral secretary of the Plaestine National Initiative (PNI)
Palestine Remix - Story of a Former Prisoner & Hunger Stiker
“Israel’s decades-long policy of detaining Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza in prisons inside Israel and depriving them of regular family visits is not only cruel but also a blatant violation of international law,” said Amnesty International. The London-based rights group said that “testimonies gathered by the organisation from family members and Palestinian prisoners detained in the Israeli prison system shed light on the suffering endured by families, who in some cases have been deprived from seeing their detained relatives for many years. Israel’s ruthless policy of holding Palestinian prisoners arrested in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in prisons inside Israel is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
It is unlawful and cruel and the consequences for the imprisoned person and their loved ones, who are often deprived from seeing them for months, and at times for years on end, can be devastating.
Instead of unlawfully transferring prisoners outside the occupied territories, Israel must ensure all Palestinians arrested there are held in prisons and detention centres in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Until then, the Israeli authorities must stop imposing excessive restrictions on visitation rights as a means of punishing prisoners and their families, and ensure that conditions fully meet international standards.
Palestinian detainees held on security grounds are also barred from making phone calls to their families. Under international humanitarian law, detainees from occupied territories must be detained in the occupied territory, not in the territory of the occupying power. They must also be allowed to receive visitors, especially near relatives, at regular intervals and as frequently as possible.”
According to Israeli Prison Service regulations all prisoners are entitled to family visits once every two weeks. However, in reality, because Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territories must apply for permits to enter Israel, they can visit much less frequently.
The Israeli Prison Service regulations also allow the authorities to rescind a prisoner’s right to family visits on security grounds.
Gaza prisoners continue to be most affected by Israeli restrictions as the Israeli military grants permits to families from the Strip only once every two months. This policy affects around 365 prisoners from Gaza currently detained in Israel.
In addition, Hamas prisoners along with other prisoners living in the same prison wings, are only permitted one monthly visit, irrespective of where they come from.
Palestinian Children Prisoners: Stone Cold Justice
Former Northern Irish hunger strikers explain how hunger strikes work and the goals they set to achieve throughout.
Thanks to Middle East Eye for publishing this post: Former Israeli Defense Minister confirmed Israeli collaboration with ISIS in Syria. Bogie Yaalon served as defence minister in the current Israeli government till he had a falling out with Netanyahu in May 2016.
In the midst of complaining about the Islamist threat to Israel and the world, Binyamin Netanyahu conveniently forgets that his own country enjoys a tacit alliance with ISIS in Syria. It is an alliance of convenience to be sure and one that’s not boasted about by either party. But is not terribly different from one than Israel enjoys with its other Muslim allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.
Na Argentina, Ilan Pappe resume a hasbara - legendado em espanhol
BRASIL - DIRETAS, JÁ!
