Thursday, March 28, 2013

Child prisoners denied education in israeli jails




Shockingly, Israel holds 39 children between the ages of 12 and 15 , among a total of 236 Palestinian minors, in jail, according to DCI-Palestine's figures covering the month of February. This is the highest total number since October 2010.


http://www.dci-palestine.org/documents/israel-prison-service-denies-jailed-palestinian-minors-education

Palestinian Prisoners' Day

We will start posting on events happening on 17 April for Palestinian Prisoners' Day


Christians United for Peace will stand in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on April 17. The military courts that send Palestinian men, women, and children to prison are designed to punish non-Jews on trumped up charges, confessions extracted through torture, handing out long sentences for non-violent protests. We support the boycott of all companies who supply Israel with equipment and services in their prison system.

http://corporateoccupation.org/israeli-prisons-using-hiatt-handcuffs/

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Excerpt from the book

This is a chapter from the book , called "The day my children were scattered" by Kahera Als'adi


My days passed like dreams. My soul and my breathing were weak as I remembered the stolen past and imagined a beautiful future yet to come. I stayed in Moskobiyyeh prison. My frail body withstood an army of interrogators. If I described them as stones, I would be unjust, for even stones sometimes soften.

A small chair and filthy walls were all I had in a cell barely larger than I am. The dyspnea that choked me wasn’t a sickness or a pain as much as a longing for the landscape of life outside this living grave. I defied them many times and forced myself to conceal my tears. I thought only of my four children whom I had left behind and who were snatched away from me.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Child prisoners

Rev Stephen Sizer who did a review of the Prisoners' Diaries attended a conference in Baghdad about palestinian prisoners in Israeli occupied prisons last December ,and he shares his presentation on child prisoners here.
If you find reading the Prisoners' Diaries disturbing, it is difficult to imagine what the conditions those prisoners endured would do to a child who may not have the same mental and physical strength to cope.

Reviews


 The Prisoners’ Diaries provides a deeply moving series of first-person commentaries on what Palestinian prisoners have been enduring for decades in the dark recesses of Israel’s unlawful and inhumane network of prisons.
Somehow these texts, with their convergent renderings of the ordeal of imprisonment make us feel and understand the reality of Palestinian suffering that is associated more generally with living under such a long and abusive occupation in vivid ways that statistics, however necessary, can never manage.
This book is so valuable as it combines the witnessing by prisoners with just enough information about the magnitude of the Israeli prison system to give readers a true understanding of this most agonizing dimension of the Palestinian ordeal.
Reading this book, above all, makes one doubt whether such individuals who have resisted the occupation of their country should be treated as criminals at all rather than brave warriors in a ceaseless and legitimate war waged against great odds to recover control of their homeland.”
Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University and UN Special Rapporteur for occupied Palestinian Territories

A full review by Richard Falk can be found on his blog at http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/2013/03/30/reading-palestinian-prison-diaries/


“ I defy you to read these stories and not weep for Jews and Palestinians. Now dry your eyes and work for justice, peace and reconciliation.”
Stephen Robert Sizer, Anglican vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water, Surrey, England, writer, peace activist and freelance photographer


“ A humane, beautiful, valuable yet painful book. I ask all people of conscience to read it to learn more about the suffering of the Palestinian detainees in Israeli Occupation prisons.”
Hana Shalabi, former hunger striker, Hasharon prison, Tel Aviv


“ Yet more shocking revelations
of Israel’s neo-holocaust politics. Inhumanely consistent with its expansionist policies in West Bank and siege of Gaza.”

Dr Musa Nordin, Chairman, Viva Palestina Malaysia 

"The Prisoners' Diaries had me in tears almost immediately. This first hand testimony by survivors of Israeli detention centres and isolation cells, makes it a pivotal work. I lived every moment from cover to cover.So will you.The question is- what do we do now we know the truth ?"
LAUREN BOOTH, English broadcaster, journalist and activist.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Middle East Monitor Review

Middle East Monitor, Review by Ramona Wadi.

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Author: Norma Hashim
Paperback: 125 pages
Publisher: Islamic Human Rights Commission
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1903718929

Review by Ramona Wadi

Edited and published during the Palestinian prisoners' hunger strike, The Prisoners' Diaries is a distressing fragment of testimonies from Palestinians whose deterioration in Israeli jails has become a fact of life, rather than a blatant violation of human rights. The resilience against the occupation and a lack of global outrage against torture and apartheid practices resonated with irregular frequencies within the international community, as leaders relegate human rights to the vestiges of redundant diplomacy.

As the epitomes of the hunger strike, Samer Issawi and Ayman Sharawna, seem to have faded from public scrutiny, this book serves as a reminder of the reality experienced by hundreds of prisoners who have, at some point, been incarcerated and subjected to torture in Israeli prisons. The brief narrations manage to dissolve the facade of statistics and portray the humanitarian aspect - estranged families, poverty, illness, death and the metaphor of time experienced as a perpetual waiting and loathed dependence on an entity responsible for the deterioration of life as envisaged by the occupying power.

The intricate web of dependence is portrayed as a primary source facilitating physical and psychological torture. Apart from the notorious practice of administrative detention, which manipulates the essence of hope, dependence upon an oppressive regime responsible for atrocities distorts the whole concept of safeguarding one's personal wellbeing. Medical neglect is one of the most commonly cited forms of torture, with prisoners reporting being treated with painkillers instead of being administered the appropriate treatment. Others have reported being traumatised by the gloating of doctors over operations for malignant diseases. A particular testimony by Ahmad Alnajjar describes the humiliating predicament. "I was like a wounded man telling predators of his pain." Akram Mansour's complaints of pain became a source of psychological torture - apart from delaying medical investigations, the prison doctor informed him that 'deadly cancer had invaded my head'. After going on hunger strike as a form of protest against negligence and torture; a proper check-up ruled out the possibility of cancer.

Family constraints are evident in almost all the narrations. Dependence upon Israel to issue a visiting permit has rendered communication almost negligible. Resorting to letters, as one prisoner explained, is perceived as the only shield against insanity and endless waiting - a means through which the connection with the world beyond incarceration is retained. Prisoners recall the dissolution of family life since the time of arrest through various imposed measures - the destruction of family property, death of children following severe psychological trauma, the offers of exile as a means of permanent separation and the forced separation of children in different orphanages following the detention of both parents. Another form of isolation, which resonates amongst the collective, is the threats to 'exile' Palestinian prisoners from the Occupied Palestinian Territories to Gaza - a move perceived as aiming to fragment the identity of Palestinians into that of estranged, separate factions.

It is evident from these narrations that the isolation from the family nucleus, as well as from the frontlines of the resistance has created a new form of endurance, in which the struggle against violence in Israeli jails became another link attributed to Palestinian resilience. There is an acknowledgement of violence by detainees, regarding their precarious and at times, deadly missions, in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. Alongside the acknowledgement is the question of legitimacy, which is intertwined in the historical struggle of Palestinians. The vociferous condemnations against Palestinian violence resemble a perpetual echo, which in turn legitimises Israel's illegal occupation and its violations of international law. The main source of violence, before armed resistance formed part of the Palestinian struggle, was the international approval of Israeli independence, which enforced a web of isolation upon Palestinians in order to enshrine Zionist ideology and its repercussions.

In turn, this acknowledgement of violence brings the Western caricature of Palestinians into the equation. The oppressed population does not enter the configuration of international governmental organisations. Palestinian prisoners are classified as 'terrorists' by international leaders, thus reinforcing Israel's necessary propaganda to ensure the survival of the 'Jewish state'. The book dispels the 'terrorists' myth, depicting, through the detainees' own recollections, a sliver of life under occupation which rendered armed resistance a necessity. This phenomenon is perhaps best viewed through the coverage of corporate media regarding the capture of Gilad Shalit and the subsequent negotiations which secured his release and that of over a thousand of Palestinian prisoners. Israeli violence is legitimised by the media, on the pretext of security concern. Palestinian armed resistance is equated to terrorism, despite the fact that the need for security is an issue which goes back to the initial dispossession.

The book includes statistical information about Palestinian detainees, stating that around a fifth of the entire Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have been incarcerated. Despite 645 complaints of torture and ill treatment, not a single investigation has been instigated. While activists and supporters of the Palestinian cause will undoubtedly be outraged by the atrocities narrated in this book, it would serve as an incentive for international leaders and organisations clamouring for human rights to reconsider and reconcile themselves with the universality of such themes. The discrepancy between the United Nation's Declaration of Human Rights and actual practice has become a source of contention and hypocrisy which needs to be addressed, lest the document is transformed into the proof of moral degeneration to safeguard imperial and regional interests.

Book Reviews

More reviews of The Prisoners' Diaries.

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"Yet more horrific revelations of Israels treatment of Palestinians; this time behind bars. Inhumane and consistent with its expansionist policies in the West Bank and siege of Gaza."
-- Dr Musa Mohd Nordin,
Chairman, Viva Palestina Malaysia

The Prisoners' Diaries had me in tears almost immediately. This firsthand testimony by survivors of Israeli detention centers and isolation cells makes it a pivotal work. I lived every moment from cover to cover. So will you. The question is - what do we do now we know the truth?
-- Lauren Booth,
English Broadcaster, Journalist and pro-Palestinian activist

Professor Richard Falk

From the weblog of Professor Richard Falk.

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The Prisoners’ Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag, edited by Norma Hashim, in close collaboration with the Centre for Political & Development Studies, Gaza, 2013


There are many moving passages that can be found in these excerpts from prison diaries and recollections of 22 Palestinians. What is most compelling is how much the material expresses the shared concerns of these prisoners despite great variations in writing style and background. A few keywords dominate the texts: pain, God or Allah, love, dream, homeland, steadfastness, tears, freedom, dream, prayer. My reading of these diaries exposed me to the distinct personal struggles of each prisoner to survive with as much dignity as possible in a dank and poorly lit circumstances of isolation, humiliation, acute hostility on the part of the prison staff, including abusive neglect by the medical personnel. The diaries also confirmed that even prolonged captivity had not diluted the spirit of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, but on the contrary had intensified it. A strong impression of the overall illegitimacy of Israel’s encroachment on the most fundamental rights of the Palestinian people is also present on virtually every page.


Although not professional writers, the sentiments expressed have a special kind of eloquence arising from their authenticity and passion. A female prisoner,Sana’a Shihada, on learning that her family had been spared the demolition of their family home, describes the ordeal of her interrogation in a poetic idiom: “..the anger of the interrogators was like snow and peace to me [an Arabic saying that conveys a sense of being ‘soothing’]. I felt the pride of the Palestinians, the glory of Muslims, and the brightness of honesty. I knelt to Allah, thankfully. My tears fell on the floor of the cell, and I am sure they dug a path which those later imprisoned will be able to see.” Or the words of Eyad Obayyat, a prisoner facing three lifetime sentences for his role in killing several Israeli soldiers, “Among us prisoners, the unity of love for our homeland was precious above all other things.” Another, Avina Sarahna, asks poignantly, “Is resisting occupation a crime?…Let me be a witness to the truth, and let me stay here.” Speaking of the pain of being separated from her four children, Kahera Als’adi writes, whom she discovered were living in an orphanage: “I couldn’t keep myself from bursting into tears. Was my loving family scattered like this? Was fate against us because of our love for our homeland?..After that visit, I felt like a slaughtered sheep.” These randomly selected quotations could be multiplied many times over, but hopefully the overall tone and coherent message are conveyed by these few examples.


What I found most valuable about this publication was its success in turning the abstraction of Palestinian prisoners into a series of human stories most of which exhibit agonized feelings of regret resulting from prolonged estrangement from those they most love in the world. Particularly moving were the sorrows expressed by men missing their mothers and daughters. These are the written words of prisoners who have been convicted of various major crimes by Israeli military courts, some of whom face cruel confinement for the remainder of their life on earth, and who have been further punished by being deprived of ever seeing those they love not at all, or on rare occasions, for brief tantalizing visits under dehumanizing conditions, through fogged up separation walls.


It is hard not to treat a prison population as an abstraction that if noticed at all by the outside world is usually reduced to statistics that appear in reports of human rights NGOs. These autobiographical texts, in contrast, force us to commune with these prisoners as fellow human beings, persons like ourselves with loves, lovers, needs, aspirations, hopes, pious dreams, and unrelenting hardships and suffering. There is also reference to the other side of the prison walls. These prisoners show concern for the suffering that imprisonment causes their families, especially young children and elderly parents. Given the closeness of Palestinian families it is certain that those who are being held in prison would be terribly missed, especially as their confinement arises because of their engagement in a struggle sacred to virtually every Palestinian. Such humanization of Palestinian prisoners is undoubtedly superfluous for Palestinians living under occupation or in refugee camps where arrests, which resemble state-sanctioned kidnappings are being made daily by Israeli security forces. It is a tragic aspect of the occupation that after 45 years of occupation there is not a Palestinian family that is left untouched by the Israeli criminalization of all forms of resistance, including those that are nonviolent and symbolic.





We need a wider ethical, legal, and political perspective to grasp properly this phenomenon of Palestinian prisoners. The unlawful occupation policies of Israel are unpunished even when lethal and flagrantly in violation of international humanitarian law, and are rarely even officially criticized in international arenas. In contrast lawful forms of resistance by the Palestinian people are harshly punished, and the resulting victimization of those brave enough to resist is overlooked almost everywhere. If we side with those who resist, as was done during World War II when those Europeans mounted militant forms of resistance against German occupation and criminal practices, we glorify their deeds and struggle. Yet if the occupier enjoys our primary solidarity we tend to criminalize resistance without any show of empathy. To some extent, this book cuts through this ideological myopia, and lets us experience the torment of these prisoners as human beings rather than as Palestinian ‘soldiers’ in the ongoing struggle against Israel.





In the past year, heroic Palestinian hunger strikers, initially Khader Adnan andHana Shalabi, did their best to call attention to the abusive character of Israel’s terrifying violent arrests in the middle of the night followed by imprisonment for lengthy periods without even making charges or holding trials. Israeli recourse to administrative detention takes place even in circumstances where the person being confined was engaged in no activities that could be remotely considered to pose a security threats. It is notable that despite hunger strikers putting their own lives at severe risk to protest such inhumane behavior by Israel in its role as the occupying power, the world refuses to pay attention even to such hunger strikers, which is somewhat shocking despite decades of lectures to the Palestinians to renounce armed resistance, and engage instead in nonviolent forms of resistance, and if they do so, they will win political support for their grievances even from governments allied with Israel, including the United States. To date the evidence suggests a far uglier pattern: when Palestinians resist by way of armed struggle, their actions are denounced and their grievances are ignored, while when they resist nonviolently, their actions and their grievances are ignored. What is worse, while this shift in Palestinian tactics has taken place in recent years, the Israeli governing process moves steadily to the right until now in March 2013, the latest governing coalition in Tel Aviv is avowedly settler oriented. The international background music has not changed, and Washington loses no opportunity to sound the trumpets while declaring its unconditional and undying loyalty to Israel, pretending not to notice violations of international law and the deliberate efforts to make the two state solution yesterday’s dream, today’s nightmare.


The preoccupation of these prisoners with the fate of the singular Israeli prisoner at the time, Gilad Shalit, was something of a surprise for me, although it is understandable. Why, the Palestinians ask themselves, does the world make such a fuss about a single Israeli being held in Gaza after being captured during a military mission, and ignore the fate of the many thousands of Palestinians detained for year after year because they fought for the freedom of their country? Once considered, such a question is both natural, and once asked, the grotesque display of double standards seems self-evident. But there is also an opposite appreciation of the significance of Shalit expressed, which recognizes that the October 2011 deal struck to release 1,027 Palestinian prisoners would not have happened had Shalit not been captured. In this sense, the Palestinians in recording their feelings realize that their freedom has been made possible because Hamas succeeded in capturing and holding Shalit. This was no small achievement. During the massive attacks by Israel on Gaza in 2008-09, Operation Cast Lead, IDF commanders told their troops that this violence had been unleashed so as to gain the release of Shalit. Had Hamas allowed Shalit to go free or had be been killed in the operation, then there would have been no negotiations for the release of Palestinian prisoners. It is as simple as that. Of course, it is not simple. Many of those released were soon rearrested by Israel, once more undermining even minimal trust between the two peoples, and again showing that Israel can defy legal and moral obligations without facing any adverse consequences, a metaphor for the overall stranglehold of the occupation.


Above all, these texts in almost every page confirm that particularly prized Palestinian collective public/private virtue of sumud or steadfastness. Such exhibitions of courage indirectly shames those of us who suffer far less or not at all, and yet find ourselves discouraged and dispirited by the ills of the world to an extent that we retreat from public engagement to the comfort zones of sanctuaries of escape. These prisoners have no such option, maintaining their commitment to the Palestinian struggle in the darkest of circumstances, consigned to spending their most energetic years behind bars or surrounded by dank prison walls. We can ask ourselves where does such courage come from? There is no definite common answer. Yet what comes across from these diary pages are deep commitments rooted in love of family and homeland as strengthened by religious faith and practice and sustained by prison camaraderie or in embittered reaction to the dehumanizing atmosphere of enduring prison life year upon year.


We should not forget that there is a callous and manifest unlawfulness about this network of Israeli prisons, all but one of the 19 being located in Israel, in direct violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention governing belligerent occupation: “Protected persons accused of offenses shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve therein.” Underlying such a provision of law is a humane impulse: compelling an individual to be imprisoned in the occupying country imposes a geographic separation from family and homeland, which in the Israeli case is accentuated by a permit system that as a practical matter makes family visits from occupied Palestine a virtual impossibility. With respect to prisoners from Gaza, there are virtually no prison visits allowed even if sentences are for several decades or lifetime. As is widely known, the people of Gaza have been subject to a punitive blockade maintained ever since mid-2007 that involves a massive imposition of collective punishment on the civilian population, a crime of war so specified in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.


Israel’s cruelty toward Palestinian prisoners is underscored by its recent practice of releasing West Bank hunger strikers at death’s doorstep, then deporting them for a period of years to Gaza, that is, beyond access to their families and normal places of residence, at a moment when their physical condition is so deteriorated that they could not possibly become a security threat and when most in need of nurture and familiar surroundings. Hana Shalabi, who was particularly close to her family, was so deported to Gaza for three years and just days ago. Ayman Sharawneh was similarly deported for ten years as part of a plea bargain. Such shocking practice is worthy of global condemnation. It involves another form of collective punishment inflicted both on the person so confined to Gaza and to his or her family that is not allowed to travel from the West Bank to Gaza. There is a triple perverseness about this practice of prisoner release: Gaza itself an open-aired prison also serves Israel as a site of punitive internal exile, and makes the distinction between ‘prison’ and ‘freedom’ almost disappear into surreal thin air. One can only imagine the global protest movement if Hamas had conditioned Gilad Shalit’s release on his confinement in a Salafi controlled region of Egypt!


This pattern of unlawful imprisonment and unjust deportation also interferes with the preparation of adequate defense representation as Palestinian lawyers also experience routine difficulties in obtaining permits and visiting rights. Article 76 also requires that prison conditions for those living under occupation should under no condition be worse than those of Israeli prisoners in Israel, which makes the disallowance and obstruction of family visits for Palestinians unlawful, as well as cruel.


It is increasing evident that international humanitarian law falls short when it comes to offering suitable protection to the Palestinian people who have been living under occupation since 1967, with no end in sight. It is not only occupation, but a continuous process of encroachment that cumulatively has assumed the character of de facto annexation via the massive settlement phenomenon. Under these circumstances, and given the inalienable right of self-determination that belongs to the Palestinian people, there is posed some protection for rights of resistance. These rights need to be exercised in a manner respectful of civilian innocence, but difficult issues of identification are posed in relation to armed and violent Israeli settlers. True, those who act in resistance are not technically prisoners of war, who are protected the Third Geneva Convention, but they are acting to fulfill fundamental rights being violated by those who occupy their land and sit in judgment when they act defensively. What is needed, beyond all doubt, is a code of conduct, if not an additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions, that fills in this gap associated with resistance. Resisters should be treated with the same dignity under international humanitarian law as is associated with Prisoners of War. Their acts, even if violent, are in keeping with prevailing societal and civilizational values, and perpetrators, even when confined for reasonable security reasons, should be treated with appropriate dignity. Unlike sociopathic common murderers, rapists, and the like (and even they should also be treated in accord with international standards), the acts of Palestinian prisoners are viewed as heroic by their own society and political culture, as well as many people throughout the world. They deserve international recognition and protection. Their ‘crimes’ will eventually be vindicated by history as part of a final chapter in the struggle against European colonial rule.


I believe it to be a moral obligation of all of us who care about human rights and freedom to read this book, and share it with others. The Palestinians, whose rights and dignity have been long trampled upon, especially deserve our deepest empathy, as well as our solidarity in their struggle. Reading the words of these prisoners vividly discloses the nature of such a struggle in the form of witnessing by those Palestinians who have put their lives at risk for the sake of recovering their stolen homeland. We also owe a debt of gratitude to Norma Hashim who has edited this collection as a work of devotion and an expression of solidarity with and reflection on the Palestinian struggle. Its publication in book form is timed to coincide with Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, April 17th.