We know they're hungry... but for what, exactly?
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| Read below to learn more than you might want to know about the prisoner on the right [Image Source] |
Two terms keep coming up in almost every report: the strikers are "unjustly imprisoned" and it's a "battle for freedom and dignity". But this is not about justice or dignity. Those key terms ought to mean something but as happens so often, they have been hijacked in the name of a vicious war and turned on their heads.
Some of the talking heads say/scream/shout that this is about administrative detention. But fewer (much fewer) than 1% of the Arab prisoners hunger-striking in Israeli prisons are administrative detainees. Reliable statistics we have seen say there are between five and ten such individualsamong the 1,500 to 2,000 hunger strikers. [The protestors estimate there are about 300 administrative detainees in the Israeli prison system.]
The two who began hunger-striking in March are men called Bilal Diab and Tha'er Halahlah, and they are administrative detainees who have been held for nine months and 22 months respectively. Their petition came before the High Court of Justice on Monday and was heard and rejected. The court pointed to the ongoing ties of the petitioners to terrorist funding and terrorism. They are a clear and immediate security risk to Israeli citizens. And (which is also significant) the Israel Prison Service is meeting or exceeding the standards required by international law regarding prisoner treatment already.
Diab and Halahlah are in fact leaders in Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The angry voices are demanding that we think of them as unjustly shunted off to prison for the equivalent of failing to pay for a television license. The media and the ranks of ‘activist’ NGOs are currently filled with such voices.
Of the other strikers, almost all were charged, tried and convicted for the most serious offences you can think of. Hundreds are in prison for murder. Quite a number of them are unrepentant murderers.
We are tracking the online news photographs (there are many) being pumped out by the wire services to enhance the impact of this protest. We have more than the usual amount of familiarity with the names and faces. When we look past the sad faced mothers and the photogenic children in the foreground, we see people like Abdullah Barghouti in the posters at the back and that puts this whole affair into a different perspective.
That particular prisoner (see 10-Apr-07: Regarding Abdullah Barghouti) made the bomb that stole our daughter's life from us. He never denied the charges against him: he was proud of them before he went to prison and he is proud of them now. He says very publicly - even on television - that he will kill more Jews when he gets the chance. More than that: he regrets that the bombings he carried out did not kill more Jews. In his own authentic and unforgettable words, "I feel bad because the number is only 66".
Prisoners like Barghouti, and not some mythical jaywalkers capriciously locked up administratively by the vindictive Zionist entity, are the cause for whom the Palestinian Arab protestors are out there shouting and burning tyres. The evidence is there in front of your eyes.
And if you ask: which editor would want to be seen fanning the flames of protest in support of a convicted multi-murderer like Barghouti serving 67 life terms, then a partial answer is: maybe the editors at UPI, APF, Daily Star - Lebanon, Scoop New Zealand and numerous others. Click on any of these and you get to see a picture of hunger-strike protestors standing in front of a picture of Abdullah Barghouti.
What would you say to the people demonstrating for rights, justice and dignity for Barghouti and the hundreds of other convicted murderous thugs? Is theirs the cause that gets you up every morning? Is the shortage of cable movie channels in their lives something that gets your adrenalin going?
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