The world watches as tragedy unfolds beneath its gaze. Khader Adnan is entering his 61st day as a hunger striker in an Israeli prison, being held under an administrative detention order without trial, charges, or any indication of the evidence against him. The Palestinian prisoner’s case is a microcosm of the unbearable cruelty of prolonged occupation.
Human Rights
Coverage of Khader Adnan, a Palestinian prisoner held by Israel under administrative detention, as his hunger strike enters its 61st day.
Sarah Leah Whitson: “Israel should end, today, before it’s too late, its almost two-month-long refusal to inform [Khader] Adnan of any criminal charge or evidence against him.”
Marian Houk: Ethnic Cleansing continues – Israeli lawyers tell UN Palestinian Jerusalemites targeted
Michael Sfard: “It’s the first report of its kind which, looking from a bird’s-eye view, sees not just demolitions, not just loss of residency, and not just discrimination between Jewish and Palestinian [inhabitants] – but also displacement based on ethnic origins.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has filed suit against President Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to challenge the legality of the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes controversial provisions authorizing the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world, without charge or trial. Sections of the bill are written so broadly that critics say they could encompass journalists who report on terror-related issues, such as Hedges, for supporting enemy forces. “It’s clearly unconstitutional,” Hedges says of the bill. “It is a huge and egregious assault against our democracy. It overturns over 200 years of law, which has kept the military out of domestic policing.”
Annual report lists Israel’s blockade of Gaza Strip, settlement expansion in West Bank, and home demolitions in East Jerusalem; report also accuses Hamas for carrying out judicial executions and for allegedly torturing detainees.
Fear is the psychological weapon of choice for totalitarian systems of power. Make the people afraid. Get them to surrender their rights in the name of national security. And then finish off the few who aren’t afraid enough. If this law is not revoked we will be no different from any sordid military dictatorship. Its implementation will be a huge leap forward for the corporate oligarchs who plan to continue to plunder the nation and use state and military security to cow the population into submission.
Taysar Hatib: “The decision is proof that one shouldn’t have any faith in the Israeli judicial system. It is clear that the Supreme Court is influenced by the wave of fascism and racism sweeping Israel and the judges weren’t expected to act in any other way.”
Israel’s Civil Administration issues 101 different types of permits to govern the movement of Palestinians, whether within the West Bank, between the West Bank and Israel or beyond the borders of the state, according to an agency document of which Haaretz obtained a copy.
On Friday, Dec 9, 2011 thousands of Israelis marched through Tel Aviv for international human rights day. While Israelis are subject to Israeli civil law, Palestinians are subject to a set of military orders. Order 101 effectively bans political protest of more than 10 people.
Likud MK Ofir Akunis, who sponsored the bill to limit foreign funding to Israeli human rights organization, stood behind Senator Joseph’s McCarthy’s actions in the 1950s… Akunis said McCarthy – who in the 1950s presided over a committee that investigated Americans suspected of harboring Communist views – “was right in every word, the fact is – there were Soviet agents.”
IOA Editor: Two of a kind…
In recent weeks, a spate of anti-democratic measures have won support from Netanyahu’s rightwing government, justified by a new security doctrine: see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil of Israel. If the legislative proposals pass, the Israeli courts, Israel’s human rights groups and media, and the international community will be transformed into the proverbial three monkeys.
Report shows the military appeals courts decidedly favor the prosecution, with judges accepting 67 percent of prosecution appeals, as opposed to only 33 percent of appeals filed by the defense.
The disingenuity of the Israeli government’s international comparisons is evident when one compares politicians’ rhetoric for audiences within Israel with the diplomatic discourse abroad.
The recent forced closures of Palestinian nonprofit organizations in Jerusalem is an example of the Israeli authorities’ continued attacks on the city’s Palestinian identity and their attempts to maintain control over occupied East Jerusalem, according to local human rights groups.
On Tuesday six Palestinian activists boarded Israeli buses in an attempt to challenge the system of segregation in the West Bank. They were arrested at Hizmeh checkpoint, interrogated by Israel’s internal intelligence agency, the Shabak [Shin Bet], and released. In the West Bank, segregation is both visible with the separation wall, fence, and separate cities for Israelis and Palestinians and invisible with separate legal and security systems for the two peoples.
Apartheid is a system of racial domination, in which a dominant group exploits, oppresses, marginalizes and excludes subordinate groups. The specific forms of these practices may vary from one case to another. They must bear similarities to South African state practices from 1948 to 1994, but need not be identical to them, as long as the general discriminatory thrust is similar.
Haneen Zoabi talks about conditions of Palestinian citizens of Israel and the racism that is inherent to Israel as a Jewish State during the 3rd International Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Cape Town, November 2011.
The Tribunal finds that Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalised regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law. This discriminatory regime manifests in varying intensity and forms against different categories of Palestinians depending on their location. The Palestinians living under colonial military rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are subject to a particularly aggravated form of apartheid.
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Download the full findings of the Russell Tribunal session HERE
In the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Israel’s prolonged occupation has led to astonishing detention statistics. Since 1967, over 700,000 Palestinians have been detained: this figure amounts to around 20 percent of the existing Palestinian population in the OPT, which consists of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Among the most egregious aspects of Israeli detention policy is its treatment of child prisoners.
