Release All Palestinian Political Prisoners!
by the Internationalist Socialist League (Section of the RCIT in Israel/Occupied Palestine), 17.10.2021, http://the-isleague.com
Since the escape and capture of the six Palestinian political prisoners last month from the Gilboa prison, the Zionist state has used punitive measures against all 4600 Palestinian political prisoners, including 35 women and 200 children, and most of all against the 400 prisoners who belong to the Islamic Jihad. A number of prisoners belonging to the Islamic Jihad were transferred to solitary confinement, and leaders of the movement were transferred to interrogation cells for torture.
A number of Palestinian prisoners are already on hunger strikes in Israeli prisons. At least two prisoners are in serious condition. The hunger striking prisoners included Zakaria Zubeidi, one of the prisoners who escaped from the Gilboa Prison. Kayed Fasfous, Muqdad Qawasmeh, Alaa Aaraj, Hesham Abu Hawwash, Rayeq Besharat, Shadi Abu Akr, Akram Abu Bakr and Ratib Haribat are on hunger strikes as well. Some of the prisoners are protesting against their administrative detention, while other prisoners are protesting against measures implemented like denial of family visits. [1]
“Administrative detention is incarceration without trial or charge, alleging that a person plans to commit a future offense. It has no time limit, and the evidence on which it is based is not disclosed. Israel employs this measure extensively and routinely, and has used it to hold thousands of Palestinians for lengthy periods of time. While detention orders are formally reviewed, this is merely a semblance of judicial oversight, as detainees cannot reasonably mount a defense against undisclosed allegations. Nevertheless, courts uphold the vast majority of orders” [2]
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement has announced the start of a mass hunger strike by its prisoners held in Israeli jails, against the punitive measures imposed on them.
Israel is violating all the international conventions relating to prisoners. According to a report by the EU parliament: “Nearly five thousand Palestinians are held by Israel in a ‘parallel’ justice system reserved for those accused of offenses against the state. Instead of entering the Palestinian legal system, these prisoners are tried by Israel’s military courts and often held in Israel, in conditions that violate international humanitarian and human rights conventions. Children and elected officials are among them, subject to ill-treatment — including prolonged solitary confinement, abuse and a lack of due process— by Israeli military authorities. A number of prisoners have gone on hunger strike and increasing numbers of protestors have demonstrated to demand that Israel guarantee basic prisoners’ rights and end its deplorable prison conditions and indefinite detention without charges or fair trial. One prisoner has been on strike for more than 200 days; he and a number of others are in critical condition and require urgent medical treatment. While the United Nations and other international bodies have condemned Israel’s systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners as a blatant violation of international law, the situation has only recently attracted widespread international calls for action. The European Union has expressed its concern, but action is now required.” [3]
In spite of this report the EU states support the Zionist apartheid state as they did in the case of the South Africa’s apartheid almost until the end of that regime. For them the accusation of violation of human rights is used against regimes in the semi colonies that oppose imperialist domination. Israel is in the front line of the imperialist control of the Middle East and they will support the Zionist apartheid until its last stages, hypocritically they accuse those who oppose the crimes of the Zionist apartheid as Anti-Semites, using this accusation to silence Palestinian activists in states like Britain. For example, Dr. Issam Hijjawi Bassalat is a Palestinian political prisoner in British jails. He has been targeted for his commitment to international solidarity and as a political means of repressing both the Palestinian and Irish movements alongside his fellow detainees, the Saoradh 9, he was detained in “Operation Arbacia,” a series of political arrests carried out by British imperialists. [4]
The hypocrisy of the imperialists is even clearer when they ignore the leading role of Zionists in the far-right racist movements and parties. For example, the leading far-right figure in France is Éric Zemmour, a Zionist Algerian Jew who has been convicted for inciting racial hatred. Another Zionist Marcel Yaron Goldhammer, a dual German-Israeli citizen and a former soldier in the Zionist army was running in the last elections on the ticket of AfD, or Alternative for Germany, a far right-wing Islamophobic Populist Party.
The imperialist ruling classes have been using the fake allegation of Anti-Semitism to attack even left-wing reformists like Jeremy Corbyn and the left in the British labor party, or the liberal wing in the US Democratic Party. An attack motivated by the capitalist’s agenda of attacking the democratic and social gains of the working class and the popular classes while pushing for a WWIII. Defending Zionism is the flag of the reactionaries of our time.
At the same time the imperialists and the reactionary regime and movement support not only the theft of Palestinian lands but the brutal attacks of the settlers in the West Bank backed by the Zionist army of the Palestinian peasants in order to prevent them from working on their lands. The settlers steal land and are backed by the Israeli state who wants to steal on the ground that these lands are not cultivated by the peasants (using the Ottoman land code of 1858!).
“Masked settlers allegedly attacked a home on the edge of the Palestinian West Bank village of Burin with stones and set fire to a nearby field on Saturday, according to video evidence published by the left-wing organization Yesh Din. The video showed young men with cloth head coverings that covered their faces. One young man in jeans could be seen setting fire to grassland, while a brush fire rages behind them on the parched hillside. Another young man in the video could be seen throwing a stone at the direction of a Palestinian home in Burin, which is located in Area B of the West Bank near the Palestinian city of Nablus. At one point in the video, an Israeli soldier could be seen standing with the group” [5]
Release all Palestinian Political Prisoners!
Down with the Zionist State of Pirates and War Criminals from the River to the Sea!
For Palestine Red and Free from the River to the Sea!
Endnotes
[2] https://www.btselem.org/topic/administrative_detention
[3] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=EXPO-AFET_SP(2013)491484
[4] Samidoun Network, samidoun@samidoun.net