Striking prisoners disappear from view

This posting has these items:
1) FSoI: The Three Wise Monkeys Keep Palestinian Hunger Strikers off the Airways, May 23;
2) +972: Fighting media silence on the Palestinian hunger strike, May 23;
3) Samidoun: Berlin, hub of support for hunger strikers;
4) MEE: Palestinians stop work in solidarity with hunger-striking prisoners, May 22;
5) Al Jazeera: Palestinians on strike in solidarity with prisoners, May 23;

In Paris activists display their support for the hunger strikers and call for May 25 to be an international day of sympathy salt and water hunger strikes. Photo by EuroPalestine

The Three Wise Monkeys Keep Palestinian Hunger Strikers off the Airways

By Glyn Secker, FSoI
May 23, 2017

There has been an unprecedented blackout by the British broadcast media on the Palestinian hunger strikers and their protest against detention without trial, rigged courts, their illegal deportation to prisons in Israel, the denial of family visits and food parcels.

On 17 April 2017 the Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, from his prison cell, issued the following statement to the NY Times:

“The eldest of my four children in now a man of 31. Yet here I am, pursuing this struggle for freedom alongside with thousands of prisoners, millions of Palestinians and the support of so many around the world”.

One of the largest hunger strikes in history has reached its second month. This supreme act of peaceful resistance by 1500 prisoners is an heroic action against the longest illegal occupation in modern times, now in its 50th. year.

Predictably, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described its leader Marwan Barghouti as an “arch-terrorist”. His defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, suggested Israel should take the approach of Margaret Thatcher towards the IRA hunger strikers in 1981: allow them to die.

The BBC, ITN and Channel 4 News have obligingly taken Lieberman’s side and are implementing Thatcher’s maxim, “to starve them […] of the oxygen of publicity”.

Whilst there have been three major articles in the Observer, The Guardian and The Independent, the BBC, ITN and Channel 4 News have played the three blind monkeys: ‘Hear no evil, see no evil, speak of no evil’.

Quoted in the Guardian, the former Israeli peace negotiator Yossi Beilin said of Barghouti,

“He is a proud Palestinian, proud of his movement. I saw him [during the Oslo peace talks] as a partner. Someone committed to a political solution. “He is a politician and a statesman. Like other politicians who have been involved with violence, we have somehow to find a way of dealing with him in a political framework […] because he can lead those who follow him to an agreement.”

Netanyahu, resolutely opposing any negotiated settlement, will have nothing to do with Beilin’s approach (which of course is the Northern Ireland model), and the BBC, ITN and Channel 4 News hold his hand, lest he should stumble.

Protest in support of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners, Haifa, May 22, 2017. Photo by Maria Zreik/ Activestills.org

Our campaign for Free Speech on Israel is a demand not just that we should be allowed to debate Israel’s action but also, and even more importantly, that the voices of Palestinians should not be silenced or ignored.

In South Africa leading figures including Deputy Prime Minister Cyril Ramaphosa, went on a 24 hour hunger strike in sympathy, but in Britain it received fleeting cover only by the Independent. A sympathy hunger strike by Manchester students was reported by Al Jazeera but totally blacked out by the British media.

Information and free speech are core to the resolution of injustice. To quote a famous civil rights leader, those who are not part of the solution are part of the problem. By their silence the UK national broadcasters are propagating the Occupation in the minds of their millions of domestic and international listeners, and are thereby very much part of the problem.

They would do well to heed Barghouti’s words:

“What is it with the arrogance of the occupier and the oppressor and their backers that makes them deaf to this simple truth: Our chains will be broken before we are, because it is human nature to heed the call for freedom regardless of the cost.”

Trump triumphant as his pal Bibi applauds him for taking up all public space

Fighting media silence on the Palestinian hunger strike

Trump’s visit to Israel is just the latest thing to keep the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike — already largely ignored by the media — out of the headlines

By Tanya Rubinstein, +972
May 23, 2017

Donald Trump’s arrival in Israel on Monday filled social media with mockery and resentment, surrounding everything from ministers’ ridiculous statements and road closures to bizarre conversations and more.

The media also had a field day with Likud MK Oren Hazan’s selfie with Trump, and with the politics of who’d get to shake hands with whom during the welcoming ceremony at Ben Gurion Airport.

During the reception, Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan told Trump that a Monday morning traffic accident in Tel Aviv may well have been a terror attack – despite the police having stated well over an hour beforehand that it had been an accident. But, as we all know, much of the internal security minister’s role these days involves wanton incitement and fabricating terror attacks, as we saw following the killing of “terrorist” Yaqoub Abu al-Qi’an in Umm al-Hiran.

But what’s happening behind all the media spin?

Only one Israeli media outlet, Haaretz, reported on how the ramping up of security for Trump’s visit — mostly based in Jerusalem — involved the deployment of around 11,000 additional police officers and the issuing of administrative orders against citizens who it was thought “may interfere with the visit.” Aside from the blocking of roads and traffic jams that inconvenienced everyone, we must also think about those whose own security and daily routine were affected because it was feared they might disrupt Trump’s visit.

Nir Hasson, writing in Haaretz, described how American and Israeli security services teams had descended on Jerusalem’s Old City ahead of Trump’s visit, describing “shops being searched with the help of a dog, before being shuttered and a blue security services sticker being placed over the lock, so that it couldn’t be opened without tearing the sticker.”

Hasson also described how surrounding roofs “had a camouflage net spread over them, while large temporary structures were erected wherever the president was expected to get out of his car.”

We were also told, one day prior to Trump’s visit, that the Israel Prison Service had started transferring hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners, who were then on the 36th day of their strike. Are their claims, demands and deteriorating health of any interest to the Israeli public and the media’s agenda-setters? Of course not. In fact, it suits the Israeli government very well to push this struggle for improved prison conditions and human rights to the margins, and away from the public discourse.

But perhaps we don’t have to accept this state of affairs. Perhaps, even, we are obligated to reject the spin. Maybe the choice over what we will listen and pay attention to is in our hands — we can take the story that has been pushed to the sidelines and spread it around, and acknowledge the people hidden behind the words “administrative orders” and “security.”

In the world of activism and organizing we sometimes shelve an event because we know there’s little chance of media coverage — it’s just as Trump is visiting, or just as Gilad Erdan is busy demonizing the same people whose basic rights we’re currently fighting for, and his voice is louder than ours.

Nonetheless, demonstrations in support of the hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners took place across Israel and the West Bank on Monday, organized by the Jaffa Clock Square activists, because expressing support and solidarity is not a matter of spin. Let’s not allow ourselves to be spun as well.

Tanya Rubinstein is the Co-Coordinator at the Coalition of Women for Peace. This article was first published in Hebrew on Haokets.

29 April, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin. Photo by Afif El-Ali

Berlin, hub of support for hunger strikers

Samidoun

EXTRACTS from running blog on May 24

As demonstrators take the streets in numerous Palestinian, Arab and international cities, towns, campuses and refugee camps in support of Palestinian prisoners, the city of Berlin, Germany has been a high point in the international mobilizations supporting the Freedom and Dignity hunger strike of imprisoned Palestinians. The streets and squares of Berlin have been filled with repeated protest actions in support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli jails, organized by Palestinian and Palestine solidarity groups in the city.

Berlin, home to one of the largest Palestinian communities in Europe, has been an active site of mobilization in support of the hunger strike that was launched on 17 April, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, by 1500 Palestinian prisoners. Labeled the Strike for Freedom and Dignity, the hunger strike demands an end to the denial of family visits, appropriate medical care for Palestinian prisoners and an end to solitary confinement and imprisonment without charge or trial. Solidarity network Palästina-Solidarität has provided consistent German-language news and information about developments in the hunger strike, while Palestinian community groups including the Democratic Palestine Committees, Palestinian National Action Committee, Palestinian Association in Germany and others have organized multiple protests.

Palestinians stop work in solidarity with hunger-striking prisoners

The strike paralysed both east Jerusalem and the West Bank

By MEE
May 22, 2017

Palestinians were on Monday observing a general strike in solidarity with prisoners refusing food in Israeli jails for more than a month over their conditions.

The strike paralysed east Jerusalem as well as West Bank cities and suburbs, with shops closed and both public and private sector employees refusing to work, AFP correspondents said.

The industrial action came in response to a call from the Palestinian striking prisoners’ support committee, a grassroots group.

Bethlehem in the general strike observed in support of Palestinian prisoners on day 36 of the hunger strike.Twitter and Reuters

The committee appealed for protests against Israeli military forces in the occupied West Bank in support of the prisoners, who are behind bars for security offences against Israel and its citizens.It coincided with the arrival of US President Donald Trump in Israel ahead of a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday.Palestinian police forces were deployed at contact points in the city of Al-Bireh close to the Beit El settlements, an AFP correspondent said.Israel announced a series of measures to support the Palestinian economy and ease transportation woes ahead of Trump’s visit, which were welcomed by the US administration as “encouraging”.

Monday’s strike was held in solidarity with more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails who have been fasting since April 17 over demands for improved conditions.

A spokesman for the Israeli Prisons Service said 10 fasting Palestinians were evacuated for medical treatment on Sunday, with two remaining hospitalised. According to the spokesman, 850 Palestinian security prisoners were currently on hunger strike.

Palestinian officials say some 1,500 prisoners are participating in the hunger strike that began on 17 April, with detainees ingesting only water and salt.

Israeli authorities have put the number at around 1,200.

Some 6,500 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel for a range of offences and alleged crimes.Around 500 are being held under Israel’s system of administrative detention, which allows for imprisonment without charge.Palestinian prisoners have mounted repeated hunger strikes, but rarely on such a scale.The hunger strike is being led by Palestinian leader and prominent prisoner Marwan Barghouti, serving five life sentences over his role in the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, of 2000 to 2005.The prisoners have issued demands ranging from better medical care to phone access.

The closed shops and workplaces of the old market in Nablus in another Palestinian general strike, May 22, 2017. Photo by Nidal Eshtayeh/ Xinhua.

Palestinians on strike in solidarity with prisoners
Israeli forces shoot and wound 11 Palestinians in West Bank, as prisoners’ mass hunger strike enters sixth week.By Al Jazeera
May 23, 2017

Israeli forces have shot and injured at least 11 Palestinian protesters who staged a general strike in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the besieged Gaza Strip in support of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.Hundreds of protesters blocked roads in cities and towns of the West Bank on Monday. Stores and government offices closed down, public transportation ground to a halt and main thoroughfares in Palestinian cities were empty of people and cars.

The Palestinian Ma’an News Agency said Israeli forces shot and injured the 11 Palestinian protesters during clashes in the West Bank.The Palestinian prisoners entered the 36th day of the mass hunger strike inside Israeli jails on Monday.

Ma’an estimates that more than 1,300 Palestinians are currently on strike behind bars in Israeli prisons, while Israeli outlets have placed the number in the high hundreds.The Palestinian prisoners’ affairs committee also called for a “day of rage” on Tuesday, when Donald Trump visits the West Bank, for “the voice of the prisoners to be heard by the president”.

The hunger strike has been led by Marwan Barghouti, a senior leader in the Fatah faction imprisoned for 15 years, who said all other attempts to redress their concerns have failed.The hunger strikers’ demands include longer and more regular family visits, landlines installed in prisons and better healthcare for the 6,500 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

With rights groups and analysts arguing that Palestinian hunger strikers are entering a crucial stage, anger is growing in the streets.Farah Bayadsi, a lawyer at the West Bank-based prisoner advocacy group Addameer, said hunger strikers have been unable to directly meet with observers from the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC).

Despite their declining health, many prisoners have been moved back and forth between different jails, Bayadsi told Al Jazeera.

Alaa Tartir, programme director at Al-Shabaka: the Palestinian Policy Network, says Israeli authorities had hoped to break the hunger strike before the US president’s visit.”One of Israel’s priorities now, as Trump’s visit looms, is to end this hunger strike and squash solidarity with the hunger strikers in the streets of the occupied West Bank,” he told Al Jazeera ahead of Trump’s arrival. “To achieve these goals, using violent measures and repressing techniques is the panacea for Israel.”Tartir added: “As the hunger strike intensifies, Israel is becoming more concerned and nervous.”The Israeli Prison Service did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.