Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forumIsrael Suspends Palestinian Hunger Striker's Detention
Israel's Supreme Court is suspending the detention of a Palestinian hunger striker who has suffered brain damage after 65 days without food.
Mohammed Allan, an alleged member of the militant group Islamic Jihad, began refusing food in June in protest at his indefinite administrative detention.
Israel had offered to release him in early November in return for him ending his hunger strike.
Doctors say Mr Allan is in a serious condition in hospital in Ashkelon.
"Due to the petitioner's medical condition he will remain in intensive care," the court ruling said.
MORE...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33994609
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)you're in prison.
Not so in Israel...
Israeli
(4,159 posts)Neve Gordon
Information Clearing House
August 16, 2015
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42640.htm
Miri Regev, Israels Minister of Culture and Sports, supports torture.
She is not alone. Joining her is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and nearly all ministers and members of Knesset in his coalition have followed suit.
Although almost half of the Knesset members opposed to the bill, the Israeli government supports torture, and thus, is by no accounts different than the governments of Egypt, Syria and many of its neighbours in the Middle East.
Israel, apparently, is not a villa in the jungle, as so many of its pundits would have us think.
By torture, I am referring specifically to the recently passed law legalising force-feeding, which according to the World Medical Association, the Red Cross, and the United Nations, is considered a cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment, and a flagrant violation of international law.
Of course, the Knessets legislation on this matter is not unique, even in the midst of Western liberal democracies.
Among the countries that deploy force-feeding against hunger strikers is also Israels enlightened ally, the United States.
While the US has been force-feeding inmates in Guantanamo for many years now, this practice actually has deep roots in the American imagination.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the suffragette Alice Paul, who was incarcerated for demanding womens right to vote, embarked on a hunger strike in prison, and was subsequently force-fed by government officials.
The Hollywood feature film Iron Jawed Angels captures the horror parallel to some prisoners accounts. It documents the struggles of the womens movement and force-feeding as is a horrific form of torture.
Israels new law is not, at least for the time being, directed against its own citizens, but rather against over 5,750 Palestinian political prisoners from the occupied Palestinian territories.
About 400 of these prisoners have been held in administrative detention without trial some for up to eight, ten and eleven years.
The presumption of innocence, which is supposed to underlie all progressive and democratic judicial systems, should have been applied to them.
It was not.
And there goes the villa metaphor.
Over the past years, many Palestinian political prisoners have embarked on hunger strikes as a form of non-violent protest against the authorities, and currently it is estimated that over 180 prisoners are on strike.
However, examination of Netanyahus justification for pushing forward a bill to legalise force-feeding reveals a contradiction in his twisted logic.
The administrative detainees are being held in prison contrary to international law and contrary to the principle of due process.
These men have not been granted the fundamental right to a fair trial, because prisoners like Muhammad Allaan, who has been on hunger strike for 60 days, are not considered by the Israeli authorities to be fully human, namely, individuals who bear rights.
At the same time, though, Netanyahus justification for advancing a force-feeding law stems from the moral imperative requiring us to save human lives.
The contradiction is that on the one hand, the Palestinian political prisoners are treated as sub-human. But on the other hand, justification of the law has to be portrayed as fully human.
However, there is one aspect of this legislative move that is consistent: the desire to harm outspoken Palestinian subjects and to violate their basic right to bodily integrity.
But the contradiction between the sub-human and human is not the sole logical distortion espoused by the Israeli legislators who supported the bill.
It is crucial to highlight that in their struggle against Israels violation of their basic right to due process, the prisoners launched a hunger strike, which is a recognised form of non-violent protest.
Ironically, the way the Israeli government has chosen to deal with this non-violent protest against its own anti-democratic practice of administrative detention is by instituting yet another serious violation of international law: torture one of the most severe forms of dehumanisation.
Not all, however, is dark. As the great philosopher Hannah Arendt teaches, even in the most difficult times, one encounters human action that sheds light on the darkness......
Q&A: It is possible to break the Israeli occupation
Dr Leonid Eidelman, chairman of the Israeli Medical Association, called upon all Israeli doctors to refuse to perform force-feeding even if the law requires them to do so.
Force-feeding of hunger strikers, Eidelman argued, breaches the principles of preventing damage and maintaining the patients autonomy over his or her body, thus violating the physicians code of ethics.
The code of ethics, he intimated, is above the law.
Eidelman is right. The question now is whether all Israeli doctors will heed his call for civil disobedience and refuse to obey the law.
The chances, unfortunately, are extremely slim.
Neve Gordon is the author of Israels Occupation as well as The Human Right to Dominate (co-authored with Nicola Perugini).
Source: http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=69882
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)I definitely recognize the name, but I don't remember why...
Israeli
(4,159 posts)Neve Gordon is a very well known ( least with us ..not sure about abroad ) Israeli Left wing post zionist .....just Google him Little Tich :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neve_Gordon
his website :
http://israelsoccupation.info/
Little Tich
(6,171 posts)and I remember that he was one of the reasons why they tried to close down the whole department. Im glad he's still around.