Yaacov Lozowick notices that Addameer, the Palestinian Arab prisoners' right association, has recently started to claim that some 800,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israel since 1967.
Sure enough, other websites are quoting Ala Jaradat from Addameer, saying that the number of Palestinians Arabs who have been imprisoned prisoners is at nearly 800,000.
Last summer, Addameer testified to the Goldstone Commission that the number of prisoners was at 750,000 since 1967 - a number that Goldstone quoted without any reservation.
In 2005, Addameer claimed there were 650,000 such prisoners.
Earlier in 2005, Addameer's number was 600,000, but they used the 650,000 number in 2004 as well.
As I showed a few months ago, these numbers are simply lies - and not just innocent lies, but lies on a massive scale. Addameer not only made up the initial numbers but they keep grossly inflating them, confident that their anti-Israel audience will lap them up without question. To think that an additional 50,000 Palestinian Arabs were imprisoned since the summer is to believe in Arabian Nights stories.
For Addameer's numbers to be accurate, Israel would be arresting some 10,000 people a month. Yet the PCHR says that the number of arrests was 23 last week, 26 the previous week, 23 the week before and 17 the week before that - for a total of less than 100 people a month.
Addameer is lying by a factor of a hundred!
And still no Western reporter has called them out on this transparent deception.
Addameer's website is not very forthcoming as to where it gets its money from. It does claim to work closely with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Do those organizations believe Addameer's fake numbers as well?
