Human rights groups in the West Bank say 2,000 Palestinians have been on hunger strike for more than a week, and others are ready to join next week. At the moment there are an estimated 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. Each year, 700-800 minors are arrested, and in all, 20 per cent of Palestinians have experienced Israeli prison.
There are actually less than 4400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails according to B'Tselem.
The idea that 20% of Palestinian Arabs have been in Israeli prisons is ridiculous. It obviously comes from Adameer, and is obviously a whopper of a lie as I have proven in the past. Yet it gets repeated by magazines, UN agencies and newspapers whose reporters cannot understand anything beyond sixth grade math.
Here's one of the testimonies that RT believes wholeheartedly:
Speaking about his years spent in an Israeli jail, as-Sinwar says different kinds of torture were routine practice.al-Sinwar says that prisoners routinely get frostbite and have to have their limbs amputated - yet RT couldn't seem to find one of these people. Shouldn't be too hard since it happens all the time, right?
“They kept me awake for 10 days in a row. Whenever I dozed off, they would pour ice-cold or boiling water on me – depending on their personal preferences. They would tie my arms behind my back, throw me on the floor, a prison guard would sit on my stomach or chest, apply pressure to the groin – the pain was excruciating,” Yahya as-Sinwar recollects.
According to as-Sinwar, the Shabak [Israeli General Security Service] handles torture during the investigation, and the Shabas [Israeli Prison Service] tortures sentenced prisoners. “They have two departments – Nahshon and Metzada – which are responsible for the total psychological destruction of a person. These methods are not used anywhere else in the world.”
He says Israeli prison guards could tie a prisoner to a child’s chair and make him balance on it for days; put a person in an ice box (after this the person’s limbs are usually amputated).
“They have this form of torture when they tie a prisoner’s hands and leave him hanging for 24 hours. Or they suffocate the prisoner, watch him turn blue, let him breathe for a bit, and then repeat this several times,” as-Sinwar told RT. “When they tortured my close friend, they beat him on the back of the head with tightly rolled newspapers. A person has terrible headaches afterwards, becomes hysterical, all the internal organs get damaged.”
According to as-Sinwar, these kinds of torture leave no marks and even a very keen doctor would find it very difficult to discover any signs of abuse.
And Israeli torturers have the amazing ability to cause severe damage to all one's internal organs - and yet do it in such a way that even expert doctoes cannot find anything wrong with those same organs.
That's a neat trick!
More absurd allegations in the article:
- “Prisoners in Israel get 10 per cent of the amount of food served in the prisons of other countries."
- "It was a tiny cell measuring 1.2 by 0.8 m where one person could not lie down, or stand up or stretch his legs, it had no furniture, and food was given once a day, and it’s so bad you couldn’t eat it."
- "What they say about prisoners having the opportunity to complete their education in Israeli schools is also a lie.”
Basic journalism standards, folks. It isn't so hard.
(h/t Margie)