Israel Is Hiding Its Draconian Detention of Palestinians From the Public - Opinion - Haaretz.com
A few days after the rescue of the hostages, the Instagram account of Kan 11 TV noted their "blindfolded eyes and lack of regular food; the terrible conditions the hostages were in … their apparent bad medical condition, the hostages are suffering from malnutrition … cynically and cruelly, Almog Meir Jan's captors celebrated his birthday in captivity, even baking him a cynical and cruel cake." Those were the words of the report.
Obviously, I was happy to see that they were in relatively good shape, as much as possible when you are kidnapped and held captive in a place you don't know, when your basic rights and security are taken from you, and in the middle of a hostile war zone at that, when shelling and explosions rattle every fiber in your body and soul, and you're not in good shape even if you look it after nine months' captivity. I can't even imagine it and don't wish it on my enemies.
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All this made me think about the way in which the ostensibly reasonable condition of the hostages rattled the world and delicate sensibilities of many Israelis, and about how disturbed they were by descriptions of blindfolded hostages, of how they weren't allowed to go where they wanted to or how their captors threatened to kill them. "We are dealing with human beasts, they baked him a cake! How evil!" were some of the reactions. "They deserve death; they blindfolded them! They probably baked him a cake so the world would think they are human beings, not creatures of the devil."
And then I thought about Mohammed Taher Jabarin from Umm al-Fahm, who initiated a demonstration at the beginning of the war. He has been under arrest since then, and photos show him to have lost a lot of weight. Taher, a teacher and activist, not a terrorist or abettor of terrorists, not a Nukhba member, simply a citizen who went to demonstrate and has not been released since then. Have there been any reports about the cruelty of his detention or the banality of evil?
Did the people who were shocked by the hostages' treatment hear about the condition of Palestinian prisoners? Have they heard about prisoners whose hands and feet were amputated because of gangrene caused by handcuffs? Have they heard in mainstream Israeli media about the Israeli Guantanamo, Sde Teiman, which serves as a detention facility for Gazans and for people suspected of belonging to Hamas? Do they know that over the last six months, the number of prisoners who have died in Israeli torture camps is four times greater than the number of prisoners who died in Guantanamo over 20 years? At least 27 have died in Israel, and likely more.
A protest outside Israel's Sde Teiman detention facility, last month.Credit: Eliyahu Hershkovitz
Do people in Israel know that prisoners in Sde Teiman are held without court monitoring and without Red Cross representatives or lawyers being able to meet them? Do they know anything at all about administrative detentions carried out here long before October 7, the beginning of history for many Israelis?
I tried to find reports about Sde Teiman on public broadcaster Kan 11 TV's website. I didn't find any on the digital version, and I scrolled far back. It turns out that if no cakes were baked for Palestinian prisoners, it wasn't cruel or evil enough to be reported.
How can one explain this total lack of attention, or denial meant to justify the massacre Israel has been perpetrating in Gaza for eight months, which the whole world except Israel can see? Exactly as I was pondering this, I read a report about an Arab midwife at a hospital who called for the release of all the hostages and prisoners on both sides. She is now going through hell as if she were an arch-terrorist, a target of the same people who were shocked by a cake in captivity. I now realize – this cannot be fixed.