According to the People of Jenin...

‘Prisoner’ is such a confusing term. It could refer to a murderer, a child
molester, or a drug dealer. But it’s also used to refer to freedom
fighters, human rights advocates, zealous leaders with a cause, and
men and woman who stand defiant, refusing to beg for mercy before a
ruthless oppressor.

But they are all ’prisoners.” Nelson Mandela was one. Marwan
Barghouthi, the leader of the Intifada is another. Ahmed Saadat, the
head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a third. And
thousands more.

Palestinians find themselves ‘prisoners’ very often these days. It often
happens when the Israeli army detains boys and men who happen to
fall in the age bracket of 15-50, sometimes up to 60. Those are not
murderers, they were merely watching TV or eating dinner when Israeli
tanks rolled in, Apaches came hovering and loud speakers ordered
them to assemble or they’d be shot.

They often assemble, where they are handcuffed and dragged to
known or unknown destinations to be tortured and interrogated by
malicious Israeli army officers.

When Israeli ‘special forces’, disguise themselves in civilian clothing,
raid a sleeping village somewhere in the West Bank and kidnap a young
man from his mother’s arms, that man is not a hostage, nor are the
Israelis kidnapers. He is merely a ‘prisoner‘, although he does not have
the rights of a political prisoner or even the rights of a criminal.

Israel is a country, it has an army and its soldiers wear uniforms with
the Star of David trademark. Under this pretext, many things are
justified.

When the men of the Jenin refugee camp were kidnapped, following
the April massacre, and thrown into a bare, yet besieged piece of land
in an area called Salam, the Israeli army was not accused of
kidnapping the men of an entire refugee camp.

The Palestinians were simply ‘detained by the army.’

I have communicated with some of these men, and I learned horror
stories about the way they were treated. A wounded man whose
finger was blown off was left to bleed for three days until his hand
swelled and he almost died from gangrene, while flies ripped him apart.
An old man was beaten by the handle of a shovel and tortured in
‘prison’ until he died. Thousands of men were ordered to strip naked
and were left for days while handcuffed, tied to each other and blind
folded; they were caged like animals in the Salam military zone, denied
food, drink and medical attention for days. They were supplied with
one small cooking pot so that they could all urinate. These were just a
few examples as their nightmare was just getting started.

But the savagery of the Israeli army can always be washed down with
merely a few technical terms.

‘Israel strongly denied Palestinian claims that the IDF ill-treated
prisoners during its sweep in the West Bank, searching for Palestinian
militants responsible for the killing of dozens of Israeli civilians.’

Isn’t this a familiar statement that we could read at any newspaper
stand in the US?

The abuse and torture of thousands of people during long cold nights
by a vulgar army, can easily be dismissed by a lying ’IDF spokesman’
as a ’Palestinian lie’. Who cares about the photos that were snuck out
by a few courageous journalists; Who cares about the hundreds of
eyewitness accounts that describe the same brutal episode over and
over, with the exact same details; Who cares about what international
law states or the rules which human decency dictate.

It’s all justified as long as Israel knows how to present itself to the
media, as long as the Israeli army and government spokesmen are
photogenic and know when its timely to crack a joke or two before
addressing some unconcerned journalists, and as long as it all falls
under “Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorism.”

Israel can curfew millions of Palestinians in their homes, and
subsequently hold them hostage, with little food or water, and no
medical attention. But the accurate assessment of the Israeli action is
never addressed.

The Nazi brutality relates too well to that of the Israelis. The Israeli
army often steals the organs of its victims; it often prevents rescue
workers from reaching dead Palestinians lying in the streets with
maggots crawling over the bodies for weeks; it carelessly runs over
dead Palestinian civilians in Jenin with tanks and bulldozers.

“We couldn’t identify the body because the tank ran over him
repeatedly. The only thing that was intact was his toes,” a Jenin
survivor told me as he testified to the Israeli massacre.

Israeli soldiers, no matter what crimes they commit, remain soldiers in
an organized army of a recognized state. Palestinians who resist and
defend their villages and families are ‘militants’, ‘gunmen’, and needless
to say ‘terrorists’.

If it happened, and it hardly does, and an Israeli solider was
‘kidnapped’ by Arab fighters, he is a hostage. Three Israeli soldiers held
by Hizbollah in Lebanon are hostages, not prisoners. And their release
is one of Kofi Annan‘s top priorities. While the release of thousands of
Palestinian ‘prisoners‘ held by the Israeli army is only the priority of
their helpless families.

Marwan Barghouthi was kidnapped in his home, by the Israeli army,
therefore he can be indicted for ‘murder and terrorism’ at his enemy’s
courts. Even those sympathetic to Barghouthi’s plight are calling on
Israel to conduct a fair trial, when the Israeli kidnappers are
technically the ones who should stand trial for committing yet another
war crime.

Three professional Israeli assassins who were caught while in their way
to carry out an assassination of Palestinian activists in Ramallah in the
early months of the Intifada were killed by an angry crowed. This
event symbolized the ‘inhumanity’ of the Palestinians and the
‘victimization’ of Israel to the American media.

But How many Palestinians were assassinated? Scores of them,
including the 44-year-old wheelchair bound Nasser Jarrar in Tubas last
week, who was crushed and decapitated by Israeli bulldozers. Yet this
was one of many ‘targeted killings of accused militants.’

If dozens of civilians are killed and wounded during those ‘targeted
killings’, the Palestinians are considered merely ‘collateral damage.’
Nonetheless, assassinating the ‘militant’ remains ‘a great success,’
according to Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

This is the bizarre reality of the Middle East, a reality that prevents
many people from seeing the simple facts that Israel is a rouge,
apartheid state, that the Israeli army is a brutal Nazi-like power, and
the Palestinian people are a nation that is fighting for its dignity and
survival.

Under such realities, Israel can get away with murder, 1805 murders
since the beginning of the Intifada two years ago to be exact, in
addition to a long list of crimes that requires chapters to narrate.

But according to the United States, it’s the lack of financial
transparency of the Palestinian Authority that to blame for all of this.

And according to Kofi Annan’s report, it’s the Palestinian ‘militants’
(who had no other choice but to defend their tiny refugee camp from
the invasion of the fourth strongest army in the world) are who
deserve the blame in the ‘Jenin Massacre‘, I mean the ... ’Jenin
events’.

And according to a leading Israeli spiritual leader, Palestinians are
’vermin’ and it is Israel’s responsibility to rid the world of them.

And according to the people of Jenin, the resistance shall continue
until the last drop of blood is spilled, because freedom and justice are
dearer than life.