Palestinians Are Dying in Hamas Prisons, and Self-Defined Champions of “Human Rights” Are Too Bigoted to Care

On February 23, Essam al-Sa’afeen, a Gaza native, died in Hamas custody under suspicious circumstances, only a month after his arrest. He is but one of several Palestinians—many of whom were members of the rival Fatah party—who have met similar fates. Bassam Tawil comments:

Sa’afeen’s death did not surprise Palestinians who are familiar with the various methods of torture in Hamas and Palestinian Authority prisons. The Gaza-based al-Mezan Center for Human Rights said that an autopsy conducted by the forensic medicine department on Sa’afeen’s body showed “bruises and a change in the color of the skin”—implying he had been physically abused. . . . The center also called on Hamas to investigate whether Sa’afeen had received medical treatment during his detention for the high blood pressure and diabetes from which he suffered.

Of course, Tawil writes, no investigation will take place. Nor will those in the West who profess so much concern over the mistreatment of Palestinians make a peep—an irony that is not lost on Palestinians themselves:

Sa’afeen’s mother [stated] that the Israelis treat Palestinians much better than Hamas does. “When the Jews arrest someone, they contact his family to say they are holding him,” she said. . . . The Palestinian news website Amad pointed out that on the same day that Sa’afeen was pronounced dead, the Israeli authorities installed phones for the use of Hamas prisoners.

Palestinian detainees do not die of dubious causes in Israeli prisons; perhaps that is why no one in the international community seems to care. When Palestinians die in Palestinian prisons, the murders are presumably regarded as the handiwork of supposedly savage Arabs, who are—with racist contempt—held to a lower standard of conduct than Westerners, and therefore regarded as unworthy of human rights, accountable governance, due process, or equal justice under the law.

Read more at Gatestone

More about: Gaza Strip, Hamas, Human Rights, Palestinians

 

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society