"Instead of apologizing for not letting me see my son, they won't even let me have the photographs. I never believed things would come to this," al-Ahmar said on the weekend in a telephone call from prison. "Do you know what I felt when the judge refused to let me have the photos? That I am living in the age of slavery, when children were taken from their fathers as soon as they were born."
The appalling loss of humanity
By Gideon Levy
Last Monday, attorney Leah Tsemel wanted to give
some photographs to her client, who was standing a
few meters from her in the military courtroom at
the Ofer base near Ramallah.
The photographs were of Quds,
the firstborn son of
administrative detainee Abed
al-Ahmar, who is being held in
custody without trial. Quds was
born two months ago, while his
father was in military custody.
Military judge Major Ronen
Atzmon refused to allow the
photos to be passed to
al-Ahmar, who has never seen his child. Atzmon
was unwilling to assume the security
responsibility for such a move.
This incident may seem trivial in view of the
mutual bloodbath of the past few days, but it
is precisely these minor events that show the
level of cruelty that the Israeli occupation
has reached. The story of our moral
deterioration is to be found here, no less than
in the acts of killing.
Al-Ahmar can't see his newborn son because
family visits to security prisoners were banned
three years ago and have not been reinstated.
The fact that his wife is a Jewish Israeli is
of no help. Thousands of Palestinian prisoners
and detainees have been totally cut off from
their families for three years without a
telephone call or a visit. There are not many
regimes in the world that treat their prisoners
this way.
Last week, al-Ahmar's administrative detention
was extended for another six months for the
17th time (not consecutively); he is one of
about 1,000 detainees being held today without
trial. It has to be said again that, if the
defense establishment has any material against
al-Ahmar and the other administrative
detainees, it must put them on trial. If not,
they must be set free.
"Instead of apologizing for not letting me see
my son, they won't even let me have the
photographs. I never believed things would come
to this," al-Ahmar said on the weekend in a
telephone call from prison. "Do you know what I
felt when the judge refused to let me have the
photos? That I am living in the age of slavery,
when children were taken from their fathers as
soon as they were born."
Still, al-Ahmar's fate is better than that of
Asmaa Abu al-Haija, a 37-year-old woman from
the Jenin refugee camp. She, too, is being held
in prison without trial; no one, including her
lawyer Tamar Peleg, knows why. Meanwhile, her
five children are abandoned in the refugee
camp. Their father and older brother are also
in prison, having been convicted of being Hamas
members.
Al-Haija has a tumor in her head, which gives
her headaches and a partial loss of vision.
According to recent testimonies from Neve Tirza
women's prison, she sleeps on the floor because
the blinding headaches make it impossible for
her to sleep in the bunk bed in her cell.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) says the
prison authorities have so far denied her
medical treatment of any kind. An urgent
request submitted by the group's Michal Bar-Or
to the head of the Prison Service's health
department, Dr. Alex Adler, to give al-Haija a
CT test at the urging of her Palestinian
doctor, went unanswered for weeks, until a
"prisoner's petition" was filed.
A Prisons Service spokeswoman, Hanna Nitzan,
said in response that the prisoner was examined
and is receiving medical treatment. Al-Haija's
lawyer said the arrest warrant issued against
her by the military commander of the region
referred to the prisoner as a male: "He is
endangering the security of the region." No one
bothered to change the standard text.
But the cruelest aspect of al-Haija's story is
that she is not allowed to phone her five
children, the youngest of whom is a 6-year-old
girl. Five children remain without a father and
a mother, and it does not even occur to the
prison authorities, in view of the harsh family
circumstances, to consider the possibility to
depart from the regulations prohibiting
security prisoners from making phone calls.
The official response: "The security prisoner is
denied telephone calls because of a procedure
that applies to all the security prisoners in
Israel." Has no one seen fit to show a modicum
of compassion, at least for the children who
have been left without their parents and
without a house, which was destroyed by
missiles in an IDF operation?
A state that prevents a prisoner who has been
held in custody for years without trial from
receiving photographs of a son he has never
seen? That prevents a woman who is under
detention without trial from phoning her
children, whose father and brother are also in
prison? We are even capable of this. This has
nothing to do with the war against terrorism.
The battle against the murderous terrorist
attacks cannot justify such behavior. Even at a
time when Hamas is perpetrating horrific
suicide bombings, Israel is liquidating people
and everything is going up in flames, we must
not ignore what appear to be relatively
small-scale incidents that reflect such
appalling loss of humanity.
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Original: The appalling loss of humanity