arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

‘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.

Text from Ramzy Baroud (Palestine Chronicle Editor-in-Chief )