It was very sad for me to hear about the political prisoner who was killed yesterday in the Negev prison after he have been tortured by the “Yatsama” unit of the Israeli Occupation Forces, who announced they used special weapons to torture the Palestinian prisoners. The prisoner should have returned to his child and wife in two months. But the gathering will not happen for another Palestinian family; the mother will not dance for her son when he is released as a dead body. Instead, she will wear black and remember all the times she had together with her stolen son. Another child will be raised without his father and will live to hear to the story of why his father was arrested and why he was killed. This child also will keep wondering how it would have been to live with his father and why his father is not with him. For me, imagining living without my father is insane. I step into a lot of dark areas when I try to imagine this. I don’t know how I would react if I lose my father in this way; to be not allowed to see him for a period of time because he is in prison. And then to imagine that he would never return home from this prison because he was killed. Nothing will convince me to accept this reality. I feel so sorry for the little kid, and I wish I can do anything to change this cruel reality. Some Palestinians believe that to be imprisoned by the Israeli Occupation as a youth is much better than being killed. In Palestine, we say “he who dies will never come back, but he who will be jailed will come out one day,” but it seems now there is no difference between death and imprisonment. The fate is very similar. Also, the prisoners get tortured for long periods of time, in many different ways. They don’t live in healthy conditions, they don’t eat well, and therefore, many Palestinian prisoners catch diseases that will last with them for a long time; they suffer from diseases as unwanted souvenirs from the prison. Personally, I can’t put myself in their shoes and I can’t talk about their experience with which I sympathize very much, but I am a Palestinian — we all live as similar people in different, bigger contexts. The same massive violence is acted against us, including restriction of movement. We can move within the city, but not within the whole country. They impose on us when to move and when not, they also control the food we eat, the water we get. I think in the resolutions of the United Nation and the Geneva Conventions concerning the rights of prisoners and detainees it is illegal to kill or injure those being held inside the prison and detention center. I think we all need to read these international laws again to remind us of the truth, not to twist them or believe those who twist them for their projects of brain-washing… so let’s search and think.

AJ

The Youth Group