The News shared in this article is obtained from Novara Media regarding how public are misled by the labels of "israeli hostages" and "Palestinians prisoners". The news presented here is in the form of transcription with the aim to maintain the accuracy of every words they conveyed in the conversation. Everyone living on this earth should understand that the label of "prisoners" is a way to dehumanize Palestinians, so please visit Novara Media to watch the conversation between by Michael Walker (Novara Media) and Milena Ansari (Human Rights Watch) about these labels, via link: https://youtu.be/_sB-AIcI-6U?si=ZpdFZ9uqt7EZuE2b. Please educate yourself before dehumanization by colonialism reach every corner of this earth.
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Why you've been misled about "israeli hostages" and "Palestinians prisoners"
📌The system is built in order to keep Palestinians inside prison📌
Michael Walker (Novara Media):
"Israeli hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.", that was the headline at top the New York Times website today. And there were similar headlines throughout the Western press, of course. Now this is a good news story, the Israelis captured on October the 7th have been through an appalling ordeal, as have the more than a thousand Palestinians released from Israeli detention as part of Trump's ceasefire deal. But there's also something deeply misleading about that phraseiology, which we've heard for two years now: Israeli hostages, Palestinian prisoners. It implies Israelis are innocent victims, which is why they often are seen to deserve individual profiles like this BBC article today showing each of the faces of the 20 people released from Hamas captivity. Meanwhile, Palestinian prisoners: a suspect and remain largely anonymous. Because what do we think of when we hear the word prisoners? We think of criminals, of people who have been arrested for wrongdoing and who have been subjected to fair trials, who have been convicted. A prisoner being held, unlike a hostage being taken, doesn't immediately imply an injustice. So what does this story or this way of telling this story miss? Well, earlier today I spoke to Melena Ansari from Human Rights Watch who was speaking to me from Jerusalem."
Milena Ansari (Human Rights Watch):
"This is a really important question because when we talk about the Palestinians that are being released from Israeli custody and detention, it's a whole variety of unlawful detention. Meaning, of the total number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees currently is 11,000 plus, amongst them half of whom do not have any charges presented against them and they've never been to trial. So, this goes to unlawful detention: a form of administrative detention which is basically detaining a person without charge or trial and it can be renewed indefinitely based on secret information. So neither the detainee nor their lawyers are aware of what the charges, if there are any charges, against the Palestinian held in Israeli detention.
So, administrative detainees are held on the presumption that they might in the future commit some kind of, you know, offense, and the way the Israeli authorities use this is that they hold children under administrative detention. So Defense for Children International Palestine reported records high of children held unlawfully. You know when children should be held, as a last resort, we see Israel detaining them without charges. This is similar to human rights defenders, political activists amongst many other. So, the main point also even those with a conviction or with a sentence, most of the time they or all of them, the majority have been tried and prosecuted before an Israeli military court that lacks any fair trial guarantees, you know, for the the basic fair trial guarantee that is proved innocent until proven guilty, that doesn't exist in Israeli military courts. But the contrary, every Palestinian is guilty whether they like it or not, or whether they committed a crime or not. And to give you an understanding, the conviction rate in Israeli military courts is 99.7%. So, almost always it ends up with a conviction. And the sentences are high because Israeli military orders place extremely high and exaggerated sentences. So, for someone throwing a stone, they can get up to 10 years imprisonment. And if that stone hits a moving vehicle, they can get up to 20 years. So basically, the system is built in order to keep Palestinians inside prison. And the last point I'll make here is this is basically part of, you know, the result of a separate criminal justice system. This is a 100% part and parcel of Israel's upper tide and persecution that's implemented against Palestinians."
Michael Walker (Novara Media):
"We'll talk in detail about the people released today and the people who weren't. I suppose just to get some clarity on the hostages prisoners distinction. So I suppose to be a hostage it's about intent isn't it? You've captured these people to get something in exchange for returning them, some kind of ransom essentially, prisoners. So, I suppose on the Palestinian side, what the Israelis have done, it's not explicit that they've taken these people for ransom. But the way that prisoner can be misleading is because prisoner suggests in the mind of the audience that these people have been proven by some fair process to have committed a crime. Whereas in fact, these people are in many cases arbitrarily detained, even if it's not explicitly to achieve some kind of ransom as is the case when it comes to Hamas with the Israeli detainees with the Israeli captives."
Milena Ansari (Human Rights Watch):
"That's exactly it in a way to simplify it a bit more. Sorry for the all the legal stuff that I mentioned, but that's context and reality of Palestinians in Israeli custody. To simplify it, both hostage taking and unlawful detention is a form of unlawful deprivation of liberty. They both fall under the main element that a person is held unlawfully and they shouldn't be in detention or deprived of their liberty in general. The difference is the intent. Hamas clearly said they're taking on these people, depriving them of their liberty in order to put pressure on Israel. And you know context is important. Israel many times doesn't need a reason to hold Palestinians. So, in a way they don't feel the need to say we're holding them for a prison exchange, to, you know, balance the scale in a way. And this is part of the dehumanization of Palestinians, when Palestinians are always looked at if they're in prison [generally people would think]: "Oh for sure they did something, they're convicted of a crime, they did something major. ", but the reality is, and this is what the media sometimes and many times neglects to prove and clarify, is that's not necessarily the case. These Palestinians in detention are not dangerous criminals. There are people who the Israeli occupation forces have arrested and detained in order either to silence them, either to put pressure on them. So the thing is, it's part of the dehumanization of Palestinians who are killed in Gaza, we have to say they are civilians, but when, you know, everything happens the other way, we just say people in general. And for example, another example, if we say like a child in detention, if they're around 17 or 18, we'd say a teenager, but they're still children. Unfortunately, we've been seeing a lot of this dehumanization language go about in the past two years."
Michael Walker (Novara Media):
"And let's talk, I suppose more precisely about the people who have been released from Israeli jails over the past few hours. So, as far as I understand it, there's 250 people who are classified as Palestinian prisoners and they are people who have been charged and found guilty of a crime, although as you say this is in military courts, there isn't really any due process, and the other group of people is 1,700 detainees from Gaza and they were essentially picked up, weren't they? Sort of during the war somewhat arbitrarily, including 15 miners. So, if you could give us a few more details about those two groups of people, and if there are any sort of important differences between them."
Milena Ansari (Human Rights Watch):
"Ya, I'll start off with the around 1,700 plus Palestinians who were arrested and rounded up from Gaza by Israeli ground forces the past two years. And for this, let me be extremely clear, for these 1,700 plus, all of them are held arbitrary and were detained arbitrary because none of these 1,700 were ever presented with a list of charges or were ever put before a judge or a military trial. They were held under something that the Israeli forces call, Israeli authorities call the "unlawful combatants law." And it's a similar method of administrative detention, detaining someone under the presumption that they may in the future do something. All these 1,700 should not have been in Israeli detention. They should not have been arrested. You know, we've been for Human Rights Watch, we documented, for example, the arrest of and detention of healthcare workers from Gaza who were rounded up, for example, during their medical evacuation from the north to the south. And these medical evacuations were coordinated by the Israeli forces on the ground, yet paramedics, doctors, nurses, when they were at a checkpoint, they were detained by Israeli forces. And after months or weeks or days released, again, no charges, no trial, the the only reason these individuals were detained, for example, is to either get information from them, most of the time they did not have any information about anything of the hostilities because they're healthcare workers, but they're also detained as a form of pressure, you know, adding more numbers to how many Palestinians are in detention. So, from those who were sent back to Gaza or released to Gaza, it included two women. So two women who were also detained from Gaza and illegally moved and transferred within Israel which is occupying power, and it included a child as well. So this just gives you a sense of who they are. And again, emphasis they should not have been in detention to begin with. The other group of released Palestinians were as you mentioned, yes, those who had high sentences, those who had convictions against them while they were prosecuted in a military court, but I I'll give you an example of a few, not to name names, but some of the high sentences are, like two decades, 20 years plus, these were individuals who were arrested and detained during the Second Intifada in 2000, so these were people or individuals who were either, you know, taking part in protests or any operations during The Second Intifada, and this was during, you know, when the [Palestine] population was rising against occupation. So, this all goes into, you know, the system of oppression and domination. Regardless of how a Palestinian wants to fight for a liberated Palestine, there's always, you know, these military courts and military orders that make it almost impossible for anyone to be seen as, you know, the arbitrary detention that they have. An example of this, I'll be more clear, Muhammad Halabi, for example, he was released in the previous prison exchange deal and he is the director of New Vision, an organization that was based in in Gaza and the charge against him was, you know, funding money to Hamas and there were no direct, you know, connections or direct proof to that. So, his detention was in order to silence New Vision's work. And then, later he was released during a prisoner exchange. So, these are just some of the groups that were released, and you know, from the ones, the 250 with high sentences, 154 will be exiled and they will be released to Gaza and from Gaza to Egypt and then we don't even know. I've been trying to figure out what exiled and deported means, and till now we don't know. And, this is just, you know, a small reporting of who are the groups. But what I would add is, I was a bit heartbroken or maybe disappointed, that none of these lists included for example the 300 plus children who are unlawfully held in Israeli detention, which was honestly a bit of a slap to the face. But I would focus on the broader around 2,000 Palestinians who were released, and none of these groups included specifically women. There were two women from Gaza released, but we still have 15 Palestinian women and a girl held in Israeli detention without an understanding about the conditions. We know about the conditions, but without knowing when they will ever be released."
Michael Walker (Novara Media):
"Let's talk about conditions because I suppose another distinction that people might sort of imagine when they think of hostages and they think of prisoners are hostages are held, you know, without any due process. Of course, hostages are held without any due process, but you imagine it being very different being taken hostage to being taken prisoner. I mean, can you talk about what it's like to be a Palestinian prisoner who's either been, you know, as you say, convicted in a trial without much due process, or arbitrarily detained? What is it like to be in an Israeli prison? Because of course there's some good news today, which is people have been released, but the bad news is that many more people remain languishing in those jails. So, what are the conditions like?"
Milena Ansari (Human Rights Watch):
"Ya. Well, I fully first of all acknowledge and understand as someone who has never been inside Israeli detention and prison, I cannot fully send or reflect an accurate picture of what has been happening. And with the Israeli authorities banning and denying the international community for the Red Cross to do their mandated prison monitoring of conditions, we do have some kind of vagueness about the reality. But having had spoken to several Palestinians who were released, including healthcare workers from Gaza and Gaza workers who were detained from October 7th, 2023, and reading reports from the UN Commission of Inquiry, for example, the OHCHR as well, Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations, we do understand that the conditions have been brutal and abusive all throughout detention. What I mean by this is for Human Rights Watch, we have a report from 1994 that talks about the systematic ill treatment of Palestinians in interrogation. But what we are slowly realizing is that now torture is throughout the whole arrest process from the minute a person is taken and detained and arrested up until they're transferred to a detention facility and later a prison and through every day and hour inside this prison facility. There's torture, there's abuse, and there's ill treatment. What we mean by this, we witnesses, we spoke to and from various reports, there's prolonged blindfolding and prolonged cuffing by the hands and the feet. So throughout detention, detainees have been blindfolded and cuffed by their hands. Why I emphasize this prolonged cuffing by the hands and knees is because Physicians for Human Rights Israel reported that dozens of Palestinians had their limbs amputated including arms and legs from the prolonged cuffing. You can imagine the cutting of proper blood circulation. What would it do with infections? And of course there's medical neglect. The healthcare workers I spoke to were extremely helpful in understanding as a health care worker how did they see the health conditions of other detainees and prisoners and they all reported that there's medical neglect. People with diabetes, with cancer, with chronic illnesses are neglected. There's no proper monitoring to their conditions. There is no proper and providing them with medical treatment, even when the injuries that are the detainees subjected to from torture and ill treatment, Israeli authorities do not provide any treatment to those. But, we're also talking about deprivation of food if you've noticed the videos of the released prisoners and detainees. The released Palestinians today, they're all you know skeleton body with faces that are faded of life in a away. And every detainee who was released that I spoke to said they lost from 10 to 20 kilograms during their detention because they're deprived of proper food and clean water. And this is something unfortunately that we saw Israel weaponize against Palestinians in Gaza and using starvation as a weapon of war.
But there's also sleep deprivation.
There's physical beatings on private areas, on sensitive parts. You know being forced to kneel on the ground 24/7, deliberate humiliation, blackmailing, electrocution even, you know, threats of death, threats of rapes, but also repeated strip searches that are completely humiliating. And the forced nudity of both men and women and beatings on to both men and women while being naked, including on the genitals. Being forced to go undergo humiliating strip searches is something almost every person I spoke to reported on and throughout the whole detention, there was verbal abuse, cursing God, cursing religion, cursing family members and the continuous also isolation. You know, since October 2023 the Palestinians inside Israeli custody they've been completely stripped of all their belongings, you know, no water kettle to heat water, no toothbrushes even. No products to clean the rooms they're in. One pair of underwear and one pair of clothes on them. Nothing else. Not even, you know, not even a radio or a TV to understand what's happening from the outside world. So these 1,7700 plus Palestinians who were released from Gaza, they have no idea whether their family members are alive or they've been killed. You know, we're seeing videos that are completely harrowing. You know, a mother just so happy to, you know, see her loved one from Gaza being released because fo months during their detention, they had no idea whether they're alive or killed."
Novara Media, https://youtu.be/_sB-AIcI-6U?si=ZpdFZ9uqt7EZuE2b