Kara Weinacht
9/11/2010
3:33 pm
This short news clip reports that Palestinians are rejected when they go to visit family members that are being held as prisoners in Israeli jails. Israeli prisoners, on the other hand are allowed visitors AND home visits. Some of the Palestinian prisoners are being transferred to Israeli jails where the government, as Al Jazeera claims, extends a prejudice against the Palestinians, and now, during the Islamic Eid holiday, this denial of rights is even more controversial because it is a holiday for families to be together. The report then adds that the holiday is also a time to visit the deceased members of the family, and Palestinian families are denied that right as well.
My personal reaction is astonishment. Who is it that is responsible to right these wrongs? The UN? The US? The Israeli government is holding some of these Palestinian prisoners with charges for murders of Israeli soldiers- they aren't politically or morally wrong or unjustified in doing that. Sahar Francis from the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association brings up that the first injustice is in tranferring the prisoners to jails in Israel, and the second being the denial of family visitation rights. This is a good point-if I were to put myself in the situation of one of these families or prisoners, I would feel violated if it were made so that i was physically, geographically, politically, or legally unable to visit with my loved ones in jail, especially in the context of a religious holiday. One of the points made by the report that is harder to endure is that this has been going on for anywhere between 10-30 years. It doesn't sound like much progress has been made in the direction of human rights.
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/middleeast/2010/09/201091112551648827.html
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