By Walter E. Block & Peloni
Al Jazeera asks: “Why are thousands of Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons without charge?” Its answer is not too complimentary to this nation: “Every year, April 17 marks Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, a day dedicated to the thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Campaigners use the day to call for the human rights of such prisoners to be upheld and for those who have been detained without charge to be released. On Monday, Israel released 150 Palestinian prisoners detained during the war in the Gaza Strip. These prisoners, including two Palestine Red Crescent Society workers, said they suffered abuse during their 50 days in Israeli prison, according to a report by the Reuters news agency.”
The National Public Radio is not a happy camper with regard to this phenomenon. According to NPR’s Asma Khalid: “Hundreds of Palestinians suspected of being involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks on southern Israel are being held in Israeli prisons. That’s according to Israeli NGO HaMoked. These prisoners join thousands of other Palestinians arrested in Gaza and the West Bank – accused, but often not even convicted of crimes. In total, an estimated 7,000 Palestinians are in prison, including many minors and activists. Nearly 2,900 of those detainees are held without trial.”
Human Rights Watch, similarly, asks: “Why Does Israel Have So Many Palestinians in Detention and Available to Swap?” It goes on to aver: “Among those being held are dozens of women and scores of children. The majority have never been convicted of a crime, including more than 2,000 of them being held in administrative detention, in which the Israeli military detains a person without charge or trial. Such detention can be renewed indefinitely based on secret information, which the detainee is not allowed to see. Administrative detainees are held on the presumption that they might commit an offense at some point in the future.
Not to be outdone, BBC piles on with an exploration of “How Israel jails hundreds of Palestinians without charge.” The British Broadcasting Corporations continues:
“The 17-year-old had been released from prison the night before, nearly five months after being arrested in a 4am Israeli military raid on the home. Yazen had been held under ‘administrative detention’ – a longstanding security policy, inherited from the British, that allows the Israeli state to imprison people indefinitely without charge, and without presenting any evidence against them.
‘They have a secret file,’ Yazen said. ‘They don’t tell you what’s in it.’ He was back at home because he was among the 180 Palestinian children and women released from prison by Israel in the recent exchange for hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. But at the same time the Palestinian prisoners were being released, Israel was detaining people at its highest rate in years. In the weeks since 7 October, the number of people in administrative detention – already at a 30-year high of 1,300 – has shot up to more than 2,800.”
In the view of the New York Times: “Freed Palestinians Were Mostly Young and Not Convicted of Crimes…. More than 9,000 Palestinians imprisoned under Israel’s military and national security laws are being held in Israeli detention facilities… Since Israel invaded Gaza, the Sde Teiman military base has filled with blindfolded, handcuffed detainees, held without charge…” [1]
Ok, already, enough, gevalt, we need hear no more. The claim of Israel’s court system to be predicated on the rule of law, on civilized practices, on justice, lies in shambles. Everyone who is anyone agrees, as in the aforementioned. No one should ever be in jail who has not been duly convicted of a crime, and the only Jewish state on the planet has not lived up to this criterion.
Yes, when judged by perfection, Israel is found wanting. On the other hand, this nation has been at war, almost continuously, since its founding in 1948. Of course, there have been a few months, here and there, of relative peace, but in terms of ongoing length of war, this nation has been involved to a greater degree than many others. It is a bit harsh to expect full adherence to the niceties of humane institutional arrangements when almost continually under siege and vastly outnumbered.
How does the government of Gaza, Hamas, stack up against Israel in this regard? We do not so much as know exactly how many prisoners it now holds. The best guess is something in the order of 100, including women and children. Talk about abuse while in prison? Have any Palestinian prisoners in Israel jails been executed? Not a one of them. How does Hamas compare? We do not know for sure, but at least one half dozen have recently met this fate: Ori Danino z”l, Carmel Gat z”l, Hersh Goldberg-Polin z”l, Alex Lubnov z”l, Almog Sarusi z”l and Edan Yerushalmi z”l. It is difficult to get more “abusive” than that.
According to Winston Churchill, “Democracy is the worst system of government, except for all of the others that have been tried.” In like manner I say of Israel, “It is the worst government in the Middle East, except for all of the others located there.
Rational people should long ago have become sick and tired of the likes of Al Jazeera, NPR, BBC, HRW and the New York Times comparing Israel with perfection, and finding it wanting, while all but giving its enemies a free pass. Have any of the Hamas hostages have been found guilty of any crimes? Not a single one of them. They have not even been accused of any criminal behavior, apart, of course, for the “crime” of being Jewish. This issue never, ever, arises in the biased press. Israel is always and ever at fault for this violation; the Arab counties? Virtually never.
The foregoing is not totally unreasonable, but here is another way of looking at the matter.
Terror is not a criminal act, but an act of revolution, and thereby requires a different type of response, which argues in favor of the use of terrorist detention rather than pursuing criminal charges. Indeed, an Arab running down the street knifing someone to death yelling Allahu Akbar is not just a murderer, any more than was the Sbarro bombing just an act of arson. The motivations behind these actions are more than criminal, they are an attempt to destabilize civilization itself. Any attempt to placate the advocates of terror by extending the niceties of civilization to those who are predicated upon the undoing of civilization would, in fact, be an act of the most sublime lack of both justice and prudence. Hence, the rules and regulations for dealing with these societal threats, which have been weaponized against Israeli society, are different from those actions which are simply criminal in nature.
[1]
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/world/middleeast/palestinian-prisoners-released-gaza.html;
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/28/world/middleeast/palestinians-detained-in-israel.html;
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/06/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-detention-base.html;
I would recommend a different response to these allegations. In the United States, thousands of individuals are held in prison every who have not been convicted, and in some instances have not even been formally indicted for any any crime. It is also not unusual for these individuals to be imprisoned for more than two years before their cases come to trial. Sometimes that are held this long because the judge before whom they are first brought (in a procedure known as habeas corpus_ decides they are too dangerous to the public to be granted bail. In other cases, the judge sets bail for them but they are unable to raise enough money to bail themselves. In other cases, to suspect’s own lawye rprevents their release by delaying the trial date by means of various appeals aimed at forcing the prosecution to drop all charged against their client.
Sometimes, when the defendant’s case finally does come to trial, the preiding judge sentences them to “time already served. In that case. they are immediately released, although a recod of their conviction remains on file with law enforcement agencies.and sometimes, on a card they are required to carry with them at all times.
In England,France,Germany, Japanand all other civilized countries where the rule of law prevails, individuals suspected of a crime but not yet convicted of one are imprisoned under similar circumstances. It therefore should come as no surprise that in Israel, a rule-of-law country, some prisoners, both Arab and Jewish, are held in prison under similar circumstances. The claim by all these phoney human rights groups that these imprisonments are a grave violation of human rights is sheer nonsense.
The authors are right again. However, the solution has been mentioned numerous times but Israel is unwilling to implement it. Any terrorist who is undoubtedly guilty should be sent to meet his maker. While this may not deter all of them, it will deter some and any win is worth working for.