The Decision to Refuse
Khalida Jarrar, a Political Prisoner, Permission to Attend Her Daughter’s
Funeral is an act of Judeo-Nazis
Nothing emphasises
the cold, racist contempt that Zionism holds for Palestinians than the decision
to prevent Khalid Jarrar permission to attend her daughter’s funeral. It is
inconceivable that a Jewish prisoner in Israel would be treated in the same
manner.
Khalid has
been repeatedly gaoled for her political activity, membership of the Marxist
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Most of the time this has been ‘Administrative
Detention’ i.e. what was called in Ireland, internment without trial. From 2nd
July 2017 to 28 February Khalida was held under Administrative Detention.
The PFLP
has a political and a military wing.
Khaled belongs to its political wing. She is an elected member of the Palestinian
parliament but that has not prevented the ‘democratic state’ of Israel from gaoling
her for nakedly political reasons. There is no ‘security’ issue, the usual
justification for racism in Israel.
As Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch said
‘Depriving a mom long unjustly detained from saying goodbye to her
daughter reflects pure cruelty, which underlies Israeli govt's apartheid’
Israel claims
to be a democratic state but it gaols hundreds of Palestinians on the West Bank
(and a few now in Israel too) without even the formality of a military trial,
for 6 months at a time. This includes children. No offence need ever be
committed. Political opposition to the occupation is all that is required.
Israel,
which helped create Hamas, has no problem with conservative Islam (despite the
pretence that Hamas is the devil incarnate, Netanyahu had an informal agreement
with them) as demonstrated by the inclusion in a governing coalition, for the
first time ever, of an Arab Party Ra’am, the offshoot of Egypt’s Moslem Brotherhood.
Secular and
in particular leftist Palestinian groups are anathema to all wings of Zionism,
left and right.
Contrast
this with Elor Azaria, the Kahanist soldier who executed an unconscious Palestinian,
Abdel Fatah al-Sharif, lying on the ground.
Azaria became a hero
to the majority of Israelis on his release from prison. They even printed
his ugly face on supermarket bags.
The face of murderer Elor Azaria decorated plastic bags in Israel
As Ha’aretz
put
it, Azaria became a ‘poster child for
Israel’s moral erosion.’ Because of the international attention that the
case aroused, the Israeli Military was forced to jail him for 9 months.
If you want
a comparison, remember Ahed Tammimi, a 16 year old girl who was gaoled
for 8 months for slapping a soldier who was trespassing in the grounds of her
house, after her cousin had been shot in the head. Slapping a soldier was worth
one month less than murdering a Palestinian.
Azaria was let
out of prison 2 days before his official release date in order that he
could attend his brother’s wedding. Yet a mother who had lost her daughter was refused,
on the whim of a sadistic prison service and political echelon, even the most
basic kindness that one would expect in the face of the bereavement of one’s
child.
Sadism and
cruelty are institutionalised in Israel in the all embracing fight against Palestinian
resistance, which they term ‘terrorism’.
I remember a talk some years ago by Raja
Shehada in Brighton and his description of the ‘meanness’ of
Israelis who, during the Palestinian hunger strike in April 2017, set up a barbecue outside Ofer prison
in order to torment the prisoners.
Even during the IRA
hunger strikes of the 1980s, no Loyalist engaged in such a calculated act of
sadism. And then there were the Israelis who set up sofas and a coffee machine
on the hills above Gaza in order that they could get a better view of the
bombing of civilians below. ‘Israelis
Watch Bombs Drop on Gaza From Front-Row Seats’, NYT, 14.7.14.
People
sometimes gib at comparing Nazi Germany to Zionist Israel but is there any more
exact comparison? Some even call it ‘anti-Semitic’!
When the holocaust
began in the wake of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 Jews were murdered by
the Einsatzgruppen killing squads under the heading of ‘bandits’ or ‘terrorists’.
Calling one’s opponents ‘terrorists’ has long been the siren call of
colonialists.
Zionists
often say that Israel cannot be compared to Nazi Germany because, after all,
whatever else they have done they have not exterminated the Palestinians. But that misses the point. A large section of
Israeli Jewry, certainly larger than the equivalent part of the German population,
would have no hesitation in exterminating the Palestinians if the political opportunity
arose and they thought they could get away with it.
When
thousands of settlers, young and old, take part in Jerusalem’s annual March of
the Flags and then parade through the Arab part of East Jerusalem chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’ (Ma’avet La’Aravim)
we should take them at their word. Even
if Israel cannot find the opportunity for mass murder on an industrial scale no
one should pretend that the mentality that enables such acts isn't already
present.
Although
Khalida was not able to attend the funeral of her beloved Suha, thousands of Palestinians
took
her place in Ramallah before demonstrating outside Ofer prison. In so doing
they ensured that in her mother’s absence, Suha was laid to rest with the love
of thousands. The squalid hatreds of Zionism was met with the love of the people.
The
following letter from Khalida was read out at her funeral:
Ami Popper - murdered 7 Palestinians
As Anat Mater and Jonathan Pollak wrote in Ha’aretz
:
If the despicable, racist murderer Ami Popper can be
granted furlough, the freedom fighter Khalida Jarrar must also have the right
to bury her daughter and part from her with dignity.
Jarrar is one of the greatest feminist, socialist
and anti-colonial revolutionaries the Palestinian people have been blessed
with, and she is recognized and respected by the international community.
Irrespective of the death of her daughter, she should be released immediately
from her political imprisonment, which will be ending, one way or another, in
three months anyway.
Of course
there is a difference. Ami Popper is a Kahanist who murdered 7 random
Arabs whose only crime was their ethnicity. Originally sentenced to a whole life
imprisonment, his sentence was reduced first to 40 years and he will now be
released after 33 years. Palestinians who kill a single Israeli Jew can expect
40 years in prison.
The Zionists,
like their Afrikaaner allies before them, are nothing if not stupid. Indeed
they are even more stupid because at least the Afrikaaners knew when it was
time to give up on a system based on racial superiority. They also released
another ‘terrorist’ by the name of Nelson Mandela. The Zionists prefer the ways
of their hero who who died in a bunker in Berlin.
The reason
why the Zionists are particularly stupid is that in their unreconstructed
vengeance it isn’t Khalida, with her quiet and poignant suffering who has
suffered the most but the Zionists themselves. They have shown themselves to be
a slow-witted and vicious cult whose only delight is in tormenting the
vulnerable. Politically they have done themselves more damage than Khalida
could ever have managed.
Below is an
appropriate article from Gideon Levy in Ha’aretz.
Tony
Greenstein
Damn
Them All
Palestinian lawmaker Khalida Jarrar attending a court
session at an Israeli military base near the West Bank city of Ramallah, in
2015.Credit: Majdi Mohammed / אי־פי
Damn them all. Damn Rafael Gana, the deputy head of the Israel Prison Service,
who wrote to the interior minister: “Your request does not meet the
prerequisites for consideration.” Damn Katy Perry, the head of the Israel
Prison Service, who approved the decision. Damn Public Security Minister Omer
Bar Lev, the heartless coward, who didn’t lift a finger to change this evil
decision. And above all, damn the Shin Bet, which probably stands behind the
decision, as it stands behind far more than we know.
Damn all those who are partner to this sadistic decision not to release Khalida Jarrar from prison to attend
her daughter’s funeral. Damn this new government, which presumed to herald a
change, and none of whose ministers acted to oppose the evil institutions that
decided to leave Jarrar in prison. Not even ministers Merav Michaeli and
Tamar Zandberg, who presumably have far more in common with the secular
feminist freedom fighter Jarrar than with their colleague Ayelet Shaked.
And damn the Israeli media, which, with the exception
of this newspaper, took no interest in the story, which was reported worldwide
but not in Israel. Jarrar is a political prisoner. After a sequence of arrests
without trial, she was sentenced to two years in prison for “belonging to an
illegal organization,” in a land where there is no organization that is
permitted to Palestinians. Jarrar is scheduled to be released September 25,
about two months from now. All the existential dangers that lie in wait for the
country upon her release will be ready to pounce in another two months.
On Sunday, her daughter Suha was found dead,
apparently from cardiac arrest. Suha’s body was found about five hours after
her death, after her sister in Canada was unable to reach her by phone and
asked friends to break into the house. Suha’s father Ghassan was in Jenin at
the time and rushed to her home. The Khalidas have two daughters: Suha, who
completed a master’s degree in climate change in Canada and worked for the Al
Haq human rights group in Ramallah, and Yafa, who completed a doctorate in law
in Canada and lives there.
I will never forget that moment in the military court
in Ofer in the summer of 2015: Yafa, Suha and Ghassan in the audience, Khalida
in the dock, and the Israel Prison Service officer, Bassam Kashkush, suddenly
allowed the two young women to approach their mother and embrace her. Even the
warden teared up. It was forbidden, against regulations, but what Officer
Kashkush dared to permit, in a rare moment of humanity and compassion, the
State of Israel, the head of the Prison Service and the interior minister
failed to do.
All that was needed was a tiny degree of humanity. All
that was missing was a minimal amount of humanity. “He had a mother, after
all,” wrote poet Nathan Alterman. They are also parents, after all, Katy and
Omer and the Shin Bet agents. Are they capable of imagining what it means to
lose a young daughter and not be able to go to her funeral? Not to be with her
father and sister during their tragedy? To mourn in grief in a cell in Damon
Prison? To hear about the death of their daughter on Radio Palestine?
What else? What else needs to be said about Israeli
insensitivity, except for one thing: Jarrar is a human being. But to most
Israelis, she isn’t. She’s a terrorist, although she has never been convicted
of terrorism, and she is a proud Palestinian, and that is even worse,
apparently.
The day after Suha’s death, when there was still hope that Jarrar would be released, the banquet hall in the center of Ramallah was filled with people. The entire secular left of the city came to be with Ghassan, who remained so alone in his mourning. He cried and cried, and everyone cried with him. Fadwa Barghouti, Marwan’s wife, who sat next to me, said their son Aarab was at this moment visiting his father in prison for the first time since the outbreak of the coronavirus. He is the only one in the family allowed to visit Marwan. Fadwa is not allowed to visit her husband, and Khalida is not allowed to attend her daughter’s funeral. Israeli malevolence, how awful it is.
