PALESTINIAN PRISONER KHADAR ADNAN CLOSE TO DEATH ON HUNGER STRIKE IN ISRAELI PRISON
“I hereby assert that I am confronting the occupiers not for my own sake as an individual, but for the sake of thousands of prisoners who are being deprived of their simplest human rights while the world and international community look on.”
“It is time the international community and the UN support prisoners and force the State of Israel to respect international human rights and stop treating prisoners as if they were not humans.”
Khadar Adnan, 11 February 2012
Breaking news although bear in mind it’s from the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17112804
This has been flagged up on Twitter earlier this afternoon
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/02/201222113016367480.html
He’s the official spokesman for Islamic Jihad and has called for more suicide bombers. But to the selective reporters of SU he’s just a harmless peace activist and victim.
http://vimeo.com/37225151
#3
i.e. he is a prominent Palestinian activist.
I haven’t met any palestinians, especially in OPalestine itself, who have any objection to suicide bombers, except whether it is strategically effective.
When i visited the town of Beit Fajjar, the trade union centre for the Fatah affiliated Stone Workers union gave pride of place to a big picture of one of their members who had carried out a suicide bombing mission.
As for Islamic Jihad, they are a relatively unexceptional part of the palestinian politic mix. It seems you are indulging in dog whistle innuendo about their name.
“When i visited the town of Beit Fajjar, the trade union centre for the Fatah affiliated Stone Workers union gave pride of place to a big picture of one of their members who had carried out a suicide bombing mission.”
A “mission’ eh?
And, as a human being and Socialist, did you ask who they may have blown up that was so worthy of commemoration? Or is that irrelevant?
If they had a picture of say, the murderers of Klinghoffer, would you have shrugged?
I ask this because this site has seen to fit to lionise the PFLP and Leila Khaled – people who have deliberately murdered 100% innocent civilians – inc. non-Israelis.
I also ask this because I have lost 2 family members to suicide bombers – once on the 7/7 bombings and another in a Hamas bus bombing. I know several other completely innocent people who have been blown up, inc. a Dutch Jewish family in a pizza parlour.
I wonder what you have to say their murderers.
And please don’t make this about me – or other Zionists.
#5
And Israelis elect a murderer like Ariel Sharon as their Prime Minister.
“And please don’t make this about me – or other Zionists.”
You can hardly expect anyone to pretend Zionism is incidental to the occurrence of suicide bombings in Israel. The two are related.
#5 “… people who have deliberately murdered 100% innocent civilians – inc. non-Israelis.”
This is the key part of DaN’s post. ie Those Palestinians killed by Israelis are not 100% innocent civilians.
What a disgusting p.o.s DaN is.
That’s an odd assessment.
PIJ was formed by Palestinian students in Egypt who regarded the Muslim Brotherhood as too moderate. They oppose not just Israel but the governments of all her neighbours aside from Syria and have carried out bombings in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan.
When Hamas announced an end to suicide bombings inside Israel in 2001, PIJ stated: “Our position is to continue. We have no other choice. We are not willing to compromise.”
Sharon was a war criminal but that doesn’t make PIJ anything else but an extremist group on the fringe of Palestinian politics.
#5 If you don’t want to make it about you, why mention losing family members?
What do you say to the relatives of Palestinian children killed by the IDF?
Or to those of people killed by Irgun and Stern Gang in the 40s?
To those who ask why some of the leaders of those organisations such as Shamir became elected to high office?
Or why the perpetrators of the King David Hotel bombing are honoured heroes, and the event commemorated by leading Israeli politicians?
The decision to use suicide bombers has always seemed to me to be neither here nor there in terms of morality. The moral issue is the use of violence and the victims of the violence, and that is the same moral choice whatever the conflict, and depends on your point of view about violence in general and/or the nature of the struggle you are fighting.
People like my father were sent to Germany between 1940 and 1945 to drop huge quantities of explosives which inevitably killed German civilians in their hundreds of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands in one night (and the survival rate for much of that time was so low that well over 50,000 never came back so I think the term ‘suicide’ could quite reasonably be used to described many of their missions).
Had my father, who was fortunate enough to miss operational missions by one week because of the end of the war, actually flown over a German city and personally dropped a few thousand tons of phosphorous (he was a bomb-aimer and trained to be in a pathfinder squadron) would you have been saying to him, ‘what do you say to the families of children burned alive by your bombs?’
My father was marginally (compared to others) in a titanic struggle against fascism. The Palestinians are engaged in a struggle to regain their land, taken from them by terror and ethnic cleansing. The Stern Gang and the Irgun were among the main ones responsible for taking it, the maintains that state of affairs.
The innocent victims are all innocent victims, mourned by their families.
#9
The continuation of suicide bombings after the Hamas ceasefire was also the position of the Al Aqsa martyrs who are linked to Fatah.
My understanding, reinforced by my visit there which mainly involved talking to Fatah supporters, is that Islamic Jihad are at the militant end of the spectrum, but reflect a substantive strand of Palestinian opinion.
I mention meeting the trade unionists, but we also hed meetings with relatively rich owners of marble quarries, who also supported the suicide bombings in principle; the objection is mainly that it is a politically cu8nter-productive and militarily ineffective strategy, and has reprisal blowback. Moral objections were not raised by anyone.
Are you really calling support for the suicide bombing of civilians ‘activism’, Andy? Talk about weasel words.
“Moral objections were not raised by anyone.”
So what? That doesn’t make suicide bombing of civilians morally acceptable or right, anymore than killings of Palestinian civilians are made morally acceptable or right if people on the other side don’t have any ‘moral objections’. After all, it’s not happening to them, so why should they care?
@ anticapitalista
““… people who have deliberately murdered 100% innocent civilians – inc. non-Israelis.”
This is the key part of DaN’s post. ie Those Palestinians killed by Israelis are not 100% innocent civilians.”
That is not a logical or honest deduction from what DAN said. It doesn’t follow at all.
Are you a pacifist Darren?
No I am not a pacifist, ted, but I don’t support deliberately targeting civilians in any conflict by any side.
Once you accept the deliberate murder of innocents for a political goal that you support, you have no moral or logical grounds to criticise the deliberate murder of innocents for any other reason.
Also, I would not wish to be murdered for some political cause, no matter how much I supported it, so I won’t engage in obfuscation and whitewash when it happens to other people, and I won’t describe those who do it as ‘activists’, ‘militants’, ‘soldiers’ etc. They are common or garden murderers.
If other people are fine with innocents being murdered in the name of a cause they support, then I ask them, how would you like it to be you who was murdered in the name of that cause. If you can’t answer that you would welcome it, then to treat it as acceptable to happen to other innocent people is sheer hypocrisy and sadism.
When this chap – and others like him – talk about ‘occupation’ are we to assume that the reference only to the West Bank plus – maybe – East Jerusalem or is the reference to every square inch of Palestine?
Big difference.
@Vanya:
“What do you say to the relatives of Palestinian children killed by the IDF?”
What do I say? What do you think I say? Unlike Mr. Newman I don’t shrug my shoulders and suspend my morality. All innocent victims are a tragedy. When they are deliberately targeted by ‘Martyrs’ who are then celebrated it adds a level of nefariousness. Baruch Goldstein is a murderer of immense evil. His supporters are evil. I guess the equivalent for the Palestinians clearly merits a shrug.
“Or to those of people killed by Irgun and Stern Gang in the 40s?”
This tired refrain of the ‘Stern Gang’. The Stern Gang were a small fringe compared to the normalised forces – forces that also fought Fascism (where mainstream Palestinian leadership aligned with Fascism). Again it is a crime to target innocents. The Stern Gang were universally condemned by mainstream Zionist movements. ‘Hamas’ and ‘Fatah’ are not fringes. The Stern Gang were – never numbering more than a few thousand fighters…and it took decades for them to normalise and gain power over the prevalent Socialist parties in Israel. Revisionist Zionism was always a minority stream compared to Socialism. Socialist and moderate Zionism set the tone in Israel.
The Stern Gang murdered less people than the British Army and the Palestinians during the Arab Revolt. While we hear of the Stern Gang as a constant, tiring refrain, there was an other side to the conflict, one in which the Palestinian leadership urged and encouraged the murder of Palestinian Jews.
At least be even handed. For every Deir Yassin there was a Hebron. Is this clear? Do you wish to constantly only reflect one side of the conflict?
“To those who ask why some of the leaders of those organisations such as Shamir became elected to high office?”
Shamir was politically cleansed after decades of marginalisation and adopted a democratic framework in which to work. He no longer had private militias to terrorise Israeli politics. This is a far cry from say, the cronyism of Arafat and Fatah.
“Or why the perpetrators of the King David Hotel bombing are honoured heroes, and the event commemorated by leading Israeli politicians?”
They are not heroes to me and to many Israelis neither. Israel is not homogenous. Again, ad infinitum, the KDH hotel bombing was widely condemned by the true pioneers of Israel, like Ben Gurion and led ultimately to the Altalena incident. At the end of the day the KDH was the British Army HQ and it was bombed by a terrorist gang. In a manner similar (and even copied!) by the IRA.
Is it clear?
#17 What is clear is that you take sides in this struggle, and you take the wrong side.
Unless you’re a pacifist, and you clearly are not, the rest is all propaganda. Simple as.
You are right; but Fatah’s position — unlike the stated on of PIJ — is not “we will never compromise”. Indeed, Fatah is often criticised for compromising too much.
If the Israeli authorities thought he could be shown to be guilty of an offence, they could have charged him and put him on trial. Instead, like hundreds of other Palestinians, he was put into ‘administrative detention’.
For sure, and I would suspect by the majority of Palestinians.
Yes, quite possibly so. Of course this is in no small measure the fault of the Likud who continue to arry out bad-faith acts (e.g., continued settlement construction).
When did he do this? Last week, last year or ten years ago? Or does it just not matter to you,like the shitheads at Harry’s Place, it’s just more mud to throw to discredit Palestinian struggle and endorse Israeli racism.
skidmarx,
He is supposed to be a leader of PIJ in the West Bank, but since he is held under administrative detention, Shin Bet (Israeli domestic intelligence service) will not comment. I’m not sure that the issue is whether he or not he supports suicide bombing — he certainly will if he’s a PIJ member (indeed as Andy Newman notes suicide bombings are supported by a great many Palestinians of different backgrounds and views) — but whether holding him without trial is the right thing to do. I imagine most people think it isn’t.
“it’s just more mud to throw to discredit Palestinian struggle and endorse Israeli racism.”
Strawman. Opposing the targeting of civilians, and calling it what it is – terrorism – does not mean discrediting Palestinian struggle, let alone ‘endorsing Israeli racism’. The Palestinian struggle stands on its own merits. Suicide bombing doesn’t invalidate it. It sure as hell doesn’t help it though, and is morally indefensible under any circumstances.
Would you, personally, assent to being killed by a bomb for the furthering of the Palestinian cause, skidmarx? Would any of the other commenters here? I wouldn’t. If you can’t say ‘Yes I do assent to that’ to that, then on what moral or logical basis do you assent to other innocent people being killed for it? What gives you the moral right to say, “Kill them, but not me”?
Deliberately murdering civilians is not and never has been the sole means for achieving political goals. Support for it is merely evidence of bloodlust and hypcorisy.
I ask you all again:
Would any of you assent to being killed by a suicide bomber for the sake of ‘advancing’ the Palestinian cause?
If you can’t see the flipside – namely Palestinian racism and the nihilistic anti-Jewish mindset, the deliberate targeting and celebration of innocents being murdered and the dismantling of the State and all that that might entail, then really you have zero skin in the game nor any moral fibre whatsoever.
What do you mean by the phrase “dismantling of the State”?
To the extent that few — if any — of us live in the Middle East, all of us ” have zero skin in the game”.
I’m amazed at the propensity of zionists to deliberately miss the point. The guy has been inside for a long time without charge or trial and there was a prospect that he would remain inside indefinitely. That’s the issue. Who or what he supports, ideologically, tactically or strategically is irrelevant.
I have no issue with his release. I was struck by the nonchalant tone of Andy Newman.
I mean the removal of the state of Israel (by sustained violence).
As to your last point, that is pertinent. There is a level of casualness when it comes to attacking ‘Zionists’ that in no way reflects the realities or sentiments on the ground. I have family in Israel. The casual approval of violence against (innocent) people is what I find exasperating.
I know of no other people(s) or conflicts covered on this site where violence that targets innocents meets outright approval or obfuscation other that against Israeli Jews.
In fairness, I think that many who post here who oppose a “two state” solution do not wish for the removal of the state of Israel, but instead would like to see some type of state to replace it that would include Jews and Arabs as citizens with equal rights etc.
Whilst I accept that the two state solution is what most Palestinians call for, as a socialist I have always had issues with the notion.
First, one of the reasons I object to the state of Israel is that it is seen by many of its citizens as ethnically pure or in the process of moving to being pure. Yes I know I am now about to get shouted down by a random Zionist who will point out that there are Israeli Arabs and/or bedouin living in Israel but they are hardly treated as citizens with equal rights are they. Anyway I fail to see how the creation of an ethnically pure Palestine state will avoid these same issues facing Israel.
Secondly, there are practical reasons for being sceptical about a two-state solution. Given the constant encroachment of settlers onto Palestinian land in the West Bank and the overwhelming military power of US funded Israel, is free West Bank/Gaza ever going to be allowed or viable? Or would it just be a powerless, impoverished satellite?
Now were an Israeli government to announce a complete about turn in policy and its desire to create a democratic state for all residents of the three regions, equal rights for all its citizens and some kind of reconciliation process, and perhaps the return of the Golan, even I might stop moaning about Israel competing in European TV music shows when it is obvious they are in the Near East.
Levi, and others – I think a post which acknowledged that he was associated with a group which called for suicide bombings, and seems to have called for them himself, yet which took issue with the circumstances of his detention, or with Israeli practice in that regard more generally, would be fine. It’s just the blanking out of the suicide bombing problem which troubles me I think.
John Grimshaw – I think your point is framed in quite sympathetic terms – but do note that Israel isn’t the only anomaly in Eurovision.
DaN, I wasn’t just referring to you. Harry’s Place is also plumbing the depths over Khader Adnan.
Since Darren Redstar believes that Ignorance is Strength, I had a look at Khader Adnan’s wikipedia page to see when his accusation dates from:
A YouTube video speaking at a rally in 2007 shows him praising and encouraging suicide bombings…At the time of his most recent arrest, Adnan was no longer an active spokesman for the PIJ.
So you aren’t attacking him for organising suicide bombings, or even for supporting suicide bombings today (and in fact I can’t find any evidence that Islamic Jihad have carried out any suicide attacks on civilians since 2007). You want to attack him for views he expressed five years ago. There’s a word for that, thougtcrime, there’s a phrase for your selective falsification of history, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia/Eastasia, there’s a phrase for your abuse of a Palestinian political prisoner and support for the system that imprisons him, Two Minute Hate.
@Levi. Even commenters who were generally critical of Israel were skewering that Guardian article by his wife. If the video from the funeral is anomalous or no longer represents his views, or whatever, then it would still be useful to invoke it to anticipate objections. He is described simply as an ‘activist’ by the Guardian – there is no reason, as I said before, why the circumstances of his arrest and detention might not be criticised strongly, without brushing aside these less palatable details.
#35
Why should any Palestinian whose life has been defined by humiliation, oppression, occupation, and immiseration at the hands of one of the most brutal and savage settler colonial project in history need explain their right to resist by any means at their disposal to you or anybody else? This is a classic case of blame the victim.
The adoption of suicide bombing as a means of resistance reflects the desperation of the victim not their depravity.
The brutality of the resistance reflects the brutality of the occupation. End the latter and you end the former. Why is this so difficult to understand?
Again, I don’t understand why the fact in itself that a bombing is carried out by someone who kills themselves as well as their victims makes it morally any worse than if they had planted it and set a timer fuse or set it off by remote control.
Or dropped it from the air for that matter.
True enough, after all the end result is the same.
I think two things are at play here firstly suicide bombers are very difficult to stop and in some ways defy military superiority and secondly few of us could imagine ending our lives in this way.
“So you aren’t attacking him for organising suicide bombings, or even for supporting suicide bombings today (and in fact I can’t find any evidence that Islamic Jihad have carried out any suicide attacks on civilians since 2007). You want to attack him for views he expressed five years ago.”
Are you suggesting there is morally some kind of statute of limitations on being an inciter of murder? How convenient. Does Tony Blair get off the hook because the Iraq War started nearly ten years ago now? Have you any evidence that Khadar Adnan has changed his views? Any reason why you are by default assuming he has?
“The adoption of suicide bombing as a means of resistance reflects the desperation of the victim not their depravity.”
The victims in a suicide bombing are primarily the people killed by the suicide bomber, not the suicide bomber himself or herself. The latter has at least chosen to die. But those victims – of the actual bombing – don’t appear to register even in your mind, because you have reserved the status of ‘victim’ for the person killing them. So what are they, John?
“Again, I don’t understand why the fact in itself that a bombing is carried out by someone who kills themselves as well as their victims makes it morally any worse than if they had planted it and set a timer fuse or set it off by remote control.”
I don’t think that is being argued. Certainly not by me. The point is that deliberately targeting innocent civilians, as in bombing a non-military target such as pizza parlour, is indefensible. In war innocent civilians are often killed. But setting out to kill innocent civilians instead of enemy combatants, is simply murder, whoever is doing it.
My points here have been about the morality of targeting innocent civilians, not about the overall justice of the Palestinian cause, which is, so far as I am concerned, not in question.
#38 I agree, but I’m sure there are few people who if they gave it much thought would contemplate charging unprotected at machine guns with little chance of survival. Yet we have monuments all over this country to men who did just that, and people go around wearing poppies to commemorate them.
#39 “But setting out to kill innocent civilians instead of enemy combatants, is simply murder, whoever is doing it”.
Just out of interest do you adopt the same approach to the bombing of Germany in WW2? You may for all I know.
As for “instead of enemy combatants” I think that the Palestinian groups who used this tactic would point out that there is universal military service for Israeli citizens and therefore, at least for adults of a certain age, the distinction is not so clear.
And unlike the Israelis they don’t have the benefit of tanks and Apache attack helicopters.
I have to say that I have a huge problem about armed force against civilians, but then I have the privelege of having a country and a passport and my nationality is not under question.
If a foreign army invaded my country nobody would question its right to use force to resist it.
I don’t have armed soldiers who harrass and threaten me as I try to get to work.
People don’t spit and throw stones at my children in the street.
My parents didn’t keep the key to a house that they were forced to leave at gunpoint so that someone else could live in it because they were the wrong ethnicity/ religion.
I wasn’t born in a refugee camp…
And even more to the point, my country is in a close military and political alliance with the country that allows Israel to do what it does, bankrolls it financially, militarally and politically.
So my priority and responsibility is to do something about that, not taking the Palestinians to task for doing what some of them felt they had to.
the overall justice of the Palestinian cause, which is, so far as I am concerned, not in question.
Compare your guest post, at the home of British Zionism on the internet, Harry’s Place, in 2009:
In My Country There Is Problem…
Your View, January 7th 2009, 2:38 pm
This is a guest post by Darren Redstar
The opponents of the right of Israel to exist often reply to accusations that they are reviving old anti semitic prejudices by replying that anti zionism is not anti-semitic.
Take a look at this picture. The brave anti imperialist warrior with the dreads has the following on his Palestinian flag;
“In my country there is problem”
Where does that come from?
Oh yes, here:
And there follows a clip of Borat singing an anti-semitic song.
Perhaps your views have changed since 2009. Have they? Or are you still part of the Hasbara effort to delegitimise Palestinian struggle?
Yes of course and that is why its important to make these points. I agree with what you said in .41 too.
Sarah – on a website, Harry’s Place, that is openly calling the Guardian a “fascist rag” and calling for it to be closed down, you have accused the Guardian of sinking to a new low and you’ve done that because it has published an article by the wife of a man imprisoned without charge or trial by a colonial settler state whose m.o. is ethnic cleansing.
Whatever he has done to offend you and other racist supporters of colonial settlement, ethnic cleansing and segregationist laws (ie the State of Israel/zionism) is irrelevant to whether his incarceration is or was just.
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