Palestinian prisoners are the central issue
Dear Friend,
Rotem here. I refused to serve in the Israeli occupation army as a teenager, and today I work as the media coordinator for Resistance Solidarity Network. I spend a lot of time on the ground at demonstrations, documenting the people in Israel/Palestine who are organizing and struggling against genocide and occupation. Of the many developments I document, one stands out as particularly important: we are seeing the rapid emergence of left-wing organizing in support of Palestinian prisoners beyond Palestinian society itself. Activists started their campaign by highlighting Palestinian doctors imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza, like Dr. Husham Abu Safiya, but have expanded towards a broad call: free them all. The Palestinian prisoners movement is one of the central pillars of Palestinian politics and society, and we are seeing its cause transcend communal boundaries. This is not only powerful in its own right. It strengthens my belief in the growth of co-resistance, not coexistence, based in organizing around shared values, not just shared interests. This is the only way we can organize for justice for all.
Over the last several weeks, I have witnessed a surge in organizing in support of Palestinian prisoners in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, not exactly traditional centers of organizing around the issue. New activist collectives have sprung up with Palestinian prisoners at their center.
These activists started out small, with a demonstration outside the Israeli Medical Association to highlight the complicity of Israeli doctors in the daily operations of Israeli prisons, which amount to torture camps with the assistance of Israeli doctors carrying out medically negligent operations among other reports that have emerged from rights groups.
Since then, their demonstrations have only grown, including a demonstration earlier this month we reported on last week outside the personal home of Liav Goldstein, the chief medical officer of Israel’s prisons. “You know exactly what is happening each and every day,” protesters blared on their loudspeakers. “Prisoners are emerging from your prisons starved; people are being beaten every day. Your face is known. You’re a criminal.”
Israel is ramping up its apparatus against Palestinians taken prisoner: the death penalty law, the increasingly gruesome stories and reports emerging from prisons-cum-torture camps told by survivors themselves and a growing number of prisoners.
This is not new: Palestinian prisoners have always determined the Palestinian political agenda precisely because the number of Palestinians taken prisoner is astounding. In the West Bank for example, virtually all Palestinians are related to or know someone who has been imprisoned. But the fascist Israeli state has ensured that the conditions of extra-judicial torture camps become the new status quo.
We must all take after these emerging groups organizing around the prisoners movement: they must lead our organizing work and resistance to genocide and occupation. We must amplify their voices to the world.
In solidarity,
Rotem Sudman
Media Coordinator
Resistance Soldiarity Netowrk