(Photo electronic intifada : Janan Abdu & 2 daugthers/filles)
Women's Day is a day of solidarity with the administrative detainee
| By: Janan Abdu |
A call for women's and feminist organizations to announce Women's
Day to be a day of solidarity with the administrative detainee Hana
Al-Shalabi and all female prisoners and women in the families of
Palestinian prisoners .
Women's Day, which marks the eighth of March, is a symbolic day to
remind us of the struggle that women of the world go through to break
the chains of sexism because they are women. However, there are
different categories of women, whilst some women struggled for
liberation and equality - for example against discrimination in terms of
the right to vote and be elected, women were sexist towards women of
other ethnic groups or on the basis of gender and race. There are
debates and fundamental differences in how to deal with certain issues
between the masses of women by the intellectual and ideological
affiliation to different streams and sometimes contradictory or
conflicting.
In Palestine, Women's Day is a day of struggle. Despite the
achievements of some significant things, were achieved as a result of
long paths of struggle, we shouldn’t celebrate yet, we are still
Palestinian women, whether in Palestine 1948 or in the West Bank and
Gaza or the Diaspora suffering from colonialism, occupation,
discrimination and racism. Women of the West Bank and Gaza Strip suffer
from the consequences of the occupation, and in Palestine 1948, we
suffer from racism institutionalized in the laws and the fact that the
state is the state of Israel, the state is built on our land and tore
our families apart.
Palestinian women suffered the most from the occupation and the
establishment of the Jewish state. They experienced the migration,
separation, and non-settlement in neighbouring countries, they continue
to live in risk of institutionalized discrimination, the risk of local
displacement and uprooting, as in Negev, and continue to live at risk of
having their families torn apart by the law of racial citizenship...
Our women have suffered of captivity in the past during the Mandate
period, and have suffered from emergency laws used by the British
Mandate also from and administrative detention.
For example, the arrest of Palestinian activist Sathej Nassar, the
Editor of "Carmel" magazine, and wife of Najib Nassar the activist, she
was arrested under administrative detention for a year without providing
an indictment against her; she was called a "very dangerous woman." She
was arrested on 23/03/1939, according to Emergency Law No. 15 B, which
permits administrative detention, and was imprisoned in Bethlehem until
23/02/1940, and this was the first arrest and imprisonment of a
Political Palestinian woman.
The Mandate government arrested many women and put them in prison
for years up to seven to ten years for hiding or smuggling arms, and
this happened during the general strike and the great revolution in
1936. In 1937, the feminist activist Maseel Maghanam wrote a book in
English titled: "The Arab Woman and the Palestine Problem": "do not talk
about women's rights as long as we under occupation." She meant that
they needed complete liberation of the entire system of occupation that
suppress freedoms and initiate violence.
In the case of Palestinian women, the Jewish state helped in the
continuing violence and the killing of women and even the failure to
provide awareness and prevention, and even have the upper hand in the
harsh living conditions experienced by Palestinian families (e.g.
unemployment, poverty, displacement and home demolition, which can be
one of the factors that cause some types of violence against
women). Palestinian women still pay the price, and suffer from the
occupation and its consequences; the Separation Barrier dismembered
families and hindered human family communication.
Our women pay the price in captivity, detention, investigation and
insults, and pay the price of the longest-lived Israeli occupation and
colonialism, after the end of the apartheid system in South Africa.
Women and young girls pay the price of their family members'
captivity, and suffer discrimination in prison against them and their
families because of the policies of prison administration, which prevent
any contact between the political prisoners and their family, which
isn’t the case for the political Jewish prisoners or for Arab or Jewish
criminals. They don’t allow the Palestinian captive to hug his family,
even in the most difficult moments, as cases of death.
Palestinian detainee Hana Al-Shalabi announced that she is on
hunger strike to protest against her administrative arrest again after
she was released in "Wafaa Al-Ahrar" deal in October 2011.
Administrative detention is arresting the person without being
presented for any trial and without providing an indictment. There are
307 administrative detainees in Israeli prisons, including 3 women, and
the total number of women detainees is 6 to date after the majority were
released in the latest deal.
Let's announce the eighth of March, a day of solidarity with
Palestinian prisoners, to unite frameworks and women's movements behind
this cause.
----------------------------
Janan Abdu ... Palestinian feminist activist and the wife of Political Prisoner Ameer Makhoul
July 14, 2010
The Case of Ameer Makhoul
A Prisoner’s Wife
I used to tell my husband, Ameer Makhoul, “One day,
they’ll come for you.” As chairman of the Public Committee for the
Protection of Political Freedoms he’d begun to organize an
awareness-raising campaign to push back against the security services’
harassment of our community, the Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Come for Ameer they did, late one night this May, pounding at our
door, ransacking our house and terrifying our two teenage daughters. And
now I’ve joined the ranks of Palestinian prisoners’ wives, many
thousands of us from the occupied territories as well as within Israel.
His July 13 hearing – persecution really – could begin the legal
nightmare that ruptures our family for many years. This is the likely
course of events unless Ameer gets a fair trial and his coerced
statements are rejected or suppressed by the court.“Democracies don’t fear their own people,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her July 3 speech in Poland at the 10th anniversary meeting of the Community of Democracies. “They recognize that citizens must be free to come together to advocate and agitate.” But the head of Israel’s General Security Services said three years ago that Palestinian citizens’ organizational efforts for equality constitute a “strategic threat,” even if pursued by lawful means.
That’s not how democracy works. We may be a minority of 20 percent, but our rights to organize and insist on full equality and civil rights ought to be sacrosanct. That’s what our entire community believes. The Public Committee that Ameer chaired was established within the framework of the High Follow-up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel, the community’s overall coordinating body. It’s a vital position and the leading organization protecting our civil rights.
And now he faces the most serious charges leveled against a Palestinian citizen of Israel since the creation of the state in 1948. He is accused of being a spy (for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah) and having contact with a foreign agent. His trial will likely last for months.
After his arrest, Ameer was held incommunicado for 21 days and tortured. Then Israeli officials pressed their charges, based on the “confession” he made during this time, when he was deprived of sleep, shackled in a painful position to a small chair, and not allowed to see his lawyers.
Ameer denies all charges. As he said in his first letter from Gilboa Prison, he was “forced to explain to them in a very detailed way how exactly I did what I didn’t do, ever.” And if the prosecution needs any more information to make its case, all they have to do is use “so-called secret evidence, which my lawyers and I have no legal right to know about.”
Clinton’s Krakow speech focused on civil society: Ameer is a civil society activist. He directs Ittijah, the Union of Arab-Based Community Associations – a coalition that brings together 84 non-governmental organizations. Clinton criticized several governments by name – but not Israel – for intimidation and assassination of activists. Why does America’s drive to promote human rights stop at Israel’s door?
Throughout his life, Ameer has struggled for the rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel – there are more than 35 laws on the books that discriminate against us – as well as those of the Palestinian people overall. He has the ability to lead and to convene diverse viewpoints, bringing them together across sect and ideology. His ability to network locally, at the Arab level, and internationally, coupled with his clear strategic vision – this is what Israel is trying to silence.
The youth also look to him for leadership, which infuriates the Israeli security services. They told Ameer so when they hauled him in for questioning during our community’s protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009.
During that interrogation they threatened to put him away if he kept up his activism, saying, “We can ‘disappear’ you. You should know that the next time we bring you in you will not see your family again for a long time.”
The few times we’ve been allowed to visit him thick glass has separated us and our meetings were taped. Ameer asked me for a copy of my new book to read in jail, but they wouldn’t let me even take him that. My daughters really miss their father. They often say, “If only we’d been able to hug him before they took him away.” That’s one of the things that hurts them most, not being able to hug their father.
Ameer still suffers from the torture and abuse inflicted on him, and they still try to break his spirit. They only allow 20 people into the courtroom even though it can hold many more, so when he sees it empty, he thinks no one cares. But far more people want to attend the trial than they allow in – family, community activists, politicians, and supporters from all over the world.
I have never thought of myself as a “wife” but rather as Ameer’s partner in life and in activism. But these days, as I wait with the other wives for our allotted visit, I find myself reflecting on the traditional Christian marriage vows: “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” No man, I think, unless he’s an Israeli jailer.
Clinton spoke of “the cowardice of those who deny their citizens the protections they deserve.” Ameer deserves the protection of the law: the right to meet his lawyers in private – Israeli officials have been taping those meetings too; the right to see the evidence against him, much of which the prosecution plans to withhold on security grounds; freedom from torture; and inadmissibility of confessions secured under torture. When will Clinton call for a Palestinian activist’s human rights and an end to his persecution?
JANAN ABDU is a social worker, feminist activist, and researcher with Mada al-Carmel, the Haifa-based Arab Center for Applied Social Research.
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