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The Palestinian Anne Franks

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The Palestinian Anne Franks
Safia
06/23/02 at 16:50:20
I don't know the background of the author, but it's worth
               the read.

               =

               ''The Anne Franks of Palestine''
               Printed on Thursday, June 20, 2002
               By Yusuf Agha


               "It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a
               foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world
               being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the
               approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I
               feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at
               the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the
               better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and
               tranquility will return once more." (Anne Frank)

               Some years ago, I visited the home where Anne Frank and her
               family concealed themselves for fear of Nazi persecution.
               It was a cool but sunny afternoon in Amsterdam, with tulips
               swaying gently in the breeze. And apart from the hustle and
               bustle of tourists ambling down the Prinsengracht to visit
               the home - a veritable shrine to the innocence of a teenage
               girl caught up in the madness of war - peace and
               tranquility had returned once more.

               Nine months after being arrested, Anne Frank died of Typhus
               in March of 1945 at the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen
               - she was 15 years old. It's hard to believe that the
               insanity surrounding her torment happened less than sixty
               years ago.

               It is harder still to believe that this madness continues
               to this day.

               Also almost six decades ago, catastrophic events in 1948
               resulted in thousands of Palestinians being wrenched out of
               their homes, dispossessed and denied the right of returning
               to their ancestral homes. They must, to paraphrase Anne
               Frank, have seen their world being slowly transformed into
               a wilderness; they must have heard the approaching thunder
               that, one day, would destroy them.

               There is a difference, though. Post-Nazi Europe thrives;
               the Jews have found a homeland. But for the Palestinians,
               the cruelty has not ended.

               Meet today's Anne Frank. Suad Ghazal is seventeen years old
               and a prisoner in an Israeli prison. Suad was only fifteen
               years when she was arrested after being accused by an adult
               female settler of attempted assault. Following her arrest,
               she was taken to a settlement police post where she was
               severely beaten by Israeli settlers.

               Suad was then incarcerated in Ramle prison, where her agony
               continued unabated.

               Those who have seen World War II movies will be familiar
               with Nazi- and Japanese-style isolation cells, where "less
               desirable" prisoners were kept to break their morale. In
               Ramle, "the isolation cells are two meters square with an
               open toilet," reports the Geneva-based human rights group
               Defense for Children International/Palestine Section
               (DCI/PS). In April 2001, Suad was repeatedly placed in such
               cells for varying lengths of time, totally devastated and
               alone.

               ... the minute I was alone I knew I was going to cry my
               eyes out. I slid to the floor in my nightgown and began by
               saying my prayers, very fervently. Then I drew my knees to
               my chest, lay my head on my arms and cried, all huddled up
               on the bare floor. A loud sob brought me back down to
               earth... (Anne Frank)
               "Subsequently," continues the DCI report, "Suad was moved
               to a stifling hot, rank cell that measured three meters by
               one meter which she was forced to share with another
               prisoner. The room had one bed that Suad slept on, while
               the other prisoner slept on the floor. They were given
               blankets that were covered in mites, causing rashes on
               their skin."
               Meet a second Anne Frank: fourteen year-old Sanaa Amer.
               Overlook, if you can, that "her arms and legs were tied to
               her bed continuously for 8-hours a day over two consecutive
               days."

               Sanaa and her sister were convicted of "intent" to stab an
               Israeli settler in Hebron. An Israeli military court tried
               and sentenced the child to a twelve months imprisonment
               term - a sentence that DCI/PS calls "shocking as it did not
               take into account her age or the fact that she did not
               carry out any violent act whatsoever."

               Sanaa, too, was sent to Ramle. Soon after, reports the DCI,
               in response to the deteriorating situation in prison, "the
               female Palestinian political detainees launched a hunger
               strike at the end of June. The prison administration …
               attacked the detainees with tear gas and heavy batons. The
               prisoners were taken to isolation and beaten."

               "During the attack, Sanaa Amer was beaten with batons on
               her arms and legs. Her arms were tied behind her back and
               she was kicked by police in her stomach, inducing her to
               cough up blood."

               Was it for Suad and Sanaa that Anne penned these lines?
               "I've reached the point where I hardly care whether I live
               or die. The world will keep on turning without me, and I
               can't do anything to change events anyway."

               But Suad and Sanaa are not alone. DCI reports that
               approximately 600 Palestinian children have been arrested
               by the Israeli occupation authorities since the beginning
               of the second Intifada in September 2000, of whom around
               160 remain incarcerated.

               From Jerusalem alone, more than 100 Palestinian children
               under the age of eighteen have been arrested since
               September, reports the Jerusalem Center for Social and
               Economic Rights (JCSER). "Many of them were arrested during
               demonstrations for throwing stones. These minors are jailed
               for an average of four to six months and held in custody at
               least until his or her trial finishes. Furthermore,
               children have been placed in cells with those who have been
               detained for criminal offences. Child detainees have been
  &nbsn they died, and so on. This is because this is not essential knowledge whereby if a person does not know about such information he will fails to become a student of knowledge or a scholar. The difference between essentials and anecdotes is that for the essentials, one is in need of men, the people of knowledge, to explain these essentials. There are two methods of obtaining this knowledge that is essential, either by verbal communication or by reading books, but the proper understanding and the ability to derive rulings from this knowledge is obtained through the scholars. Hence, the salaf have a saying, "knowledge used to reside in the chest of men," i.e. before the books of hadeeth, tafseer and fiqh were written, "then it was put into books, however its keys remained with the scholars." It is possible for one to refer to books, open books, read and research them, but opening ones’ understanding to what are in those books remains at the hands of the scholars.


What are anecdot;          Al-Ahram weekly quotes from a report issued by the Israeli
               human rights group, B'Tselem. The report exposes "the
               systematic torture and abuse of Palestinian minors detained
               at the police station in Gush Etzion, near the West Bank
               town of Bethlehem. … Police arrested Palestinian children
               in their homes in the middle of the night and took them to
               the police station in Gush Etzion, where police
               interrogators tortured them until the morning to obtain
               confessions and information about other minors."

               The report continues: "Methods of torture described in the
               report included forcing the juvenile detainees to stand in
               painful positions for prolonged periods; beating them
               severely for hours at a time with various objects;
               splashing cold water on the detainees in the facility's
               courtyard in wintry conditions; pushing their heads into
               the toilet bowl and flushing the toilet; making death
               threats and cursing and degrading them."

               Meet Ahmad Ziad Hijazi, a Jerusalem resident and imminent
               threat-extraordinare to the IDF for all of his tender
               fifteen years. He, too, threw stones at tanks and armored
               cars. Ahmad suffers from asthma and "since his arrest,"
               reports the JCSER, "has spent about 40 days in isolation.
               It was only recently that he was transferred to a child
               prison. The conditions in prison worsened his health
               condition enormously. Today, he needs treatment three times
               a day."

               I'll just let matters take their course … and hope that
               everything will be all right in the end. (Anne Frank)
               The JCSER has issued a condemnation of "the conditions and
               treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli prisons. Many
               of these prisons lack basic facilities and living
               conditions, violate not only Israeli law, but also the
               Convention on the Rights of the Child."
               Article 37 of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the
               Child reads: "No child shall be subjected to torture or
               other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
               punishment..."

               The Rights of the Child! What rights do brutal regimes like
               the Third Reich grant children like Anne Frank? What rights
               do tortuous regimes like Sharon's permit the children of
               Palestine?

               Writing in the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, Joseph Algazy tells
               of the 80 Palestinian youths imprisoned at Telmond, most of
               them15 and 16 years old. "They were arrested because of
               their participation in protest activities of the Al-Aqsa
               Intifada. The youths, members of their families, their
               attorneys and DCI, have complained in the past that jailed
               Palestinian minors have been beaten and humiliated during
               their detention and interrogation, have been tortured
               physically and mentally, have had confessions extorted from
               them, and have been sentenced by military courts to long
               periods of imprisonment and payment of fines."

               The Ha'aretz article recalls the harrowing statements made
               under oath to the Public Committee Against Torture in
               Israel, by some of the minors prisoners at Telmond. They
               deposed "about the types of violence used against them when
               they were arrested in their homes, usually in the middle of
               the night; about the beatings they received during their
               interrogation at police headquarters or in military prison
               facilities, in order to extort confessions that would
               incriminate them and others; about being kept in isolation
               for long periods of time, in cells without bathrooms; and
               about being held in the Telmond prison with criminals who
               abused and attacked them."

               The article also quotes the Palestine Red Crescent,
               according to which "154 Palestinian minors (under 18) were
               killed in the period between September 29, 2000 and June
               17, 2001; of these, 26 were children under the age of 12,
               including infants. The number of minors injured is
               estimated in the thousands."


               It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a
               foundation of chaos, suffering and death. (Anne Frank)
               These are the camps of Ramle and Telmond, the latter
               ironically located on confiscated Palestinian land, run by
               the Israel Prison Service. They are the modern versions of
               the fearsome "Jugenverwahrlage" or "children camps" of the
               Nazis, where hundreds of children and teenagers were
               transferred to these places - before they were shipped to
               extermination centers.
               But there are no exterminations, you say? Ask of the
               parents of Abu Mutawi.

               Last Tuesday evening, June 11, Abu Mutawi, a 9-year-old
               Palestinian child was shot dead when IDF forces opened fire
               on a residential area in Gaza. The child was struck by an
               Israeli bullet in the chest in the proximity of his home.
               The Israeli army had no comment.

               Also last Tuesday, a ten year-old Palestinian girl, Wissam
               Muhamed, was wounded when an Israeli settler ran over her
               Tuesday, reports the Palestinian News Agency, WAFA. The
               Israeli settler is an inhabitant of the illegal settlement
               of Dutan. No arrests have yet been made.

               In a letter to George Bush in February this year, a number
               of Palestinian school children had this to ask of the U.S.
               President: "Like all children in the world, we just want to
               live a normal and peaceful childhood, to be able to reach
               school safely, and to be able to sleep at night in comfort
               when even our parents' comforting does not free us from the
               horror we live on a daily basis, the images of funerals,
               humiliating checkpoints, and injured friends, and the fear
               of the sounds of shelling and gun ships - Are we asking for
               too much?"

               Maybe at least one ten year-old child in Rafah was asking
               for too much.

               Jennifer Loewenstein, a prolific writer who also works for
               the Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza City, recalls
               events in April this year of how "Israeli soldiers shot
               dead a ten year old boy in Rafah for having the audacity to
               play too close to the border. The children of Rafah make
               good target practice for those planning their nighttime
               raids into the refugee camps there and elsewhere throughout
               the Strip."

               Golda Meir, the former Israeli Prime minister, once said:
               "There will be peace in the Middle East only when the Arabs
               love their children more than they hate Israel." What the
               "gentle" Prime Minister of Israel failed to understand was
               that it is not that the Palestinian mothers' love their
               children less, it is their incarceration, their torture,
               their deaths that they despise.

               It is the criminal hijack of the future of entire
               generations of Palestinians by successive Israeli
               governments.

               Like "Huriya Beni Odeh from the village of Jiftlik [who]
               had a miscarriage because of delays at an Israel Defense
               Forces roadblock, when she was on her way from her home to
               the hospital in Jericho," per a DCI report.

               Or like another little ten year-old girl, Osa'ama Hamdan
               with her warm brown eyes and gentle locks of hair, "who
               died of complications of pneumonia after her parents were
               prevented [by IDF forces] from taking her to the hospital
               in Nablus."

               And yet, when she looked up at the sky, she must somehow
               have felt that everything will change for the better, that
               this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will
               return once more.


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