Op-Ed: PA Prisoners Are Hungry, But For What?
Arnold Roth
The writer is a lawyer who made aliyah from Australia and lives in Jerusalem with his family. His daughter, Malki, was murdered in the horrific Sbarro terror attack.The media are filled with reports about a protest strike by Palestinian Arab prisoners and their friends. What's it about?
Two terms keep coming up in almost every report: the strikers are "unjustly imprisoned" and it's a "battle for freedom and dignity". But this is not about justice or dignity. Those key terms ought to mean something but as happens so often, they have been hijacked in the name of a vicious war and turned on their heads.
The court pointed to the ongoing ties of the petitioners to terrorist funding and terrorism and that they are a clear and immediate security risk to Israeli citizens. It added (which is also significant) that the Israel Prison Service is meeting or exceeding the standards required by international law regarding prisoner treatment already.
When we look past the sad-faced mothers and the photogenic children in the foreground, what we see (and most others don't notice) is people like Abdullah Barghouti in the posters at the back. This places the whole affair into a different perspective.
That particular prisoner, Abdullah Barghouti, made the bomb that stole our daughter's life from us.
He says publicly - on US television, for instance - that he will kill more Jews when he gets the chance. More than that: he regrets that the bombings he carried out did not kill more Jews. In his own unforgettable words, "I feel bad because the number is only 66".
Is theirs the cause that gets you up every morning?