Save Samer, he is dying: Samer Issawi and the plight of Palestinian hunger strikers
'Save Samer, he is dying': Samer Issawi and the plight of Palestinian hunger strikers
After the children and all the abuses Israel perpetrates against them, it is the Palestinian political prisoners that stand out to me as showing us the real face of the human rights abuses that is the Israeli Occupation of Palestine!
We see all of what the Occupation is in all of its ugliness.
The only light is in the faces of the men and women and children and their families who endure/experience these awful unlawful detentions and their stories of remaining steadfast and always keeping hope alive. They endure such crimes against humanity that deprives them all of liberty and freedom and basic human rights that are supposed to be guaranteed to all human beings in our world by international treaties and laws!
Samer Issawi is dying, on hunger strike for 153 days now, here is a part of his story, a man in prison for 11 years (and all detentions of Palestinains are unlawful as they do not meet the requirenments of intl law as to detentions or trials) , released, and then redetained, held without bail and I think no official charges have been levelled against him, even now.
"On Nov 22nd I talked with Samer's father on the phone. Hearing his sad voice gave away how depressed he was. On Sunday, December 16th, though the situation is even harder as his son is at a critical condition, I had the chance to talk to him again, and I asked about his wife who had fainted after her son's re-arrest; she has hardly been able to speak or move since then. "Her condition is worsening each day. She was shocked and kept looking at her son's face when she attended the court hearing on Thursday, December 13th. She could not endure seeing her son losing more than half of his weight. Unconsciously, she screamed at the judge's face, "Your apartheid regime is illegal and we do not recognize it. Samer will be released either you want or not". I do not know how to describe this, but my wife is just a mother with a heart!" "Her physical and psychological condition is now more at risk than ever. She cannot endure seeing her own son dying. She spends most of her day at hospitals and every single moment, she repeats the same plea: "Can't anybody help my son to be free and to live!"
I cautiously asked Shireen: When have you seen your brother?" No one has met or spoken to him since his current arrest. I have seen him on Thursday (December 13th) when he appeared in court. He is turning into some bones covered with a human wrap. In other words, he is a skeleton sitting in a wheelchair, and he can't move or walk. My brother was put in the slaughterhouse of Ramla Prison Hospital during his first month of the strike. A month later he was put in a small cell as a punishment. He suffered the solitary confinement in a two-meter square room, meant to pressure him to end his strike, she answered with sorrow."
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Sherri
Samer Issawis hunger is stronger than Israels savagery, his hunger for justice and for freedom and for an end to the Occupation of Palestine! And soon he will be free! God, who is with him every step that he takes, will see to that!
Shirin, Samir's sister holds a photo of Samir.
A mural in Gaza , in solidarity with Palestinian hunger strikers, stands opposite a protest tent at the International Committee of the Red Cross offices in Gaza.
Samir was in prison with his friend, Loai, sharing a cell in Israeli jails, a friend who he grew up with in Jerusalem, when both were released in the deal to release Shalit. Loai was released to Gaza, and Samir to Jerusalem.
But Apartheid Israel never keeps her deals, there is no integrity with Ethnic Cleansing Israel, nothing good or decent whatsoever, when it comes to the treatment of the Gentile, the nonJew, the Palestinian, inside Israel and Palestine, and many political prisoners released in the Shalit deal were rekidnapped and held without charges. Israel showed herself to be the LIAR she always is, devoid of truth and justice and humanity and God.
Your humanity and determination is always stronger than their brutality and savagery, Loai wrote to his friend Samer. Loai had first thought Samer was luckier than him to be able return to Jerusalem, Loai had been expelled to Gaza, kept away from his hometown of Jerusalem, where he and Samer grew up as children.
And Loai also said of his friend, Samir, when he was kidnapped on July 7 by the IOF and declared an open end hunger strike to protest his rearrest, I know how stubborn he is. He will not break this hunger strike until he is set free, even if it costs him his life."
Loai keeps repeating that Samir is stronger than all of these hardships. And on his recent birthday, Loai said of Samir, He is celebrating his birthday in hunger, in a cold dark cell, And he wrote as a birhday greeting to his friend, "Keep being free. Keep your head held high over their barbed wires and racist walls. You shall be among us, my comrade.
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Samir faced grave conditions on his recent birthday, that he still suffers in his 153+ day hunger strike carried on since July 7, 2012. But there is cause for celebration for the Palestinian people, in Samir's indestructible will, his steadfastness, his courage, as he carries out his hunger srike for freedom and justice. He is armed, not with weapons that kill man, but instead with something much, much, greater than that, he is armed with a determination and will that makes physical needs, like that man has for food, meaningless. I cannot help but think about Jesus, here, and when he was tempted by Satan, for 40 days, He was without food in the desert. And He said to Satan, man does not live by bread alone, but by the Father's words. These weapons, this determination and will and steadfastness, Samir displays as a gift freely available to all Palestinians, his gift to all of them, that he shares, with love, with them.
The steadfastness of Samir, demonstrated by this act of nonviolent resistance, of which there is none greater than to sacrifice self for others, like Jesus did on the cross almost 2000 yeras ago, is more harmful to the Israeli military than any physical weapon. It drove them to physically attack Samir and his family when they went to court a couple of weeks ago. It drove the Occupying Forces to destroy sit-in tents erected in solidarity with Samir and other political prsioners on hunger strike in Jerusalem, especially in his home village, Issawiyeh.
Sami, like every hunger striking Palestinian political prisoner, all held in violation of intl law, is a reminder to every Palestinian man, woman and child that their cause is just and that with resolve and steadfastness like that illustrated by Samir there is no doubt but that victory is in their grasp, they will survive the Occupation and see Palestine free again!
Sherri