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Instead of Auschwitz

Amira Hass writing in Haaretz today:

"The committee coordinating the struggle to free Gilad Shalit went all the way to Auschwitz where, it is reported, its members distributed 888 yellow flowers. That was in October, and we can only hope that this media gimmick will not be repeated, either because an agreement will be reached in the near future or because the organizers will understand how lacking in taste that move was.

The committee is continuing to put non-stop pressure on the government despite warnings that this is hampering the negotiations. In this way, the organizers and participants are showing a healthy lack of faith in the politicians' promises. But the lack of faith stops when we talk about the policy of repression employed by Israel against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. Here the organizers (including the kibbutz movement's missions branch) accept the government's approach and merely demand "more!" - more blockading of food, medicine, fuel and cash; more destruction of industry and agriculture; more homes without water. That is the logic behind the demonstrative obstruction of the border crossings initiated by the organizing committee in October. Now the committee is aiming its arrows at the families of the Palestinian prisoners. It tried to stop family visits at the Ashkelon prison and pledges to do so at other jails.

There is no doubt about it, Shalit's confinement is cruel - the lack of certainty, lack of information and lack of continuous contact, as well as the fact that there is no external body that can visit him and inspect the conditions of his captivity. The committee is demanding "mutuality," but it seems more like revenge. And in our naivete we thought they wanted to see Shalit freed. To that end, the committee should have done its homework, and not with Defense Minister Ehud Barak as teacher.

If it is a lack of legality we are referring to, the committee could have reminded itself and the government that it is forbidden for an occupying power to imprison in its sovereign territory people from an occupied territory. The committee heads could have checked and known that the right to regular prison visits is being withheld from tens of thousands of Palestinians (including some 1,000 Gaza families). A perusal of the information which the (Israeli) Association for the Palestinian Prisoners has would reveal to the committee's activists that the Palestinian security prisoners do not have the right to speak regularly on the telephone with their families, even when they do not visit them for months or years."

Continue reading the op-ed piece here.

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