Will Obama Challenge Abbas About Torture In Palestinian Detention Centers?

Palestinian Authority TV came out with another anti-Israel show recently--this one claiming that Israel tortures prisoners with hot irons and electric drills:

Libelous drawings depicting fictitious "Israeli torture" are part of the new introduction to a PA TV program for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and their families.

Purporting to show how Palestinian prisoners are tortured by Israel, the drawings portray Israeli prison guards:

1- Burning into a prisoner's chest with a hot iron;

2- Drilling a hole through a prisoner's hand;

3- Burning into a prisoner's shoulder with a soldering iron;

4- Whipping a prisoner while hanging him by his feet;

5- Squeezing a prisoner's head in a medieval looking head press;

6- Chopping off a prisoner's arm below the elbow;

7- Hanging a prisoner by his arms while chains pull from his chest and neck.

The question that arises, however, is whether the PA got the ideas for their accusations from the torture of their own people.


It seems that Palestinians are complaining of widespread torture in PA detention centers:

"It is a slaughter house," "even the Gestapo didn't do this;" I spent many years in Israeli jails, and never experienced some thing like that." These are some of the comments and observations made by people who have just been released from Palestinian Authority (PA) lockups and detention centers.

The PA said it formally and completely stopped physical torture in its numerous detention centers as of October 2000, especially following protests by the donor countries which complained that their tax-payers' money was being used to torture suspected political opponents in the West Bank.

However, recent reports and testimonies gathered by human rights organizations and journalists have shown that intensive, even life-threatening torture is still being widely practiced by PA security authorities with or without the knowledge of the political authorities.

In some instances, like at the Jericho prison, which has been described as most notorious in the application of torture, some prisoners and detainees are tortured 17 hours per day.

"I am subjected to the shabah (confinement to a very low and small chair while one's hands are cuffed and tied to his back) up to 17 hours per day, I am only let go during the time of prayers, meal times, and when I have to use the bathroom," said Mua'ath Abu Ejheishe, one of the detainees languishing at the Jericho lockup said.

...Following a visit to the Preventive Security lockup in Jericho by a team of lawyers affiliated with the Independent Palestinian Commission for Human Rights, it became crystal clear that "graphic and barbaric" torture was being performed on 14 detainees who were being incarcerated in "shocking" conditions.

The delegation of lawyers visited the detainees on 17 and 19 September, 2010.

Compare the testimony about torture in Palestinian detention with this video of an interview with a Palestinian Arab after he was released from an Israeli prison:

PA TV Host: "You were in Megiddo [prison]. How are the guys?
You were released from prison just today."
Prisoner: "By Allah, the guys in the prison are fine. They lack nothing. They are doing fine."
Host: "Do they lack nothing?"
Prisoner: "They are doing really fine."
Host: "They lack nothing, not even freedom?"
Prisoner: "No. Freedom, Allah willing, there will be freedom."
Host: "How long were you in prison?"
Prisoner: "Two years."
Host: "And you say that they lack nothing?"
Prisoner: "I don't know."

Don't expect Obama to start asking Abbas about humanitarian rights in the West Bank anytime soon

Technorati Tag: Torture.