Khader Adnan and now-normalized Western justice

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

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Time‘s Tony Karon today writes about the case of Khader Adnan, a 33-year-old Palestinian baker currently imprisoned without charges by the Israeli government on accusations that he is a spokesman for Islamic Jihad. To protest his due-process-free imprisonment and that of thousands of other Palestinians, Adnan has been on a sustained hunger strike and is now close to death. Karon writes:

Israel has not charged Adnan with any crime

. . . Israel deals with such cases

using a legal framework based on emergency laws left over from British colonial rule to detain any suspect for six months at a time without needing to provide evidence or lay charges against them. When a detainee’s six-month spell has expired, the detention can simply be renewed.

Writing today about the Adnan case in The National, Joseph Dana explains that Israel imprisons Adnan and so many like him pursuant to “a framework of laws and statutes to govern all aspects of life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” and “many, if not most, of the laws governing movement of Palestinians, freedom of speech and association are draconian in nature; none is more alarming than the administrative detention order. The order enables Israel to hold prisoners indefinitely without charging them or allowing them to stand trial.” Behold the principles of justice driving this Israeli behavior:

Mr Adnan’s story is emblematic of the administrative detention experience of many Palestinians. He claims to have been beaten and humiliated by Israeli soldiers while in custody, and began his hunger strike in protest. On January 8, Mr Adnan was given

a four-month administrative detention order, which can be renewed indefinitely, after a military judge reviewed classified information against him. Evidence and allegations have not been made available to Adnan or to his lawyer.

According to the Israeli military, information in administrative detention cases is kept classified in order to protect sources of intelligence. To this day, the only claim that Israel has made about Mr Adnan’s detention is that he is a high risk to Israeli security.

Of course, the U.S. has its own system of indefinite detention now firmly in place. Both within war zones and outside of them, the Obama administration continues to hold hundreds of prisoners who have never been charged with any crime even as they have remained captive for many years. Put another way, both the U.S. and its closest client state have completely normalized exactly the type of arbitrary, due-process-free imprisonment the U.S. has long condemned as the defining attribute of despotism. And, of course, the U.S. Congress just enacted, and President Obama just signed, a law that expressly permits indefinite detention.

Worse, these countries have normalized this practice not merely in terms of government policy, but also the expectations of their own citizens. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found widespread support across the American ideological spectrum for maintaining Guantanamo, where more than 150 prisoners are still held without any charges of any kind, while Dana today writes that “to date, Mr Adnan’s hunger strike has stirred little debate in the Israeli press about the legitimacy of administrative detention” (this is the seventh time Adnan has been imprisoned without charges). The hallmark of the Supremely Authoritarian Citizen — dutifully reciting unproven Government accusations as Truth to justify due-process-free punishment (he’s a Terrorist!) — is now extremely commonplace in the citizenries of both countries.

Even random glances at State Department Human Rights reports will lead one to the most suffocatingly hypocritical denunciations by the U.S. Government. It condemns China, for instance, for the harsh detention conditions of one detainee who “was repeatedly subjected to solitary confinement. . . . The longest period of such confinement reportedly lasted 11 months.” Accused WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning, convicted of no crime, spent 10 months in extreme solitary confinement; the U.S. prison industry is teeming with prisoners who are subjected to this abuse (as one American held for 10 years in solitary confinement by China put it last month in an Op-Ed: “Imagine how shocked I was to find years later that we, the United States of America, hold more human beings in long-term solitary confinement than any other country in the world. I had supposed it would be China — but, no, it’s us”); meanwhile, Israel routinely uses harsh solitary confinement for Palestinian prisoners and even places Palestinian children in solitary confinement for weeks on end.

The State Department report on China also accuses the Communist state of “extrajudicial killings, including executions without due process.” That, of course, is exactly what the Obama administration has been doing continuously with its manic fixation on drone murders in at least six Muslim countries and its targeted, due-process-free execution of its own citizens (and their children). Again, not only does this provoke very little controversy among Americans, this power long cited by the State Department as the ultimate indiciator of tyranny — “executions without due process” — now provokes widespread cheers from majorities of all American political factions. Israel, of course, has been using due-process-free “targeted assassinations” for many years.

What’s so notable here isn’t merely that the U.S. and Israel are engaged in the very practices which the U.S. annually and flamboyantly condemns as “human rights abuses” when done by others. It’s that these abuses have now been going on for so long in the two countries, are so entrenched, that they have been absorbed into the political landscape as barely noticed accoutrements. They have become completely normalized — not just legally and politically but culturally – to the point where they are scarcely controversial.

Earlier today, Foreign Policy Managing Editor Blake Hounshell wrote about the Palestinian hunger striker: “If Khader Adnan is really a member of Islamic Jihad, he should be charged and tried in court. If he’s committed no crime, release him.” That this even needs to be said at all is a potent sign of how severely our conceptions of justice have collapsed (just like: the U.S. Government shouldn’t be executing its own citizens based on the secret orders of the President without any due process). But even more telling is that it is the objections to these practices, rather than the practices themselves, that are considered fringe and radical. That’s because tyrannical practices, when acquiesced to for a long enough time, become norms, and only radicals, by definition, object to those.

* * * * *

The U.S. last year also denounced China because “police surveillance, harassment and detentions of activists increased around politically sensitive events”; because “Internet users at cafes were often subject to surveillance”; and because “former political prisoners and their families frequently were subjected to police surveillance, telephone wiretaps, searches, and other forms of harassment.” Today, Associated Press — continuing its superb investigative series on the massive surveillance practices aimed at American Muslims by the NYPD, often in conjunction with the CIA — describes how Muslims student groups and Muslim students in the United States, suspected of no wrongdoing whatsoever, were subject to extensive surveillance by police officials, including a file collecting their emails.

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http://www.salon.com/2012/02/20/khader_adnan_and_normalized_western_justice/

Edited February 21, 2012 by wife_of_mahmoud

[luckytxn 2,264]

I read about this and also know that Israel jails any that dissent from their point of view. I expect it from Israel but the U.S. has shame for doing the same thing. I don't care who they are or where they are. If they are captured or arrested then bring them to trial or release them. We should never indefinitely detain anyone.

[sandinista! 1,816]

GG nails it, as usual.

[sandinista! 1,816]

I read about this and also know that Israel jails any that dissent from their point of view. I expect it from Israel but the U.S. has shame for doing the same thing. I don't care who they are or where they are. If they are captured or arrested then bring them to trial or release them. We should never indefinitely detain anyone.

The part where the CNN journalist interviews Regev, and Regev keeps pointing out how these detentions are like totally legit and stuff, cause like America does it all the time, was pretty cringeworthy.

[luckytxn 2,264]

The part where the CNN journalist interviews Regev, and Regev keeps pointing out how these detentions are like totally legit and stuff, cause like America does it all the time, was pretty cringeworthy.

It may be legal in other countries but it is not Constitutional here. The U.S. thinks by holding them in other countries or Gitmo makes it legal, it does not. The U.S. can't point the finger until they clean their own act up.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

The part where the CNN journalist interviews Regev, and Regev keeps pointing out how these detentions are like totally legit and stuff, cause like America does it all the time, was pretty cringeworthy.

I wish I could embed it - if anyone wants to watch the clip, it's at the Salon link. The difference between what is broadcast on CNN International and what is served up to Americans on CNN domestic is quite illuminating.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Breaking news on the Khader Adnan case --

Palestinian prisoner ends 66-day hunger strike after Israel guarantees his release

Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan announced Tuesday that he will be ending his 66-day hunger strike after Israel agreed to release him.

The Islamic Jihad operative, who has been fighting a provision that allows Israel to hold detainees for months or even years without trial or formal charges, reached an agreement with the state prosecution less than an hour before his case was discussed at the Supreme Court.

According to a Justice Ministry statement, the state will not request to extend Adnan's administrative detention, which is due to end on April 17.

Adnan, who is hospitalized in Ziv Hospital in Safed, announced that he will be ending his hunger strike. Since an agreement was reached, there will not be a hearing at the Supreme Court.

Adnan continued his hunger strike longer than any Palestinian detainee before him. His doctors warned this week that the 33-year-old might die soon.

The hunger strike has transformed Adnan into a Palestinian hero, with thousands protesting in support of the once obscure bearded baker. The Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad had vowed revenge if Adnan died, possibly by firing rockets into Israel from Gaza. The group has killed dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks. Adnan was once a spokesman for the group. It's unclear if he ever participated in any attacks.

Adnan is serving four months in administrative detention. Israeli military judges can imprison defendants for up to six months at a time, with the possibility of renewing the detention order repeatedly. Defendants and their lawyers are not shown the alleged evidence against them.

An Israeli military judge rejected an appeal by Adnan last week, saying he reviewed the evidence and found the sentence to be fair.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/palestinian-prisoner-ends-66-day-hunger-strike-after-israel-guarantees-his-release-1.413978