French rally breaks Western silence on Palestinian Prisoner’s Day

Ramin Mazaheri
Press TV, Paris

On Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, marked every April 17, protesters in Paris demanded an end to Western silence regarding Israel’s horrific and illegal treatment of political prisoners.

Since 1948, an estimated one million Palestinians have been arrested by Israelis. Due to waging an average of 10 police raids every single day, Israel arrests about 6,000 adults and 1,000 children annually.

A new report revealed that nearly 5,000 Palestinians are currently held in long-term Israeli prisons, including almost 200 children. More than 1,000 people have not even been charged with an alleged crime.

Prisoners report that physical and psychological torture is not just routine but shockingly brutal, and hundreds of Palestinians have died in Israeli custody. Many accuse the international community and Western-led human rights groups of abandoning those ensnared in Israeli occupation prisons.

Europe’s longest-serving political prisoner is a pro-Palestinian resistance fighter held in France --- Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who has become lionized as “the Arab Nelson Mandela.” Abdallah refuses to recant his support for Palestine and his continued imprisonment is widely viewed as a flagrant politicization of France’s legal system.

In neighboring Germany, protests in support of Palestinian Prisoner’s Day were banned. The Israeli occupation means that Palestinians endure terrorist tactics every single day. The brutality is even worse for political prisoners trapped in Israeli jails.

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