Comment on In the Hamas/Israel war, why does Palestine have "hostages" but Israel has "prisoners"?
CerealKiller01@lemmy.world 11 months agoYeah, I’d like to address that.
This message turned out a bit longer than I intended, but I really tried to give the best answer I can.
First off, the video takes statements from the Palestinians released and conveyed them as-is. It’s extremely hard to verify things like that, so there’s absolutely no basis saying my comment is a “blatant lie” unless you automatically assume every Palestinians statement is the objective truth. If that’s the case, feel free to skip the rest of this post as there’s nothing I can say to make you re-evaluate your position.
I could just say “If you claim Palestinians have been kidnapped without any evidence or charges and held as hostage, please show me some evidence instead of unsubstantiated claims made by a party who has a vested interest in making false claims”. I thing that’s a valid claim, but as you can see, I do have a bit more to say. I’ve actually tried to check her statement when the video was posted earlier (not so I could argue about it, just to be informed).
First off, many of the Palestinians approved for release have been charged with serious crimes (some, though they might not have been release yet, as Israel is trying to release them from least serious to most serious). Even Al-Jazeera said most Palestinians released were charged with “small” crimes such as throwing rocks. So which is it - Are Palestinians being kidnapped without charges, or are they being charged with minor crimes? If some were kidnapped and some were legally arrested, would calling them “hostages” not be as inaccurate as calling them “prisoners”?
There’s only one Palestinian who said she was held without charges, not “many” as you claimed. It’s also worth noting she said she was “due to be released in October”, so I think it’s odd calling her a “hostage” (hostages usually don’t get released if a certain time has passed. that’s more correctly called a “detainee”).
Going from her age and arrest date, there’s only one 24yo female Palestinian who was detained in October and approved for release. I won’t try to write her name in English, as there’s 0% chance I’ll get it right, but in Hebrew it’s רגד נשאת צלאח אל פני (copy-paste the name to find her details, which can be translated via google translate).
Assuming that’s her, she was charged with “State security - other”, which is a general charge that can include espionage, giving information to the enemy, inciting violence and more. I will admit it’s a general charge, and the fact she was due to be released shows the Israeli state wasn’t able to make it stick.
So why did she say she was being held without a charge? Don’t know. Maybe in her mind “state security” isn’t a valid charge. Maybe she was exaggerating. Maybe she’s lying (yes, even oppressed people can lie). Maybe she was told her charge would be amended (that makes sense. As I said, “State security” is a general crime). Or maybe I found the wrong person. The point is, I did really try to find more information based on the video, and was unable to substantiate her claims. If you have any other source for similar claims, I’d be very interested to hear about them.
I live in Israel, and I’ll agree that a lot of times Palestinians are treated badly. I’m even prone to think the person in the video should have been freed after 3 months instead of 12. That said, there’s a far cry from that to saying Palestinians are kidnapped without evidence and being held without trial.
Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
State security - OTHER is indeed not a real charge at all. If she was even told about this that is. Jailing someone for even 3 months for this is completely insane, but a YEAR ??
Afterwards you go on a journey dismissing this heinous crime as okay because apparently if you can read the charges every crime israel commits is now A Okay.
Don’t look up the Amnesty report damming israel for killing their hostages without process in jail. You’d have to do some insane mental gymnastics and you might not be ready for it.
CerealKiller01@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What does that mean? It appears in the Israeli law, so it’s as “real” as any other charge. You could say it’s not a justifiable charge, but that wasn’t her claim. She didn’t say “I was arrested for an unjustifiable charge”, rather “I was arrested without charge”.
I think that’s like saying “The word Murder exists as a charge, it is not in her charge” when talking about homicide. Not sure though.
Not “without process”, “without trail”. It’s not uncommon for prisoners being held 3 months only to have the charges dropped (regardless of nationality).
“what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence”. Not saying there aren’t any issues with the way Palestinians are treated in the Israeli court system, but you made some specific claims that I disagree with, and didn’t give any evidence.
Sorry, but I actually did try to look it up, and wasn’t able to. Could you please link to it?
The closet thing I was able to find is this, which refers to Palestinian prisoners as, well, prisoners. So even if it’s not the right report, it would seem Amnesty themselves don’t refer to Palestinian prisoners as “hostages”. Could we at least agree on that?
BTW, I didn’t read through the full report, but I find myself agreeing to most of the thing said (most weren’t news to me).
I’m not trying to say Israel did nothing wrong. Israel has done PLENTY of immoral things, and is currently doing plenty of immoral things. I’m saying that Israel isn’t some devil that wants to kill all Palestinians, and has zero regard for their lives (though some Israeli are). It’s extremely complicated.
Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The prime minister of israel called the Palestinians Amalek. They’re very openly calling for genocide. This is not much of a morally gray conflict it’s israel saying “hey we want to genocide all Palestinians and steal their land, if only all those other countries weren’t stopping us we would do exactly that, also all Palestinians are subhuman animals”
CerealKiller01@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Right, after calling me a “cartoon villain Nazi” I don’t really think this discussion can go anywhere, so I’ll go a bit off-topic and say something other readers might find interesting:
About a month ago, I spoke with a Palestinian work-buddy (yes, Palestinian Israelis work with Israeli Jews. In the the same jobs and with the same pay. Apartheid).
I asked him how he’s doing, as he’s not only living in Israel (and therefor a missile can hit his family as well as mine. Yet another area where Palestinian-Israelis and Jewish-Israelis are no different), he has the added bonus of fearing some psycho Jewish supremacist attacking him. He mentioned that the police are monitoring social media, and summoning for investigation Israeli-Palestinian influences who show support for Hamas, threaten them with charges and release them. Me, a
cartoon villain Nazibleeding heart liberal: “wow, I don’t think anyone in their right mind should support Hamas, but summoning people and releasing them without charges just to threaten them… yeah, that’s rough”.He replied “No, you don’t understand, that wasn’t a criticism. I’m saying that’s a good thing. If that’ll help stop a replay of two years ago [social networks played a large part in encouraging Palestinians to riot. The riots caused a surge in anti-Palestinian violence among Jews], I’m all for it” . I’m still not sure how I feel about that.
Not saying every Palestinian is like him and every Jew is like me. Just… yeah, it’s complicated.