A Tale of Two Strikes

Many New Haveners are well aware of the recently concluded hunger strike waged by graduate student teachers on Beinecke Plaza. Theirs is a fight for decent, secure wages and comprehensive benefits. In spite of the fact that the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that graduate teachers have the right to collective bargaining, and in spite of the fact that graduate students in 8 Yale departments voted to unionize, Yale has refused to acknowledge the union, and has maligned the graduate students by bringing into question the skills and expertise to perform the very jobs that the university has placed them in. Clergy and politicians such as Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Sen. Richard Blumenthal stopped by to lend their support.

Thousands of miles away, another longer and larger hunger strike waged under quite different conditions, was suspended on May 27. On April 17, over 1000 Palestinian prisoners launched the largest collective hunger strike in years. There is a good chance you have not heard of this, as the American media has given scant coverage to it. Far from having supporting the strike, our elected representatives choose instead to lend unstinting immoral and financial support to Israel to perpetrate the harsh conditions that the strikers continue to resist.

This second strike was on the occasion of marking 50 years of military occupation & nearly 70 years of Israel’s displacement & imprisonment of Palestinians. The strikers’ demands have been simple:

• Abolish endless detention without trial or charge
• Abolish solitary confinement
• Allow visits and communications with family
• Treat prisoners in a humane way
• Provide proper medical treatment
• Restore right to learning and education

While most details of the agreement that ended the strike remain to be known, visitation rights, which had been reduced, have been restored to 2 visits per month.

Since the occupation of 1967, roughly 20% of the Palestinian population has been imprisoned by the occupying power at one point or another. The Palestinian prisoners organization Addameer (www.addameer.org) reports that Israel currently holds approximately 6300 Palestinian political prisoners, including 300 children and approximately 56 women as well as an estimated 500 Palestinians in administrative detention (including 2 children). Addameer further reports that over 70% of Palestinian families have had at least one member detained.

People living in Israel are subject to the Israeli civilian legal system. People living in the occupied West Bank are subject to the Israeli military court system. This system uses Administrative Detention to detain people without charge or trial for indefinitely renewable periods of up to six months, on the basis of secret evidence. Israel’s widespread and systematic use of administrative detention violates international human rights and humanitarian law and amounts to psychological torture.

Beyond an end to administrative detention, a key demand of the hunger strikers has been an end to the use of solitary confinement in Israeli prisons and detention centers. The use of long-term solitary confinement is widely understood to be a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment that may amount to torture. Israeli Prison Service has practiced the policy of isolation against the prisoners and detainees, as well as detention in secret prisons since 1967. Prisoners have suffered from permanent psychological harm due to Israeli government reliance on isolating Palestinian prisoners from meaningful human contact with their fellow prisoners.

As a result of the hunger strike, Palestinian prisoners were subjected to violent and coercive measures and policies by Israeli Prison Service and special units to push prisoners and detainees to end their hunger strikes. Prisoners were punished for their hunger strikes by being placed in solitary confinement and denied family and attorney visits; denied recreational time; prohibited from participating in group prayers on Fridays; and had their salt (for salt water) seized. More troubling, the Israeli Prison Service made it exceedingly difficult for independent doctors to visit the hunger-striking prisoners and provided prisoners with plastic cups in order to drink from the tap rather than the usually provided drinking water.

The strike was suspended in time for the month-long Muslim fast of Ramadan, which began on May 26.

5/28/2017 Contact Jewish Voice for Peace New Haven at: JVPNH.org
JOIN THIS VIGIL FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE—EVERY SUNDAY 12-1 P.M.,
BROADWAY, PARK & ELM STREETS:RESIST THIS ENDLESS WAR!
https://newhavensundayvigil.wordpress.com/