An appeal to those of conscience
The world has watched in horror as the Zionist government of so called Israel has declared the second Nakba and liquidation of the Gaza concentration camp. Many around the world have sprung to action with direct material support, solidarity marches, and tactile actions meant to erode support and readiness of the Zionist state and its conspirators.
In this brokered temporary pause in the ongoing genocide, we must renew the demands for dignity, humanity and the release of all political prisoners worldwide. The temporary ceasefire has thankfully allowed for an exchange of many prisoners, but during this lull as the IOF has released 117 prisoners (at the time of writing), they have imprisoned 116 in the occupied West Bank without trial, many of them children.
Counterinsurgent practices have sought to separate the resistance of the Al-Qassam brigades from the people of Palestine but this is vastly underrepresented in reality. Western ne’er-do-well liberals tow this line deeply in their empty condemnation of what they’re told is “terrorism” to segregate the resistance from Palestinian society. The same settler-colonial institutions that build the mechanisms of mass incarceration to subjugate Black, Brown, and Indigenous families in Europe and the West are rallying around their jingoist calls to collectivize all Palestinians as combatants and ethnically cleanse or lock away all whom they cannot destroy .
Nowhere is this as evident as the treatment of captives. While Palestinian prisoners (including children as young as five) are beaten, tortured, extorted, starved, and often murdered, Israeli captives of the Al-Qassam brigades are treated as humans. The comparison to treatment of Israeli prisoners to your everyday county jail and prison plantation in the so-called United States is striking. Below is a note from an Israeli detainee addressed to the leaders and fighters that were tasked with holding her and her daughter under intense Israeli bombardment:
“To the generals who have accompanied me in recent weeks, it seems we will part ways tomorrow, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your extraordinary humanity shown towards my daughter, Emilia. You were like parents to her, inviting her into your rooms whenever she desired. She acknowledges feeling like all of you are her friends, not just friends, but truly beloved and good. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the many hours you spent as caregivers. Thank you for being patient with her and showering her with sweets, fruits, and everything available even when it was not. Children should not be in captivity, but thanks to you and other kind people we met along the way, my daughter felt like a queen in Gaza… In general, she acknowledges feeling like the center of the world. She hasn’t met anyone on our long journey, from the rank and file to the leadership, who didn’t treat her with kindness, affection, and love. I will forever be a prisoner of gratitude because she did not leave here with a lifelong psychological trauma. I will remember your kind behavior of her, granted here despite the difficult situation you were dealing with yourselves and the severe losses you suffered here in Gaza. I wish in this world we could truly be good friends. I wish you all health and well-being… Health and love to you and your families’ children.
Many thanks,
Danya and Emilia”
Conversely, the realities of Palestinians imprisoned by the Israeli prison service will seem more relatable to anyone who has ever done time in the “states”. On the second day of the Al-aqsa flood, Yazan al-Hasanat recounted that all electronics and appliances were taken: TV’s, kettles, stoves. All clothing was taken and prisoners were left with two outfits. They were reduced to eating bread, and being given four loaves of bread per every ten prisoners every twenty four hours, and their recreational time was reduced from forty five minutes per day, to thirty minutes per day. “Freedom is indescribable. We thank our brothers in the resistance for what they’ve done for all prisoners and for what they’ve done for us. We owe them all the gratitude–The prisoners will not but stand hand in hand with the resistance.”
Resistance fighters transferring prisoners over to Red Cross
From Dallas to Moskobiya we must renew the call to end this decrepit monstrosity we call incarceration and strip the system to the bones. If you are helpless, and miles away from the conflicts that dominate your media consumption, you can do just as much good by organizing your local jail. Bully your local “officials” until they grant humanity to the dispossessed, locked away to dark dungeons to be forgotten. There is not a foothold of a path forward until we burn this plantation to the ground and make the jailor unemployable and obsolete.
Ripped from Swallowtail Distro
