Transcript of the audio:

Helena Cobban: (00:44)

Hi there, Yousef, how are things with you this week?

Yousef Aljamal: (00:46)

Hi there Helena, I’m doing alright. What about you?

Helena Cobban: (00:58)

Well, we’re doing Ok. We’ve got a little bit of sunshine in Washington DC, but in general things look pretty bad. In this podcast series, Yousef and I are exploring the many intersections between the Zionist settler, colonial project in Palestine, which is still ongoing, and the many other settler colonial projects that Western European nations have pursued in all the world's non European continents. Throughout the past 600 years. In earlier episodes we discussed the use by anti colonial activists and leaders of hunger strikes to win their nation's liberation. We looked at the stories that settler colonialists tell themselves and others to justify the plundering and the cruelty they engage in against countries and peoples far distant from their own. And we started looking at some of the dire environmental consequences of settler colonial projects all around the world. Today we're going to pick up from the episode we did on hunger strikers and look more deeply at how colonial powers throughout history, including Israel, have used various forms of mass incarceration as a central tool in their project to control the indigenous populations of the areas they are colonizing. But before we dive into today's discussion, I'd like to ask Yousef to bring us all up to date on this week's main headlines from Palestine.

Yousef Aljamal: (02:23)

So Israeli forces assassinated 3 Palestinians in the in the West Bank city of Nablus yesterday, Deutsche Arabic has sacked 5 Palestinian journalists over antisemitism claims and accusations. And finally, a Palestinian child prisoner was released from Israeli jails after 20 years in jail to his Jerusalem home.

Helena Cobban: (02:58)

I guess that’s a great segue for us Yousef into the story of incarceration as used by the Zionists in Palestine and as used by settler colonialists all around the world. Could you maybe give us a quick sketch of the dimensions of the incarceration projects that Israel pursues in Palestine?

Yousef Aljamal: (03:22)

Every single Palestinian family has been impacted by this incarceration policy by the Israeli authorities. Speaking of my family, my grandfather was arrested for six years. Between 1972 and 1978, my uncle was arrested under administrative detention. My cousin was arrested under administrative detention for two years. And you know there are thousands and thousands of Palestinians who are arrested by Israel every year since 1967, almost 1,000,000 Palestinians have been incarcerated by Israel as of November 2021, 4650 Palestinians were incarcerated by Israel, including 500 Palestinians who are held under administrative detention, which means that they are not, charged or put to trial. 160 Palestinian child prisoners are held by Israel and 34 female prisoners. There are also 70 Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship who are also arrested and 350 Palestinians from Jerusalem. From the Gaza Strip there are 230 Palestinians who are arrested by Israel and many of these prisoners have spent long years in Israeli jails. We are talking about 25 prisoners who have been arrested even before the Oslo Accords in 1993.  Nael Barghouthi has spent 42 years in Israeli jails and he's still in jail. There are 544 Palestinian prisoners who are serving life sentences and finally there are there  499 Palestinian prisoners who are serving a sentence above 20 years in jail. So imprisonment you know impacts Palestinians in different way and I think this is part of Israel's policy of controlling the Palestinian body.

Helena Cobban: (07:05)

What is the main organization that deals with the issue of Palestinian prisoners that you know if our listeners are interested in finding out more behind the kind of figures that you gave us, what? Organization or website should they try to contact?

Yousef Aljamal: (07:27)

I think we have a couple of organizations that are extremely active and they have an English version of their reports and websites. Addameer for prisoners rights where I took these statistics from. And the Defence for the Children International and interestingly, Israel has put Defence for Children International Palestine on their terror list recently. There's also the Palestinian prisoners club. Which has more resources on prisoners? I have also translated three books on "Palestinian prisoners. The Prisoners' Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli  Gulag." "Dreaming of Freedom: Palestinian Child Prisoners Speak," and "A Shared Struggle: Stories of Palestine and Irish Hunger Strikers," which came out in July last year. All of these books are available on Amazon and in English and other languages as well.

Helena Cobban: (08:31)

So we'll put more details about these books and these resources onto our website, where by the way, we want listeners to know that we have a a whole section on our website now devoted to this project where you can listen to past episodes or you can see transcripts of the past episodes and our wonderful audio engineer here, Amelle Zeroug is putting up links to all the organizations and resources, so do please go to our website www.justworldeducational.org, where you'll find all these links and resources. And by the way, that website also has a donate button that lets you support this podcast series and all the rest of our work. Yousef, I'd like to discuss something that I know is really difficult for prisoners and that is often whether it's child, prisoners, or adult prisoners in Palestine. When the authorities imprison somebody, they very frequently try to turn them into agents or snitches. And it's very difficult, especially for young people to deal with all this pressure. And I mean, I think that's the case with settler colonial projects all around the world, but is that something that happens? And that people find it hard to deal with in Palestine? Or do they? Do they find ways of resisting even once they're in prison? 

Yousef Aljamal: (10:06)

So yes, I think there are. There's this story of the five Haris Boys and Haris is a Palestinian village and in the West Bank who were sentenced to 15 years in prison. Over accusations that they threw stones at and you know, an Israeli truck driver who lost control of the truck and this resulted in the serious injury of some Israeli settlers who he had an accident with. I think based on the testimonies of these five children as documented by Defence of Children International, The Israeli interrogators told some of the children that their friends who also were arrested, were part of the five children group that confessed that they threw stones and it's their turn now to confess. And this was how they actually got their children to “confess.” And again it has societal implications. There is a shame around it, you know, like telling people in the village that oh this child confessed. And again this is a child confesses because of pressures and torture. When he was in court again, he said, I said this under and you know, pressure and torture and he did not actually do this. And again, these prisoners, child prisoners also signed confessions in Hebrew, a language they do not understand. And they are tried before military courts. So there is a special system for. Palestinian children, which is a military system where they are brought to court and trail. Unlike Israeli settlers who live in the same area who are tried before civil courts.

Helena Cobban: (12:19)

So I guess that's part of the apartheid system, right where you know an Israeli child who throws a stone is going to be, you know. It's not even punished, and the Palestinian child who throws a stone may be put into prison for for many years, but I guess you know, we're kind of getting used to the idea that that is apartheid. Indeed, I I, just you know, a few years ago I was reading about what the British did in Kenya when they were trying to hold on to their colonial empire and they. They were, they really wanted the resources of the land of Kenya, which is quite a rich land, and they did not want the people there. But if they wanted the people they wanted them to be completely under control so they put them into massive great like concentration camps and that were controlled in a very very cruel manner. And then they tried to get the men and women who were in those camps to inform against each other and to say this was a time of there was a very secretive nationalist organization called the Mau Mau and I remember growing up in Britain in the 50s like everybody was supposed to be so so terrified of the Mau Mau and how brutal they were. But of course, the British authorities had the predominance of power and they were extremely brutal. They ended up According to the Kenyan Human Rights Commission. Something like 90,000 Kenyan men were killed, tortured and maimed in these camps, and more than a quarter of a million people passed through these camps. One of them, interestingly, was Barack Obama's grandfather. people didn't mention that much when Barack Obama was president, but that's just kind of what settler colonial empires have to do in order to control people. You have studied the situation in Algeria quite a bit. Did you find a record of mass incarcerations there under the French?

Yousef Aljamal: (14:50)

I think this rings a bell with Israel policies and and in Gaza, and the you know building a wall around Gaza and maiming thousands of Palestinian protesters who protested under the Great March of Return. And now many of them lost their legs because Israeli snipers would directly, you know, shoot them and and the knee, and then and the leg so that they maimed them. And they cannot walk again. And this also rings a bill in in Algeria where thousands and thousands of Algerians, especially you know the leaders of the FLN were arrested and many of them were tortured to death. We have Larbi Ben M'hidi. We also have other leaders of the Algerian Revolution who were arrested like Zohra and Ferhat Abbas and thousands of others. They were put in jail. I think this is a technique by the colonial authorities where they try to control and limit the ability of the native population to resist. And they make sure that the ability to resist is extremely limited by all possible means by incarceration is one of them. Killing and torture is also other techniques used. And then you know, as you said, getting people to spy on each other. And rewarding some prisoners. If they spy on other prisoners in Palestine, we have something that prisoners know as "Asafir," birds. These are spies planted by the Israeli prison service among prisoners Palestinian prisoners. And who claimed to be Palestinians and encouraged prisoners to confess. Or trying to help Palestinians who are new in prison, but now I think you know almost 75 years of experience of incarceration. More Palestinians are aware of these tactics and techniques, and I mean, again, you know, incarceration did not stop after 1967. we look at the Palestinian communities in Israel and Lod and Ramla and Haifa. Palestinians were placed in ghettos and and and wired communities for years before Israel decided to release them. To be specific, you know, towns and villages. 

Helena Cobban: (17:36)

That's right and meantime, you know the Israeli settlers inside 1948 Israel had stolen all their land, so they couldn't go back to their own villages. I mean, you know, I guess any settler colonial project wants to steal the land and resources and then just dispose of the people as they want. I recall in our last episode where we talked about hunger strikes. That you said that actually prisoners, in spite of all the pressures that are brought on them by the authorities have amazing political resilience and resources and remain as leaders of the movement even after they're in prison, so I think that's important to kind of remember, because otherwise it just sounds as though it's like a really, really sad story. It's like an outrageous story, it's not just sad. But I think the fact that you have somebody like Marwan Barghouti who is a prisoner and a leader of prisoners, a political leader for prisoners and non prisoners, is really important to remember and like going back to the FLN in Algeria. You know, once people were imprisoned it didn't end their political effectiveness. I am also since you mentioned Zohra Drif. I was of course proud to publish her memoir called Inside the Battle of Algiers and People should read it. I mean, it's especially for you to know women's history and African history of African resistance leaders. It's a great book, but as the police were coming into the Casbah to arrest her the thing that she wanted to do above everything else was to destroy the lists she had of the women all around the country who were planning mass marches and demonstrations. So you know the way that the Battle of Algiers is told in the movie. And here in the West, it seems to be all about men with guns.

But actually what was happening was largely underpinned by women doing mass organizing. And you know, they continued doing that even after imprisonment as much as they could. What other kinds of examples from around the world. Do you think? I mean, obviously you've worked on this book about the Irish prisoners. Are there other examples that you think Palestinians can learn from about how to deal with these challenges of mass incarceration?

Yousef Aljamal: (20:38)

I think we have different examples that Palestinians can learn from Algeria is one of them, but we also have South Africa, India, Ireland. As you mentioned, you know the struggle of indigenous people. You know natives in Canada and even in Turtle Island, the US. Aboriginals in Australia. I think the mass incarceration technique has been used or has been used by all colonial powers all over the world and there is a history of arresting people for decades. If we look at South Africa Nelson Mandela, he was in jail for 28 years and now we talk about Marwan Barghouti and others. Nael has been in Israeli jails 42 years. He was a very young teenager when he was arrested and today he's 60. I think 65 or 66. 

We have Palestinian prisoners who are serving more than 25 years in Israeli jails. And again, Nelson Mandela was not the only South African who was incarcerated for this, you know, long period of time. There are dozens of South African activists who were put in jail for decades who were tortured. We have more 220 Palestinian prisoners who were tortured to death in Israeli jails. So torture, incarceration is is part of a this technique of silencing people, be it in Palestine and Algeria. Huge number of people when I visited in Algeria. Arresting people is is one way to silence them, but also killing them. In two months in Algeria in 1945, almost 45,000 Algerians according to Algerian sources were killed while only 86 European settlers and 16 of them were soldiers were killed. So killing and you know imprisonment and we can also talk about the example of Ghandi and Indians who were even not using violence but using nonviolence. They were also incarcerated. And then some of them were deported. So part of you know, removing. The influence and even the physical presence of people under colonization is deporting them, and we have examples of Palestinians too who were deported to Marj Zohour in South Lebanon in 1992, 415 Palestinians, and many of them were rearrested after they were allowed into Palestine again after one year. They were rearrested, so some of them were even assassinated. 

Helena Cobban: (23:49)

Especially in Gaza,I think some of the ones who returned were killed by bombs in the early 2000s as I recall. So when a Palestinian person is incarcerated, put in jail, obviously it has huge effect on the family because I think there's a real problem for Palestinian families to be able to visit their prisoner, because often The prisoner is taken to jail proper and imprisoned there. And actually, that's against the Geneva Conventions. You know you're not supposed to remove prisoners from, you know, the location in the area where they were. So how did the prisoners' families put up with this?

Yousef Aljamal: (24:42:59)

My cousin Nora Abu Ghanieh did a short documentary called Visitation about, you know, family visits and the struggle Palestinian families go through. When they visit their sons and daughters in Israeli jails and I'm, I mean, she talks about Palestinians from the West Bank because they are allowed to visit more than Palestinians and the Gaza Strip. The issue of Palestinian prisoners and family visits from the Gaza Strip is used for collective punishment. So when, for example, now there are four Israelis who are helped by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli government denies Palestinian prisoners family visits or when Israeli soldier should actually was captured in 2006. I think the families of Palestinian prisoners were not allowed to visit their children in Israeli jails for five years when he was released as part of an exchange deal. And speaking of the ordeal and the struggle, if you watch the movie, which was sponsored by Dar al-Kalima College in Bethlehem and it's online available online. You see how Palestinians wake up very early at 2:00 and 3:00 AM, and then these visits are organized by the Red Cross and they are allowed to visit once every two months. And it's for a very short period of time, so we're talking about 15 minutes, 10 minutes and after long hours of you know searches and checkpoints and waiting under the sun when they are allowed into specific places to see their kids, they're not allowed to touch them directly, and they only speak to them over a phone or a cable. And again there is this glass that they could see their children from behind. So this visit is full of humiliation and even some prisoners and families when they get to the timing of seeing their families, they are asked to leave because some papers are not complete. Something like that. But despite this I think Palestinian prisoners managed to do something very smart like smuggling their sperms with their families. So far we have, I think 100 Palestinian children who were born, from Palestinian prisoners, while in jail, they smuggled their their sperms and they had, you know, this these implantation surgeries in Palestine hospitals and now the Israelis are very mad about it.

Helena Cobban: (27:40)

Obviously, these cruelties and the suffering. It's sometimes hard to talk about. But in South Africa, I think when once the apartheid system was dismantled, one of the conditions was to have this Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which enabled the prisoners and the families and the people who had been tortured to, actually, you know, directly speak their truths to the whole of the public and the you know, obviously the whole process was chaired by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu in a very caring and supportive way for these survivors, of of the torture and and I think the goal was to really confront the perpetrators of that violence and all the White South Africans who had stood behind the violence and knew it was going on. But they didn't want to take responsibility for it. And so I think the Truth and Reconciliation Commission there was an attempt to make the White South Africans sort of take responsibility for the violence that they had committed and condoned. Do you think in the future, some kind of a process like this could be useful for Palestinians.

Yousef Aljamal: (29:12)

I think there are hundreds and thousands of stories that could be told by these political prisoners, and we're talking about. More than 50 years of military occupation, where almost 1,000,000 Palestinians were incarcerated. And as I said, the hundreds who passed away as a result of torture. Many of these prisoners, hundreds of them, are sick, and many of them became sick inside prison because of their conditions, and I think one way to do this is is is to have such committees of you know reconciliation and to allow these prisoners to speak. I have spoken to dozens of them as part of the interviews conducted for the three books I worked on, and there are a lot of stories, stories of torture, but also stories of resilience. There was this prisoner, who said, when I was released, I wanted to hug the sea, he said. I like the expression but it also speaks to how they they are deprived of even the most basic things. Seeing the Sun is their dream. That prisoners who kept birds and and their cells and they fed them. You know stories of of torture of humiliation when we talk about the basic rights of Palestinian prisoners such as having access to books or food or family visits. They were not easy victories, they were not, you know, rights that were taken for granted by these prisoners. They fought to get these rights. They went on mass hunger strikes so that they could speak to their families. They could have access to family visits or paper, or you know, fans in the summer because it's really hot. For example, in Nafkha Prison, they are in the middle of the desert. It's really hot in the summer. So yes, I think one day we will have these reconciliation commissions and committees. And there will be stories. I remember there was this Mahmoud Abu Hawish, our neighbor in Gaza. He wrote a novel, 500 pages something, in Arabic. Before my tormentor dies, so he wants justice because he was tortured in prison and he was. He told me that Israeli interrogators lit light under his, you know private organs, they they took his teeth and nails out. So that he could confess. But again there are prisoners who will never confess anything, even their names. I I know stories of prisoners who deny their names. This is not me, you're arresting the wrong person. That's not me. 

Helena Cobban: (32:19)

I mean one day all these stories will come out and there will be truth that is told to the perpetrators and in the meantime, Yousef, thank you so much for the work that you do to help bring these stories out. I'm afraid our time is up right now. But really, this is an important topic and I'm really happy that we've been able to explore it some. So, Yousef, thank you for being with me again this week. 

Yousef Aljamal: (32:55)

Thank you Helena, and I’m looking forward to speaking to you again.

Helena Cobban: (32:55) 

Yeah, next week!