Letters from Palestine (33 page)

Then, one day, in late October, we received
this email from Mohammed:

Dear Friends,

Now it’s time for you to bring out the
champagne, fill your glasses, and toast yourselves: your hard work
and diligent efforts in bailing me out of our Gaza prison have paid
off.

As you read this, I am awaiting my flight to
Holland, where I will undergo the needed surgery and the PTSD
treatment over the next four weeks or so.

I will not forget Gaza and my people, and I
will come back again to continue being the voice of the
voiceless.

Needless to stress, I could not have gotten
out of this land under siege without your help and concern. I am
humbled by your humanity and grateful to count you as friends.

All the best for now!

Mohammed

Finally! Needless to say, I was overjoyed to
receive this message.

It is now early May 2009, as I write this,
and Mohammed is still in Holland. He has not yet recovered. It has
been a long and difficult journey to regain his health, but I have
been assured by a physician involved in the case that he will
eventually be fine. But at least we who had come to care so much
about him can be assured that he is well looked after, he is safe,
and, best of all, he has been able to write again, as his articles
in recent issues of the
Washington Report
demonstrate. So
Mohammed is on the mend and is once more “the voice of the
voiceless,” which the Israelis have not been able to silence, and
never will.

Honored in London, tortured in Israel for
exposing the truth about Gaza

Seven years ago, I began my career as a
journalist. Living behind walls and checkpoints and under daily
Israeli military attack, we Gazans never know if we’ll see
tomorrow. By 2006, I began to win awards for journalism and
notoriety in the United States and Europe.

In May, just before my twenty-fourth
birthday, I received a call from journalist John Pilger, informing
me that I and Dahr Jamal, an “unembedded” American reporter who
covers Iraq, had been named corecipients of the Martha Gellhorn
Prize for Journalism. The prestigious award is given to journalists
who expose the truth behind heavily propagandized subjects, often
at great personal risk in war zones. I am the youngest journalist
to date to have received this recognition.

With substantial lobbying of Israel by Dutch
parliamentarian Hans Van Baalen, I was able to leave the Gaza Strip
to tour Europe and speak about Gaza to parliaments, students, and
journalists and to receive my prize at the June 16 ceremony in
London.

I left Gaza already exhausted but in great
anticipation of my multicountry speaking tour of the Netherlands,
Sweden, Greece, France, and the U.K. and of the Martha Gellhorn
Prize ceremony. In Europe, I spoke about Gaza, sharing photos and
videos, disclosing facts and giving updates on life under the
siege. I described the latest hazard to which Gazans resorted out
of desperation: using cooking oil, which becomes highly
carcinogenic when burned, as fuel for cars. And I highlighted the
shortages of other basic needs due to the Israeli closure.

People were outraged—not only members of the
press, but human rights activists, university students, and
legislators in the British House of Commons and the Greek and
Swedish parliaments.

As with my writing, my aim was to educate,
to get the truth out of Gaza, and to express what the voiceless in
Gaza could not. London was my last stop before my departure from
Paris for home. My schedule had been hectic. I’d gone long
stretches without sleep as a result of constant meetings and
contact with the press in Gaza and around the world, including
radio stations in the U.S.

Finally I arrived in Amman, where the ordeal
of getting Israeli approval to transit began. I simply wanted to
get back to Gaza, my home. That, however, proved to be a major
challenge.

Interrogation and torture

Despite the fact that I was traveling under
the escort of Dutch Embassy diplomats, Israel refused to allow me
to return home, forcing me to remain in limbo in Jordan for five
days. On June 26, Israel finally granted me passage through the
Allenby Bridge. There, however, I was taken aside, interrogated,
strip searched, and tortured. In Israel, despite a Supreme Court
ruling outlawing it, torture is legal and used regularly on
Palestinian civilians. I am a journalist and civilian who has never
acted violently or supported a political movement. My only crime is
that I have reported accurately on Gaza and that my words have been
read abroad.

At Israeli immigration, a female soldier
told me that I did not in fact have an entry permit and ordered me
to sit and wait. People with American and European passports easily
traversed passport control before my name was finally called, an
hour and a half later.

An agent of Shin Bet (Israel’s internal
intelligence agency, known by the Hebrew acronym Shabak) with blond
hair and green eyes then took me to another room and ordered me to
turn off my cell phone and remove the battery. He forcefully
rejected my request to call my Dutch Embassy escort waiting outside
the terminal.

After another hour and a half, a uniformed
Shabak officer named Avi took me to a corner of the terminal where
he emptied my luggage, checking every item. A blond, well-built
muscular man in his forties joined Avi, as “green eyes,” from my
earlier Shin Bet encounter, entered the terminal and began
interrogating me.

“What is this?” “What is this?” he asked
about every item in my luggage. The Shabak men dumped all of my
documents, business cards (even of European parliament members!),
and notes into a blue box, adding my cell phone and camera memory
cards.

“Green eyes” then ordered me to place all
the currency I was carrying on the table. This amounted to the
equivalent of about $800.

Dissatisfied, Avi pressed further: “Where
are the English pounds, and how much do you have?”

I realized he was after the award stipend I
had received for the Martha Gellhorn Prize. I told him I did not
have it with me, that I’d arranged for a bank transfer rather than
carry it with me.

More intelligence officers entered the room,
bringing the total Israeli personnel—most well-armed—to eight:
three directly checking my suitcases and the other five around and
behind me. Eight Israelis and me.

Avi, wearing a police uniform, then led me
to an empty room at the Shin Bet office.

“OK, take off your clothes,” he ordered.
Removing everything but my underwear, I stood before Avi,
repeatedly refusing his orders to remove my underwear and reminding
him that my Dutch escort was waiting for me outside the terminal.
He knew that, he said.

Avi smirked at my protests when I asked why
he was treating me this way. “I am a human being,” I said.

He responded, “This is nothing compared to
what you will see now.”

Unholstering his weapon, Avi pinned me on my
side and forcibly removed my underwear. Completely naked, I stood
before him as he proceeded to feel me up one side and down the
other, even though I had already gone through an X-ray machine
before entering the passport holding area.

Back in the terminal with the other Israeli
officers, the blond intelligence officer continued going through my
belongings. “You are a crazy man,” he said, shaking his head in
disgust.

“Is there any Gazan who would see Paris and
then come back to Gaza, where there is no food, no fuel, no clean
water? Aren’t you ashamed to have your name and reputation
associated with such a dirty place as Gaza?” he asked.

Finally I responded, “Returning home is my
choice. I want to be a voice for those who have no voice and get
the truth out about Gaza to the world.”

“Why the perfumes?” the blond interrogator
asked, rifling recklessly through my belongings.

“They are gifts for the people I love,” I
explained. “And the chocolate is for a pregnant woman in Gaza who
has always dreamed of eating European chocolates.”

Snidely, he asked, “Oh, do you have love in
your culture?”

As the stress of the interrogation, coupled
with the anxiety, uncertainty, and assaults on me, mounted, I began
to feel faint and suddenly began vomiting. My legs buckled, and I
passed out.

As I lay there semiconscious, the Israeli
intelligence officers took turns kicking and pinching me. One
screamed my name into my ear as his fingernails punctured my skin,
clawing at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He dug his fingernails
in near the auditory nerves between my head and ear drum and into
my neck, grazing my carotid artery, while crushing my chest with
his full weight.

Through my haziness, as I lay on the floor,
I vaguely heard a woman with a Palestinian accent pleading, “Let
this young man alone! Leave him!”

One of the men placed his combat boot on the
right side of my neck, pressing down to the hard floor, choking me.
The beating, scratching and kicking continued. I awoke to find
myself being dragged by my feet through my vomit, my head bouncing
on the pavement.

Only when the Israelis thought I might die
did they call for an ambulance to transfer me to a hospital in
Jericho. I later discovered several stickers in Hebrew marking the
spots on my chest where the defibrillator pads had been placed as
the doctor in a military clinic attempted to revive me. Between
lots of shouting in Hebrew, I could hear the English word
“ambulance” several times.

To my amazement, I heard a man speaking
reassuringly to me in Arabic. “We are the Palestinian Red Crescent
ambulance,” he told me.

My tormentors wanted to ensure that
nobody—especially no one with diplomatic credentials—knew what
they’d done to me. As I was later informed by Mahmoud Tarirah, the
emergency medical technician (EMT) who transferred me, they
insisted that the Dutch Embassy not be contacted at that point.

Avi insisted that the EMTs would not be
permitted to move until I signed a waiver—directly in contravention
with international humanitarian law—indemnifying Israel. If I died
or was permanently disabled as a result of Israel’s actions, Israel
would then not be held accountable.

Tarirah refused. “He’s unconscious,” he told
the Israelis. “You can’t make him sign something he cannot read,
and we don’t know yet what you did to him during the
interrogation.” The Red Crescent EMT said he told the Shabak
officer not to get into the ambulance with his gun.

I was then transferred to a hospital in
Jericho, where the physician who stabilized me explained to me that
the combination of intense pressure, stress and exhaustion had
resulted in a nervous breakdown and the vomiting. I was given no
X-ray or medical tests, and after two hours in the hospital I was
released.

An official from the Netherlands
Representative Office accompanied me to a checkpoint in Jericho,
where we obtained a permit for me to travel through the Erez
crossing from Israel into Gaza, and we then drove to the
crossing.

My interrogation by the Shin Bet has left me
with pain in the ribs, difficulty breathing, barely functioning
legs, and scars and scratches on my neck and body. My hands don’t
function well, and typing is difficult.

Karin Laub of the Associated Press’s
Jerusalem office wrote that my detention, interrogation, and
torture at the hands of the Shin Bet was only an allegation. As
with Rachel Corrie and the
USS Liberty
, the Israeli
government denies culpability—a denial for which my unborn children
shall pay. My doctor has informed me that one “alleged” kick I
received while unconscious has blocked key nerves and might prevent
me from fathering children of my own.

Solution and resolution

I’ve been asked what I’d like the outcome of
my detention and abuse to be. First, journalists should never be
subjected to torture by any government. If we are, humanity loses
and the truth remains buried. Second, I and all Palestinians wish
to be treated as human beings—to live and move freely and raise
families without the threat of torture or occupation. America,
which gives Israel more than 30 percent of its international aid
budget each year, has the power to grant my wish.

Israel allegedly wants to be a democracy—and
therein lies a solution. In November 1947, Zionists promised the
United Nations that if they were given a state, it would be free
and democratic with a constitution. Six decades later, Israel still
doesn’t have a constitution. Rather, it has a two-tiered legal
system which denies or bestows rights based on race and religion. A
constitution would preclude this.

Washington must persuade Israel to fulfill
its promises and prove its commitment to democratic principles by
drafting and ratifying a constitution—and make this a condition for
receiving further American aid. Articulating the limits of
governmental conduct and defining rights and equality should not be
a problem for a nation claiming it does not discriminate. With a
constitution, Israel’s Jewish, Muslim, and Christian citizens can
begin living on an equal footing supported by national law, working
toward the common good—in a state where torture and hatred,
fomented in injustice, are relegated to the past.

Palestinians are sometimes called the “Jews
of the Arabs” because they prize education so much. Families will
sacrifice everything in order that their children can receive a
good education, and students themselves will endure every hardship
imposed by the Israeli occupation in their effort to secure it.
Israel, however, continues to place every possible obstacle in the
way of Palestinian students, and the situation in Gaza is
particularly onerous owing not only to the lack of school supplies
and other essentials, but because of the restriction of movement
imposed by the Israeli blockade.