Hunger Strikes and Administrative Detention
by Jonathan Kuttab
News of the death of Sheikh Khader Adnan, after 86 days on a hunger strike protesting his administrative detention, has shocked the entire Palestinian population. His passing is being marked with nationwide strikes, protests, and a renewed determination for resistance.
The logic of a hunger strike is firmly founded in the theory and philosophy of nonviolence. It is an important tactic in a moral and spiritual battle, where an activist asserts the truth, legitimacy, and moral righteousness of one’s case, not by attacking one’s tormentors, but by voluntarily taking upon oneself the punishment and suffering. It is an eloquent and impressive assertion that draws widespread attention to a particular issue. It challenges one and all (including one’s enemies) to support one’s claims and, in the case of one’s enemies, to change their course of action. It represents a sort of “moral jiu jitsu” whereby the weaker party allows the full strength of their powerful opponent to fall on them, and rather than resist their opponent head-on, to let the weight of the opponent cause them to fall.
In this case, the injustice against which Sheikh Khader Adnan was protesting is that of administrative detention. Why should he have been jailed, without charges or trial? If Israel is accusing him of anything, they have all the machinery of an unjust military court system to try and convict him. Yet, they could not do that, because they had no proof that he had done anything wrong. Instead, they arrogantly and repeatedly jailed him for extended periods of “administrative detention.” This is an evil tool that represents the utter arrogance and unrestrained power that the Israelis hold over Palestinians, and which they have been using with increasing frequency. Any Palestinian, certainly anyone politically or socially active, is subject to the use or threat of this unjust measure. Currently more than 1,000 Palestinians are detained under administrative detention, without charge or trial. Merely a determination by the commander, or whoever he has delegated this power, that a certain individual should be kept in detention—for up to six months, renewable indefinitely. This device has been used during interrogations. After a prisoner refuses to “confess,” he is simply told that he can just be held indefinitely under administrative detention. Other prisoners who have served their sentence in full are often not released but continue to be incarcerated under administrative detention. The power over Palestinian lives that this device grants to Israeli authorities must be intoxicating, as it is almost unlimited.
To be sure, in typical Israeli fashion, a pseudo-legal procedure does exist, allowing one “to object” to their administrative detention before an Objections Committee. Anyone, however, who attempts to make such an objection will quickly realize it is a sham. This committee hears arguments and evidence in secret and in the absence of both the detainee making the objection as well as his or her attorney. It routinely rejects the objections it receives and “confirms” the decision of the military commanders. The whole process can be seen as a cross between a charade and a kangaroo court.
Khader, who had attempted the “objections” route, realized that going on a hunger strike as a nonviolent tactic was the only route open to him. He had become quite a warrior in this nonviolent battle. He fought several bouts, with lengthy hunger strikes five separate times. In 2012, he went on a hunger strike for 66 days; in 2015 for 56 days; in 2018 for 59 days; and in 2021 for 25 days, before his last strike. At one time, after a lengthy hunger strike, the Israeli authorities relented and promised not to renew his administrative detention so long as he suspended his hunger strike. He did so, and the army released him following the end of his period of detention. He was allowed to go to a Palestinian hospital, where he stayed long enough to gather his strength. Then, they reneged on their promise and issued a new administrative detention order.
When a prisoner goes on hunger strike, he does not wish to die but to live as a free person. He is reclaiming his agency and humanity, willing to pay a heavy price for his beliefs. When Khader’s health declined, he refused to accept medical attention in an Israeli jail until they agreed to a visit by an independent doctor, with a promise not to share his medical information with his jailors. The Israeli authorities refused and sent him back to his prison cell, where he was later found dead.
In his famous, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who was an inmate of the Nazi concentration camps, wrote that your oppressors can sometimes hold total power over you, but the one thing they cannot control, and which is totally within your power, is how you react to that oppression. Israelis can use all the power at their disposal, but they cannot control how one reacts. Khader Adnan chose to react nonviolently using the tactic of a hunger strike.
In a final, pathetic attempt to assert their power in this matter, the Israel authorities refused to release his body to his family for a decent burial. And, against his express wishes not to have an autopsy, they sent his body to the pathology institute of Abu Kabir.
The least we can do, as we mourn the death of this hero, is to work for an end to the brutal practice of administrative detention he died protesting. The battle after all is a moral and spiritual battle. Israel and its friends should be put to shame and pressured into ending this immoral practice. Even in South Africa under apartheid, such a practice was not permitted. We may not be able in the near future to end all injustice, or resolve all outstanding issues, but at the very least, we should work to end the inhuman practice of indefinite imprisonment without charges or trial.
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Demand Justice for Shireen Abu Akleh and Contact the Department of Justice
This Wednesday, May 3rd, was International Press Freedom Day. Next week, on May 11th, we mark one year since Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed. Now is the time to demand justice.
It is important to Shireen's family, to journalists and human rights activists around the world, that this investigation be completed and the findings made public. You can help keep Shireen's memory alive by contacting the Department of Justice and inquiring as to the status of the report and urge them to complete and publish their findings:
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May 6: Online
PCAP Book Event: "Palestine Hijacked: How Zionism Forged an Apartheid State From the River to the Sea"
You are invited to join PCAP in commemorating the anniversary of the 75th Nakba with author, Thomas Suárez, who will speak with us about his latest book, Palestine Hijacked: How Zionism Forged an Apartheid State from River to Sea.
Suárez has published widely on the issue of the injustices committed against the Palestinian people by Israel and the Zionist movement. Illan Pappe called his book State of Terror: How Terrorism Created Modern Israel (Olive Branch Press, 2016), “The first comprehensive and structured analysis of the violence and terror employed by the Zionist movement and later the state of Israel against the people of Palestine.” State of Terror has been translated into Arabic and French. His book Writings on the Wall: Palestinian Oral Histories (Interlink, 2019) collects and preserves oral testimonies of what Palestinians have experienced under seven decades of Israeli rule. His articles have appeared in Mondoweiss, Middle East Monitor, Washington Report on the Middle East, and countercurrents.org.
May 6: Oakland
NorCal Sabeel Presents: TEA for Palestine
Support the new Palestine Studies Program at U.C. Berkeley and Pal Trek. Music by ASWAT, the premier Arab music ensemble.
Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza continue to live under an increasingly horrifying Israeli apartheid regime. This TEA for Palestine: Truth, Education, Action is a fundraising event to support future leaders in the U.S. who will mobilize their talents on behalf of Palestinian rights. The SF Bay Area premier Arab music ensemble, ASWAT, will be playing and there will be delicious refreshments. Please join us! If you can’t join us, please consider making a donation. All expenses associated with this event are donated.
All funds collected are tax exempt and will be directed to the new Palestine Studies Initiative at U.C. Berkeley and to Pal Trek.
The Palestine Studies Initiative has been launched after two years of preparation. It is a groundbreaking effort, and organizers are now raising funds and preparing for its first course offerings under the Department of Ethnic Studies.
May 9: Online
Palestine Solidarity Campaign presents: Nakba 75 - Exist, Resist, Return
On May 15th Palestinians across the globe will be commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the process of ethnic cleansing, colonisation and dispossession that saw over 750,000 Palestinians driven into exile and more than 500 towns and villages wiped from the map.
The Nakba is marked not just as an historical event but as a continuing process of oppression enacted over the past 75 years though ongoing colonisation of land, enforcement of apartheid and military occupation.
Join us for this online event to hear from Palestinian movement leaders, poets, scholars and activists from across historic Palestine and the diaspora who will share their personal histories and tell us how they confront the ongoing Nakba in their life and work.
Speakers will include: Professor Kamel Hawwash - PSC Chair and academic Sami Abou Shahadeh - Historian and Head of Balad/Tajamou’ party Muna Dajani - Palestinian water and environmental justice scholar Selma Dabbagh - Poet/Writer and Head of Strategy at International Centre of Justice for Palestinians
May 10: Washington D.C.
Nakba 75 & the Palestinian People
An educational community event featuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Wed, May 10 in the auditorium of the Capitol Visitor Center, Washington, DC.
To uplift the experiences of Palestinians who underwent the Nakba, and educate Members of Congress and their staff about this history and the ongoing Nakba to which Israel continues to subject Palestinians, we’ve partnered together to host this congressional and community educational event, to be followed immediately afterward by dinner.
May 11 - 19: Washington, D.C.
Museum of the Palestinian People Presents: Al-Nakba: Commemorating 75 Years
To commemorate the 75th year since the Nakba began, the Museum of the Palestinian People is hosting a series of events dedicated to uplifting Palestinian cultural heritage, historic preservation, and lived experiences. Please join us in honoring Nakba survivors and those determined to keep Palestinian culture and history alive.
May 13 - 18: Online
ICMEP Presents: Nakba @ 75: The Ongoing Palestinian Catastrophe
The Indiana Center for Middle East Peace commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Nakba by highlighting the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people with a series of three interviews/webinars free and open to the public.
May 4: Sandra Tamari, founder of the Adalah Justice Project
May 13: Sam Bahour & 1948 Nakba Survivors, The Continuing Nakba & the Responsibilities for Justice. Cohosted with the Chicago Faith Coalition on Middle East Policy
May 18: Phil Weiss, founder, Mondoweiss
These will be conducted via Zoom, and you are invited to log in and join us - we hope you will!
May 13: Online
Canadian Voices for Palestinian Rights presents: Al Nakba Day with Dr. Basel Ghattas
Join CVPR's webinar and Q&A with Dr. Basel Ghattas. Dr. Ghattas is a Palestinian politician and prominent community activist from Rameh, a Palestinian town in the Upper Galilee. For more than 12 years he led the Galilee Society, an NGO involved in health and environmental issues with the Palestinian community in Palestine 1948. In 2007, he established Malakom, the only business magazine focused on the Palestinian community in Palestine 1948/Israel.
During his work as a Knesset member, he focused among other issues on Palestinian prisoner's rights. Out of humanitarian and conscientious motives, Dr. Ghattas decided to use his immunity as a Knesset member to provide mobile phones to Palestinian political prisoners who are deprived the basic right to call their families. The Israeli security forces filed a legal case against him with serious accusations of supporting terror and terrorists and harming State security. He resigned his position and was imprisoned for two years with other Palestinian political prisoners.
Nakba 75: National March
Join the protest march and rally for Palestine taking place on Saturday 13th May 2023 in central London.
Organised by: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, Palestinian Forum in Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Muslim Association of Britain, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
Date: Saturday 13 May 2023
Time: 12pm
Location: The BBC, Portland Place W1A, London
May 14: Washington, D.C.
AMP Rally: Nakba 75 - One Year Closer
On Sunday, May 14th at 1 pm EST, American Muslims for Palestine, along with the Palestinian Youth Movement, Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace, MD 2 Palestine, and supporters from across the Palestine movement will lead a rally in Washington, D.C. at the Washington Monument to commemorate 75 years of the Nakba.
Nakba 75, The Struggle Continues - Demonstration
Vancouver, all out for Palestine! Join the demonstration outside of Vancouver Art Gallery on May 14, 1pm.
By Canada Palestine Association, International League of Peoples' Struggle Canada, Masar Badil, Palestinian Youth Movement, Samidoun, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights UBC and Students for Justice in Palestine SFU.
May 15: Online
Palestine Return Centre: Ongoing Nakba at 75: Palestinians Demand Right of Return
Stream the Palestine Return Centre's online event on Facebook and Youtube, with speakers Mick Napier, Huwaida Arraf, Muhannad Ayyash, and Richard Boyd-Barrett.
MFSA and UMKR Present: Knowing the Nakba - The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine to Create the State of Israel
The Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948 has been called the poisonous root of all that has plagued the Holy Land since that time, with a never-ending impact that pervades the Middle East and the entire world. We cannot hope to understand the present turmoil in the Holy Land - let alone achieve a just peace for all those who live there - without knowing where and how the conflict began: with the ethnic cleansing of indigenous people from their homeland.
Join us for this unique educational and thought-provoking presentation, with moving recollections from living Nakba survivors, expert historical analysis, and riveting video clips.
VFHL Film Salon: Remembering the Voices
Two documentary films, Voices across the Divide and Born in Deir Yassin, pull back the carefully constructed curtain of “a land without people for a people without a land.” Since 1948, a monumental effort has been made to promote a romantic mythology of Israel's creation and to hide the brutal violence. But firsthand accounts by both the oppressor and the oppressed, the expeller and the exiled, reveal the ongoing wounds. Nothing is resolved by dialogue alone, yet nothing will be resolved without it. Any hope of coexistence begins when the historical truth is rediscovered and acknowledged. It begins here.
Watch the film for free at your convenience; then join the Q&A Discussion with:
Alice Rothchild: Author, filmmaker, and Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School (Retd.)
Emad Moussa: Palestinian-British journalist, researcher, and human rights activist
Huda Giddens: Palestinian American educator, Nakba survivor
Ahlam Muhtaseb (moderator): Author, filmmaker, and Professor of Media Studies at CSUSB
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Kumi Now! (Week 18) Freedom of Speech. As we celebrate World Press Freedom Day on May 3, we want the world to know that Palestinian journalists face regular threats of censorship and violence. Frustratingly, this censorship has been aided and abetted by tech giants such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Zoom. The Palestinian Center for Development and Freedoms (MADA) is working in support of freedom of speech and a free and independent press in Palestine. Here’s what you need to know and what you can do so that together we can rise up.