Hour by hour, a hunger striking Palestinian journalist starves to death in Israeli custody | World Defense

Hour by hour, a hunger striking Palestinian journalist starves to death in Israeli custody

Falcon29

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Hour by hour, a hunger striking Palestinian journalist starves to death in Israeli custody

Inside the hospital room where Mohammed al-Qiq is on hunger strike in protest at his detention without charge by Israel

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Mohammed al-Qiq is in constant pain after 86 days without food
....

Mohammed al-Qiq looks like almost like a child as he curls up beneath a blanket on his hospital bed.

A man who once weighed 200lbs is now just half that. His yellowing eyes are sunken in his gaunt face and once-powerful forearms are thin and brittle.

On his bedside table is a copy of the Quran that he can no longer read and a plastic cup of water he can no longer lift. Sips of water are the only nourishment to have passed his lips in 86 days.

The Palestinian journalist is on hunger strike in protest at his detention by Israel. He was arrested in late November by Israeli troops who burst into his Ramallah home at three in the morning.

His two young children slept through the raid but they had questions in the morning. Where was their father? And why was the door hanging shattered off its hinges?

The 33-year-old was held under “administrative detention”, a legal legacy of British rule in Palestine which allows Israeli authorities to hold terror suspects for six-month periods without charging them or presenting evidence against them.

The Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of MI5, has said only that Mr al-Qiq was involved in “terror activities”. Evidence presented in secret to the Israeli Supreme Court convinced the judges that the journalist, who is also a supporter of Hamas, was indeed a threat to national security.

But Mr al-Qiq’s withering body is now itself a challenge to the Israeli security state. He stopped eating on November 25 in protest at his administrative detention and demanded that Israel either charge him or release him.

The Supreme Court has instead left him in legal limbo. Earlier this month it suspended the administrative detention but forbid him from going free.

Two armed policemen sit in the hallway outside his room in the Haemek Hospital in Afula, a city in northern Israel. Authorities have ordered the windows shut, as if a man on the verge of organ failure might leap from his bed and scale down the side of the building.

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Israel still has one card to play. Last summer the Israeli Knesset passed a law that gives authorities the power to force feed prisoners in order to break a hunger strike. Force feeding is widely considered to be torture and so far Israel has never invoked the law.

Late on Monday night Mr al-Qiq began to writhe and contort in pain. His eyes rolled backwards into his head and his fingers clawed at his chest.

“We thought that was the end of him,” said Muhammad Kanaaneh, a Palestinian activist who has been staying at his bedside in ten-hour shifts. Mr Kanaaneh had never met the hunger-striker but now sits with him and lays a cool cloth on his forehead to try to ease his suffering.

“His family is in Hebron and cannot come to see him. So we are here to help him and to be his family,” he said.

...........


Hour by hour, a hunger striking Palestinian journalist starves to death in Israeli custody - Telegraph
 

remnant

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What happened to the milk of human kindness? The thread that unites us collectively as humans appears to have long been severed. We can only ponder and daze at the moral and military monster the West and particularly the US have created in the name of defending Israel. No offence intended but I thought that this should have been a rallying call amongst members of the Fourth Estate in the democratic world. But one takes solace in the fact that every action will have its own unforeseen consequences. I am encouraged by the fact that more and more Israelis are getting enlightened and seeing beyond the carefully choreographed charade that is playing out to the detriment of Palestinians in the name of national security.
 

gmckeebiz

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Pretty terrible situation no matter what your views on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict are. I think we have to work to solve this conflict unlikely as it is. The liberals in America seem to be on the Palestians side, while the conservatives are reflexively for Israel. While I do believe Israelis are usually on the morally correct side of most of the issues between the two sides, I think we can agree that the issue is a lot more nuanced than most people care to admit. On a side note, I didn't even know you could go for 86 days without food. That's pretty remarkable.
 

pwarbi

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I don't understand what he thinks he's going to achieve other than a slow and painful death by going on hunger strike. I'm all for making a protest against something, but to commit suicide slowly isn't the way to make a point I wouldn't have thought.

As for making a point to the world, this is the first time I've heard the story and if/when he dies, I very much doubt there will be any more coverage and the only people who would be left distressed are his family and friends.
 

Kai

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I don't understand what he thinks he's going to achieve other than a slow and painful death by going on hunger strike. I'm all for making a protest against something, but to commit suicide slowly isn't the way to make a point I wouldn't have thought.

As for making a point to the world, this is the first time I've heard the story and if/when he dies, I very much doubt there will be any more coverage and the only people who would be left distressed are his family and friends.

That is not true, hunger strikes do in fact work. They are one of the few things a person who was imprisoned unjustly could do to get themselves out of prison. This story has in fact reached you, and the likelihood that it would have reached you had he not been on hunger strike is much lower. By bringing attention to their plight, they can only stand to gain, in my opinion. This is particularly true in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel wishes to maintain its image as the "only democracy" in the Middle East. Having journalists die in jail, when they have not actually been charged with a crime is not very conducive to "winning the hearts and minds" of people internationally.
 

Falcon29

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I don't understand what he thinks he's going to achieve other than a slow and painful death by going on hunger strike. I'm all for making a protest against something, but to commit suicide slowly isn't the way to make a point I wouldn't have thought.

As for making a point to the world, this is the first time I've heard the story and if/when he dies, I very much doubt there will be any more coverage and the only people who would be left distressed are his family and friends.

He actually was released ....
 

eveliner

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I think that we should just take our minds away from the war itself and pay our respects to this guy... he's committing a true sacrifice for a great purpose. Too bad we humans are like this, but it's our nature after all. Can't change it whatsoever!
 

pwarbi

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He actually was released ....

He was released because he was being held illegally, not because he went on hunger strike though. Its not as if he was a criminal that had been charged and convicted, went on hunger strike and they looked at the case again because of it and then released him.
 

Falcon29

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He was released because he was being held illegally, not because he went on hunger strike though. Its not as if he was a criminal that had been charged and convicted, went on hunger strike and they looked at the case again because of it and then released him.

He wouldn't have been released without the hunger strike that brought media attention and local attention. Anyway it was his personal choice, this is not the first time he was held illegally for long periods. That shouldn't happen in the first place, the West Bank is Palestinian territory, there should never be Israeli soldiers there and there should be a Palestinian army waiting to kill any Israeli terrorists violating our sovereignty. Fatah needs to go and Hamas needs to replace it, Israeli's only understand the language of force. If it wasn't for the whole world gathering to assist them, justice would be delivered to them.
 
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