Israel killed Khader Adnan
By Anat Matar • Translated by Sol Salbe
A few words about the horrifying death of the shahid [martyr] Khader Adnan this morning at the Nitzan prison. I will start from the end: this is not empty demagoguery: This was really a conscious direct causing of death, by the Shin Bet/Shabak security agency and the Israeli Prison Service.
Adnan’s condition, after 86 days of a hunger strike, was known, and he should not have been left in Nitzan prison, despite his refusal to undergo tests that would attest to his condition. Also complicit in the crime was the court which made the decision to release him during the trial contingent on the results of the medical tests which never happened.
Although Adnan refused the tests, he expected life-saving intervention in case he lost consciousness. His lawyer, as well as a doctor acting on behalf of the Physicians for Human Rights Israel, had long ago demanded that he be transferred to Assaf Harofeh Hospital. There wasn’t and there couldn’t be any reason to oppose such a move, given Adnan’s deteriorating condition, except for the intention that he will die in prison.
I’m not sure it’s unnecessary to mention: unlike all his previous hunger strikes, this time Khader Adnan’s hunger strike was not a response to an arbitrary administrative arrest, but to the arbitrary nature of the indictment filed against him. The indictment included two main counts: belonging to the Islamic Jihad and incitement. The “incitement” included, for example, support for the hunger strikers (like he himself) protesting against administrative detention as well as the armed resistance to the Occupation.
According to his lawyer, Jamil Khatib, the indictment is based on outdated false testimony, from a year and a half ago. But in any case, it is clear that there was a conscious and deliberate decision to break Adnan by breaking his chain of administrative arrests, with the help of an indictment and detention until the end of the proceedings.
The arbitrariness is the same arbitrariness, the justice is the same justice, and the Occupier’s law is the same Occupier’s law.
All of this is closely related to the iniquities of the current demonstrations that are consciously choosing to remain blind to everything that Israel does as “democracy” and the associated sanctification of the Israeli courts and law, the law of the occupying dictator.
Just like the abuse of [the people of] Khan Al Ahmar — it is clear to everyone that there are no legal proceedings here and the question of whether they will throw the people of the village into the garbage (literally in this case. There is nothing metaphorical this time, the deportees are destined to be sent to a garbage dump and a sewerage site) is not a legal question at all.
The pretence that there is a court in Israel, that there is an independent court, is a lie that we must repeatedly denounce all the time.
