by Khaled Abu
Toameh July 6, 2015
- Like the mainstream
media in the West, the UN chooses to look the other way when Palestinians
torture or kill fellow Palestinians.
- The Palestinian
Authority and Hamas claim that the three men committed suicide.
- When three detainees die
in less than a week, this should sound an alarm. But pro-Palestinian
groups and human rights activists do not care about the human rights of
Palestinians if Israel cannot be held responsible. Their obsession with
Israel has made them blind to the plight of Palestinians living under the
Palestinian Authority.
Three
Palestinian men were found dead in their jail cells in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip this past week.
But
their stories did not attract the attention of the international media or human
rights organizations in the U.S. and Europe. Nor was their case brought to the
attention of the United Nations or the International Criminal Court (ICC).
By
contrast, the case of 17-year-old Mohamed Kasba, who was shot dead north of
Jerusalem by an Israeli army officer as he attacked the officer's car with
stones, received widespread coverage in
the Western media.
The
UN even rushed to condemn the
killing of Kasba, and called for an "immediate end" to violence and
for everyone to keep calm. "This reaffirms the need for a political
process aiming to establish two states living beside each other safely and
peacefully," said UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace
Process, Nickolay Maldenov.
The
UN official, needless to say, made no reference to the deaths that occurred in
the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas jails. He did not even see a need to
express concern over the deaths or call for an investigation. Like the
mainstream media in the West, the UN chooses to look the other way when
Palestinians torture or kill fellow Palestinians.
The
reason the case of the three detainees will not interest anyone in the
international community is because the men did not die in an Israeli jail.
Instead, the three men died while being held in Palestinian-controlled jails.
Had
the three men died in Israeli detention, their names would have most likely
appeared on the front pages of most leading Western newspapers. The families of
the three men would have also been busy talking to Western journalists about
Israeli "atrocities" and "human rights violations."
But
no respected Western journalist is going to visit any of the families of the
three detainees: they did not die in an Israeli jail.
The
same week that the three Palestinian men were found dead in jail, the UN Human
Rights Council decided to adopt a resolution
condemning Israel over the UN report into last year's Operation
Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. Again, the UN Human Rights Council chose to
ignore human rights violations by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, who deny
detainees basic rights and proper medical treatment.
Two
of them died in PA security installations in Bethlehem, while the third was
found dead in a Hamas-controlled jail in the Gaza Strip.The Palestinian Authority
and Hamas claim that the three men committed suicide.
The
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a Gaza-based non-profit group
dedicated to protecting human rights, promoting the rule of law and upholding
democratic principles in the Palestinian territories, called for an
investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of
the detainees.
"PCHR
stresses that the Palestinian Authority is responsible for the lives of
prisoners and detainees under its control and is thus responsible for treating
them with dignity, including offering them medical care," the group said
in a statement.
When
three detainees die in less than a week in Palestinian detention, this should
sound an alarm bell, especially among so-called pro-Palestinian groups and
human rights activists in different parts of the world.
But
these folks, like the UN and mainstream media, do not care about the human
rights of the Palestinians if Israel cannot be held responsible. Their
obsession with Israel has made them blind to the plight of Palestinians living
under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, as well as to the horrific crimes
committed every day by Muslim terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The
story of the three men who died in Palestinian jails is yet another example of
the double standards that the international community and media employ when it
comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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