Palestinians are hostages, too

The taking of hostages is a terrible crime - and that applies to the far greater number of kidnapped Palestinians suffering far worse conditions

Palestinians are hostages, too. Indeed, there are far more Palestinian hostages than their unjustly held Israeli counterparts, and the conditions they’ve suffered are overall much much, worse.

As both Israelis and Palestinians who have been held in protracted captivity are released to their loved ones, this needs to be discussed.

It’s been a time of profound trauma both for those held captive, and their families and their friends, and seeing the footage of them being reunited is profoundly moving.

What’s lacking is moral and political consistency. As ever, the coverage in the Western media has been deeply racist, once again stripping away the human worth of Palestinians, be they living or dead.

Now, I’ve come under fire on this question from apologists for Israel’s genocidal onslaught, who seem to harbour the illusion that they can both be cheerleaders for one of the most obscene crimes of our age, and retain some sort of moral high ground. (You can’t).

That’s because of language I’ve used to describe the exchange agreements which have freed both Palestinians and Israelis who have been held in captivity. Put simply, it’s difficult to settle on a pithy description. Many Western media outlets settle on hostage and prisoner exchanges, but this erases the fact that many Palestinians are themselves hostages.

As I’ve said from the start, the taking of Israeli civilians as hostages by Hamas and other militants was an indefensible war crime: they should never have been taken and they should all be free. Those same human rights apply to the far greater numbers of Palestinians who have their freedom taken away without any just cause.

Indeed, in 2021 three Palestinian NGOs estimated that 1 million Palestinians had been incarcerated since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967. Of those, 50,000 were children and 17,000 were women .

Crucially, tens of thousands of Palestinians were subjected to administrative detention before 7th October. As Israeli human rights’ organisation B’Tselem puts it:

In administrative detention, a person is held without trial without having committed an offense, on the grounds that he or she plans to break the law in the future. As this measure is supposed to be preventive, it has no time limit. The person is detained without legal proceedings, by order of the regional military commander, based on classified evidence that is not revealed to them. This leaves the detainees helpless – facing unknown allegations with no way to disprove them, not knowing when they will be released, and without being charged, tried or convicted.

Spending months or years behind bars without being charged or even told what they’re accused of. These are hostages.

But what of those Palestinians who are convicted? Well, most Palestinians stand trial in Israeli military courts. These trials are over in minutes, the judges and prosecution are serving Israeli soldiers, are conducted in Hebrew, and the conviction rate is over 99%. These are sham trials. Israeli citizens living in the West Bank, on the other hand, are covered by Israel’s civil justice system and are tried in civic courts. Welcome to apartheid.

As for children: as Human Rights Watch put it in 2015:

“Israeli security forces have used unnecessary force to arrest or detain Palestinian children as young as 11. Security forces have choked children, thrown stun grenades at them, beaten them in custody, threatened and interrogated them without the presence of parents or lawyers, and failed to let their parents know their whereabouts.”

It gets worse. According to a Save The Children report in July 2023, that is 3 months before 7th October, child detainees are subjected not just to physical abuse - with 86% reporting being beaten, and nearly half injured as they are arrested, including bullet wounds and broken bones. Child detainees reported being sexually abused by Israeli soldiers, too. It was estimated at the time that between 500 and 1,000 Palestinian children were held in military detention every year. Israel is the only country on earth which systematically imprisons children through military courts. The main alleged crime was stone throwing, which carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years for Palestinian children.

As an Amnesty International report into Israel’s apartheid in 2022 found, Israel long used torture against detainees. They note a 2000 report by the Israeli State Comptroller found that in the first intifada, between 1988 and 1992, Israel’s Security Agency “used systematic torture against Palestinians and regularly lied about it.” That included painful shackling and binding, immobilisation inn stress positions, sleep deprivation, the use of threats including against family members, sexual harassment, prolonged and extensive use of solitary confinement.

Since 7th October, these heinous practises have only intensified. There are more than 300 Palestinian children in Israeli custody, with 112 of them in administrative detention. These are child hostages. We don’t know the full number of Palestinians held in administrative detention, but by the end of June 2024, the Israeli Prison Service said they had 3,340 Palestinians. Remember - held without charge or trial.

Indeed Israel is also guilty of the crime against humanity which is the mass forcible disappearance of civilians. Thousands are simply being disappeared without their families having any idea where they are. How are these not hostages?

Consider the conditions these Palestinian hostages are being subjected. Consider Sde Teiman, a prison camp with conditions which are gruesome beyond description. According to Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselemt:

“The testimonies reveal that Palestinians currently in Israeli prisons are being subjected to harsh arbitrary violence on a frequent basis, sexual assault, humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation, forced lack of hygiene, sleep deprivation, restriction and punishment of religious worship, confiscation of all group and personal belongings, and denial of adequate medical care.”

There are now overwhelming documented examples of rape and gang rape of Palestinian detainees. Take Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, one of Gaza’s most prominent doctors and the head of orthopaedics at the now destroyed al-Shifa hospital. According to Human Rights Watch, other detainees testified that three Israeli soldiers had taken it in turns to rape him with their M16 rifles. It is believed Dr. al-Bursh may have died because he was raped to death.

In another example, Israeli soldiers were filmed gang raping a detainee. Because Israel’s authorities feared further arrest warrants over torture and rape, there was a rare attempt to arrest the soldiers responsible, which triggered literal riots on the streets of Tel Aviv attended by Israeli ministers in support of the right to rape.

Little wonder that Gideon Levy, the courageous Israeli journalist, believes that Palestinians suffer much worse human conditions. We discussed this over a year ago - and since then things are much worse.

I would note the self-proclaimed Zionist Shiel Ben-Ephraim, who who originally tweeted in support of Israeli soldiers humiliating Palestinian detainees by parading them mostly naked in front of cameras, came to change his mind, last July saying he was “stupid and ashamed” for believing that reporting by the New York Times and CNN on the horrors inflicted on Palestinian detainee were all antisemitic lies. As he noted, not only were these detainees subjected to obscene torture: “Worst of all, many of the people in this facility were innocent. Rounded up by accident.”

Well, he continued to show his naivety there.

Now some will go - some of those detained are Palestinian militants. Yes, and there are Israeli soldiers amongst those taken on 7th October. In all of these cases, they should be treated as prisoners of war with all of the rights that entails. That hasn’t been the case.

What is ignored by our racist media is that Israel has kidnapped Palestinians en masse - indeed, on an industrial scale. It is important to condemn the taking of Israeli hostages - there is no defence, and they should always have been freed. If you are not a racist, and you believe that Palestinian civilians have equal worth to Israeli civilians, then you should support the freeing of the far greater numbers of Palestinian hostages, including children: indeed there are more Palestinian child hostages than the total number of Israeli hostages taken on 7th October. You should also note that the conditions endured by Palestinian hostages are overall much much worse, with far worse crimes we know about being identified.

All hostages should be released. The failure of the Western media to cover this accurately again drips of unapologetic, rampant anti-Palestinian racism, and it must be called out.

PS: I’m hiring a brilliant video and social media expert to do a big relaunch: revamping the YouTube channel, and crucially a huge expansion on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and so on. With the far right dramatically on the rise, the left fixing our social media strategy is crucial. You can support the expansion by becoming a subscriber.

You can see how we’re beginning to roll out new viral content, for example here and here.