Israel getting away with abuses with complicity of US: Rights advocate

Press TV has interviewed Mary Hughes Thompson, human rights advocate and co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement from Los Angeles, on the Israeli regime’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners and Amnesty International’s reaction.

Following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: In the West, where you’re sitting, especially in the US, journalism is seen as almost a sacred thing, but then the West supports the likes of Israel, an important ally - they call it - but Israel of course has no respect for journalists such as Mohammed al- Qiq (Palestinian journalist imprisoned in an Israeli jail). Why is that, do you think?

Thompson: Israel has been getting away with these kinds of abuses for so many years with the complicity of the United States, and most of the world seems to have been … with what Americans wanted so long. But I think it’s just become so extreme and so outrageous that in the international community people are now more willing to speak out regardless of what the United States has to say.

And when they are arresting and incarcerating journalists, this is something that anyone in the world who could respect democracy should be outraged. It’s just totally unacceptable and it is becoming more and more routine. I believe there are, something like 19, Palestinian journalists right now in Israeli custody, none of whom have been charged with any kind of crime. Their only crime is that they’re reporting on what they witness in Palestine.

Press TV: Indeed, obviously they have not been charged with any crime on top of that now al-Qiq, we know, is being force-fed, which is a form of torture even what Amnesty International said and we can only imagine that’s quite a painful procedure to be going through. What are your feelings about that?

Thompson: Of course the force feeding is unacceptable. Israel has absolutely no respect for human rights of Palestinians or for international law as it has demonstrated over and over. And Israel seems to feel that it does not have to abide by the rules... And we have certainly encouraged that in the United States by continuing to support everything they’ve done and our media of course the mainstream media in the United States never tells the people what is really going on.

I do believe that if more people understood what was going on, there would be more outrage. I think that anyone would understand that it is certainly inappropriate to incarcerate journalists. And force feeding of course is something that has been done by the United States to prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. And amazingly, shockingly, there doesn’t seem to be enough outrage in the general public about that.

So, I think we’ve all been kind of dumbed-down to accept things that are unacceptable; that would have been considered unacceptable, in our country and everywhere not too long ago. We just seem to accept that these things are OK because everybody says it’s about security and because the United States continues to say Israel’s security is important to us. And so people just seem to be able to turn the other way and not even know what’s going on, not even think that it is as extreme as it is, and if they do realize it’s extreme, they can justify it for some reason.

I can only hope that with this kind of thing now being brought out by Amnesty International that more and more people will stop and look at the situation and understand that this is absolutely unacceptable and it must stop.

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