Who is Ahmad?
A 20-years old Palestinian, who was arrested by the Israeli settlers when he was 13-years old in 2015. The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) accused him and his cousin, Hassan, of attempted murder of Israelis in East Jerusalem (Palestine). Although, there is no clear evidence that proves this allegation, apart from the fact that they were carrying knives.
(If the IOF sees any Palestinian carrying knife, stone, or anything that is “suspicious”, they will arrest, beat, or even kill him without any dialogue.)
Hassan was shot dead at the moment, while Ahmad was deliberately hit by an Israeli with a car, left to bleed on the ground, and simultaneously humiliated by the settlers who literally wanted then-13-years old to die.
The video from 2015 shows how cruel and disrespectful the Israeli settlers are:
He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, which was later reduced to 9.5 years. According to then-Israeli law, you couldn’t hold anyone below 14 criminally responsible. Therefore, they waited until Ahmad turned 14 to put him in prison. The law was changed in 2016, and now it is permissible “to imprison a minor convicted of serious crimes such as murder, attempted murder or manslaughter.”
Palestinian prisoners are not treated well in the prisons. They lack minimum standards of human dignity, which leads to frequent hunger strikes by the prisoners to improve their conditions. According to Defense for Children International - Palestine, 3 out of 4 Palestinian prisoners are treated horrendously and tortured from the moment they are arrested.
Ahmad was subjected to both physiological and psychological torture. He has been kept in solitary confinement for the past 4-5 months by the IOF which deteriorated his mental health. However, according to International Law, any solitary confinement longer than 15 days is torture. This is not only immoral but illegal.
“His mental health is deteriorating inside the prison. He keeps crying, he imagines things and situations that don’t exist, he mixes up his speech,” Manasra’s uncle said.
In December 2021, a doctor was allowed to visit Manasra, who issued a report which stated that he was suffering from schizophrenia.
Another video of Ahmad being mentally harassed by the Israeli interrogators aches my heart. The video:
How can do this to a child? This breaks my heart. As they say, evil doesn’t care who it is dealing with, the only thing it cares about is their ultimate agenda, which - for Israeli evil - is the continuous oppression of the Palestinians.
The story of putting Palestinian children in jail is generational.
Since 2000, the IOF has put 12,000 Palestinian children behind the bars, according to Addameer.
Most of them are charged with throwing stones at Israeli forces, which is a crime punishable up to 20 years in prison under the military law.
Noam Chomsky highlighted the irony really well:
Israel is the only country in the world that tries children in military courts.
In 2020, Save the Children surveyed 470 Palestinians to find out how Israelis treated them in prisons. Their findings are worrisome:
81% suffered physical breathing.
86% were subjected to strip searches.
89% were blindfolded or hooded during detention.
52% were threatened with harm to their families.
This is how they treat children. If this doesn’t make your blood boil, I don’t know what will.
Even if we agree that Ahmad did try to kill an Israeli policemen, I would still support him. Why? Because when an invader invades your country, murders people openly, deprive them of basic and birth-given human rights and freedoms, take away their homes, it is not only the right but duty of all the countrymen to defend their homeland and its people.
Their is a hope at the end of the tunnel for Ahmad as the Israeli judiciary dropped “terrorism” charges on the 21-years old in the court hearing yesterday ( April 13, 2022).
For now, we should continually highlight and make others aware of the way Israelis are violating human rights in Palestine because if we don’t, they will keep getting away with it.
My work is entirely supported by readers like you. If you want to support independent reporting, please SUBSCRIBE to the newsletter and be a part of The Great Awakening.