Palestinians: The 'Political Detainees' No One Talks About

by Khaled Abu Toameh • January 23, 2019 at 5:00 am

Palestinians say that Shaheen and Fattash are among dozens of "political detainees" who are being held in Palestinian Authority (PA) prisons and detention centers in various parts of the West Bank. According to some human rights organizations, the Palestinians held in PA prisons are often subjected to various forms of torture.
In a letter to Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, a number of Palestinian human rights organizations recently demanded that the international agency speak out against the politically motivated arrests by the PA in the West Bank. It is highly unlikely, however, that the human rights organizations will receive any reply from the UN, whose various agencies continue to be obsessed only with Israel.
The UN does not seem to care about human rights violations committed by the PA against its own people. These are the type of stories that evidently do not interest either the UN or the international media because they lack an anti-Israel angle. The only "abuses" they see are those that can be blamed on Israel.
What is happening in the PA-controlled territories and prisons in the West Bank is a tiny taste of what life for the Palestinians would be like under a totalitarian regime that does not tolerate any form of criticism. In both the PA-controlled territories and Gaza, Palestinians must resort to the desperate measure of closing their mouths to food because they cannot open their mouths to demand decent treatment.

The Rome-based International Federation for Rights and Development last week condemned the Palestinian Authority for its crackdown on political opponents and said the detainees were being subjected to systematic physical and psychological torture in Palestinian prisons. (Image source: iStock. Image is illustrative and does not represent any person in the article.)

The mother and wife of a Palestinian man being held without trial in a Palestinian Authority (PA) prison in the West Bank have gone on hunger strike as part of a campaign to secure his release. Four days after they began their hunger strike, the two women were rushed to hospital for medical treatment. The women say they will not end their hunger strike unless the PA releases Abdel Rahman Shaheen, who was detained in early January.

The mother of another Palestinian being held in PA prison, Murad Fattash, has also gone on a hunger strike to protest the continued incarceration of her son, who was also detained by the PA in early January.

Palestinians say that Shaheen and Fattash are among dozens of "political detainees" who are being held in PA prisons and detention centers in various parts of the West Bank.

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Turkey: The Price of Dissent

by Uzay Bulut • January 23, 2019 at 4:00 am

"This is how jihad is being taught at schools." — Title of the OdaTV article that sparked threat of massacre.
"We are a news website that draws attention to the new [Islamic] organizations whose members are being staffed in state institutions... We remind that illegal structures are once again being formed within the state... Why do the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Justice, and the Directorate of Religious Affairs stay silent?" — Barış Pehlivan, the editor-in-chief of the threatened OdaTV.
"The point is not that these things are written in Islamic scripture, but that people still live by them." — Bruce Bawer, author.
Although OdaTV has not denounced or criticized Islam, it does oppose the indoctrination of school children with violent jihad. Apparently even this was sufficient cause for the Turkish mufti to threaten the outlet's journalists with death.

A mufti who works for Turkey's state religious authority, the Diyanet, recently insinuated that a massacre of the employees of the opposition news site OdaTV would be justified. Pictured: Barış Pehlivan, the editor-in-chief of OdaTV. (Image source: Jimkuras/Wikimedia Commons)

A mufti who works for Turkey's state religious authority, the Diyanet, recently insinuated that a massacre of the employees of the opposition news site OdaTV -- along the lines of the 2015 slaughter of the staff of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo -- would be justified.

Ahmet Altıok, mufti of the Siirt Province, made this veiled threat of mass murder in an interview with the İLKHA news agency. ILKHA has ties to Turkey's Hizbullah ("party of Allah" in Arabic; not connected to Hezbollah in Lebanon), a Sunni terrorist organization responsible for many horrific murders in the country.

In his interview, Altıok said, in part:

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