Hamas: Ben Gvir’s Treatment of Prisoners Is Fascist Criminal Conduct Reflecting the Occupation’s Brutality and Degeneracy

Senior Hamas leader Abdul Rahman Shadid said that the deliberate publication by extremist Israeli government minister Itamar Ben Gvir of footage showing a Palestinian prisoner, his hands shackled, being forced under threat to paint the wall of his cell constitutes fascist criminal conduct that reflects the occupation’s brutality and degeneracy.

Shadid said: “What Ben Gvir is committing against prisoners inside the prisons is nothing but a desperate attempt to cover up the state of failure and political and military bankruptcy in which the entity is living,” stressing that the occupation’s systematic violations against male and female prisoners go beyond the bounds of terrorism and amount to fully constituted organized crimes under international law.

He added that Ben Gvir and his government’s flaunting of psychological and physical abuse against defenseless prisoners would only make the prisoners firmer and more steadfast, and would not succeed in breaking their will.

Shadid noted that the ongoing punitive practices against the prisoner movement, foremost among them systematic medical neglect and restrictions on basic rights, require a unified national stance and a popular uprising to support the prisoners in all arenas, in backing their steadfastness in the face of the machinery of oppression.

Shadid called on human rights and international institutions and UN bodies, foremost among them the International Committee of the Red Cross, to intervene urgently to stop these crimes and flagrant violations, to work to hold the occupation’s leaders accountable and try them before international courts for their crimes and ongoing violations, and to put an end to their terrorism against our prisoners, our land and our people.