[The following article is extracted from the November 1999 issue of The Other Israel.]

'Khiam is a shame!'

Among the many email messages which arrive at the screen of a known-to-be peace activist the following call looked 'different.'
What do you know about El Khiam prison? Probably not much, if you rely on the Israeli press for information.

Every year, hundreds of Lebanese citizens are detained in this prison, under administrative arrest and without trial. Without any kind of legal supervision. It is probably the most demonic facility operated by the Israeli government. For years, it has been strictly closed to the press. Ex-detainees have reported torture in medieval dimensions, including electric shocks.

A recent arrest of Cosette Ibrahim, a 25-year old Lebanese journalist, has attracted the attention of human rights groups around the world to El Khiam. Cosette was accused of writing reports about South Lebanon, and transferring information to Hizbullah and the Lebanese army. The Lebanese claim that the Israeli army wanted her silenced because she wrote anti-Israeli articles about the situation in South Lebanon. Which version is true? Does it even matter when there is no trial?

We don't know about El Khiam because they don't want us to know.

It is our civil duty to DEMAND to know what our army is doing in our name.

-- We will protest against the fact that we don't know.

-- We will meet with people who DO know and get the information that we are denied about El Khiam.

-- We will demand the stop of dark, illegal activities that require a code of silence, more than a decade old.

It was at the initiative of two women, Yona Rochlin and Irith Katriel, who had been involved in the Withdrawal from Lebanon campaign and became sick and tired of only looking at what happens to "our" soldiers. They started to pick up information about what happens to the other side from international Human Rights groups. And when the imprisonment of 25-year old Lebanese journalist Cosette Ibrahim, had ignited more than average international attention, Rochlin and Katriel decided that now was the time. They decided to hold simultaneously with protests in the Lebanese capital Beirut on Sept. 27 a protest in Tel-Aviv opposite the Defence Ministry, and started mobilizing the Israeli peace camp which so far neglected what was going in the prisons of Israel's SLA mercenaries. Human Rights Advocate Allegra Pacheco had already taken some cases to court, but without a protest movement it didn't result in recognition of Israeli moral responsibility for what is happening out there.

Probably it was an advantage that two women could not easily be identified with a party or an organization. With enormous energy and skill they did it all: from contacting the press and different peace and human rights groups, to sitting phoning for days and inviting people personally for the demonstration, up to starting at once an active internet existence.

And to the first protest vigil came some 50 people, representing quite a variety of organizations. The press was there too. And there started to appear articles, in all Hebrew dailies. A bit later the television followed suit. Per email came the message that a warm response had been received from Lebanese Khiam Solidarity activists and that photographs of the Tel-Aviv action had appeared in Lebanese papers.

A second action was announced, for October 27, declared by Amnesty International a special day for worldwide protests about the Khiam Prison. And every day brought more news. A new appeal to the Supreme Court had been rather more successful, thanks to the spotlight and in the wake of the recent Supreme Court stance against torture. That verdict provided a precedent for the struggle against the daily routine of Khiam prison. Now, it was at least confirmed in an official affidavit of the Israeli military that there is -- though no direct involvement -- a certain amount of Israeli control over what goes on in Khiam Prison. The SLA's deputy commander was not happy -- the anti-war movement is already threatening his job; he complained in an interview on Israel-I TV (27.10) that 'Israeli democracy is the problem', but that in Khiam prison 'everything is fine.'

On October 27, more than a hundred people came, and one could see activists standing together who had for long hardly been on speaking terms -- belonging to different shades of left. Maybe that there was something very liberating in the courageous, direct appeal to morality -- rather an exception in the Israeli peace culture. It is more or less an unwritten law that protest action should be based on "the ultimate interest of Israeli society." And see, here are two women who dare to speak of shame and moral responsibility, without apology, no mention of obscure international conventions, just appealing to the hearts and minds. It was really doing something to the tenacious but tired peace fighters present.

Never before had I seen Asher Davidy, of the Hadash Communists -- originally immigrated from Latin America -- so eloquently using the megaphone, really making passersby stop to listen to his furious speech. And who did not happen to pass the spot, could hear him say it on late evening TV news: "Khiam, let's not call it prison -- it's much worse! It's a shame! It is like a concentration camp."[BZ]

Contact: Yona Rochlin, Bnei Tzion 60910; yona@netvision.net.il Irit: iritka@zahav.net.il; +972-4-8230329
 

P.S. As this goes into print (Nov. 8), came the news of 13 prisoners released from Khiam. Israel radio reported from Lebanese sources that the prisoners had from within the prison joined the protests of Oct. 27, with a hunger strike.