Senior PLO leader calls for violence: "Let every one of us look for a gun and bullets"
Senior PLO leader calls for violence:
"Enough, let every one of us look
for a gun and bullets"
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
PLO Director of the Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake called on Palestinians to prepare themselves for armed conflict against Israel, encouraging them three times in one article: "Look for a gun and bullets."
The article, which he published on the PLO's Commission of Prisoners' Affairs' website as well as in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds, accused Israel of deliberately trying to murder Palestinian prisoners and therefore "there is no need for journalism, media, analyses, and speculations... Break the pens, look for a gun and bullets. Do not look at your watches, the time is up."
Karake wrote this one day before the Palestinian prisoners ended their 40-day hunger strike, and he argued that Israel was not giving in to the hunger strikers demands so that the Palestinian prisoners would starve to death.
"They (i.e., the prisoners) are being murdered [by Israel] in silence, through an official and planned method. They are melting, bleeding, and dissipating. If one prisoner will fall, the entire world will fall. The world will die if a Palestinian prisoner will die...
Do not make us receive bodies from the occupation's prisons. There's nothing left to say, and there is no need for journalism, media, analyses, and speculations. ... The prisoners are currently struggling for their lives. Break the pens, look for a gun and bullets. Do not look at your watches, the time is up..."
[Website of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs, May 24, 2017
and Al-Quds, May 25, 2017]
Karake repeated the call to prepare for violence twice more in the article using the same words:"Enough, let every one of us look for a gun and bullets."
Earlier in the hunger strike, Karake "warned" Israel that if anything would happen to one of the prisoners, "all options [would] be open." [Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 18, 2017]
The terms "all options" and "all means" are often used by PA leaders to refer to violence and deadly terror against Israeli civilians.
An explicit terror threat was voiced by Fatah Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen on official PA radio, who said Israel treats Palestinian prisoners worse than the Nazis treated the Jews:
"There will be a violent response against the Israeli occupation if one of our heroes dies as a Martyr (Shahid) in prison... This is a fascist leadership that enjoys the suffering of the Palestinian people, attempts to imitate the Nazis in their behavior towards the Jews in World War II, and also sometimes surpasses [the Nazis'] behavior towards our people and our prisoners."
[The Voice of Palestine, official PA radio station, April 30, 2017]
Karake has often claimed that all the prisoners without exception are "not terrorists but freedom fighters." When he applauded Fatah's appointment of murderer Karim Younes as member of Fatah's Central Committee, claiming the appointment to be proof of the "fact" that Palestinian prisoners are not terrorists but in fact "freedom fighters":
"The Fatah Revolutionary Council made a decision to appoint prisoner Karim Younes (i.e., terrorist, murdered 1), the most veteran of the prisoners, as a member of the Fatah Movement Central Committee. I think that this is a very great and significant political response, [which says] that our prisoners are not terrorists and are not criminals. They are freedom prisoners and fighters who enjoy an important national, human, and legal status among their leadership and among their Palestinian people."
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, May 28, 2017]
Similarly Fatah's youth movement Shabiba called "to escalate the confrontation with the occupation as a sign of support for the prisoners' battle and their hunger strike. [Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 27, 2017]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous examples of PA leaders promoting violence and glorifying terrorists.
The following are longer excerpts from the articles mentioned above:
Excerpt of an op-ed by Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake
"After 39 days in which the prisoners are waging an unlimited hunger strike, and with the month of Ramadan (i.e., Muslim month of fasting) imminent, do not make us receive the bodies [of the prisoners] who are liable to die in the occupation's prisons...
They are being murdered in silence [by Israel], through an official and planned method. They are melting, bleeding, and dissipating. If one prisoner will fall, the entire world will fall. The world will die if a Palestinian prisoner will die. Everything will die, because nothing will remain of the great and sacred ideas - not democracy, nor human rights, speeches, slogans, freedoms, cultures, large and small summit conferences, justice, or law...
Do not make us receive bodies from the occupation's prisons. There's nothing left to say, and there is no need for journalism, media, analyses, and speculations. The prisoners are currently struggling for their lives. Break the pens, look for a gun and bullets. Do not look at your watches, the time is up...
Enough, we have received 10 Martyrs [from the prisons] (Shahids) since 2013, and we held the occupation responsible a thousand times and demanded to put it on trial, to demand an accounting from it, and to convict it over the crimes against humanity that it is committing in the prisons. [But] nothing has happened. The prisoners continue to come out of the prison gates inanimate and strangled. Enough, let every one of us look for a gun and bullets...
Now I curse my helplessness. We would need a permit from the Israeli Civil and Military Administration (sic., Israeli Civil Administration) in order to live and go from place to place. And if we defend our lives, we must pay them compensation and be dragged into their military courts for them to accuse us of whatever they want and declare that they have caught us, 'the terrorists.' Enough, let every one of us look for a gun and bullets...I have memorized well the prisons' anthem in Ashkelon Prison and Nafha Prison. Do not kill the words of [deceased Palestinian poet] Mu'in Bseiso in my mouth and heart, when we repeat together with him:
'Yes, we will not die, yes, we will live
Even if the chains eat our bones
And even if the whips of the tyrants tear us to pieces
And even if they burn our bodies
Yes, we will not die, but rather
We will uproot death from our land.'"
[Website of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs, May 24, 2017
and Al-Quds, May 25, 2017]
Headline: "Ramallah: Main events of support for the prisoners' battle"
"Director of [PLO] Commission of Prisoners and Released Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake warned the occupation's [Israeli] Prison Service not to oppress the hunger striking prisoners and treat them violently, and said that all options will be open if something bad happens to one of the prisoners.
He referred to the masses that went out [into the streets] of the homeland and the diaspora, and said: 'Our people wherever it is declares that the cause of freedom is holy to it and it is thirsty to be liberated of the occupation, and also that the occupation government will not achieve peace, security, and stability as long as it commits terror and organized crime against our people and its prisoners.'
He added: 'The Palestinian people declares its intifada against the worst occupation in modern history and supports its prisoners who are waging a battle for dignity through [a] hunger [strike] in the most difficult place of confrontation.' He called on the international community and the UN Security Council to stand by their legal and moral responsibility in light of what is happening to the prisoners in the occupation's prisons, to provide them with international protection, and to put the Israeli war criminals on trial for their ongoing crimes."
[Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 18, 2017]
Headline: "The Nablus branch's Shabiba called to escalate the confrontation with the occupation as a sign of support for our prisoners"
"After a meeting it held at Fatah's Nablus branch headquarters, Fatah's Shabiba [youth] movement at the Nablus branch called in a statement to escalate the confrontation with the occupation as a sign of support for the prisoners' battle and their hunger strike...
Shabiba published a statement in which it called on its members, its supporters, and our young people in the [Fatah] branches and in the branches of the various organizations to escalate the popular resistance (i.e., term that also refers to violence) against and the daily confrontation with the settlers and occupation soldiers as a sign of support for our brave prisoners' hunger strike that is entering its tenth day.
Fatah's Shabiba noted in its statement that escalating the popular resistance in Area C (i.e., regions of the West Bank under full Israeli administration according to the Oslo Accords) and direct confrontation with the occupation forces and the herds of its settlers has great significance now, in light of our brave prisoners' [hunger] strike entering its tenth day, and the escalation of the occupation's racist steps against them."
[Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 27, 2017]