Palestinian hunger strikers in the face of oblivion

Convenience and contempt continue to serve Israel well. As news resurfaces regarding the probability of force-feeding two prisoners who are on hunger strike in protest at their administrative detention with neither charge nor trial, it is clear that a degree of sensationalism and the cultivation of a public persona is necessary for their cases to be catapulted into the limelight. According to prisoners’ rights NGO Addameer, the hunger strikers in question — Anas Shadid and Ahmad Abu Farah — have been imprisoned without charge or access to the courts since August. Yesterday, Ma’an news agency reported that Israel has “threatened to force-feed the prisoners who have recently slipped into a coma.”

Objections raised by the Israeli Medical Association last September regarding force-feeding legislation were dismissed by Israel’s Supreme Court, which ruled that force-feeding hunger striking prisoners was constitutional. According to the court, a hunger striker “is not an ordinary patient but a person who knowingly and willingly places himself in a dangerous situation as a protest or a means of attaining a personal or public goal.” Following the example of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Supreme Court is twisting the narrative to allege the extraordinary situation of hunger strikers rather than the fact that colonial violence is forcing Palestinians to protest in extreme ways due to Israel’s incessant and extreme violations of their rights.

Ma’an has also reported that another 11 Palestinians have been served with administrative detention orders, in addition to the 25 such orders issued in the previous two weeks. It is most likely that more prisoners will now embark on hunger strikes to protest against Israel’s calculated use of indefinite imprisonment as a weapon, which has not been outlawed completely in international law. In this case, Israel is benefiting from both an omission by international legislation as well as its own inherent disregard for human rights which has now played into the hands of the Supreme Court by imposing absurd definitions upon hunger striking Palestinian prisoners.

Israel is aware of the collective defiance embodied by hunger strikers. The media is dismissing the effort, preferring instead to limit its coverage by choosing drama over perception and analysis, leading to the exploitation of Palestinian hunger strikers and committing an easily overlooked flaw. Instead of focusing upon separating the struggle, there should be more focus on how all hunger strikers are exposing Israel’s dependence on the extension of its colonial violence.

The Supreme Court’s ruling is one such example. By now, Israeli rhetoric about “security concerns” should have been rendered obsolete. Instead, it has become a focus even when unwarranted. As a result, hunger strikers are either celebrated or forgotten, resulting in a collective struggle that is still fighting against being confined to prison cells. Veering towards an awareness that practically every Palestinian family has experienced some form of incarceration by Israel ought to suffice as a preliminary step. What follows afterwards depends upon whether there is the disposition to embrace the collective struggle as one borne out of necessity, rather than limit such courage and determination to rhetoric and celebratory posters. The trend is to create a flawed spectrum with regard to Palestinian prisoners where they are perceived as celebrated and exploited media commodities, or else completely excluded from recognition.

It is perhaps time to evaluate whether the penchant for graphic images of severe pain experienced by hunger strikers is actually eclipsing the resistance of Palestinian prisoners. In the absence of the former, oblivion is swiftly making inroads to obscure the latter.

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