The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called on the Trump administration to address the latest reports of Israel’s torture of Palestinian prisoners.
Palestinian prisoners just released by Israel show visible signs of torture and say they endured repeated abuse. Almost 10,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons. Another 3,498 Palestinians, including children, are being held without charge or trial.
One released prisoner stated: “Every day, starting at 5 am, they would wake us up, and from 7 am until 11 pm, we were forced to stand without sitting or moving. Sometimes, they made us kneel for two or three hours straight. Anyone who moved was beaten. After that, they made us stand with our arms raised above our heads. If your arms dropped, they would beat you.
“Every week, they would assault us and beat us with metal rods. Our chests and backbones are broken. Our knees too. The situation was unbearable – complete humiliation. There was no sitting, no sleeping, no food – nothing.”
CAIR has repeatedly called for U.S and international action to stop Israel’s torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
Washington, D.C., based CAIR also called for the release of prominent Palestinian journalist Samer Khuwaira after he was taken from his West Bank home by Israeli forces.
Earlier this week, CAIR said U.S. media should show video of journalists being burned alive after an Israeli bombing of a media tent outside a hospital on Gaza.
In a statement, CAIR said:
“The Trump administration must stop spending American taxpayer dollars on the Israeli government’s torture camps. It’s bad enough that the far-right government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has been kidnapping and holding hundreds of Palestinian hostage. Starving, beating, and in several cases, killing them, is another level of criminality.
“For decades, the Israeli occupation as been granted impunity as it violates international law and violently imposes racist apartheid policies on the Palestinian people. U.S. support for these crimes must end and the Palestinian people must be allowed to live in freedom and dignity on their own land.”
Yesterday, CAIR said that a new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policy to screen social media for “antisemitic activity” to block immigration benefits amounts to ‘McCarthyism.”
Also yesterday, CAIR said a new Pew poll documenting a significant rise in negative views of the Israeli government among the American people shows the failure of unprecedented attempts to smear and censor critics of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
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CONTACT: CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, e-Mitchell@cair.com; CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw, 202-742-6448, rmccaw@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Manager Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, iallison@cair.com