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Urgent: Zakaria Zubeidi needs your help!
by: The Freedom Theatre date: 2012-09-17
http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=285
see also
Zubeidi Resumes Death Fast as Detention Extended
http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=284
Zakaria Zubeidi and The Freedom Theatre urgently need your help.
Zakaria Zubeidi, co-founder of The Freedom Theatre, was today sentenced to another 19 days in Palestinian Authority prison. He has been held since May 13 and no charges or evidence of wrongdoing have been presented against him. Zakaria has resumed a full food and fluid strike and a doctor has told him that he will die within three days.
Continue to call the numbers in our previous Call for Action (http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=280 ) We know it’s difficult to get through, but don’t give up and remember that your call does make a difference!
Sign the Emergency Plea to Abbas by sending an email to friends@thefreedomtheatre.org
(http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=284)
Sign the Open Letter to Abbas by sending an email to joanna@tyabji.co.uk
(http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=282)
Send letters, make calls and visits to PA representatives in your country (http://embassy.goabroad.com/embassies-of/Palestine)
Send letters and make calls to your country representatives in the occupied Palestinian territories
Spread the word about Zakaria any way you can – share our press releases and facebook status updates (http://www.facebook.com/thefreedomtheatre), use twitter #Freezakaria, email, write articles or blog posts, anything you can think of.
Please do what you can and remember that Zakaria does not have much time!
Thank you for all your efforts,
The Freedom Theatre
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2 Al Jazeera
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Palestinian hunger strikers ‘close to death’
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/09/201291852648624510.html
see also
http://news.yahoo.com/palestinian-hunger-strikers-close-death-085143098.html
and
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/09/14/238031.html
Samer Barq, one of the three prisoners refusing food, has been moved to intensive care as his blood sugar level dipped.
One of three long-term Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli detention has been moved to a hospital intensive care unit suffering from a drop in blood sugar, a spokeswoman for the Ramallah-based Palestinian Prisoners Club has said.
Amani Sarahna said that Samer Barq, one of three prisoners on hunger strike for weeks to demand their release from detention, was placed in intensive care at Assaf Harofeh medical centre, in central Israel, early on Monday evening.
“It looks as if he is refusing to take liquids or vitamins,” she said, citing doctors who she said called his lawyers.
Barq began his initial hunger strike on the April 15, in conjunction with the mass hunger strike taken up by approximately 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails who were demanding better conditions, including an end to the arbitrary methods of administrative detention and long-term isolation.
According to Addameer, a Palestinian NGO working to support political prisoners in Israeli and Palestinian prisons, Barq ended his hunger strike with the other prisoners on May 14, but resumed on May 21 after Israel issued new administrative detention orders (roughly 120 days till now. D).
Sivan Weizman, Israel’s Prisons Service spokeswoman, said that Barq was moved from prison to the civilian hospital on Sunday but that she was not permitted to give details of a prisoner’s medical condition.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday that Barq and fellow hunger strikers Hassan Safadi and Ayman Sharawneh were close to death.
“These people are going to die unless the detaining authorities find a prompt solution,” the head of the ICRC delegation in Israel and the occupied territories, Juan Pedro Schaerer, said in a statement.
One of the terms of the accord was that those held without trial in administrative detention would go free at the end of their current terms, unless fresh evidence emerged against them.
Safadi went back on hunger strike after his detention order was renewed.
Addameer reported Safadi’s health has significantly worsened, and by September 10 he was unable to drink any water at all.
+++
3 Toronto Star
Friday September 14, 2012
Article of interest. Published in Canada’s largest circulation newspaper, The Toronto Star. [Of interest indeed! Thanks to Ed for forwarding. Dorothy]
Ed Corrigan
Canadian-Israeli woman in jail, accused of dodging draft
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1257261–canadian-israeli-woman-in-jail-accused-of-dodging-draft
by Carmelle Wolfson
Yana Gorelik
Courtesy of Gorelik family
Yana Gorelik, seen with her fiance Frederik Lillelund, is in jail in Israel. The Canadian-Israeli citizen is accused of deserting the Israeli army, but her family says after she moved to Canada, she was told she didn’t need to report for service.
When Yana Gorelik travelled to Israel on the Labour Day weekend, she planned to stay a week to attend her cousin’s wedding and visit with relatives.
Instead, she was arrested and has been held in an Israeli army prison for nearly two weeks without bail.
Israel is accusing Gorelik, a 30-year-old with dual Canadian-Israeli citizenship, of deserting the military after moving to Toronto with her family when she was 17.
All Israeli citizens are required to start mandatory service in the Israeli Defence Forces at 18. Women must serve for two years unless they receive an exemption. Deserters can be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
Gorelik’s family said she visited Israel in 2010 and 2011 without any problems, but upon arriving at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport with her fiancé on Sept. 2, Israeli authorities told her to report to the army base the next day to sign paperwork and settle her affairs with the army. Once she got to the base, she was arrested and brought to prison in central Israel.
Her court hearing has been postponed twice and is set to take place Thursday. Her family and lawyer attempted to get her released for a few days over the Rosh Hashanah holiday, which starts Sunday night, but the prison denied their request.
Gorelik moved to England last year with her fiancé, Frederik Lillelund, and he said she twice met with Israeli consulate officials in London — once to extend her Israeli passport, and again to obtain a new one.
“We were told that because of her age that the army wouldn’t be interested in her,” Lillelund said. She was also told that Israel would not issue her another passport if they expected her to serve in the army, he said.
Gorelik’s mother Marina, who lives with Gorelik’s father and sister in Richmond Hill, said the family left Israel at the onset of the Second Intifada in 2000 because she was worried about the conflict and couldn’t stand the hot weather. They submitted all the necessary paperwork at the time to make sure the whole family could leave the country, she said.
Leaving her 17-year-old daughter behind in Israel to serve in the military would have meant breaking up her family, she added.
“I love my kids and I do everything I can do,” she said.
The Israeli army claims that after she received her draft order when she was 17, Gorelik was legally obligated to report to the draft office.
“She left Israel without trying to initiate any process to get out of it,” said a spokesman for the Israeli Defence Forces, Eytan Buchman.
Gorelik’s family says she attempted to settle her affairs with the Israeli army in 2007, because she was thinking of going back to visit and she knew that all Israelis who don’t serve need to secure an exemption, even if they are just visiting. The Israeli Consulate in Toronto told her she would need to go through basic training to be released from service. She was paying off a loan at that time and couldn’t afford to make that long a trip, so she stayed in Canada, her mother says.
However, the Israeli army says there is information in its files that shows Gorelik did visit Israel that year, but couldn’t give any further details on it.
“When she tried to come back in 2007 she asked to make an exception, and she was told they’d allow her to come back as long as within 72 hours of coming to the country she would come to the draft office,” Buchman said. “When she came (in 2007), she never went to the draft office.”
Gorelik and her family disagree, saying her first visit to the country was in 2010 and that she was not told to report to the draft at that time, and that there was no indication then — or during her next visit in 2011 — that there were any problems.
“What does it give to Israel if she sits in prison?” Marina Gorelik said. “They’re trying to punish her as if she ran away from serving. Nobody knows what they want.”
Lillelund says his fiancé is “fragile” and has been shaken by the situation. He visited her twice when she was brought to court before he returned to London.
“She was upset and crying. She was stressed out and shaking,” he said. “I’m very worried about my Yana.”
Gorelik’s sister Ilona Gorelik is also anxious. “She says if she stays there any longer then she will go psychotic,” she said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said in an email that consular officials in Tel Aviv “are in contact with local authorities to gather additional information.”
Israeli newspaper Maariv reported on Friday that opposition lawmaker Zeev Bielski is urging Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak to intervene in Gorelik’s case and release her Sunday before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins. Once the holiday starts, offices will close for the week.
The Israeli Military Police began an operation in May to arrest thousands of army deserters and draft dodgers. There are currently other foreigners being held in Israeli prisons for dodging the draft, including a Swedish citizen.