Many Britons no longer appreciate the uniqueness of Israel’s democracy

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Monday July 07, 2008 17:58 by TD - Free Palestine Campaign

After collecting his award in London, "on his return home to Gaza, he was seized by the Israelis, who demanded the prize money and tortured him".

John Pilger and the Democracy Now website are reporting that the youngest ever winner of the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, the 24 year old Palestinian journalist and photographer from Gaza, Mohammed Omer, was strip searched, beaten by 8 armed Shin Bet officials and hospitalized for a week after being detained at the Allenby Bridge crossing.

Mohammed

Mohammed whose citation reads: “Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. His homeland, Gaza, is surrounded, starved, attacked, forgotten. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless.” The eldest of eight children, Mohammed has seen most of his siblings killed or wounded or maimed. An Israeli bulldozer crushed his home while the family were inside, seriously injuring his mother. And yet, says a former Dutch ambassador, Jan Wijenberg, “he is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel.”

"I was now surrounded by eight Shin Bet officers, all armed. The man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: ‘Why are you treating me this way? I am human being’. He said, ‘This is nothing compared with what you will see now’. He took his gun out, pressing it to my head and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said, ‘Why are you bringing perfumes?’ I replied, ‘They are gifts for the people I love’. He said, ‘Oh, do you have love in your culture? As they ridiculed me, they took delight most in mocking letters I had received from readers in England. I had now been without food and water and the toilet for twelve hours, and having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror.”

Pilger reports that: "The Israeli line, as reported by Reuters, is familiar; it is that Mohammed was “suspected” of smuggling and “lost his balance” during a “fair” interrogation"

Democracy Now reports that "The Shin Bet security service issued a response saying Omer “received decent treatment and no extraordinary measures were taken against him.”
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/7/award_winning_pale..._omer

Meanwhile, the the new Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Proser was "was publicly complaining that many Britons no longer appreciated the uniqueness of Israel’s democracy" - as John Pilger ventures: "Perhaps they do now".

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