10,000 Detained Palestinians Every Month

10,000 Detained Palestinians Every Month

Alice Rothchild at Mondoweiss has a report which is so totally dishonest I wouldn't know where to start disproving it. Or rather, I could imagine how to do it but lack the time and the inclination; it's not as if anything I might say could change her mind.

There is however one little nugget that's worth recording, because it's part of a new trope we're going to be hearing a lot of.

Ala Joradat, the program manager of Adameer, a Palestinian human rights organization that focuses primarily on prisoners, legal aid, and monitoring, meets with our delegation and tries to unravel the complex civil and human rights issues that face Palestinians, particularly those who choose to protest the conditions of the Israeli occupation. He explains that the prisoners are both a product of the conflict and a cause for the conflict. Since 1967, 800,000 Palestinians have experienced detention, representing more than 53% of the population over 18. Because mostly Palestinian males are targeted for arrest, 60-70% of adult males have been to prison.

This is an interesting number, because back in September 2009, when the Goldstone Report trotted out the number of detained Palestinians, it was 750,000. I wrote about this in my analysis of the Goldstone Report, and explained why it was wrong. What we're now being requested to believe is that since late summer 2009, Israel has arrested an additional 50,000 Palestinians, or 10,000 each month, that's 333 daily, every day with no respite.

This is a flat lie. It's also so blatant as to be ridiculous, childish, even. What does it tell you about educated and seemingly intelligent adults who believe in and disseminate extravagant lies about Jews? Isn't there a name for them?

Just in case you wish to see some real numbers, B'Tselem has them.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations