if the PA didn't display 1000 times the racial hatred that Israel is accused of displaying, . . . and blah blah blah.
Couple things. First of all, I thought the PA was more or less blown up, at least in terms of all visible ministries and offices, in the April 2002 "terrorist infrastructure" thing. Then there are these peculiar statistics, previously noted in #reply-19446530 :
*During the first Intifada "the rate of incarceration in the territories [OT] was by far the highest known anywhere in the world: close to 1,000 prisoners per 100,000 population, or one prisoner for every 100 persons" (Middle East Watch, 1991.). One would be hard-pressed to find a Palestinian from the West Bank and Gaza who has not had a friend or relative in an Israeli prison at some point. By 1987, almost 20% of Palestinians in the Israeli occupied territories had been subjected to detention. (Lisa Hajjar, Authority, Resistance and the Law: A Study of the Israeli Military Court System in the Occupied Territories, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Sociology, The American University, 1995, p. 612.). The Israeli human rights organization, B'Tselem, estimates that 85% of all Palestinian prisoners and detainees were tortured during their incarceration. (B'Tselem, Routine Torture: Interrogation Methods of the General Security Service, B'Tselem, Jerusalem, 1998, p.8.). Interviews conducted between 1988 and May 1992 with more than 700 Palestinians indicate that at least 94% of those interrogated by the GSS were tortured. (Melissa Phillips, Torture for Security: The Systematic Torture and Ill-treatment of Palestinians in Israel. Al Haq Ramallah, West Bank,: 1995. ) (from dci-pal.org )
You may, of course, reply with the official Israeli government version of these numbers if you like. A philosophical question: Was the amount of "moderate physical pressure" used by the Israeli occupation forces over the past 36-odd years too little, or too much, in terms of generating Palestinian hatred? Or was it just the right amount? |
