Lol, I suspect that the definition of “political prisoner” depends on whether or not the imprisoning authority happens to be Israel.
Maybe. I mean, the guy did kill for a political reason…it’s not like the soldier stole his girl or something. So, if you want to define it that way, he, and pretty much all terrorists are “political prisoners”. I think problem is that the term “political prisoner” tends to carry with it a connotation that the person was unjustly imprisoned, which in this guy’s case, I don’t think he was.
Well so did Charles Manson and he’s been in jail for a lot longer than Barghouti.
To me, “political prisoner” means that the individual is being held because of his views or because of anti-government activities which would otherwise be lawful.
Here in the U.S., blowing up something gets you the chair or life in prison. Israel is really quite easy on career criminals sometimes. For shame. :o
I sincerely mean it when I say I hope you never have to think about it and that your children will always be safe.
I assume he was on some kind of suicide watch. After all, he does Hamas no good dead, right? I do know that suicide is against Jewish law, but martyrdom is a mixed bag.
<shudder>
Was this gentleman a citizen of Israel? How could have ‘political prisoner’ status if he his to be a citizen of a future Palestinian state?
Don’t think so. “Political prisonner” doesn’t imply that there wasn’t a crime commited, only that the crime was politically motivated. For instance arrested members of the IRA in the UK or of the members of extreme left terrorist groups from the 70s in various European countries (Red Brigades in Italy, “Action Directe” in France, etc…) were commonly refered to as “political prisonners”, and relatively commonly had unoficially a different treatment in jail than ordinary criminals (physically set apart, more access to information, etc..), despite clearly having blood on their hands.
Of course, when people hear “political prisonner” they think of some brave advocate of freedom unjustly jailed by a backward dictator, but those words have been used (and I assume are still used) in a more general sense.
By the way, count me as another poster who opposes giving in the demands of hostage takers. Especially on such a scale!
Also, I dislike the “what if you were the mother of” questions. What if you were the mother of one of the Palestinian freed? What if you were the mother of a murdered child? What if you were the mother of the possibly innocent man in the death row? What if you were the hostage yourself? Yes, if you happen to be the mother of whoever is involved in whatever high risk situation, you’d be ready to give anything to get you child back to safety, regardless of the side you’d end up on whatever issue. It’s a pointless question that doesn’t prove anything. As a previous poster stated, if I were an hostage, I might beg for the release of 2000 child murderers just to be set free. Doesn’t make my opinion that such exchanges are a fool’s game any less valid.
But you can’t be a political prisoner if you’re not a member of that country! I mean, if I blew up shit in France, I wouldn’t be a political prisoner. And Hamas leaders are not political prisoners.
The problem is confusion between the terms “political prisioner” and “prisoner of concience”. Some people equate these two and some, such as AI, distinguish between 'em.
In the AI definition, "political prisoner’ is simply someone whose actions were motivated for a political purpose. They may of course still be a vicious criminal - robbing, raping or killing - but the motives of their crimes, if any, are political.
In contrast, a “prisoner of concience” is someone who has been imprisioned for non-violent expressions of their beliefs (exluding those who have conspired with a foreign country to overthrow their government).
The former may be quite justly rotting in jail (or may not be, depending of course on the facts); the latter are, by definition, not justly imprisioned.
The problems arise when the former is said but the latter is meant; the (wrong) impression is that anyone who is a “political prisioner” is, as such, unjustly imprisioned.
So of course you agree, then, that the Guiness Book of World Records was incorrect when it asserted that Bhargouti was the longest-running political prisoner?
After all, Charles Manson’s crimes were politically motivated (he wanted to start a race war) and he was arrested in 1969.
Possibly, but I have a feeling that’s not the real problem here. For example, consider Sundiata Acoli ne Clark Edward Squire. I found him with about 5 minutes of Googling.
He was a member of the Black Liberation Army who was convicted in 1974 of the murder of a policeman. According to his web site, he is still incarcerated.
Clearly he is just as much of a political prisoner as Barghouti. And yet Guinness apparently doesn’t care about him. Which leads me to suspect that the Guinness folks have the subconscious double-standard which is so common when the subject of Israel comes up.
So I wonder how many of the 1027 released were “prisoner of concience” and children?
Committing suicide to stop the escape of at least ten mass murderers? A hero.
I agree, but Israel would just fuck it up by trading five mass murderers for his corpse.
Andrew Sullivan has an interesting–perhaps paranoid?–take on the issue:
The full post is at http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/10/the-netanyahu-hamas-alliance.html
Anyone have thoughts on this? I enjoy reading Andrew Sullivan and generally agree with many of his points, but I find his take here to be shocking. It almost makes Netanyahu sound like a Palpatine-type of character.
Given that apparently the majority of Israelis agree with Netanahu, I think Hanlon’s Razor (“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”) applies. Netanyahu is probably just one of the 79%.
Sully is a bit of a nutjob.
He also knows very little about either the Middle East in general or Israel in particular.
He also has the zeal of a convert on countless issues.
On Israel, for example, he used to be a hard-core Zionist who had nothing but contempt, but recently converted to an ardent anti-Zionist who often flirted with soem rather odious anti-Semitic attitudes.
He usually simply trades one simplistic take on a particular issue for another.
Compare his writings on John McCain in 2005 to John McCain in 2009 or his rants about how liberals were quislings and traitors to America following 911 to how he now says almost the same about conservatives today.
And don’t get me started on how he promoted the Bell Curve.
Sorry. Suicide is what the other guys do.
I think with Netanyahu, it’s little more than, “Wow, this is popular and will make me look really good.” Bibi is neither particularly Machiavellian nor politically courageous. The man panders pretty shamelessly to public opinion, and this is what this is.
What terrorists do is bad because of their goals and their targets, not because they die in the process.
That’s your opinion. To Israelis, it’s all one and the same - we despise suicide bombers for the suicide as much as for the murders.