The death in custody of Walid Daqqa, a 62-year-old Palestinian writer who was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails after 38 years of imprisonment, is a cruel reminder of Israel’s disregard for Palestinians’ right to life ⬇️https://t.co/hSz0gdZgVj
— Amnesty International (@amnesty) April 8, 2024
The above tweet from Amnesty International is still up. In case it disappears, here is the text:
Amnesty International
@amnesty
The death in custody of Walid Daqqa, a 62-year-old Palestinian writer who was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails after 38 years of imprisonment, is a cruel reminder of Israel’s disregard for Palestinians’ right to lifeFrom amnesty.org
Last edited
6:39 PM · Apr 8, 2024
The tweet calls Walid Daqqa “a Palestinian writer”, as if he had been imprisoned for his writings – as if he were the sort of prisoner of conscience on whose behalf I used to write letters on that special blue Air Mail paper, back when I was a member of Amnesty International.
To be fair, although you would never guess it from their tweet, the linked article by Amnesty does make perfunctory mention of the non-literary crime that caused Walid Daqqa to be put in prison:
On 25 March 1986, Israeli forces arrested Walid Daqqah, then 24, a Palestinian citizen of Israel. In March 1987, an Israeli military court sentenced him to life imprisonment after convicting him of commanding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)-affiliated group that had abducted and killed Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam in 1984.
Perhaps concerned about her wordcount, Amnesty’s writer, Erika Guevara-Rosas, did not say much about Moshe Tamam. She cited Walid Daqqa’s youthful age at the time, 24, but did not see fit to say that his victim Moshe Tamam was just 19. And she skips over some relevant details in that brief word “killed”. Daqqa and his PFLP comrades did not just kill Moshe Tamam, they tortured him to death. They gouged out his eyes and castrated him. Then they murdered him.
But Ms Guevara-Rosas found space in her article to write most eloquently about Walid Daqqa:
During his time in prison, Walid Daqqah wrote extensively about the Palestinian lived experience in Israeli prisons. He acted as a mentor and educator for generations of young Palestinian prisoners, including children. His writings, which included letters, essays, a celebrated play and a novel for young adults, were an act of resistance against the dehumanization of Palestinian prisoners. “Love is my modest and only victory against my jailer,” he once wrote.
Walid Daqqah’s writings behind bars are a testament to a spirit never broken by decades of incarceration and oppression.
Kind of like Nelson Mandela was a mere political prisoner and forgetting to mention the terrorism he was part of.
That’s what Palestinian writers do!
Some ‘disregard for Palestinian life’ – they kept this worthless creature alive for far longer than I would have.
There are some institutions I respected in my youth (decades ago) for they did worthy work. There are some institutions that have become politicised and the main work they do is just politics and so partisan and less worthy. In my opinion Amnesty International no longer merits my respect. Oxfam is another. Several American institutions have veered away from support for free speech and so on.
My ‘solution’ is not to support them and to press for them to lose their charitable status.
“lived experience” – and the rest of the “Woke” Critical Theory (Frankfurt School) Marxist language.
It is was one of the ironies of history that the Frankfurt School of Marxism (whose doctrines now dominate “Amnesty International”, which now seeks the extermination of the Jewish people as capitalist “exploiters and oppressors” was founded by people from once Jewish families.
But then the same was true of Dr Karl Marx (1818-1883) himself – the man who wrote “What is the religion of the Jew? Hucksterism! What is the God of the Jew? Money!” was from a once Jewish family.
By the way – the universities that the Biden/Harris regime wish to bail out by “forgiving” 400 Billion (400 Billion) Dollars in student loans (whilst carrying on giving “loans” that will never be repaired) are the source of the spread of this Marxist poison in society.
Remember the first Men in Black movie where the evil cockroach alien kills the farmer “Egger” and then wears his body as a disguise? That’s what the left does with “once respected” organizations like Amnesty International.
Nobody is forgiving anything. It’s paying off banks with your money. If they called it what it really is it would never happen.
Paul,
“lived experience”, what experience is there that one hasn’t lived? Are they worried we might think they are referring to experience derived from channeling the spirit world?
I remember ‘way back, when Amnesty International used to condemn people who would torture and murder people, rather than supporting them.
Pournelle’s “Iron Law of Bureaucracy” has overtaken them.
No, Amnesty International was always evil. Even “back in the day”, all they were doing was just masking, meant to fool the rubes into supporting them. Once they got enough money and public support, they unmasked.
Had a chat with some of these sanctimonious pricks back during the 1980s, and they made it very clear where their sympathies lay. It was just that they couldn’t yet let their freak flags fly. Now that they can? They’ve self-identified for the masses, but because they’ve got that long tail of reputation behind them… Here we are. They’re “credible” to all too many.
Same thing with a lot of the international NGO types. I’ve got very little respect for any of them, based on what I’ve seen of them in action. They’re actively on “the other side” of civilization, and make no bones about it. Observe their actions, who they support. Were there any Amnesty International types demanding to see Israeli hostages from the October 7th terrorist action…? Ever seen them go in and demand to see any of the Ukrainian prisoners from Mariupol?
Most of these NGO organizations had their start as fronts for the KGB and GRU. Do note who they highlight, what they highlight, and how rarely they call out their former handlers. Was Amnesty ever engaged in trying to free Yazidi sex slaves, from ISIS? Have they done anything at all about what’s going on in Syria, with the Russians blasting anyone that’s against the regime? Nope; they’re compromised and always have been. Their “acceptable” positions of days gone by? Protective coloration, all part of the fraud. Same with the various climate organizations; you never see them protesting Chinese or Russian fossil fuel development or exports, now do you? China is building how many coal-fired energy plants, again…? Do you see our pet freak Greta chaining herself to Chinese embassies, or is it solely Western energy companies she calls out…?
Pay attention to that which underlies it all, and much becomes clear.
All ‘human rights’ organisations are left-wing by default, as the whole concept of ‘human rights’ (as opposed to particularist historical rights) is a leftist ideology.
Amnesty’s favorite jailhouse author used his time behind bars to write Mein Kampf.
Anything from any of the international NGOs is nonsense on stilts. I feel sorry for all the young’uns who work collecting money for their leaders lavish lifestyles. Sorta sorry – if you are that oblivious to what is really going on you’re lucky to be getting minimum wage.
Beyond the outrageous propaganda, there is the unreality of complaining about *Israel’s* “disregard for the right to life” pegged to the news that a repugnant racist-torture-murderer, died *of old age* in an Israeli jail, rather than 38 years ago from a firing squad.
Which side is it that doesn’t respect the other’s “right to life” here, Terror—err, Amnesty International?
Swap the identities around and this guy would have been torn apart—literally—by an angry mob by an angry yet estatic mob about 5 minutes after he was caught. Instead Israel took away his freedom, but not his life, despite the horrible things he did. Hard to exhibit much more respect for life than that. In many other countries, including Muslim ones, those sadistic, murderers who escape mob justice are nevertheless quickly put to death by the state.
Without getting into an argument about the death penalty, I think statistics indicate that a sizable majority of countries and individuals believe communities are justified in expediting murderers of Daqqar’s ilk to death. But Israel didn’t.
I mean, it’s hard to imagine a society less deserving of sympathy on the topic of “right to life” than the Arabs living in what was once this colonial bit of the Ottoman Empire, which itself violently stole land from Christian and Jew alike. This is the lot who raise their children to kill Jews, with children’s shows denigrating Jews and their “right to life”. The same lot who has a fat payroll—picked up by Western suckers—maintaining the families of suicide bombers, whom they glorify as most high (they even have a reverent name for them: shaheed), in the trans-Jordanian equivalent of high trim. The ones who want to push all the Jews into the sea, and think the Holocaust was both made-up Jew propaganda and also the swellest thing that ever happened. The same lovelies who both common sense and opinion polls indicate would kill as many Jews as possible if given half a chance. The same society where the second most popular job is ‘human shield’..
But perhaps that’s Amnesty’s point: look at just how deranged we’ve become, and disconnected from our proper focus. We’re hanging it all out for race-torture-murder., so, you know, we’re serious about right to life.
Of course, the problem with that theory is that judging by the other actions, Amnesty Intl doesn’t give a dang about right to life in general. They love Planned Parebthood in the USA, which is like Hitler to unborn babies (oh, I keed, I keed). They also seem only to get aroused by certain groups and ethnicities: with groovy positive vibes for “POC” and missing-universe-sized quantities of negative energy for white males.
All of which is a very much too lengthy way of saying that AI is indistinguishable from every other insipid, woke, cookie-cutter identi-kit Lefty lousing up the interwebs, causing traffic jams, and chucking paint on art. The whole lot of them should just walk around saying “ditto”—as in Barack Obama, ditto. Justin Castr—er, I mean Trudeau, ditto. And all the recently expired sell-by/retired Lefty potentates we rightfully scorn, like Mutti, Ardern, Sturgeon, Corbyn, etc, and all their adequately inadequate replacements that we will in time grow to hate as well: ditto infinity!
And all the recently expired sell-by/retired Lefty potentates we rightfully scorn
Except in our case he is manoeuvred back into unelected office to ponce round the works lapping up the undeserved attention while saying and doing everything in his power to make an even bigger balls up of Israel than he did in Libya. All the while hoping to be finally rewarded for his treachery against an ally with the millions he was previously denied when Greensill went tits up.
“I sneeze in threes”.
By talking about “lived experience” they are saying that reason (rationality) does not matter – or is evil “whiteness” i.e. the belief that there are universal truths of logic not dependent on race, sex, social class or historical period. Instead reasoning is supposed to be relative to what group one is in – both the Nazis (with their contempt for “Jewish logic”) and the Marxists (with their contempt for “capitalist” logic) agreed on this “polylogism” as Ludwig Von Mises put it (this is idea that there is no such thing as objective truth and objective reasoning)
For example, if someone says that burning down areas of American cities and driving out merchants with endless theft and other crime will make the population of these areas poorer – the response is “RACIST – you have no lived experience of being one of these people”.
So, for example, if I have not personally stuck my hand in a fire and watched it burn, I can not know that sticking my hand in a fire will burn me – as I have no “lived experience”.
Or that I can not know that price controls produce shortages, rent control and other regulations cause homelessness over time, interventions in the labour market cause unemployment, and-so-on.
Amnesty International lost the plot 15 years ago over their spat with Gita Sahgal, and sided with the pro-Taliban brigade against the women’s rights division, I doubt very much Walid Daqqa’s ideology differs much from ISIS or the Taliban, so it appears their love affair with the misogynist jihadis is yet to run its course.
Amnesty International have been repugnant for a long time.
It is worse than nonsense, they defend the enemy.
“retired Lefty potentates we rightfully scorn, like Mutti, Ardern, Sturgeon, Corbyn”
While he was (and is) bat sh*t insane, I don’t put Corbyn in the same category as the others. He didn’t (to me) appear to be part of the WEF Globalist cabal. He shared many of their ideas, but they never supported him to the same degree they did with the other mentioned 3, who all attained power. I got the feeling they considered he wasn’t ‘one of them’ so they didn’t trust him, and thus were prepared to let him fail. Better to have a bland loyalist who will toe the line 100% than an independent maverick who shares some (even many) of your ideals, but may go off piste at some point. That would never do.
As David Burge said:
1) Identify a respected institution.
2) kill it.
3) gut it.
4) wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
Amnesty International is a zombie abomination.