It turned out to be a night when a big, burly policeman felt the pain in his heart when he listened to three Palestinian activists tells their story of misery at the Islamic Propagation International Centre this week.
Inspector Ally said that he was devastated when he heard their accounts of murder, mayhem, torture and imprisonment of children, the elderly, women and even the dead who are kept in prison in fridges. “There is a pain in my heart,” he said. What can we do to help the people of Palestine?” he asked with anguish.
He listened to the plight of Firhan Farrah whose 14-year-old son is serving a three-year sentence in jail because he was supposedly overhead saying “one day I will take revenge on Israel.”
“I am not the only mother who is suffering. We only want our children home and to have them do normal childish things. We want them to play with their toys, go to school and enjoy their youth,” she said.
Cartoonist, Osama Nazza said that he used his work as a weapon against the State of Israel whose cruelty amounts to crimes against humanity. He told of how bodies of prisoners were kept in fridges behind bars until the full sentence of an unjust court is completed. “It is horrific. Nowhere in the world do anyone do this to anybody. It is being done in Israel and it is perpetrated against the Palestinians. I have been arrested, imprisoned and persecuted, but I will continue with my work, regardless of the consequences,” he said.
Rula Timimi highlighted the atrocities which children, some as young as four being jailed because the Israelis regard them as enemies of their state. “They imprison our children far away from their homes making it very difficult for their parents to visit them. Traveling within the country is very difficult for the Palestinians because of so many restrictions,” she said.