Jews Say No: Not In Our Name!

The Salt Water Challenge

Today, there are 6300 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons; this number includes 300 children and 500 administrative detainees (those imprisoned without charge or trial).

Since April 17, Palestinian Prisoners Day, more than 1500 of these political prisoners have engaged in an open-ended hunger strike. Today is Day #37. These prisoners have refused to eat food, only consuming salt water to maintain their health, until the Israeli government meets their demands for basic human rights as stipulated by the Geneva Convention. Freedom and dignity are universal rights inherent in humanity – to be enjoyed by all human beings.

The demands of these hunger strikers include:

1. An end to administrative detention
2. An end to solitary confinement
3. An end to the denial of family visits
4. Access to proper medical care and treatment, and
5. The right to access distance higher education

On Monday, May 22,  Jews Say NO! and the Granny Peace Brigade stood in the rain at Broadway and 96th Street in NYC to join a growing, worldwide, social media campaign – #SaltWaterChallenge – to draw attention to the plight of Palestinian political prisoners. As supporters of these hunger-strikers, we drank salt water to stand in solidarity with those who refuse a life of humiliation.

Now, we challenge you to do the same.

Tags: Israel, Jews Say No, Palestine, prisoners, The Forward

This entry was posted on May 23, 2017 at 1:03 pm and is filed under articles, Events, Our Call, Published online, Solidarity Statements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.