Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Israel: thinking is a crime
Just the other day I warned that Israel's talk of releasing prisoners wouldn't necessarily come to fruition. Well, they haven't released anyone yet, but they've already changed their minds about some of them:
An Israeli ministerial committee met to scrutinize a list of 441 Palestinian inmates who have been held in Israeli prisons and approved the release of 432 of their number.And why did nine of them not make the "approved" list?
Eight of the nine prisoners whose release was rejected were found to have switched their allegiance from Abbas's Fatah faction to rival Islamist group Hamas.Note that these men weren't "caught in the act" of doing something. They aren't even accused of planning something. This "change of allegiance" occurred in jail, so it only involves thoughts which these men have allegedly had. Nevertheless, it's enough to keep them in jail. Which, chances are, is about as good a reason as Israel had for putting them there in the first place.
