The New Dark Age

A Palestinian woman who was detained by Israeli authorities while pregnant gave birth to a baby girl inside an Israeli dungeon on Monday.

The Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said that detainee Dana Joudeh, 35, from the town of Iraq al-Tayeh in Nablus Governorate, gave birth to her daughter inside Damon Prison.

It held the Israeli occupation authorities and their prison administration fully responsible for her life and the life of her newborn.

The Commission added that Joudeh, who spent six months in administrative detention, will be released on Tuesday following the end of her detention period and that she and her newborn will be transferred from the hospital to the checkpoint.

Joudeh, 35, was three months into her pregnancy when the Israelis detained her from her home in Nablus in April this year. She has been serving six months of administrative detention without charge or trial while pregnant and denied access to the medical care and nutrition that her condition demanded.

The Commission explained that detaining prisoner Joudeh while she was pregnant, placing her under administrative detention, and leaving her to face the conditions of pregnancy without any health or medical care constitute crimes in violation of international norms and laws.

It added that forcing the prisoner to give birth to her child inside the prison constitutes an even graver crime and a violation of all human values, stressing that the occupation authorities and their prison administration bear full responsibility for the circumstances surrounding her pregnancy and childbirth inside the prison.

Other pregnant women in detention

Joudeh wasn’t the only pregnant Palestinian in Israeli dungeons. Manar Ibrahim and Amina Shaher al-Tawil are two other pregnant women enduring Israeli barbarism in its Damon Prison.

Al-Tawil, 37, is a mother of four children, while Ibrahim, 28, is a mother of two.

Both women are more than eight months into their pregnancies and weeks away from giving birth. They were detained from their West Bank homes for “incitement” on social media. The Israelis have refused to release the women despite their conditions.

It is increasingly likely that Ibrahim and al-Tawil will also give birth in captivity.

Israeli crimes against women

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club revealed in June that Israeli authorities have detained more than 765 Palestinian women since the start of the Gaza genocide in October 2023, including girls, elderly women, and women from a wide range of social backgrounds and professions, among them students, lawyers, journalists, activists, teachers, homemakers, doctors, and wives, sisters, and mothers of prisoners and martyrs.

Some women were detained together with their husbands, thereby depriving their children of the presence of both parents. The vast majority of those detained were held either under administrative detention based on undisclosed “secret files” or on accusations of “incitement,” a charge that has increasingly served as a key pretext for repression since the genocide began.

Nearly a hundred Palestinian women are currently held in Israeli rape and torture dungeons and subjected to all kinds of horrific abuse.

‘Minimum of the minimum’: Ben-Gvir storms prison, taunts female Palestinian detainees over harsh conditions

Palestine Will Be Free

·

30 Aug

Read full story

Rabid Jewish supremacist Ben-Gvir, who is in charge of the prisons in the Jewish state, recently filmed himself barging into a women’s cell with his family and prison officials, taunting the detainees.

He took pride in their suffering and made them a promise: “I will continue to lead a policy of the minimum of the minimum!”

Above international law

In its statement announcing Joudeh’s delivery, the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs highlighted that the Israelis make no distinction between male and female detainees when inflicting abuse and torture upon them, and the treatment of Joudeh illustrates one aspect of Israeli barbarism towards Palestinians the Israelis detain.

It asked: “How can this organised terror continue unabated without the international community taking action? Will the occupation state remain above international laws and agreements?”