Abuse of Prisoners Is Intolerable, Whether in Palestine or Northern Ireland
This article was originally published on May 23, 2017 in the Huffington Post.
In my final year of high school in the spring of 1981, headlines in North America chronicled the long decline of Irish Republican hunger striker, Bobby Sands. It was my first introduction to “The Troubles” of Northern Ireland, but I came through that period with a better understanding of the two sides of that conflict.
While many Canadians might not realize it, there is a hunger strike going on today that is just as significant as that of Bobby Sands and the other Irish Republicans in 1981. Led by Marwan Barghouti, hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails are five weeks into a hunger strike. Yet because North American media are ignoring the strike, Canadians are hardly wiser to the plight of the Palestinian prisoners. Unfortunately, any time Israel is involved, it is nearly impossible to get North Americans to address the realities of the situation.
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