When Israel re-arrested Palestinian men in the occupied West Bank town of Dura, the detainees faced familiar treatment.
They were blindfolded, handcuffed, insulted and kept in inhumane conditions. More unusual was that each man had a number written on his forehead.
Osama Shaheen, who was released in August after 10 months of administrative detention, told Middle East Eye that soldiers brutally stormed his house, smashing his furniture.
“The soldiers turned us from names into numbers, and every detainee had a number that they used to provoke him during his arrest and call him by number instead of name. To them, we are just numbers.”
If my local police were bombing schools and hospitals, their writing numbers on people with sharpies might just get (rightfully) overlooked.
At the time maybe, but a lot of smaller details such as this will become much more important later on when the dust settles. So, why not write it up now so that ot can be revisited later on. It’s not as if there’s a limit to the number of acticles they can publish.