5 Rights Groups Urge Israel to Inoculate Palestinian Prisoners against COVID-19

Palestinian prisoners at Gilboa prison. (AFP file)
Palestinian prisoners at Gilboa prison. (AFP file)
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5 Rights Groups Urge Israel to Inoculate Palestinian Prisoners against COVID-19

Palestinian prisoners at Gilboa prison. (AFP file)
Palestinian prisoners at Gilboa prison. (AFP file)

Five human rights organizations in Israel submitted a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court to force Minister of Public Security Amir Ohana to vaccinate Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails against COVID-19.

The mover was made after he had decreed that the detainees would not receive the vaccine.

The joint petition was signed by the Adalah Legal Center, Association for Civil Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Center for the Defense of the Individual, and Rabbis for Human Rights.

The organizations demanded that the court order the Israel Prison Service (IPS) to inoculate all prisoners against COVID-19, especially those over the age of 60.

It demanded that the Prison Service prohibit opting to vaccinate Israeli detainees over Palestinian political prisoners.

The petition also included a medical report issued by the Association of Public Health Physicians of the Israeli Medical Association asserting that prisoners must be treated as a captive population.

“In the context of COVID-19, this is considered an at-risk population, both due to preexisting health issues and to the overcrowded conditions that increase the risk of infection and mortality.”

Ohana's decision against vaccinating Palestinian prisoners was also criticized by Israel’s attorney general Avichai Mandelblit, who said the minister does not have the authority to make such an order.

Ohana retorted, explaining that all the agencies that are part of the Ministry of Public Security fall under his jurisdiction and he will be held accountable before the public, stressing that he will not change his position.

Adalah described the decision as “racist”, saying it violates the basic and medical rights of prisoners and defies international laws and conventions, which Israel signed and is bound to implement.

The organization noted this was not the first time Israeli authorities have violated prisoner rights during the coronavirus outbreak.

In its letter to Ohana and IPS acting director Asher Vaknin, Adalah demanded that they revoke the decision to prevent Palestinian prisoners from being vaccinated.

Adalah stressed that the new orders violate Israeli Health Ministry instructions and professional medical ethics, which guarantee equal treatment for all.

It condemned the distinction between criminal prisoners and Palestinian prisoners, saying it is neither professional nor objective, especially that this is a dangerous virus and excluding prisoners violates the principle of equality and the right to life.



An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
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An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)

An Israeli airstrike that killed three journalists and wounded others in Lebanon last month was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime, an international human rights group said Monday.
The Oct. 25 airstrike killed three journalists as they slept at a guesthouse in southeast Lebanon in one of the deadliest attacks on the media since the Israel-Hezbollah war began 13 months ago.
Eleven other journalists have been killed and eight wounded since then, Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said.
More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, and women and children accounted for more than 900 of the dead, according to the Health Ministry. More than 1 million people have been displaced since Israeli ground troops invaded while Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel - and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes.
Human Rights Watch determined that Israeli forces carried out the Oct. 25 attack using an air-dropped bomb equipped with a US produced Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, guidance kit.
The group said the US government should suspend weapons transfers to Israel because of the military´s repeated "unlawful attacks on civilians, for which US officials may be complicit in war crimes."
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the report.
The Biden administration said in May that Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but that wartime conditions prevented US officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.
The journalists killed in the airstrike in the southeastern town of Hasbaya were camera operator Ghassan Najjar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida of the Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, and camera operator Wissam Qassim, who worked for Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV.
Human Rights Watch said a munition struck the single-story building and detonated upon hitting the floor.
"Israel’s use of US arms to unlawfully attack and kill journalists away from any military target is a terrible mark on the United States as well as Israel," said Richard Weir, the senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Weir added that "the Israeli military’s previous deadly attacks on journalists without any consequences give little hope for accountability in this or future violations against the media."
Human Rights Watch said that it found remnants at the site and reviewed photographs of pieces collected by the resort owner and determined that they were consistent with a JDAM guidance kit assembled and sold by the US company Boeing.

The JDAM is affixed to air-dropped bombs and allows them to be guided to a target by using satellite coordinates, making the weapon accurate to within several meters, the group said.
In November 2023, two journalists for Al-Mayadeen TV were killed in a drone strike at their reporting spot. A month earlier, Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and seriously wounded other journalists from France´s international news agency Agence France-Presse and Qatar´s Al-Jazeera TV on a hilltop not far from the Israeli border.