Amyra El Khalili: the story of Vladimir Herzog has been repeated for 76 years in Occupied Palestine

40 Years ago, Amyra El Khalili, and activist Carlos Seabra, among other comrades, founded the film club at the Union of Professional Journalists of the State of Sao Paulo, in this auditorium Vladimir Herzog.

We were young, we were refugees and children of arab and jewish refugees, palestinians and israelis. Young Brazilians and naturalized foreigners who believed in the power of words, images, art and journalism to combat inequalities, suffering and injustice.

Here, in this auditorium Vladimir Herzog, who once again welcomes us and whose name honors the journalist tortured and murdered by the Brazilian military regime during the dictatorship, we have carried out important actions that were part of the progressive history of this country in defense of human rights, environmental law and political rights.

Today we are here again, four decades later, in the auditorium Vladimir Herzog, in this act of relaunching the book “Genocide Isola Israel: Challenge is to Create the State of Palestine” by Nathaniel Braia and Nilson Araujo de Souza, in joint promotion of the Unions of Journalists and Writers of the State of Sao Paulo, with the participation of union leaders, representative entities, community leaders, religious, politics, journalists and activists.

We are here to record in history that we are not silent and that we do not neglect the facts, in this act for the ceasefire already and permanently in Gaza and for the end of the massacre of the Palestinian people.

The heinous practices of crimes against humanity, such as the torture that murdered journalist Vladimir Herzog, have been used by Zionists for 76 years to terrorize Palestinians. The mainstream press has repeatedly and vigorously pointed out that Hamas has kidnapped innocent civilians, but it does not tell the other side of that story. It does not account for why Hamas did so and does not clarify its objective of exchanging them safe and sound for the kidnapped and tortured Palestinian prisoners of war, and especially to rescue the lifeless bodies of those who have already been martyred, whose families have not yet been able to bury them worthily.

In Israeli prisons today there are more than 9,300 prisoners of war, not to mention those detained in Gaza, who are in their thousands and subject to the policy of enforced disappearance in the camps. More than 3,400 Palestinian prisoners are in administrative detention under the guise of the so-called “secret archive”, many of whom are women and children. According to specialized organizations, this number has never been reached in history.

To remind the world that the case of Palestinian prisoners has been going on for many decades since 1948. Despite this, the world continues to ignore them and the systematic torture to which they are subjected, which has intensified in a terrible way since the beginning of this genocide in October last year.

Israeli Prison Service authorities have committed horrific crimes against our prisoners and prisoners, violating all international charters in order to kill and dehumanize them, according to dozens of testimonies from legal teams and prisoners released after serving their sentences.

The families of Palestinian political prisoners, men and women, in the Israeli occupation prisons have called on the international community’s legal and humanitarian organizations and the International Red Cross to commit to fulfilling their legal and humanitarian responsibilities and to act urgently to protect their loved ones held in Israeli occupation prisons.

Administrative detention was first used in Palestine by the British colonial mandate and then adopted by the zionist regime. It is now routinely used to target Palestinians, especially community leaders, activists and influential people in their cities, camps and villages. Although, under international law, this type of detention without charge can only happen for “urgent security reasons”, Israel uses it as a routine method to suppress Palestinian society and activity.

Issued for up to six consecutive months, administrative detention orders are indefinitely renewable, and allow – Palestinians including – minor children to be spending years in prison without charge or trial under administrative detention. The – administrative detention as the entire – Israeli prison system is a colonial weapon aimed at targeting Palestinian resistance and isolating leaders from the struggle of the Palestinian people.

History repeats itself when we omit ourselves and neglect the pain of the other. Just as the family of Vladimir Herzog undertook his saga to prove the fate of his martyr, whose blood shed, like that of many others who fell, was the cost to the conquest of the Democratic State of Law, we Palestinians and Palestinians, make this call to the truth revealed through the lenses and cameras of our martyrs journalists and we call for the defense of journalists who have disappeared and been kidnapped by Zionist terror to be protected and immediately released.

Here in the auditorium Vladimir Herzog, with the right people, in the right place and at the right time, we once again write the history of this country in solidarity with our just Palestinian cause, which is the cause of human and environmental rights in memory of those who died in tortured prisons and those who suffered and still suffer the traumas and pains of injustices and cruelties to which no human being should ever submit.

Torture Never Again!
Torture Never Again!
Free Palestine, “from Rio to Mar”!

Amyra El Khalili
Women for Peace Movement in Palestine

Publisher: Alexandre Rocha