You are dying of hunger and colitis in Megiddo Prison, where you’re held without charges or a trial. May your captor-starvers be damned
My brother Nidal,
On March 24 we learned with horror about the death of Waleed Ahmad of Silwad in a Megiddo Prison pen, where you are also held prisoner without charges or trial. Unlike you, he was young and healthy, an athlete. He was 17 when he died. You, on the other hand, have already gone through 55 years of your life, and even before you were taken, you couldn’t be described as being in the best of health.
Unlike many others before him, Waleed wasn’t beaten or tortured to death. He starved to death. Yes, just that. He was starved by his jailers until he ceased to live. The recently released prisoners say they received two spoons of lentils as their main meal of the day, and so Waleed died of the deliberate, planned famine that the Prison Service and the army are imposing on the prisons. He also died of the infectious colitis epidemic rampant in Megiddo, where no treatment is given to those who suffer from it.
Nidal, you’re totally cut off from the outside world and don’t know this, but Waleed was one of at least 79 prisoners who have been killed in the last year and a half in the lockups that Israel calls prisons. That is, 79 that we know of for sure. It is doubtful that we’ll ever know the actual number of all those who died there.
Nidal, my brother, my concern – which I share with all your relatives, friends and acquaintances – has grown immeasurably since that moment. As chance would have it, I know the doctor who took part in Waleed’s autopsy. He is shaken. I’ve never heard such shock in his voice, for he never witnessed such a severe case of starvation damaging the body like he observed on Waleed’s dead body. Never – except in medical literature describing the condition of concentration camp survivors.
Nidal, my brother, yesterday Riham visited you after we somehow received word that you had contracted scabies. But horrifically, scabies isn’t what’s eating up your body; rather, it’s the same colitis that killed Waleed. Nidal, forgive me my brother, but I don’t know what we can do to save your life.
When she came out of Megiddo, Riham called me in tears to relay what she saw. I didn’t cry, because I was on the other side of the line; because I wasn’t the one who saw your dying, fading form. And yet, here I am crying bitterly now through these words, a letter there’s no way to deliver to you.
Nidal, my brother, Riham says you’re not yourself. Before her stood a human skeleton whose skin hangs like a sack from his bones, whose eyes peek with difficulty from the crates that were once his eye sockets. Fifty kilograms you said you weigh. You said you suffer from terrible stomachaches that won’t stop and prevent you from sleeping, that you vomit and have diarrhea, and that you’ve lost consciousness twice.
Perhaps worse, you said you’re not receiving any treatment, and that not one or two but about half of your prison cellmates have colitis, and the skin of some of them is also rotting under scabies scabs. Nidal, my brother, may your captor-starvers be damned, and damned are we all now, because I don’t know how we can save you.