Israeli “prison was like an institute of education,” where prisoners had “an opportunity to acquire culture, to read, and to study many things,“ a Jordanian journalist admitted.
By: United with Israel Staff
Jordanian journalist Yousef Alawnah compared his incarceration in Israel for terrorism offenses to prisons in the Arab world and said that he was ashamed by the sharp contrast.
In an interview on the Saudi 24 TV earlier this month, Alawnah recounted that he had served 30 months in an Israeli prison for smuggling explosives, saying that that “prison was like an institute of education,” where prisoners had “an opportunity to acquire culture, to read, and to study many things,” according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
Alawnah wrote for the Kuwaiti press for many years and, according to media reports, he was deported in 2016 after criticizing Iraqi Shiite leader Ayatollah Al-Sistani.
He said that in the library of an Israeli prison there are 30,000-40,000 books, and asked “do the Sunni prisoners in Iraq have books to read? The prisoners held in the dungeons of the Syrian regime… Do you think that they have books?”
484 Palestinians Pursue Degrees While in Jail
According to data from 2017, 484 Palestinian terrorists incarcerated in Israeli prisons are studying for BA degrees in the Al-Quds Open University program in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Education, studying in three main departments: Arabic Language, Islamic Education, and Social Work.
The university was hoping to add a fourth prison and reach a total of 600 students.
All this is conducted in contradiction to Israeli law, which prohibits university programs for terrorists in prison, as they constitute a reward for terror.
In fact, the conditions in Israeli prisons are so good that anti-terrorism organizations are trying to fight them.
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), which monitors Palestinian incitement to terrorism, wrote in a report that terrorist prisoners with academic degrees supervise, test other terrorists, and grade them, while lawyers bring in study materials, and bring out grades to be recorded at the university.
The discussion about Israeli prison conditions becomes at times absurd. For example, Israeli Minister of Public Security and Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan recently ruled that Hamas terrorists in Israeli jails would not be permitted to watch the FIFA World Cup in June along with the other Palestinian convicts from the Islamic Jihad and Fatah sharing their detention facilities.
“I do not intend to allow Hamas terrorists to watch the World Cup while the bodies of our soldiers are held in Gaza together with our kidnapped civilians,” Erdan stated.
He was referring to Lt. Hadar Goldin and Sgt. Oron Shaul, who were killed in action during Operation Protective Edge in 2014 and whose bodies were abducted by Hamas, in addition to Avera Mangistu and Hisham al-Sayed, two men with mental health issues who wandered separately over the border into the Strip in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
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