US complicit in Israel’s systematic human rights violations: Analyst

A UN official tells Press TV that the US is complicit in the Zionist regime’s war crimes and violations of human rights of the Palestinians.

The comments come as the Israeli medics have been condemned by a rights group for endangering the lives of Palestinian prisoners, especially those who are on hunger strike. “Medical ethics and human rights violations carried out by the IPS, specifically by prison medical practitioners… endangered the lives of prisoners and detainees on hunger strike,” the rights group said. According to Palestinian sources, over 4,500 Palestinian prisoners are held in Israeli prisons, many of them without charge or trial, and are subject to human rights violations such as the use of torture during interrogations.

Press TV has conducted an interview with Donna Nassor, the UN representative at the International Peace Research Association from New Jersey to shed more light on the topic of the program. What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Professor, I want to ask you, will Israel, do you believe, be held accountable at any point for the way it treats these Palestinian prisoners?

Nassor: Well, when you say at any point, I think that at some point yes, they will have to be held accountable.

For the time being, they are still engaging in this style of ethnic cleansing, which began in 1948 and now they have developed into many different styles including mistreating prisoners.

You know, the Israeli officials really have no interest in keeping prisoners alive. It is just one less Palestinian to have to deal with.

They are not viewed as human beings with families and friends and loved ones. I think that the word is starting to pay attention; unfortunately people are dying all of the time because of deliberate medical neglect.

For example in the case of Abu Hamdiya, aged 64, who died on April 2nd, which is causing the protest now; he was suffering from throat pain since August 2012.

He was diagnosed, five months later, with cancer in January of 2013.

He did not get to the hospital until very soon before he was ready to pass away.

It does not take five months for a diagnosis and so it is pretty clear that that is deliberate medical neglect.

Israelis are not being specific as to what if any treatment he received after the diagnosis or before.

The other death, Arafat Jaradat, 30-years-old, was tortured to death inside an Israeli detention facility.

Certainly when the torture was going on, there should have been some medic or medical treatment to alleviate whatever was happening to him.

He was a 30-year-old young man, who went in healthy and came out dead and left two small children and a young wife. So, you know, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is accomplished in many forms by Israel.

Will one day these war crimes be prosecuted in International Criminal Court? I sure hope so but right now it does not look like that that is going to happen.

Press TV: Well, Professor, we just have under a minute left and I want to ask you, you mentioned the world is now paying attention but most importantly is the United States paying attention, considering it holds much power in the likes of the UNSC, etc.

Nassor: Well, I think that Obama made it very clear, when he made his little visit to Israel and his few hours he spent in Ramallah, that at this point he has no intention of intervening in any meaningful way.

When I said that people are starting to pay attention, I think that more people in the United States are starting to pay attention, but does that translate to government action and real intervention, which could be very easy like withholding all the billions of dollars that the United States sends, of our tax dollars, to maintain and prop up this occupation and it is complicit in the war crimes.

You know, we can only hope that the people will begin to speak out and get our government to do what is right, because so far they have not done what is right.