Lying on a huge scale, with the problem being, people believe them.

...doesn’t quite add up to tens of thousands of arrests a year. Addameer is lying, and lying on a huge scale. It is simply making up these numbers out of thin air. The problem is, people believe them. Not only “people”, but putatively ‘credible’ British journalists.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
21 April '15..

An April 17th Daily Mail article about violence in the West Bank town of Bilin during demonstrations to mark Palestinian Prisoners Day focused on sensational photos of a five-year old Palestinian boy throwing stones at Israeli police during the demo, but also attempted to provide some context on the larger issue of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Prisoners Day is marked every year in solidarity with the more than 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails.

‘We will not leave our prisoners in jail alone,’ rally organiser Abdullah Abu Rahma said.

‘We will defend their right to be released, because the majority of them have been arrested illegally by Israeli forces.’

With Israel having arrested some 800,000 Palestinians in the occupied territories since 1967 – equivalent to 40 percent of the male population – almost every Palestinian family has been affected.

The Daily Mail’s completely unsubstantiated claim – parroted also in a December New York Times article – that 800,000 Palestinians have been arrested since 1967 (a number alternately placed at 750,000 or 900,000) is not new. Popular blogger Elder of Ziyon fisked the story back in 2009, and traces it back to Goldstone Commission testimony from the director of the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Such numbers would mean that there were, on the average, “over 23,000 new prisoners a year since 1967, or 500 a week”.

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