Israhell detains American senior citizen for election activity

[yankeedoodle]

Elderly citizen
Meanwhile, a Palestinian American has been held in administrative detention by Israel for the past seven months.

Democracy for the Arab World Now, a US-based organization founded by the murdered writer Jamal Khashoggi, is calling for 76-year-old Jamal Niser's immediate release.

Niser was first detained in 2021 for four months without charge or trial because of his alleged involvement in Palestinian legislative elections, which were scheduled that year but never took place.

After his release in October 2021, Niser's congressional representative in the United States, Tim Ryan, even tried to intervene on his behalf and – through the State Department – got "assurances" from the Israeli government that he would be able to return to the United States.

But nothing came of that.

Israeli forces raided Niser's home in Ramallah in the middle of the night last August and detained him again, without charging him with a crime. His administrative detention order is set to expire on 22 April.

"At least 10 Israeli military legal officers have played direct roles in the arbitrary detention of Jamal Niser," DAWN said.

"The US and other responsible governments should impose sanctions on these individuals for their role in human rights abuses."

Following his migration to the United States in 1967, Niser established himself, built a family and became the owner of a number of grocery stores and gas stations, and got into real estate development.

Niser moved back to the occupied West Bank after the signing of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, where Israel enforced restrictions on him leaving the West Bank since 2011, with the exception of one trip to the United States in 2017.

"At the very least, the Biden Administration should work to free Jamal Niser with the same diplomatic might and influence as it wields on behalf of high-profile Americans, like Brittney Griner and Evan Gershkovich," Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, Director of Research for Israel-Palestine at DAWN, said.

Griner is an American professional basketball player who was arrested on drug smuggling charges in Russia last year. Gershkovich is an American journalist detained by Russian authorities on espionage charges.

Israel is currently holding around 4,900 Palestinians, more than 20 percent of them under administrative detention orders. The last time Israel was holding that many Palestinians without charge or trial was during the second intifada in 2003.

https://twitter.com/DCIPalestine/status/1647921637382037510?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1647921637382037510%7Ctwgr%5Ed9725844e2837fc097bba8c24f2172dfe5d61380%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Felectronicintifada.net%2Fblogs%2Ftamara-nassar%2Fwhy-israel-arbitrarily-detaining-us-senior-citizen

Around 150 Palestinian children are being detained by Israel, 11 of them without charge or trial.

The foregoing is excerpted from this larger article:
Why is Israel arbitrarily detaining a US senior citizen?
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/why-israel-arbitrarily-detaining-us-senior-citizen