The Palestinians have begun a campaign to obtain the release of Walid Daqqa, who is surely one of the most sadistic of Palestinian murderers. The diplomatic campaign is based on the fact that Daqqa has cancer, and so it is claimed he should have some kind of compassionate release. Furthermore, the Palestinian and Arab media have been claiming that the Israelis are deliberately trying to kill Daqqa through “medical neglect.” But this is absurd. Daqqa has been getting first-rate medical care from Israeli doctors while in prison, and has just now been moved out of the prison to a hospital for even more advanced treatment. There is no need to release him; the medical care he is getting is the same any Israeli citizen would get, and far better than what Palestinians receive from their own doctors in Gaza and the West Bank.
More on this campaign to pressure Israel to release Daqqa can be found here: “Palestinians demanding the world pressure Israel to release a sadistic murderer from prison,” Elder of Ziyon, May 23, 2023:
The Palestinian ministry of foreign affairs has started a major diplomatic initiative to pressure Israel to release Walid Daqqa, a prisoner who has cancer….
The [sic] do not mention why he is in prison.
On August 6th, 1984, 19 year old soldier Moshe Tamam was hitchhiking home for a weekend leave to spend time with his family in Netanya. He first visited his girlfriend in Tiberias, and then took the bus towards Tel Aviv. At the Beit Leed Junction he got off and hitched a ride with four Israeli-Arabs from Baka El Garbiya….
For two days, Moshe Tamam was held in a house on the outskirts of Baka El Garbiya. When the terrorists realized that they could not get him across the border into Syria, they decided to kill him.
First they gouged out Moshe’s eyes, and then they mutilated him by cutting off parts of his body starting with his sexual organs. Finally, they shot him in the chest, and dumped his body in an olive grove near Jenin. Moshe’s mutilated body was discovered on August 10th. The DFLP immediately claimed responsibility for the heinous murder.
The Arabs. could, of course, have simply shot Moshe Tamam. But they wanted him to suffer the unbelievable pain of having both of his eyes gouged out while he was alive, and then, their bloodlust still not sated, to cut off his genitals. And then other parts of his body were also mutilated. What fun for the four Arabs! Think about that: what kind of person could do such things? What satanic cruelty did the leader of the group, Walid Daqqa, exhibit?
The “torture” in Israeli prisons consists in the fact that there is no torture. Worse than Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo because you suffer nothing physical, but only the “harder form of torture” that somehow – it isn’t explained – loosens your grip on reality. And then there is that “feeling of impotence and the loss of initiative.”
Considering the hideousness of his crime, Daqqa might well have been condemned to solitary confinement for the rest of his wretched life. Instead, Israeli prison authorities let him take courses online and earn two degrees. What torture! While in prison, Daqqa has both gotten married and studied towards his Master’s in political science. He’s published a number of studies and articles, as well as a book about his life in prison, A Parallel Time, which was adapted into a play by Bashar Murkus. He’s also written a Young Adult work of fiction that won an Arab award. The Palestinians always refer to Daqqa, most misleadingly, as a “Palestinian writer, activist, intellectual, and political prisoner.” He has been allowed to write propagandistic trash fit for Palestinian “young adults,” in prison. His “activism” consisted entirely of murdering, in the most barbarous and cruel fashion, a too-trusting IDF hitchhiker. He is no intellectual, if by that word we mean someone who thinks for a living. He’s certainly not a “political prisoner.” Natan Sharansky was a political prisoner. Alexey Navalny is a political prisoner. Walid Daqqa wasn’t jailed for his political activities. He was jailed because he gouged out the eyes of Moshe Tamam, and then cut off his genitals, while Tamam was still alive, until finally murdering him.
Daqqa will receive – maddeningly – the best treatment for his incurable cancer that Israeli doctors at the Assaf Harofen hospital can provide. And then he will be returned to prison. The Palestinians will continue their worldwide effort to pressure Israel to release Walid Daqqa, the “activist” and “political prisoner,” who does not in their eyes deserve to suffer the diabolical torture, as Daqqa himself puts it, of not being tortured. Just keep that absurd complaint in mind, and then recall what Walid Daqqa and his three friends so eagerly did to Moshe Tamam.