Comment: Wife of late Meir Kahane addresses hunger-striking grandson's administrative detention
"An administrative detention order deprives a person of his basic rights," Libby Kahane argues.
By LIBBY KAHANEMeir Ettinger attends a remand hearing at the Magistrate’s Court in Nazareth.(photo credit: AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS)
The imprisonment of my grandson Meir Ettinger brings back difficult memories for me. I don’t know how many people remember that my late husband Rabbi Meir Kahane, zt”l was jailed under those same despicable administrative detention orders in May 1980. An administrative detention order deprives a person of his basic rights. He can be held for six months without being charged or tried and the order can be renewed indefinitely. If there were any evidence that my grandson Meir committed a crime, he should be put on trial in open court. He has not been tried in court because he has not committed any crime. What he has done is not considered a crime in any democratic country. He expressed unpopular views in a blog he wrote on the Hebrew website “Hakol Hayehudi.” Simply put, the powers-that-be don’t like the way he thinks. When his case came to court for review after his first three months in prison, the judge ordered his imprisonment continued. The reason he gave was that Meir had not changed his views. The Honenu lawyer said, “If the judge wants him to change his opinions, he can send him to Korea, there they know how to make people change their opinions." The administrative order imprisoning Meir can be renewed by the simple signature of the Minister of Defense for another six months, and another and another – life imprisonment by installments.
Is Israel turning into a totalitarian state? What is happening to our beloved Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East? Please, Mr. Ya'alon, stop issuing these orders! With two weeks left of the six months decreed by Defense Minister Ya'alon, my grandson Meir began a hunger strike on Wednesday, January 20. I hope and pray it will succeed in touching the hearts of the powers that be, but what will it do to Meir’s health?