Israel Detains 967 Arabs With No Trial. This Must Stop - Haaretz Editorial - Haaretz.com

Israel Detains 967 Arabs With No Trial. This Must Stop - Haaretz Editorial - Haaretz.com The HAARETZ editorial transmitted below shines a light on the Israeli practice of "administrative detention" of Palestinians. The editorial states: "Detention without charges or trial is an instrument used only by dictatorships." Fair enough, but, in this context, it may be worth noting that almost all of the roughly 780 unfortunates who have been held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, including many of the 31 who remain, have been detained without charges or trial. Finding international conventions according rights to prisoners of war inconvenient, the U.S. government created a new status previously unknown to international law -- "enemy combatants", to whom no rights whatsoever were accorded. Finding international law as a whole inconvenient, the U.S. government created the new and eminently vague and selective concept of a "rules-based international order". The "unbreakable bond" between Israel and the United States may indeed be based upon "shared values" -- just not the alleged values that they claim to hold dear.