Ayalon prison
by Nick Moss
What struck me most … was how seemingly highly cultured government officials and civil servants, when faced with extremities of conscience and courage, could impose extremities of harsh, brutalising control, because to show even the tiniest bit of human compassion would be seen as weak. The bodies and minds that were damaged were those of the prisoners; the spirit that was broken was the spirit of fairness, justice and humanity of those who wrote the policies and insisted on the regime. – Justice Albie Sachs, Constitutional Court Judge (Retd), South Africa, commenting on the 2020 report by the Independent Panel of Inquiry into the Circumstances of the H-Block and Armagh Prison Protests 1976-1981.
When states decide what aspects of state violence
They should conceal or can reveal,
They make their decisions as if high on ket,
In a mirror-world, where what’s general
Gets concealed, and what’s particular
Occurs in plain sight.
The planned and deliberate starvation of thousands
By a regime that describes Palestinians as human dogs,
And the random killshots aimed at the abject GHF crush
By bored, contemptuous reservists, are denied
With a smirk, if at all.
In Ayalon prison, though, there is
A secret underground wing, “Rakevet”
Where guards are known only by their numbers
And prisoners are exercised for one hour
In a concrete yard, with artificial light.
The yard walls are decorated with
Photographs of the destruction of Gaza
So you can walk anticlockwise
Round a panorama of mass slaughter.
The cells have no windows. No-one
Leaves the wing. When Itamar Ben-Gvir
Was asked about Rakevet, he said
I believe these scum should not
See the light of day.
Until they are sentenced to death
Their natural place is underground.
They will come in fat and leave here thin.
Much the same, then, as the black sites
Which ran as pleasure palaces for
CIA hyenas to indulge their hankering
For waterboarding, whipping,
Hosepipe-rape and stress positioning,
Or the Brits sanctioning torture
On internees in ’71 and after.
Hooding, beatings, white noise.
Batons, boots, mirror searches,
Crumlin Road. Long Kesh. Armagh.
Asking states if they routinely torture
Is like asking presidents about rich
Paedophiles. They all deny it
But you know the truth.
The project of genocide
Has no audience in mind.
Those it sickens cannot stop it
Those induced to fear are those who’ll die.
The interests of other states
Lie in “business as usual.”
In the secret jails
Obtains an irrational circularity.
The prisoners already know
The state’s project and resist it.
Brutalisation just confirms
The oppression they refuse.
Ben Gvir’s fear: We cannot
Allow the new Yahya Sinwar
To emerge from here.
There is a line that stretches from the Nakba
Through the intifadas to today.
Resist, regroup, then rise again.
Ben Gurion was wrong. (1)
The young will not forget.
Note
The old will die and the young will forget is a quote attributed to David Ben Gurion, First Prime Minister of Israel, 1948. (Arab News 25 April 2002). Asa Winstanley, editor of the Electronic Intifada, and author of Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2023).however, has stated that although the quote is likely an accurate summary of Ben Gurion’s hope re the Palestinian question, it is almost certainly not his wording.
