Free Jamal Nisser, a 75-Year-Old Palestinian-American Imprisoned in Israel

By Jad K. Jadallah Tawil

Any government around the world must defend and secure the health, safety, and rights of any of its born or naturalized citizens, wherever these citizens are located in the world. This includes US citizens whose rights and dignity must be protected and secured, regardless of their ethnic, religious, or racial backgrounds.

Sadly, Palestinian-Americans who are traveling or residing in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, even those who are carrying an Israeli military occupation Identity Card, are being stripped from their human rights and are often mistreated by the Israeli occupation.

Those Palestinian-Americans who are deprived of their basic human rights by Israel are not given any legal protection by the US government, despite the fact that they have constitutional rights to receive protection in the US as well as overseas.

A striking example of this assertion is the ongoing mistreatment of Jamal Nisser, a Palestinian-American who has been detained and sentenced by Israel’s occupation authorities.

Nisser has been sentenced by an Israeli military court to 4 months in prison on charges of political activism. Though political activism is not and should never be considered illegal, no evidence of any direct violation was presented against Nisser.

Nisser is a 75-year-old retired Palestinian-American businessman from Youngstown, Ohio. He is also a civil rights advocate and a Palestinian rights activist who is currently residing in the city of Al-Bireh, in the occupied West Bank. Israeli forces arrested him from his house at dawn, on June 9.

Nisser is an ailing man, suffering from a chronic illness and vision problems. He has been a long-time civil rights activist in the US and also took part in several of Jessie Jackson’s political campaigns. The fact that the US government continues to neglect his case and Israel’s violations of his basic human rights and dignity is outrageous.

Please raise your voice and demand freedom for Jamal Nisser and insist that the US government must treat Palestinian-Americans with the same respect as all of its citizens anywhere in the world.

– Jad K.Jadallah Tawil is a Palestinian- American civil rights activist living in the West Bank, Founder and Board Director of the Palestinian Society For Bleeding Disorders Society, PSBD. His email is jkjtawil@yahoo.com. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.