Holocaust survivor marks 80th birthday with protest outside Israeli prison

A Holocaust survivor has chosen to mark her 80th birthday on Friday by bringing her friends together for a solidarity vigil outside an Israeli prison where hundreds of Palestinian inmates arrested after the 7 October attack are being held.

Prof Veronika Cohen, who was born in the Jewish ghetto of Budapest and was saved by what she has described as “a series of miracles”, turned her birthday into a protest in front of Neve Tirtza women’s prison in Ramla.

The protest was aimed at exposing the degrading treatment faced by Palestinian prisoners, as well as bringing attention to Israel’s systematic use of administrative detention – which allows for indefinite detention without charge or trial – during the Gaza war.

“At a time, particularly during this crucial moment, when you think there are no more hearts left to break, mine shattered upon learning about the deplorable conditions endured by Palestinian detainees,” said Cohen, a professor emeritus at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. “Furthermore, I made the decision to stand before this prison where Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian politician, has been unjustly imprisoned for over 10 months, without any trial received or specific criminal charge pressed against her.”

Jarrar, 61, a senior Palestinian feminist politician and a prominent figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a faction in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, was arrested by the Israeli army on 26 December, along with other activists of her leftist party, after troops stormed the West Bank city of Al-Bireh, near Ramallah, at dawn.

In June, Jarrar – who was elected in 2006 to the Palestinian assembly as a PFLP representative, and has long been an advocate of women’s rights – was ordered to serve another six months behind bars without charge or trial under administrative detention, one day before her previous detention order was due to expire.

“I think about her unbearable situation,” said Cohen, a co-founder of the Rapproachment Group for Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. “I can’t stop thinking of a woman in her 60s who has already suffered so much in life, and who finds herself in prison without ever being judged.

“A woman imprisoned under administrative detention that can continue for an indefinite time, that may not even have an end. A woman put in solitary confinement, without light, without windows … I thought I had to do something. I wanted to highlight her case, to set her free, or at least to improve her living conditions in prison.”

According to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, which has released a report alongside the organisations Adalah, HaMoked and Physicians for Human Rights, almost 10,000 Palestinians are held in Israeli detention, a 200% increase from recent years.

Among them are approximately 8,000 Palestinians classified as “security” detainees – citizens of Israel and residents of the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem, held either under military or criminal law. More than 30% of administrative detainees are held without charge or trial, in prison facilities managed by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS). According to the report, inmates are subjected to widespread physical and mental abuses.

“As of June 2024, at least 14 detainees have died in IPS custody since October 7, with forensic evidence suggesting that at least some of these deaths were connected to instances of severe violence by IPS officers,” the report says, while at least other 40 Palestinians have died in military camps.

On Wednesday, the Israeli supreme court rejected a request by civil society organisations to shut down the notorious Sde Teiman prison, which holds Palestinians from Gaza and where human rights violations have been reported, including inmates regularly being kept shackled to hospital beds, blindfolded and forced to wear nappies.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that “detainees are handcuffed according to their level of risk and their state of health”.

Cohen was one of the few Jewish children who survived the Holocaust in the Budapest ghetto. Nearly 80,000 Jews were killed in the Hungarian capital, shot on the banks of the Danube and then thrown into the water.

“I survived thanks to mother and my father, who had been deported to a labour camp,” said Cohen, who has also served on the committee for Israel’s national music curriculum. “He used to say that he would return because I was still alive, and that was the only reason keeping him alive – to reunite with his daughter.”

When Cohen arrived in Israel in 1979, she says she realised she had to fight against the occupation “as it was destroying us and the Palestinians”.

She said: “We cannot build a strong, democratic country without ending the occupation. So, much of my efforts were focused on fostering dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis. I have an optimistic belief that if we get to know each other, the destruction would stop.

“You can assume what I feel about the current government, which is not my government. That’s why, in these tragic times, I wanted to do something special for my birthday.”

She added: “My birthday is a special thanks for being alive, thanks to the creator, and the way I want to thank the creator is by doing something for one of his creatures.”

• This article was amended on 20 September 2024 to correct the spelling of Veronika Cohen’s first name.