They stand, just barely, on the lowest rung of that metaphorical ladder, ranking the dregs of the Israeli prison system. They are far beneath the security detainees held in Prison Service facilities. They are even below refugees from Darfur and Eritrea, who came here seeking employment and asylum, but who ended up in jails and detention camps instead. I’m talking about the 62 Egyptian prisoners being held in Israel. No one wants them. No one even asks about them. Almost no one seems to care about their well-being.
This week, one of them, Mohamed Aida, had his lawyer relay a letter to Doctors for Human Rights in Egypt. He hoped that this letter would somehow find its way to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi. It did make its way to Al-Monitor. In it, Aida writes: “The Egyptian government has forgotten about us. It disregards our very existence, so we are launching a hunger strike.”
