After long years of defending the Palestinian cause and the just rights of Palestinians Jewish lawyer and one of the first defenders and lawyers of Palestinian prisoners Felicia Langer passed away leaving behind for future generations memories and diaries of truthful stories in which she recounts what she has experienced of Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
Langer who died after a long battle with Israeli crimes at the age of 88 on June 22 2018 in Germany narrates in her memoirs her quarter-century-experience of defending the rights of the Palestinian people saying: “I suffer when I see Palestinian blood tarnishing my Israeli ID card as well as that of my people under false claims.”
Legal struggle
Langer migrated with her husband Metsio Langer a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps in the early 1950s to Israel to face Israeli injustice against the Palestinians which was renewed following the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 1967 after years of studying law.
Israelis called her “Israel’s public enemy number one” due to her role in fighting and struggling against Israeli violations against Palestinian prisoners.
As a result of her positions Langer took her decisive decision to leave Israel in 1990 to migrate and settle in Germany.
Painful separation
Sadness and pain of departure befell the human rights activist who won the Right Livelihood award known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ for her exemplary courage in her struggle for the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people.
The role of Langer and her interaction with the Palestinian cause and the peaceful and legal struggle of the Palestinians marked a major milestone because she is an Israeli whose Jewish parents survived the Nazi Holocaust.
Tirelessly Langer defended the arrest of Palestinians and the administrative detention orders against them as well as the torture of Palestinian prisoners challenging expulsion orders demolition of houses and confiscation of lands of Palestinian citizens. By doing so Langer expressed humanitarian positions in a battle that lasted for more than a quarter of a century.
Immortal diary
Langer born in Poland in 1930 earned her law degree from the Hebrew University in 1965 chose to be a legal advocate for Palestinian human rights against the repressive practices of the Israeli occupation.
In her memoirs entitled Anger and Hope: The March of the Palestinian People under Occupation the Jewish lawyer exposed the Israeli occupation and its crimes against Palestinian prisoners inspired by her experience in defending Palestinian prisoners.
In her book Langer documented her observations and memoirs before Israeli military courts where she spent 25 years defending Palestinian prisoners waging a legal and political war to refute injustice inflicted on prisoners in their cells.
‘Hajja Fola’
During the course of her struggle for human rights ‘Hajja Fola’ as Palestinian prisoners called her – has defended hundreds of them rejecting unfair Israeli judicial procedures and fighting against the Israeli army and intelligence.
Speaking of this she said: “I am with justice and against anyone who believes that the result of the Holocaust is hatred cruelty and insensitivity.”
After the 1967 Arab-Israeli war Langer founded a law firm in occupied Jerusalem through which she became a trusted authority to human rights institutions in the world documenting Israeli violations against Palestinians.
In 2017 she appealed to the international community to save the lives of Palestinian prisoners who engaged in a 47-day-long open-ended hunger strike saying: “I appeal to you not to remain silent on this ongoing repression otherwise you will be part of these crimes.”
Humanitarian model
Writer Nasri Haggaj said that Palestinians have lost a humanitarian model that is rarely found in the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Nasri who met with Langer at human rights seminars said that she refused to live in Israel and sympathized with the Palestinian people.
The head of the PA prisoners’ affairs authority Issa Qaraqi mourned Langer saying: “She has documented the facts about the Israeli occupation in her famous book in which she said: I saw the crimes and torture on the bodies of the detainees.”
He added “She saw how the (Israeli) occupation government violates international and humanitarian laws where no international law prevails in Israel’s prisons courts and interrogation cells and where systematic disregard for human justice is prevailing.”
Palestinian NGOs and official bodies mourned Felicia Langer for her role in defending the rights of the Palestinians and her struggle to confront Israeli injustice.
