Twitterstorms are back! Alaa Hammad, political prisoner in Israeli jail

Unfortunately, Twitterstorms for Palestinian political prisoners do not go out of fashion. The reason for this is that the racist Zionist state continues to violate the human rights of Palestinian political prisoners, even including those who do not fall under their false and illegitimate ‘jurisdiction’.

 

Campaigning is now on for Alaa Hammad, Palestinian Jerusalemite with a Jordanian citizenship, who on the day of this post enters his 168th day of hunger strike. In order to refresh your memory on what makes Twitterstorms effective, and enables us through harmonious coordinated action to get his name and cause trending on Twitter, here is a quick refresher course. Under the 10-point list of trending principles, we provide you with the background information needed on Hammad’s case, courtesy of the Global Campaign for Palestinian Political Prisoners.

 

NOTE: Twitterstorms take place at  9 pm Palestine time, 3 pm EST, 7 pm GMT, 10 pm Makkah & Amman time. – join the Global Campaign on Facebook to stay updated!

 

 

 

So, how do we make Twitterstorms effective? 10 tips that really make a difference

 

(if you have doubts that this tweeting strategy works, convince yourself in less than 20 seconds that it does, by watching how it worked for Samer Issawi)

 

1. Wait till the hashtag is revealed, and tweet the EXACT hashtag (use copy/paste to avoid mistakes).

2. Make ORIGINAL tweets with it – retweets are NOT counted for trending by Twitter.

3. What you tweet doesnt matter for trending. Add the hashtag to every tweet, even if u are responding to someone else about a totally different subject.

4. Encourage celebrity pro-Palestine tweeps with lots of followers to JOIN.

5. Send as many tweets in as short a time as possible. Tweet short messages with the hashtag, also for speeding up the tweeting process.

 

 

6. Be ON TIME !! We need that massive explosion of tweets with that hashtag !

7. If the hashtag hasn’t trended after an hour, you can still keep sending tweets for the hunger strikers, but it becomes highly unlikely that it will still be able to cause a trend.

8. Be sure to tweet articles about Alaa Hammad ! Open the article in a browser tab, and most websites have a tweet button. Just copy/paste the hashtag into the tweet. This works VERY fast.

9. Use ONLY ONE hashtag per tweet, or it doesn’t count towards trending. A tweet with 5 times the hashtag is useless, as is a tweet with any other hashtag added.

10. Tell all your friends to be there and JOIN !

 

NOTE: if you really did a GREAT job (which is sending an incredible number of tweets with that hashtag in a short time) you get what we call ‘Twitterjailed’. Although it disables you from sending tweets for a few hours, and you are thus unable to storm any longer, you should actually consider this a medal. This means you were one hell of a twitterstormer and you did your job for today!

 

Alaa Hammad – background information

 

Source: Global Campaign for Palestinian Political Prisoners – Iyad Al-Dababseh, the prisoners’ lawyer, confirmed that prisoner Hammad, who is currently in Soroka hospital, is suffering a serious deterioration in his health status as a result of continuing a hunger strike since 02/05/2013 (163 consecutive days of hunger strike).

 

Hammad is taking only water and vitamins, suffering severe weakness in his body and undergoes tight security procedures especially with regard to going to water cycle and when changing clothes. He is shackled both in his hands and feet while in his bed and also when he is being transferred from a place to another despite his deteriorating health.

 

Al-Dababseh has pointed out that the Jordanian Embassy didn’t intervene to rescue Hammad’s life and its officials didn’t visit to check on his health since he started his hunger strike 4 months ago.

 

Al -Dababseh has conveyed prisoner Hammad’s message in which he considered that the delay in the Jordanian embassy’s moves towards his case is like a death sentence for him because hunger strike for this long period will cause dire consequences. Al-Dababseh also confirmed that Hammad is determined to continue his hunger strike until the achievement of his demand to be released and relieved of one-third of his imprisonment period in accordance with the laws of the Israeli prisons, where he spent more than two-thirds of his sentence, or to be deported to Jordan to complete his sentence there. Al-Dababseh has said that there is a negotiation between the administration of prison and prisoner Hammad, but what is being offered by the prison administration does not meet his demands as the prison administration refused to pledge in a written statement to release him or deport him.

Hammad was born in Jerusalem city on 20/10/1978 and lived with his family in the Jordanian capital Amman as he holds the Jordanian citizenship. After his visit to Jerusalem in 2006, he was arrested there on 24/11/2006 and was accused of multiple charges that include thinking of kidnapping an Israeli soldier for the sake of a prisoner exchange, and contacting a hostile country which is Syria. Hammad was forced to acknowledge these charges because of the torture practices and threats against him.

 

Hammad was sentenced to 12 years in prisons where he was being moved from one prison to another. In the first six years of his arrest, he was deprived from any contact with his family except through mail letters, whereas his mother was allowed to visit him every six months because she carries a Jerusalemite identity. On the other hand, his sons were not allowed to visit him. He went through many hunger strikes in order to be allowed to contact his family.

In the 2nd of May, 2013 Alaa carried an open hunger strike along with four Jordanian prisoners under the name of “Al-Karama Martyrs’ Strike”, in order to demand the Jordanian government to move to release them or to be deported to Jordan to complete their sentences as well as revealing information of the missing Jordanians. Four of the hunger strikers ended their strike after more than 100 days of hunger and after serious deterioration in their health.

 

An agreement was reached in which their demands, guaranteeing their visit rights and improving their arrest conditions, were met. Prisoner Hammad insisted on continuing his hunger strike amid the ongoing negligence of his case by the Jordanian government. Alaa has married in 1998 and he has three boys and three daughters; Maryam (14 yrs), Maram (13 yrs), Rim (12 yrs), Yousef (10 yrs), Ibrahim (8 yrs) and Issa (7 yrs).