Palestinian Prisoners On Zoom Via Smuggled Phones Unsure Whether Israel Jamming Or Platform Just Sucks

Never attribute to bad luck or to incompetence what can be attributed to Jewish perfidy.

Ofer Prison, October 14 – Inmates at this IDF-administered detention facility north of Jerusalem who rely on contraband mobile devices to keep in touch with their terrorist organization colleagues, commanders, and subordinates voiced uncertainty today regarding the lousy performance of the software they use for the purpose, struggling to determine the more likely scenario: that prison authorities have succeeded in disrupting the signals on which the communication depends, or that Zoom is simply a terrible system.

Members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah, and other militant factions now serving time or awaiting sentencing for acts of violence against Israelis confessed their equivocation concerning the unreliability of the online meeting environment, which has come to prominence over the last several months amid distancing and isolation measures in response to COVID-19. Prison Services Authority – a division of the Israeli Police – and the Israel Defense Force implemented various new policies to prevent and contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen among inmates at various incarceration facilities; such measures include reduced contact among prisoners accustomed to hours per day of direct interaction. Smuggled smartphones have taken on added significance and utility as a result, serving to connect inmates with other inmates in addition to the existing role of facilitating communication up and down the terrorist organizations’ chains of command.

“WhatsApp has been more or less reliable,” explained  Yusuf Erekat, 26, halfway through a six-month term he earned for hurling Molotov cocktails at Israeli motorists. “At some times of day there might be a system overload, but that’s how I keep in touch with my family, for example, to check whether they’ve received any money yet from the Palestinian Authority for my heroic actions. But they’re not very punctual about responding, so it’s hard to tell in my case whether there’s a systemic problem. Zoom is much more challenging: meeting sessions just drop for apparently no reason at all. From what I hear that’s not atypical even outside these walls, but with Israel you never know. We Palestinians have an axiom: never attribute to bad luck or to incompetence what can be attributed to Jewish perfidy.”

“It’s bad enough that everyone talks at once and there’s always one guy who doesn’t realize he’s not on mute,” added Hamas member Ahmad Qawasmeh, 23, whose failed stabbing of a soldier resulted in a gunshot wound that left him with a permanent limp, and landed him in prison for eight years. “I can imagine folks doing this at home have their own problems, but it’s a different order entirely when you’re talking guys in jail cells, where, let’s just say, the toilet isn’t in a separate room. But when our connection drops we always have to consider the possibility that Israeli intelligence is trying to thwart us. It wouldn’t surprise me if the whole coronavirus thing is an elaborate Israeli plot to get us to make our communications vulnerable through Zoom.”

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