Most of us take basic things in life for granted such as freedom, medical care and a comfortable house to live in. Others are not as lucky neither this year nor for the next 25 years or perhaps until they die.

Did you guess it yet? They are the forgotten of our time and their pain is often overlooked or even ignored. They are the thousands of Palestinian and Arab prisoners in Israeli maximum security prisons, dark dungeons and torture chambers.

Thousands of abused souls and shattered dreams are subjected to “legal” Israeli torture almost every day. From the crack of dawn until the hours of dusk they try to survive inhumane Israeli treatment. But once they go to bed, jammed together like tuna in a rusty can, they try to dream.

However, in time dreams change. Your dreams when you were a little boy are different from your dreams when you are a full grown adult. You start your life with sweet childish dreams, and then they grow as you experience more of life.

Yet, for these prisoners, it is the opposite. In their first years in prison, their dreams grow so great, their tiny cells cannot contain them. Later one, after 10,15 or 20 years behind bars, these dreams shrink rapidly to be the simplest wishes ever.

So, this year, I decided to take a break from my own resolutions that I can never keep up with any way and tell you about the New Year resolutions for some of these heroes who are still standing like giants despite the steel and fire in a very busy world that no longer remembers it’s children.

I wish to die.....free

His name is Yasser al-Mu’athen. He is a Syrian freedom fighter who fought for Lebanon and Palestine. Yasser was arrested in South Lebanon in 1989 by the Israeli occupation forces and were sentenced to 25 years in an Israeli jail with his Palestinian comrades.

The story is tragic enough for the man who is being punished for defending his just cause, but there is one thing that makes Yasser’s story different from the three thousand who are spending their best years in Israeli jails. Yasser has kidney failure and without a kidney transplant won’t survive for long.

The Palestinian human rights organization, “Addamir” has been campaigning for his release or at least to allow his family in Syria to donate a kidney for him before it’s too late. But Israel refuses both demands, leaving Yasser to experience a painful death away from Syria and away from his loved ones in a heavily guarded military hospital.

Despite the terrible pain and the slow death, Yasser now believes that even death feels different when your arms and legs are shackled to the sides of your bed. Yasser’s crime was defending those defenseless innocents killed regularly by the Israeli army in South Lebanon.

No arms, one eye and lots of courage

Ahmed Bani Nimra was convicted in a Nablus military court in January,1989 and was sentenced to 13 years in The Nafhah Israeli prison. Israel claims that Ahmed was plotting to set an explosion in a West Jerusalem neighborhood. Instead, the explosion went off on him in a Birzeit University dormitory. Even though there is no strong evidence to support the Israeli claim, Ahmed was convicted and sent to jail while missing two arms and one eye and with many fragments left in his body. After all of these years, some fellow prisoners still pull out fragments that are protruding from his skin. We can imagine how hard Ahmed’s life is while having to take care of himself. There is no doubt that Ahmed still dreams of freedom day and night. But for now, after knowing the inhuman face of Israel in it’s true colors, his New Year’s wish became more and more realistic and simplistic. Tomorrow perhaps freedom will come, but for now suitable prosthetic limbs might do the trick.

He is my son...I swear!

Thousands of Palestinian families have experienced the hassle and hardships of visiting their sons, daughters and relatives in the Israeli prisons. But for Imm Ghazi al-Nims, the hardship became even harder. After 13 years of visiting her son from one military prison to the other , the Gazan woman was recently told that she cannot conduct any further visits to her son because her son is simply not hers.

Imm Ghazi has knocked at every door and has begged for the help of every organization there is. Finally she was able to prove that her son is hers but will Israel believe that?

If you believe though that Imm Ghazi has no plans to see her son, you’ll be making a big mistake. Imm Ghazi declared her plans earlier this week by saying, “ If they won’t let me see my son, I’ll scream. In fact I will scream so hard that they will either have to let me see him or kill me”. Earlier on, Imm Ghazi hoped to see her son free and married with kids. But for now all what she hopes for is a glance at his face and kiss on the forehead before she dies.

For these imprisoned heroes, life and freedom are much more than a concept and a topic for discussion. It’s a reality that they experience every day for years past and years to come. Now, not only their freedom but also their lives are at stake. They remember us every morning when a sun ray makes it through a crack in the wall or a sealed window into their torturous cells. But do we really ....remember them?

PS To help, visit http://www.addameer.org/