In March this year, Salah Hamouri — a French-Palestinian lawyer from Jerusalem — published an article in Jacobin documenting his long-standing abuse at the hands of the Israeli state, including repeated detention without trial, physical violence, family separation, surveillance, judicial harassment, and attempts at deportation. The day after the article was published, Salah was arrested by the Israeli occupation and has been held without trial ever since.

Here he writes to French president Emmanuel Macron from his prison cell, on the occasion of Bastille Day, highlighting his plight, drawing parallels with abuses in French history, and calling for his immediate release from Israeli dungeons. Despite his French citizenship, the French state and Macron’s administration have done little to prevent the continued abuses against him and his repeated incarceration, limiting themselves to mealymouthed statements calling for his human rights.