He will live in our hearts for ever By prisoner Chaim Ander Gentlemen, I should like to remind you that apart from us 31 captured soldiers, in this courtroom you should, according to your laws, have brought to trial another Jewish youth. Then this trial would have been called in the history of our people not the trail of the 31 but the trial of the 32. However, this youth can no longer be reached by your hands: you cannot fetter his hands with handcuffs, you cannot put his body behind prison walls. This youth is on our lists as one of our ranks – but he is no longer alive. One on the hundreds of bullets that your machine guns spit at us hit our young  brother, Avenr Ben Shem. Seriously wounded he collapsed. But it would have been possible for you to save his life. There can be no doubt that had he been given appropriate care – appropriate for an injured man, appropriate for a prisoner enjoying recognized rights, he would be here today; among us, sharing our sufferings and our hopes. But this was not to be. No medical treatment worthy of the name was given to our injured friend. His condition deteriorated while he was in our hands, and he breathed out his pure soul. This is not the first time that youths perished in your prison through the physical and spiritual agonies inflicted on them. This is what happened to Asher Tratner, a pupil of a Haifa secondary school, who was shot in the hip while pasting a pamphlet on a house wall, and whose wound, though relatively slight, led to his death. Why? Because instead of sending the wounded boy into a hospital you sent him to a filthy dark cell in Acre prison and chained him on his bed of agony. For many days and nights the boy was compelled to wipe off with his shirt the blood and matter trickling from his wound. The result was that blood poisoning set in, and it was only after his condition had become hopeless that he was transferred from Acre to Haifa – after all, he had been arrested in Haifa – and he was sent to a hospital where his leg was amputee. But the operation came too late – and the youth – almost a child – the only son of his parents, died. You should compare this treatment which you accord to our people captured by you to the treatment given to the British officers captured and taken prisoners by us. I read in the newspapers the report by your officers who were released after a few days. One of them had been wounded with a stick when he tried to resist his captors: He received good treatment, his wound was bandaged by a nurse, he was looked after by a doctor, and was even given the assurance that the circumstances under which he had been injured would be investigated and if it should be found that he had offered no reason for the use of physical force against him, the soldier responsible would be punished. Your officers were released healthy and unscratched, because they had been held by really civilized men, by soldiers who respect the laws relating to the treatment of prisoners taken by belligerents. With you, however, people fall ill with dangerous stomach diseases; people confined by you suffer from tuberculosis; in your prisons the prisoner's body is weakened through the bad food you give him. And if your plans do not succeed completely and the treatment given to the prisoner does not lead to his death, he is frequently rendered an invalid for the rest of his life. For these reasons, Gentlemen, we demand that an end be put to this sort of treatment. These conditions cannot be tolerated any longer, conditions under which our blood is shed by your fault – not only in the countries of the Diaspora, not only on the battle field, but even in imprisonment, where the life and health of prisoners ought to be safe. Learn from those who fight against you! Treat those whom you capture as they treat those of you taken prisoners by them! Our young brother Avner Ben Shem, is no longer your prisoner. He has been freed before you sentenced him. He has not been brought to trial by you; he faces today the judge of the world. But even though, his body is not with us today, his soul is here in this courtroom, and with the spiritual ear that is given only to idealists who are prepared to sacrifice their lives for a good cause, we hear his voice speaking to us from heaven, from spheres as sacred and pure as the bright firmament: Do not be afraid, my brethren! Go your way of suffering proudly and hopefully for it is worth it. It is worth fighting for our Zion. It is worth suffering for it, and it is worth even to die for it. May the memory of our brother, Avner Ben Shem, be blessed for ever!