Letter to UN General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon - Free Ahmad Sa'adat and All Political Palestinian Prisoners

Link

6/29/2009 01:27:00 AM Reporter: Editor Publisher Hiyam Noir

"Rafah, Gaza

A mass rally took place on June 18, 2009 in Rafah Governorate, in solidarity with Ahmad Sa'adat.

The participants carried Palestinian flags and posters of Sa'adat, and chanted for the lives of Sa'adat and all Palestinian prisoners in the Zionist jails.

Iyad Awadallah of the PFLP spoke at the rally. He praised the strength of the prisoners and their example of national unity, calling for national unity to confront the occupier and struggle for the rights of the Palestinian people. He closed by paying tribute to Sa'adat and all prisoners."

________

FRIENDS OF AHMAD SA'ADAT

We are asking for your endorsement and that of your organization to the below letter, inspired by the hunger strike of imprisoned Palestinian national leader Ahmad Sa'adat, calling upon United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to uphold his responsibilities and take action to protect the rights, health and lives of Palestinian prisoners and demand the freedom of all 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners.

We welcome endorsements from all organizations, individuals, coalitions and institutions in support of the goals of this letter and the rights and freedom of Palestinian prisoners.

Dear Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon;

We, the undersigned organizations and individuals, call upon you to immediately take action in defense of the lives, health and rights of the over 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners held inside Israeli occupation jails. This number includes numerous elected members of Palestinian Legislative Council, among them Ahmad Sa'adat, General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Marwan al-Barghouthi, Fateh leader; Abdel-Aziz Dweik, Hamas leader and President of the Council, just freed after three years in prison, and dozens of other elected political leaders, in addition to thousands of other Palestinian activists, union members, community organizers, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters.

Palestinian prisoners suffer in conditions that violate international standards and norms, and are imprisoned because they refuse to accept a brutal occupation of their land and their people. Ahmad Sa'adat recently waged a nine-day hunger strike in protest of the policy of isolation and solitary confinement that has recently been escalated against Palestinian prisoners. Palestinian prisoners have been denied family visits, at times for years, denied access to all books and magazines, and denied even communication with their fellow prisoners in the isolation units. Palestinian prisoners, including Sa'adat, are currently denied necessary health care and medical treatment.

Palestinian prisoners are placed into isolation because they are national leaders and because the Palestinian prisoner movement has been an inspiration to all Palestinians and all who struggle for freedom. Ahmad Sa'adat's hunger strike has sparked thousands of people around the world to appeal for his release, as a living example who symbolizes the steadfastness and strength of the Palestinian prisoners amid isolation and dire conditions, and it must compel all of those outside the prisons to act. Many Palestinian and international human rights and social justice organizations have called for the release of Sa'adat and to ensure the safety of his life and health, as well as for freedom and protection for all Palestinian prisoners.

The fate of these 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners is a fundamental issue of justice. Palestinians, in Palestine and in exile, are denied their rights - to return home,to self-determination, and to freedom, and those who seek to secure those rights are subject to imprisonment, whether within the open-air prisons of Gaza under siege or the walled-in West Bank, or the jails of the occupation. The silent, and at times, active, complicity of international agencies, particularly the United Nations, in the denial of Palestinian rights must not continue.

We call upon you to uphold your responsibilities and exert all pressure to end torture, cruel and inhuman treatment of Palestinian prisoners, and to free every Palestinian political prisoner from Israel's occupation jails.

Sincerely,

Individual Name

Organization/Affiliation Name

Organizational Endorsement?

Individual Endorsement?

Email Address:

Location

Submit

Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat

Al-Awda NY
Al-Awda Omaha
American Iranian Friendship Committee
Arab American Union Members Council
Arab Muslim American Federation
Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine
BAYAN USA
The Freedom Archives
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Hammerhard MediaWorks
International Action Center
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
International Socialist Organization
Jericho Movement - NYC
National Lawyers Guild
New Jersey Solidarity - Activists for the Liberation of Palestine
New Orleans Palestine Solidarity
NYC Labor Against the War
NY Committee For Human Rights in the PhilippinesPalestineFreeVoice
Palestine House
Palestinian Youth Network
PATOIS: New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival
Socialist Action
US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) (Popular Conference)
War Times/Tiempo De Guerra
WESPAC Foundation

MP George Galloway, UK Parliament Member and coordinator of Viva Palestina USA medical aid caravan to Gaza
Prof. Bashir Abu Manneh, Columbia University
Musa al-Hindi, Omaha, NE
Susan Abulhawa, author, Pennsylvania
Yousef Abudayyeh, California
Abdelwahab Amri Secretary-General of the Federation of PDP, Gabes, Tunisia
Prof. Emeritus Naseer Aruri, University of Massachussetts at Dartmouth
Boniardi Ambrogio, Milano, Italy
Pawel Michal Bartolik, journalist, Poland
Abdul-Nasser J.G. Baston, London, UK
Dr.C.J. Burns-Cox MD FRCP, Gloucester UK
Professor Seif Da'Na, University of Wisconsin-Parkside
James C. Faris, Director Emeritus, University of Connecticut Program in Middle East Languages and Area Studies
Enrique Ferro, Brussels, Belgium
Sara Flounders, co-director, International Action Center
Prof. Emerita Sherna Berger Gluck, California State University Long Beach
Prof. Emerita Elaine Hagopian, Simmons College
Paul Hubbard, Providence, RI
Monadel Herzallah, San Francisco, CA
Sana Kassem, Athens, Greece
Charlotte Kates, attorney
Prof. Mujid S. Kazimi, Massachusetts Institiute of Technology
Basem Khader, Chappaqua, NY
Peter Klosterman, Ph.D. Oakland, CA
Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewski, researcher and editor, Poland
Michael Letwin, Co-Convener, New York City Labor Against the War; Former President, Assn. of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW Local 2325
Dr. Renee Levant, Instructor, Master of Liberal Studies Program, Fort Hays State University
Professor Moshé Machover, London School of Economics
Patrick MacManus, Rebellion, Denmark
Dr. Bruce J. Malina, Dept of Theology, Creighton University
Ali Mili, Phillipsburg, NJ
Harald Molgaard, Twickenham, UK
Marlene Newesri, New York City, USA
Dr. Marcy Newman, Associate Professor of English, An Najah University, Nablus, Palestine
Hiyam Noir, PalestineFreeVoice.org, USA/Palestine
Ardeshir and Eleanor Ommani, Founders, AIFC
Daniel Perez Creus, Ingenio {Gran Canaria} Spain
Dr. Nagesh Rao, Assistant Professor of English, The College of New Jersey
Dick Reilly, Chicago, IL, US
Samia Saleh, northern Virginia, US
Dr. Ahdaf Soueif, author
Professor Mustapha Soueif, University of Cairo
Stan Squires, Canada
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, M.D., USA
Tony Whelan, London, UK
Katherine Wilson, CUNY, New York City

This letter will be delivered to Ban Ki-Moon's office on July 8, 2009. Please send your endorsement as quickly as possible in order to ensure it is included, preferably before July 5, 2009. This initiative is being supported by the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa'adat. Please send endorsements to info@freeahmadsaadat.org.

________________________________________________

© PalestineFreeVoice Copyright reserved 2003 - 2011
Intellectual Rights Retained

Read more...


Free Ahmad Sa'adat Campaign

6/29/2009 12:15:00 AM Reporter: Editor Publisher Hiyam Noir

June 1, 2009

Ahmad Sa'adat speaks from isolation in Asqelan: The so-called "Two state solution" is a threat to the Palestinian people and the right to return

Ahmad Sa'adat, General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said in a letter issued from isolation in Asqelan prison where he is held by the Israeli occupation, that the so-called "two state solution" is dangerous, threatens the right of return and the very existence of the Palestinian people in the occupied lands of Palestine '48.

The letter was sent on May 30, 2009 to the Preparatory Committee for the Palestinian National Day in Sweden. Sa'adat stated in the letter, which greeted the Palestinian and Arab communities and their consistent work to defend our rights, that the only termination of the historical and substantive conflict with the occupation is the end of Zionist rule in Palestine, the establishment of democracy and the achievement of the right of return. He noted that ending the Zionist project was the only real solution for the Palestinian people, while the so-called "two state solution" only opens the door for the acceptance of the "Jewish state," a racist concept based on the expulsion of our people.

Sa'adat also greeted the people of European countries who stood beside the Palestinian people in the face of the recent war on Gaza, and other international solidarity forces, particularly noting the leadership of Venezuelan Bolivarian president Hugo Chavez.

He stated, "I am honored to participate in these events marking the 61st anniversary of al-Nakba, in defense of our national and historical rights, particularly the right to return to our homeland. These are the rights affirmed by our national leaders and martyrs, including al-Hakim, Dr. George Habash, Abu Ali Mustafa and Sabir Mohieddin. They are not only the essence of the Palestinian cause but also the bridge for our nation and the democratization of all of historic Palestine."

The following is the text of the letter in full:

"I am honored to participate in these events marking the 61st anniversary of al-Nakba, in defense of our national and historical rights, particularly the right to return to our homeland. These are the rights affirmed by our national leaders and martyrs, including al-Hakim, Dr. George Habash, Abu Ali Mustafa and Sabir Mohieddin. They are not only the essence of the Palestinian cause but also the bridge to our nation and the democratization of all of historic Palestine.

I salute you and your valuable efforts, which have filled in the gaps left in the absence of the PLO and the marginalization of a powerful leadership for the Palestinian cause.

I also pay tribute to all Arab and Palestinian groups that work tirelessly to defend our rights and salute all the popular progressive and democratic international forces who stood by our people in their just struggle for their right to independence and return. I would also like to pay tribute to the attitude of some European countries who have taken an independent position in regard to our people, and our right to democracy, and stood beside our people in the face of the recent barbaric war on Gaza, in particular Sweden and Norway, and the Bolivarian nations of Latin America, led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

The right of return has not snd will not be extinguished by prescription, and we have maintained our presence in the defense of this right. However, that does not eliminate the risks that beset the right to return, as since Camp David and the dismantlement of most of the Arab national project of confrontation of the Zionist enemy, what has remained is only a "pragmatic" Palestinian policy situated in the context of a "settlement." This course went through Madrid and Oslo, detached from our Palestinian national constants dismantling our project of national liberation.

This caused great damage to our national liberation project, as does the national and Arab impotence displayed by the Arab initiative, which weakened the right of return through the use of ambiguous language that appeared in the text. The stress that is required at the Palestinian and Arab national level is to end any confusion, and to distinguish clearly between the end of the occupation and the end of the conflict.

The end of the historic conflict and the objective can only be an end to the Zionist entity and the establishment of democracy throughout all of Palestine, through the implementation of the Palestinian right of return. The slogan of "two states for two peoples" that are being voiced only opens the door to the acceptance of Israel as a "Jewish state," which threatens not only our right to return, but also the existence of the masses of our people in the occupied part of Palestine 1948 on the ground where they were born and where they have remained firmly rooted and strong in the land.

I am aware that the Palestinian reality at this time of the division of our people does not provide a climate of substantial achievements in terms of correction of Palestinian politics and tactics for managing the conflict with the occupation. However, the common denominators that were agreed upon in Cairo in 2005, and the document of national reconciliation as the basis for Palestinian unity will lead to the rebuilding of the institutions of the Palestinian people, foremost among them the PLO, the political entity of the whole Palestinian people, and the objectives of the unity our our people and our national rights, including the right to return. On this basis, I call on the masses of our people in the diaspora to lift their voices in order to end the Palestinian division and to rebuild the Palestine Liberation Organization a democratic way as a national instrument for the national democratic struggle, qualified to lead our people in their struggle and to take leadership at the strategic level to meet the challenges and maintain our national objectives on the road to their achievement. I have no doubt that those national objectives will be achieved.

I trust you and your ability and energy and the energies of our people and the pan-Arab popular forces of various political colors. They are committed to the project to confront American imperialist hegemony and control of the region and the world as well as to support our allies and their people and the popular and progressive forces on an international level. I am confident that our people and the rest of the marginalized and oppressed peoples of the world, as well as the poor and marginalized countries in the world who are leading the forces of progress today, have their feet firmly placed on the road to defeat all of the projects and plans of imperialism and racism, and will establish the new international order based on justice, equality and brotherhood among peoples, peace and social progress and will renounce all forms of racial discrimination and national and class national oppression. Victory is certain!

Ahmad Sa'adat

General Secretary, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

From the isolation cell in Asqelan prison

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Update:

June 18: Ahmad Sa'adat's isolation extended in retaliation for his defense of prisoners' rights..

PCDP: 98% of Palestinian prisoners in IOA jails subjected to torture

PCDP: 98% of Palestinian prisoners in IOA jails subjected to torture

June 27, 2009

GAZA, (PIC)-- The Palestinian center for the defense of prisoners (PCDP) has charged that Israel was among the few countries in the world to exercise excruciating torture in its prisons in a bid to extract confessions from detainees.

The PCDP report said that the Israeli occupation authority's (IOA) practices were in blatant violation of heavenly and earthly laws that incriminate torturing human beings.

The report, issued on the occasion of the international day against torture on Thursday 26/6/2009, said that torture is practiced in IOA jails with official approval.

It noted that the vast majority of Palestinians detained in IOA jails were tortured without any interference of the human rights groups that champion protection of prisoners.

Revealing a number of torture methods being used in IOA jails, the report pointed out that 98% of Palestinian detainees were tortured in around 30 prisons and detention centers, adding that 88% of prisoners were hanged from their hands naked for long periods of time.

It said that 196 Palestinian prisoners died in IOA jails mostly under torture or in extra judicial execution after detention, and charged that 1,600 sick prisoners in Israeli jails are deprived of adequate treatment.

It recalled that many of those sick prisoners contracted their diseases while in custody due to the severe torture rounds.

The report beseeched human rights groups and institutions catering for the prisoners to exert utmost efforts and to pressure Israel into ending the "horrific humiliation practices against prisoners".

at 6:47 PM 0 comments

Israeli ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children - a report

link

By Haitham Sabbah • Jun 27th, 2009 at 19:34 • Category: Children's Corner, Haitham's Choice, Human Rights, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Resistance, Zionism

DCI-Palestine* released a report which documents the widespread ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children at the hands of the Israeli army and police force - Palestinian Child Prisoners: The systematic and institutionalized ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities.

The release of the report came just days after an article was published in The Independent newspaper reporting the testimonies of two Israeli soldiers which detail the deliberate abuse of Palestinian children. One soldier is reported as saying that in an incident that occurred in a Palestinian village in March, he saw a lot of soldiers 'just knee (Palestinians) because it's boring, because you stand there for 10 hours, you're not doing anything, so they beat people up.'

The report published contains the testimonies of 33 children, one as young as 10 years old, who bear witness to the abuse they received at the hands of soldiers from the moment of arrest through to an often violent interrogation.

Most of these children were arrested from villages near the Wall and illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. There is evidence that many children are painfully shackled for hours on end, kicked, beaten and threatened, some with death, until they provide confessions, some written in Hebrew, a language they do not speak or understand.

Following are some excerpts from this chill-shocking report. It is a must-read report and worth saving for your reference in the future. It can be downloaded from here and here (both PDF format):

Executive summary

The Israeli military court system in the Occupied Palestinian Territory has operated for over 42 years almost devoid of international scrutiny. Each year an average of 9,000 Palestinians are prosecuted in two Israeli military courts operating in the West Bank, including 700 children.

From the moment of arrest, Palestinian children encounter ill-treatment and in some cases torture, at the hands of Israeli soldiers, policemen and interrogators. Children are commonly arrested from the family home in the hours before dawn by heavily armed soldiers. The child is painfully bound, blindfolded and bundled into the back of a military vehicle without any indication as to why or where the child is being taken. [...] Most children confess and some are forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not comprehend. These interrogations are not video recorded as is required under Israeli domestic law.

Children as young as 12 years are prosecuted in the Israeli military courts and are treated as adults as soon as they turn 16 [...] In 91% of all cases involving Palestinian children, bail was denied. [...] With no faith in the system and the potential for harsh sentences, approximately 95% of cases end in the child pleading guilty, whether the ofence was committed or not. [...] Many children receive no family visits whilst in prison and limited education [...]

Some examples of torture

What amounts to torture or ill-treatment will depend on the circumstances of each individual case. However, it is useful to list some of the types of circumstances that have been held to amount to torture and ill-treatment by the Committee as a general guidance:

- Restraining in very painful conditions;
- Hooding under special conditions;
- Playing loud music for prolonged periods of time;
- Threats, including death threats;
- Violent shaking;
- Kicking, punching and beating with implements;
- Using cold air to chill;
- Excessive use of force by law enforcement personnel and the military;
- Incommunicado detention (detention without access to a lawyer, doctor or the ability to communicate with family members);
- Solitary confnement;
- Sensorial deprivation and almost total prohibition of communication;
- Poor conditions of detention, including failure to provide food, water, heating in winter, proper washing facilities, overcrowding, lack of amenities, poor hygiene facilities, limited clothing and medical care.

The above list is by no means exhaustive and in every case, the particular vulnerability of the victim, such as his or her young age or medical condition should be taken into consideration.

Case Study No. 15

Name: Islam M.
Date of arrest: 31 December 2008
Age at arrest: 12
Accusation: Throwing stones

On 31 December 2008, 12-year-old Islam from a village near the West Bank city of Nablus, was out hunting birds in an olive grove when he and his friends were arrested by Israeli soldiers and accused of throwing stones. The olive grove was located about 500 metres from an Israeli settler bypass road.

At around 4:00pm we decided to go home. We collected the nets. Our houses are about one kilometre away. After walking 20 metres we heard a gun shot from the bypass road. We began walking faster towards our houses in the opposite direction to the bypass road. When we reached the edge of the village, we were surprised to see Israeli soldiers, about 10 to 20 metres behind us, with their guns pointed at us. They were shouting at us to stop in Hebrew. We stopped where we were. [...] One of them approached me and grabbed my hand. Another soldier grabbed Hasan's hand. They then tied our hands together with the same plastic cord. They tied my right hand to Hasan's left hand. The soldiers then pushed us and forced us to walk towards our house. The soldiers did not tell me why they were arresting me [...] When we reached the jeep, the soldiers blindfolded me and Hasan with a piece of cloth that the soldiers had. They pushed me inside the jeep. I fell on the ground. I was seated on the floor of the jeep. I lifted the blindfold using my untied left hand and looked around. I saw six soldiers inside the jeep, sitting on seats. Hasan and I were seated between their legs.

Twelve-year-old Islam was arrested by Israeli soldiers while out hunting birds. He was transferred to an Israeli military base for interrogation. Ten minutes later a soldier asked me [...] whether I threw stones at the soldiers. Three minutes later a captain called Hasan, wearing a military uniform, came to us … He took me to a pine tree and made me sit on the ground. 'Have you seen kids throwing stones at the soldiers?' he asked. 'Yes,' I answered. 'Do you know them?' He asked. 'No,' I said. He threatened to pour hot water on my face. 'I don't know who threw stones,' I said. Five minutes later he took me to a place full of thorny bushes. He ordered me to sit in the bushes. I refused. He pushed me and I fell in the bushes. That really hurt me. They placed me inside a jeep [...] Captain Hasan approached me and asked me to confess to throwing stones. I refused. 'We'll put you in jail, patriotic boy' he said. [...] A policeman in blue uniform came and took me to interrogation. I was still tied and blindfolded, but managed to see things from beneath the blindfold. In the interrogation room, there was one policeman with a solider sitting next to him. 'You threw stones. You were photographed while throwing stones' the policeman said. I denied it [...] I asked the soldiers for food. They brought me an apple, one half rotten. I ate the good half and gave the rotten half back to the soldier [...] They seated me on a chair for about five hours without asking me anything.

A policeman in blue uniform came and took me to an office. He allowed me to watch a DVD that had children throwing stones at soldiers. 'See yourself throwing stones?' He said. I did not see myself because I had not thrown stones. He then took me out of the room. I was kept alone, tied and blindfolded, sitting on the ground for three hours. (2 February 2009)

Islam was charged with throwing stones and fned NIS 1,000 (US$ 250) by a military court after entering into a plea bargain. He spent three days in detention in Ofer.

Case Study No. 22

Name: Afaf B.
Date of arrest: 5 February 2008
Age at arrest: 16
Accusation: Contact with a wanted person and the intention to carry out a suicide bombing

On 5 February 2008, Afaf and her father voluntarily went to the Israeli intelligence headquarters at Ras al-Amoud, Jerusalem, after being ordered to attend. Afaf was immediately taken for interrogation where she was accused of having contact with a wanted person and intending to carry out a suicide bombing. Afaf's father was not permitted to remain with her during interrogation. Afaf was then interrogated for 59 consecutive days and then sentenced to 16 months imprisonment inside Israel.

The interrogator began asking me general questions about myself and how I was doing. I asked him to stop asking such questions and get straight to the reason why they brought me here. He said that I had committed some security ofences [...] he then asked me about a young man called Murad … I agreed that I had never seen Murad but I used to talk to him on the phone [...] The interrogator did not charge me directly with any wrongdoing, and he did not accuse me of a specifc accusation. He only said that I had committed some security ofences without giving any further details [...] An hour later, the interrogator came back to the room and told me I was under arrest and that they would transfer me to Al Mascobiyya Interrogation and Detention Centre in Jerusalem. [...]

Two interrogators named Arsan and David were already in the room. They had a typed paper written in Hebrew. They told me that this paper was sent via fax from the same interrogator who interrogated me earlier in Ras al-Amoud, and that I had confessed to doing many things. I told them that what was in the paper was a lie and that I did not confess to anything and no specifc accusation was made against me. They said that the paper says that I knew a young man named Murad and I knew that he was wanted by the intelligence … This interrogation lasted until midnight. [...] In the morning of 6 February 2008, they came and took me to Jerusalem's Magistrate's Court. My hands and feet were tied. A lawyer hired by the State was waiting for me, but none of my family was there [...] In the court, the prosecution asked for my detention to be extended for 10 days, relying on a secret file submitted to the judge. My lawyer objected and asked for my immediate release. However, the judge decided to extend my detention [...]

Israeli Military Court

My interrogation lasted for several hours for 59 consecutive days. In one of the interrogation rounds, a tall interrogator told me that I should confess that I had asked Murad to help me carry out a suicide bombing. I denied that of course, and he slapped me so hard that I fell over to the ground and my mouth began bleeding.

On the seventh day of my arrest [...] the interrogator told me that Murad had been arrested, and he had interrogated him. He added that Murad confessed that I asked him to help me to carry out a suicide bombing. [...] After 10 days of interrogation [...] I came back from the court and I was put in a room inside the Centre with another detainee named Nisreen Z. She was detained on a theft case. On the same day I had a stomach ache. Nisreen handed me a white pill, which turned out later to be a narcotic pill. I fainted for some time. When I woke up, Nisreen told me that I had said many things and confessed to many things and that it was recorded. I was then removed from the room and taken to the interrogation room. The tall interrogator asked me to confess to everything but I refused [...] the interrogator played the recording. I heard myself speaking with Nisreen who was asking me many questions about Murad and carrying out a suicide bombing, and I would answer her 'yes' without giving further details [...] I did not sign any confession papers. (23 December 2008)

Afaf was charged with contact with a wanted person and the intention to carry out a suicide bombing. She was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment by a military court after entering into a plea bargain. She is currently detained in Telmond Prison inside Israel. Afaf was released on 7 May 2009.

Case Study No. 33

Name: Ezzat H.
Date of arrest: 11 June 2008
Age at arrest: 10
Accusation: None

On 11 June 2008, Israeli soldiers stormed Ezzat's family's shop in a village near the West Bank town of Qalqiliya, situated near the Wall. The soldiers said that they were looking for a hand gun.

At around 10:30am, I was sitting in my father's shop selling animal feed and eggs. I was wearing a red T-shirt and blue jeans. My brother Makkawi (7) and sister Lara (8) were sitting with me [...] I was surprised by the arrival of two Israeli soldiers to the shop. One of them had dark skin, wearing khaki jeans and a black T-shirt with a blue vest on top. The other one was in green clothes. Both of them were wearing helmets and carrying black weapons. The soldier with the black T-shirt was carrying a pistol around his chest in addition to the assault rife.

They suddenly walked into the shop. Once they entered the shop, the soldier with the black T-shirt began shouting at me, telling me: 'your father has sent us to you and we want the pistol your father has.' I became terrifed and said: 'my father has nothing. He doesn't own such things.' He slapped me hard across my right cheek and he slapped my brother on the face too. He then asked my siblings to get out of the shop. He asked me all over again and I told him we had nothing. He asked me to get out the pistol from the animal feed sacks. I answered him we had no pistol. He slapped me again and this time it was on my left cheek. [...]

A group of locals gathered around the store and some of them tried to enter and help me, but the soldier standing by the door prevented them from doing so. When the other soldier did not find anything, he asked me again to tell him where the pistol was. When I answered him back saying: 'we don't have anything' he punched me hard in my stomach and I fell over onto the empty egg boxes. I was crying and screaming because I could not stand the pain and I was terrified too.

The soldier with the black T-shirt made fun of me and imitated my crying. He spoke very fluent Arabic. He kept me inside the shop for 15 minutes. He then grabbed me by my T-shirt and dragged me out of the shop. I asked him to let me close the shop but he said leave it open so that it would be robbed. Some of my friends who were at the scene closed the shop.

When he dragged me out of the shop, he ordered me to walk in the street in front of him. He and the other soldier, who was pointing his weapon at me, walked behind me, and some people gathered around. While walking, the soldier in the black T-shirt would slap me hard on my neck now and then … I was slapped three to four times on my nape while walking towards the house. When we reached the house, 100 meters away, I saw many soldiers around the house and a number of dark green military vehicles. The word 'Police' was written on an olive coloured jeep. When I entered the house [...] the soldier with the black T-shirt made me stand in the yard and asked me to get the pistol out of the flower basin. When I was about to answer him and say we had no pistol, he slapped me so hard that I fell down on my face in the fower basin. [...]

My father was standing by the door of the guest room, where my family was held. The soldier slapped me on my nape in front of my father and I fell to the ground. He slapped me again on my nape and I fell to the ground after I stood up. All of this was in front of my father. He then lifted me in the air after he grabbed my T-shirt. He told my father that he was going to take me to prison [...] He threatened to arrest my older sister who was 19 years old [...] he then pushed me into the guest room where my mother and siblings were held. My mother was crying. When she saw me crying, she asked me why and I told her that I had been hit. She asked them to leave me alone and hit her instead. They told her that they would take me to prison. [...] The soldier with the black T-shirt took me to the bedroom and slapped me at the door. He then brought my older sister to search and interrogate her while forcing me to stand by the kitchen door. They then moved me to another bedroom.

Torturing Ezzat H

While passing me, the soldier with the black T-shirt slapped me so hard on my face that I fell on the ground. He asked me to stay there in the room. He would go for five minutes and then come back to slap me on the face, and punch me several times in my stomach. I would shout and burst into tears. He would imitate me and make fun of me. He continued coming to the room around six times where he would hit me and slap me. [...] I spent about one hour in the room all alone with the soldiers. During this hour, the soldier with the black T-shirt ordered me to stand on one foot and lift my hands up in the air with my back against the wall. This lasted for about half an hour. I was exhausted but I did not dare to put my foot on the ground because he ordered me not to. [...] The soldier with the black T-shirt [...] then brought my older sister and asked me whether I cared about her or not. I said: 'yes I do.' He then asked me to tell him where the pistol was and he would not tell my father. I said we did not have a pistol, so he took my sister out, and then came back and hit me all over my body. He left the room and after a while he came back and ofered me 10 Shekels if I would tell him where the pistol was. I told him I did not care about money. He really became so angry that he took of his helmet and hit me with it from two metres away. He asked me to bring him the helmet and when I did, he threw it again at me, but this time he missed. He again asked me to bring him the helmet but this time he did not hit me with it. Instead, he left the room for five minutes and came back and slapped me on the face and stomach without asking me anything. Once again he left the room and was gone for a while, and I was all alone in the room. He then came back and asked me about the pistol and I answered that we did not have any pistol. He slapped me twice on my face and pushed me back. He then left the room for a while and came back to repeat it all over again. [...]

Afterwards, a soldier wearing black sunglasses came into the room where I was held and pointed his rife at me. The rife barrel was a few centimeters away from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me and said: 'shivering? Tell me where the pistol is before I shoot you.' I replied by saying that we had nothing. He lowered his rife and took out the bullets [...] (21 June 2008)

After initially wishing to file a complaint against the soldiers involved, Ezzat's father changed his mind for fear of retaliation.

Since DCI-Palestine last published a report on Palestinian child detainees (April 2008), the practice of ill-treatment and torture has continued unabated. During the course of the reporting period DCI-Palestine continued to receive numerous testimonies from Palestinian children speaking of their ill-treatment and torture at the hands of Israeli soldiers, policemen and security operatives. This abuse occurs from the moment of arrest, and continues during transfer, interrogation and detention. The ill-treatment documented by DCI-Palestine appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalised, suggesting complicity at all levels of the political and military chain of command. This abusive system operates with the knowledge and assistance of some doctors, and is overseen by a military court system that ignores basic principles of juvenile justice and fair trial rights, whilst willfully turning a blind eye to the presentation in court of one coerced confession after another. This system imposed by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory operates beyond international legal norms and within a general culture of impunity.DCI-Palestine continues in its eforts to bring this situation to the attention of the international community which is itself bound by a number of legal obligations to ensure that these violations are fully investigated, and where appropriate, prosecuted and that such conduct is not rewarded.

Without some measure of accountability, it is unlikely that the situation endured by Palestinian children described in the pages above, will improve.

* Defence for Children International - Palestine Section (DCI-Palestine) is a national section of the international non-governmental child rights organisation and movement, Defence for Children International (DCI), established in 1979, with consultative status with ECOSOC. DCI-Palestine was established in 1992, and is dedicated to promoting and protecting the rights of Palestinian children in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), as well as other international, regional and local standards. As part of its ongoing work to uphold the rights of Palestinian children, DCI-Palestine provides free legal assistance, collects evidence, researches and drafts reports and conducts general advocacy targeting various duty bearers.

Tagged as: child, child-abuse, Israel, Palestine, Palestinian, palestinian-children, prisons, torture, torturing, West Bank

Haitham Sabbah is an uprooted Palestinian blogger. He is the webmaster and editor of Palestine Blogs, also webmaster and co-editor of Palestine Think Tank. His personal blog is Sabbah's Blog: http://sabbah.biz/
Email this author All posts by Haitham Sabbah

Demonising Iran

Link

This was published in the Sunday Herald.

Two manifestations of Iranian Modernity

The mainstream media narrative of events unfolding in Iran has been set out for us as clear as fairytale: an evil dictatorship has rigged elections and now violently suppresses its country’s democrats, hysterically blaming foreign saboteurs the while. But the Twitter generation is on the right side of history (in Obama’s words), and could bring Iran back within the regional circle of moderation. If only Iran becomes moderate, a whole set of regional conflicts will be solved.

I don’t mean to minimise the importance of the Iranian protests or the brutality of their suppression, but I take issue with the West’s selective blindness when it gazes at the Middle East. The ‘Iran narrative’ contains a dangerous set of simplicities which bode ill for Obama’s promised engagement, and which will be recognised beyond the West as rotten with hypocrisy.

Iran’s claims of Western incitement for the protests are roundly scorned in our media, and of course Khamenei’s scapegoating of foreigners and “terrorist groups” demonstrates an unhealthy denial of the very real polarisation within Iranian society. Yet Iranians still have good reason to fear outside interference. It was, after all, British and American orchestrated riots that brought down the elected Mossadeq government in 1953. And in 2007 Bush administration neocon John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US attack on Iran would be “a last option after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.” According to veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, ongoing US special operations in Iran include funding ethnic-separatist terrorist groups such as the al-Qa’ida linked Jundallah in Baluchistan. With some honorable exceptions, this dimension has not been touched by the mainstream media.

And Mousavi’s vote-rigging allegations are accepted without scrutiny, despite there not yet being any hard evidence of organised cheating. The official result is similar to that in the second round of the 2005 elections, when Ahmadinejad received 61.7 % to former President Rafsanjani’s 35.9 %. A few weeks before the latest elections, a poll commissioned by the BBC and ABC News predicted a nationwide advantage of two to one for Ahmadinejad over Mousavi. Even Israel’s Mossad chief Meir Dagan reported that there were no more irregularities in the Iranian vote than in elections in liberal democracies.

I visited Iran in 2006, with a backpack and guidebook-standard Farsi. I noticed two things. First, Iran is far freer, fairer, less littered, and more literate than any of its neighbours. Second, very many Iranians are unhappy with their corrupt rulers and, unlike people in nearby Arab states, they are not afraid to say so openly. To an extent the revolution has been a victim of its own success, having transformed a largely feudal land into a highly educated urban society, creating along the way a swollen middle class and an idealistic youth which chafes against the petty oppression of dress codes and state-enforced morality. But everyone I spoke to favoured evolution of the existing system over counter-revolution.

The Islamic Republic has been a great – if seriously flawed – experiment in economic and strategic independence, its engines oiled by class consciousness and national pride as much as by religion. Iran is at least a semi-democracy, and has held ten presidential elections in thirty years. Iranian women are obliged to cover their hair, true, but women in US-client Saudi Arabia are obliged to cover their faces. In Saudi Arabia of course there are never any elections to dispute – but there are US military bases, so we don’t dwell on the issue.

Here’s the nub of it. Iran opposes the US military presence in the region, and vigorously supports resistance to Israeli expansionism. On these two points, the Iranian regime is closer than any other to the true sentiments of Middle Easterners.

And this, fundamentally, is why Iran is imagined to be such a problem in the West: because it’s a Venezuela or a Cuba of a country. Iran is troublesome not because it’s any more obscurantist or dictatorial than its neighbours, but because it is less submissive.

The world worries about Iran’s nuclear energy programme while keeping quiet about Israel’s 200 nuclear weapons. Israel occupies Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian territory. Iran has not attacked another country in its modern history.

Iran is accused of backing terrorism because it helps to arm Hizbullah and Hamas, grassroots anti-occupation groups with a legitimate, even legal, cause. Both groups have targetted civilians (rarely, in Hizbullah’s case) but not on as grand a scale as Israel, which is armed and funded by the United States. And Iran doesn’t export Wahhabi-nihilist terrorists of the Taliban or al-Qa’ida-in-Iraq variety. Again, that would be our ally Saudi Arabia.

President Obama recently chose to address the Muslims from Cairo, seat of a client regime which has ‘pre-emptively’ arrested hundreds of democrats in recent months, fearing they may demonstrate. Commenting on Iran, Obama called the “democratic process” a “universal value”. But obviously not quite universal enough to cover Egypt, or the elected Hamas government, what remains of it, in beseiged Palestine.

Silences can be more significant than words. Is Obama also “deeply troubled” when Israel shoots unarmed protestors or arrests children as young as twelve? Does he mourn “each and every innocent life that is lost” in Gaza as well as in the plusher streets of Tehran? If so, he still hasn’t told us.

At present our opinion formers are blithely simplifying and demonising a complex culture, allowing illusions and half-truths to become shining certainties in our minds. This is how we arrived in Iraq.

Written by qunfuz

June 28, 2009 at 11:25 am

Iran Divided & the 'October Surprise'

link

By Robert Parry - June 24, 2009

Consortium News

Iran’s current political divisions can be traced back to a controversy nearly three decades ago when Iran faced war with Iraq and became entwined with U.S. and Israeli political maneuvers that set all three countries on a dangerous course that continues to this day.

In the election dispute now gripping the streets of Tehran, Iran is experiencing a revival of the internal rivalries born in the judgments made in 1980 and later that decade about how and whether to deal with the Little Satan (Israel) and the Great Satan (the United States).

Former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims he is the rightful winner of the June 12 presidential election, was part of the group (along with his current allies former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former House Speaker Mehdi Karoubi) that favored secret contacts with the United States and Israel to get the military supplies needed to fight the war with Iraq.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s current spiritual leader and the key supporter of reelected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was more the ideological purist in the early 1980s, apparently opposing the unorthodox strategy that involved going behind President Carter’s back to gain promises of weapons from Israel and the future Reagan administration.

Khamenei appears to have favored a more straightforward arrangement with the Carter administration for settling the dispute over 52 American hostages seized by Iranian radicals in 1979.

In 1980, the internal Iranian divisions played out against a dramatic backdrop. Iranian radicals still held the 52 hostages seized at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran; President Jimmy Carter had imposed an arms embargo while seeking the hostages’ release – and he was struggling to fend off a strong campaign challenge from Republican Ronald Reagan.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin was furious at Carter for pushing him into the Camp David peace deal with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat that required Israel returning the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for normalized relations.

Begin also was upset at Carter’s perceived failure to protect the Shah of Iran, who had been an Israeli strategic ally. Begin was worried, too, about the growing influence of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as it massed troops along the Iranian border.

Upsetting Carter

Determined to help Iran counter Iraq – and hopeful about rebuilding at least covert ties to Tehran – Begin’s government cleared the first small shipments of U.S. military supplies to Iran in spring 1980, including 300 tires for Iran’s U.S.-manufactured jet fighters. Soon, Carter learned about the covert shipments and lodged an angry complaint.

“There had been a rather tense discussion between President Carter and Prime Minister Begin in the spring of 1980 in which the President made clear that the Israelis had to stop that, and that we knew that they were doing it, and that we would not allow it to continue, at least not allow it to continue privately and without the knowledge of the American people,” Carter’s press secretary Jody Powell told me in an interview.

“And it stopped,” Powell said -- at least, it stopped temporarily.

Questioned by congressional investigators a dozen years later, Carter said he felt that by April 1980, “Israel cast their lot with Reagan,” according to notes I found among the unpublished documents in the files of a congressional investigation conducted in 1992.

Carter traced the Israeli opposition to his possible reelection in 1980 to a “lingering concern [among] Jewish leaders that I was too friendly with Arabs.”

Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski also recognized the Israeli hostility. Brzezinski said the Carter White House was well aware that the Begin government had “an obvious preference for a Reagan victory.”

Begin’s alarm about a possible Carter second term was described, too, by Israeli intelligence and foreign affairs official David Kimche in his 1991 book, The Last Option. Kimche wrote that Begin’s government believed that Carter was overly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and was conspiring with Arabs to force Israel to withdraw from the West Bank.

“Begin was being set up for diplomatic slaughter by the master butchers in Washington,” Kimche wrote. “They had, moreover, the apparent blessing of the two presidents, Carter and Sadat, for this bizarre and clumsy attempt at collusion designed to force Israel to abandon her refusal to withdraw from territories occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem, and to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Collaborating with Republicans

Extensive evidence now exists that Begin’s preference for a Reagan victory led Israelis to join in a covert operation with Republicans to contact Iranian leaders behind Carter’s back and delay release of the 52 American hostages until after Reagan defeated Carter in November 1980.

That controversy, known as the “October Surprise” case, and its sequel, the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s, involved clandestine ties between some leading figures in today’s Iran crisis and U.S. and Israeli officials who supplied Iran with missiles and other weaponry for its war with Iraq. The Iran-Iraq conflict began simmering in spring 1980 and broke into full-scale war in September.

Khamenei, who was then an influential aide to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, appears to have been part of a contingent exploring ways to resolve the hostage dispute with Carter.

According to Army Col. Charles Wesley Scott, who was one of the 52 hostages, Khamenei visited him on May 1, 1980, at the old U.S. consulate in Tabriz to ask whether milder demands from Iran to the Carter administration might lead to a resolution of the hostage impasse and allow the resumption of U.S. military supplies, former National Security Council aide Gary Sick reported in his book October Surprise.

“You’re asking the wrong man,” Scott replied, noting that he had been out of touch with his government during his five months of captivity before adding that he doubted the Carter administration would be eager to resume military shipments quickly.

“Frankly, my guess is that it will be a long time before you’ll get any cooperation on spare parts from America, after what you’ve done and continue to do to us,” Scott said he told Khamenei.

However, Khamenei’s outreach to a captive U.S. military officer – outlining terms that became the basis of a near settlement of the crisis with the Carter administration in September 1980 – suggests that Khamenei favored a more traditional approach toward resolving the hostage crisis than the parallel channel that soon involved the Israelis and the Republicans.

In that narrow sense at least, Khamenei was allied with Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the sitting Iranian president in 1980 who also has said he opposed dealing with Israel and the Republicans behind President Carter’s back. In a little-noticed letter to the U.S. Congress, dated Dec. 17, 1992, Bani-Sadr said he first learned of the Republican hostage initiative in July 1980.

Bani-Sadr said a nephew of Ayatollah Khomeini, then Iran’s supreme leader, returned from a meeting with an Iranian banker, Cyrus Hashemi, who had led the Carter administration to believe he was helping broker a hostage release but who had close ties to Reagan’s campaign chief William Casey and to Casey’s business associate, John Shaheen.

Bani-Sadr said the message from the Khomeini emissary was clear: the Reagan campaign was in league with pro-Republican elements of the CIA in an effort to undermine Carter and wanted Iran’s help. Bani-Sadr said the emissary “told me that if I do not accept this proposal they [the Republicans] would make the same offer to my rivals.”

The emissary added that the Republicans “have enormous influence in the CIA,” Bani-Sadr wrote. “Lastly, he told me my refusal of their offer would result in my elimination.” Bani-Sadr said he resisted the GOP scheme, but the plan ultimately was accepted by Ayatollah Khomeini, who appears to have made up his mind around the time of Iraq’s invasion in mid-September 1980.

Clearing the Way

Khomeini’s approval meant the end of the initiative that Khamenei had outlined to Col. Scott, which was being pursued with Carter’s representatives in West Germany before Iraq launched its attack. Khomeini’s blessing allowed Rafsanjani, Karoubi and later Mousavi to proceed with secret contacts that involved emissaries from the Reagan camp and the Israeli government.

The Republican-Israeli-Iranian agreement appears to have been sealed through a series of meetings that culminated in discussions in Paris arranged by the right-wing chief of French intelligence Alexandre deMarenches and allegedly involving Casey, vice presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, CIA officer Robert Gates and other U.S. and Israeli representatives on one side and cleric Mehdi Karoubi and a team of Iranian representatives on the other.

Bush, Gates and Karoubi all have denied participating in the meeting (Karoubi did so in an interview with me in Tehran in 1990). But deMarenches admitted arranging the Paris conclave to his biographer, former New York Times correspondent David Andelman.

Andelman said deMarenches ordered that the secret meeting be kept out of his memoir because the story could otherwise damage the reputation of his friends, William Casey and George H.W. Bush. At the time of Andelman’s work ghostwriting the memoir in 1991, Bush was running for re-election as President of the United States.

Andelman’s sworn testimony in December 1992 to a House task force assigned to examine the October Surprise controversy buttressed longstanding claims from international intelligence operatives about a Paris meeting involving Casey and Bush.

Besides the testimony from intelligence operatives, including Israeli military intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe, there was contemporaneous knowledge of the alleged Bush-to-Paris trip by Chicago Tribune reporter John Maclean, son of author Norman Maclean who wrote A River Runs Through It.

Maclean said a well-placed Republican source told him in mid-October 1980 about Bush’s secret trip to Paris to meet with Iranians on the U.S. hostage issue. Maclean passed on that information to State Department official David Henderson, who recalled the date as Oct. 18, 1980.

Since Maclean had never written a story about the leak and Henderson didn’t mentioned it until Congress started its cursory October Surprise investigation in 1991, the Maclean-Henderson conversation had been locked in a kind of historical amber.

One could not accuse Maclean of concocting the Bush-to-Paris allegation for some ulterior motive, since he hadn’t used it in 1980, nor had he volunteered it a decade later. He only confirmed it when approached by a researcher working with me on a PBS Frontline documentary and in a subsequent videotaped interview with me.

Also, alibis concocted for Casey and Bush – supposedly to prove they could not have traveled to the alleged overseas meetings – either collapsed under close scrutiny or had serious holes. [For details on the October Surprise case, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

Military Shipments

Though the precise details of the October Surprise case remain hazy, it is a historic fact that Carter failed to resolve the hostage crisis before losing in a surprising landslide to Reagan and that the hostages were not released until Reagan and Bush had been sworn in on Jan. 20, 1981.

It also is clear that U.S. military supplies were soon moving to Iran via Israeli middlemen with the approval of the new Reagan administration.

In a PBS interview, Nicholas Veliotes, Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, said he first discovered the secret arms pipeline to Iran when an Israeli weapons flight was shot down over the Soviet Union on July 18, 1981, after straying off course on its third mission to deliver U.S. military supplies from Israel to Iran via Larnaca, Cyprus.

“It was clear to me after my conversations with people on high that indeed we had agreed that the Israelis could transship to Iran some American-origin military equipment,” Veliotes said.

In checking out the Israeli flight, Veliotes came to believe that the Reagan-Bush camp’s dealings with Iran dated back to before the 1980 election.

“It seems to have started in earnest in the period probably prior to the election of 1980, as the Israelis had identified who would become the new players in the national security area in the Reagan administration,” Veliotes said. “And I understand some contacts were made at that time.”

In the early 1980s, the players in Iran also experienced a shakeup. Bani-Sadr was ousted in 1981 and fled for his life; he was replaced as president by Khamenei; Mousavi was named prime minister; Rafsanjani consolidated his financial and political power as speaker of the Majlis; and Karoubi became a powerful figure in Iran’s military-and-foreign-policy establishment.

Besides tapping into stockpiles of U.S.-made weaponry, the Israelis also arranged shipments from third countries, including Poland, according to Israeli intelligence officer Ben-Menashe, who described his work on the arms pipeline in his 1992 book, Profits of War.

Since representatives of Likud had initiated the arms-middleman role for Iran, the profits flowed into coffers that the right-wing party controlled, a situation that created envy inside the rival Labor Party especially after it gained a share of power in the 1984 elections, Ben-Menashe said.

The Iran-Contra Case

In this analysis, Labor’s desire to open its own arms channel to Iran laid the groundwork for the Iran-Contra scandal, as the government of Prime Minister Shimon Peres tapped into the emerging neoconservative network inside the Reagan administration on one hand and began making contacts to Iran’s leadership on the other.

Reagan’s National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, who had close ties to the Israeli leadership, worked with Peres’s aide Amiram Nir and neocon intellectual (and NSC consultant) Michael Ledeen in spring 1985 to make contact with the Iranians.

Ledeen’s chief intermediary to Iran was a businessman named Manucher Ghorbanifar, who was held in disdain by the CIA as a fabricator but claimed he represented high-ranking Iranians who favored improved relations with the United States and were eager for American weapons.

Ghorbanifar’s chief contact, as identified in official Iran-Contra records, was Mohsen Kangarlu, who worked as an aide to Prime Minister Mousavi, according to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman in his 2008 book, The Secret War with Iran.

However, Ghorbanifar’s real backer inside Iran appears to have been Mousavi himself. According to a Time magazine article from January 1987, Ghorbanifar “became a trusted friend and kitchen adviser to Mir Hussein Mousavi, Prime Minister in the Khomeini government.”

In November 1985, at a key moment in the scandal as one of the early missile shipments via Israel went awry, Ghorbanifar conveyed Mousavi’s anger to the White House.

"On or about November 25, 1985, Ledeen received a frantic phone call from Ghorbanifar, asking him to relay a message from the prime minister of Iran to President Reagan regarding the shipment of the wrong type of HAWKs,” according to Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh’sFinal Report.

“Ledeen said the message essentially was ‘we've been holding up our part of the bargain, and here you people are now cheating us and tricking us and deceiving us and you had better correct this situation right away.’”

Earlier in the process, Ghorbanifar had dangled the possibility of McFarlane meeting with high-level Iranian officials, including Mousavi and Rafsanjani.

Another one of Ghorbanifar’s Iranian contacts was Hassan Karoubi, the brother of Mehdi Karoubi. Hassan Karoubi met with Ghorbanifar and Ledeen in Geneva in late October 1985 regarding missile shipments in exchange for Iranian help in getting a group of U.S. hostages freed in Lebanon, according to Walsh’s report.

A Split Leadership

As Ben-Menashe describes the maneuvering in Tehran, the basic split in the Iranian leadership put then-President Khamenei on the ideologically purist side of rejecting U.S.-Israeli military help and Rafsanjani, Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi in favor of exploiting those openings in a pragmatic way to better fight the war with Iraq.

The key decider during this period – as in the October Surprise phase – was Ayatollah Khomeini, who agreed with the pragmatists on the need to get as much materiel from the Americans and the Israelis as possible, Ben-Menashe said in an interview this week from his home in Canada.

Ben-Menashe said Rafsanjani and most other senior Iranian officials were satisfied dealing with the original (Likud) Israeli channel and were offended by the Reagan administration’s double game of tilting toward Iraq with military and intelligence support while also offering weapons deals to Iran via the second (Labor) channel.

The ex-Israeli intelligence officer said the Iranians were especially thankful in 1985-86 when the Likud channel secured SCUD missiles from Poland so Iran could respond to SCUD attacks that Iraq had launched against Iranian cities.

“After that (transaction), I got access to the highest authorities” in Iran, Ben-Menashe said, including a personal meeting with Mousavi at which Ben-Menashe said he learned that Mousavi knew the history of the Israeli-arranged shipments in the October Surprise deal of 1980.

Ben-Menashe quoted Mousavi as saying, “we did everything you guys wanted. We got rid of the Democrats. We did everything we could, but the Americans aren’t delivering [and] they are dealing with the Iraqis.”

In that account, the Iranian leadership in 1980 viewed its agreement to delay the release of the U.S. Embassy hostages not primarily as a favor to the Republicans, but to the Israelis who were considered the key for Iran to get the necessary military supplies for its war with Iraq.

Today, many of the same Iranian players are back at center stage in the election dispute, but it’s unclear what the power struggle might mean for President Barack Obama's desire to negotiate agreements on Iran's nuclear program and on broader Middle East peace.

For instance, does the Mousavi-Rafsanjani-Karoubi contingent still have its more pragmatic view about the West? Does Khamenei still favor his more straightforward approach toward dealing with Washington?

Since Khamenei holds Ahmadinejad’s political strings, one could conclude that the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad faction might be easier to deal with in a traditional diplomatic framework that seeks a direct solution and wants to avoid endless bickering. However, others might see the Mousavi-Rafsanjani-Karoubi faction as the more flexible negotiating partners.

Whatever the case, President Obama might want to get a better grasp on the complex history of U.S.-Iranian-Israeli relations before he charges off into that negotiating thicket.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com.

at 11:16 AM

Labels: Gangsterism, Wars for Israel

Palestinian council for right of return established

Palestinian council for right of return established

[ 28/06/2009 - 09:41 AM ]

DAMASCUS, (PIC)-- Nine committees concerned with the Palestinian refugees' right of return on Saturday evening announced the establishment of the Palestinian council for the right of return (Mithaq) with the aim of endorsing RoR.

The council members read out the charter they endorsed at the Arab culture center in Yarmouk refugee camp which affirmed that historical Palestine was not for partitioning and was the homeland of none other but the Palestinian people.

The charter stressed that the Palestinian refugees are entitled to return to their cities, villages and homes of their father sand forefathers from where they were expelled n 1948, adding that RoR was not for bargaining, negotiations or referendum considering the surrendering of that right as "high treason".

There is no legitimacy for any party trying to give up RoR, it said.

The founding statement of the council said that the state of Palestinian division and the absence of a political leadership for the Palestinian people in light of that rift were threatening RoR.

Ahmed Hussein, secretary of the Palestinian return group (Wajeb) one of the founding committees, said that the step was taken in a bid to counter the "ferocious campaign against Palestinian rights".

cartoon of the day

By Carlos Latuff • Jun 27th, 2009 at 21:00 • Category: Artwork, Cartoon of the day

click to enlarge. By Carlos Latuff

Carlos Latuff is a friend of Palestinian people.
Email this author All posts by Carlos Latuff

Will Obama Buckle?

Link

In the PULSE, here

"....There is no real evidence pointing to the latter other than the silence from the administration on the just-announced plan to expand the Talmon settlement by some 300 units, a provocation and a test of Obama's resolve. Beyond that is the general fear that the Israeli government has invariably won these battles with previous administrations and the feeling that Obama will, like his predecessors, blink as the lobby quietly (or loudly) pushes back.

Only time will tell whether Obama will choose to prevail; I say "choose" because he holds all the cards in the U.S.-Israel relationship...."

Posted by G, Z, & or B at 11:24 AM

Maximizing Rights: The One State Solution to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict

link

Palestinian-American law professor and commentator George Bisharat.

In April George Bisharat wrote an article for the San Francisco Chronicle titled Changing the Rules of War giving a legal perspective on Israeli conduct in Gaza. He stated that “what is less appreciated is how Israel is … brutalizing international law, in ways that may long outlast the demolition of Gaza.” I’m sure if you read it in April, you’d remember it, and if you haven’t read it, I can’t recommend it more highly.

Maximizing Rights is a previous work of his, published 2008 in the Berkley journal Global Jurist. In it he states that it’s time to face the painful truth: the two-state solution has failed. He argues for a new paradigm, with a rights-based approach, that favours a one-state solution as it provides “the widest array of rights to the greatest number of Palestinians and Israelis.” Simply put: the one-state solution is the most just solution and is most likely to bring lasting peace.

The article can be downloaded for free on the journals website. I’ve included the abstract below.

This article employs a `rights-based approach’ in evaluating a `single state solution’ to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. International human rights provide a necessary normative standard for the just resolution of this long-running dispute. A single state, as compared to the two-state solution that has been broadly supported by the international community since 1947, offers superior opportunities to maximize the legitimate rights, interests, and aspirations of the greatest number of Israelis and Palestinians. Yet Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs each enjoy internationally recognized rights of self-determination and sovereignty. Accordingly, there is no legal means by which a one-state solution could be directly imposed on the parties to the dispute without violating the respective rights of each people. As a matter of law, then, a one-state solution could only come about through the agreement of Palestinians and Israelis and as an exercise of their respective rights to self-determination. The inability to implement a one-state solution without consent of the parties requires consideration of the means by which such an agreement might be encouraged. There is no indication that states are likely to brook the current international consensus in support of a two-state solution. Thus it is necessary to examine whether international civil society is capable of playing a facilitating role analogous to the role it played in the demise of apartheid in South Africa. A variety of scenarios can be imagined, but in any of them, ultimately, broad Israeli Jewish opposition to a single state solution will have to be overcome. This suggests that a non-violent campaign, or at least one that scrupulously avoids attack on innocent civilians, is the most promising route to achieving a one-state solution. While such a shift appears farfetched at the moment, no other solution to the conflict currently seems imminent. The moral power of a single state, based on equal rights for all residents of Israel/Palestine, has transformative power that should not be underestimated.

Written by Dave

June 28, 2009 at 1:17 am

Posted in Israel, One-State Solution, Palestine, Two-State Solution

Tagged with George Bisharat