My friend from the Occupied Golan Heights just published his own review of Waltz with Bashir in al-Quds al-Arabi a few days ago. Here is my translation of it:
On the Israeli Film “Waltz with Bashir”: What Fault is it of these Poor Horses that are Dying?
Salim Abu Jabal
The only thing that can make an Israeli director search for his place as a soldier in the Sabra and Shatila massacre is to make a film in which he narrates his own personal story as a soldier. In the case of Ari Folman, he is aiming for more – to recover his memory by jogging it with pictures of killing! Waltz With Bashir is a documentary film made with animation techniques; it is also a personal film in which the director tries to recover his lost memory from the days of his participation in the war on Lebanon in 1982. For this sake, Folman speaks with his buddies one by one, bringing the viewer as close to them as possible, as they enter Lebanese territory on the first day on their tanks singing “Good Morning, Lebanon”.
The film begins with a nightmare dreamt by the soldier Boaz, in which he sees 26 dogs that he had killed in Lebanese villages. This prompts Folman to recall where he was when the Sabra and Shatila massacre happened, and for some reason, he is unable!
Who killed Bashir Gemayel?
Punishing Palestinian civilians in the refugee camps with the excuse of avenging the murder of Bashir Gemayel is certainly a criminal act, but the facts indicate that the perpetrator was not Palestinian. Habib al-Shartuni was apprehended just two days after carrying out the operation, and confessed that he had wanted to punish the Lebanese President – in Gemayel’s case, that meant a death sentence. Because Lebanon in that period was not in a state of centralized rule that would permit justice to take its course, and because Gemayel was so powerful that he could not be punished, Shartuni, a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, executed Gemayel by blowing up his office on the third floor of the Phalange Party headquarters that were in the same building. He supported his actions with Article 274 of the Lebanese Penal Code, which stipulates the death sentence for anyone who collaborates with a foreign power to disturb Lebanese internal security. Shartuni was apprehended in and remained in custody without trial in the Baabda Palace until the beginning of the nineties.
Those Responsible for the Massacre
In his film, Folman brings into question the role of the Israeli army in the massacre, making it seem a moral issue. But in truth, his questions lead to a single conclusion, namely, that the Christian militias, as he calls them, bear the primary responsibility, and that it was only possible for the army occupying Lebanese territory to stop the massacre after 36 hours.
The Israeli role in the massacre provoked debate for unclear reasons, as if its carrying out at the hands of the Lebanese Forces could even have occurred if not for the occupation of Lebanon and the protection and nurturing of the Israeli army. So who holds the higher number in the death toll? Let it be a fair competition and let the judges be neutral and we will not get upset if Israel wins fair and square!
Actually, the Lebanese and Palestinian civilian victims of the Israeli army far outnumber the victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. The principal aim of the invasion of Lebanon was to expel the Palestinians, one that Israel and the Lebanese Forces shared. This explains the joint planning between the two sides, as confirmed by testimonies of Forces members in the film Massacre directed by the German Monika Bergman.
Massacre by Monika Bergman
In her film, Bergman interviewed a group of LF members who participated in carrying out the Sabra and Shatila massacre. The film presents an ugly picture of the slaughter, its perpetrators and their relationship to Israel. The testimonies make clear Israel’s involvement in the operation from the stage of planning to execution. One of them speaks about the training camps in Haifa and Eilat for an LF group years before the war: “We arrived in Haifa from the sea during the afternoon, we got off on land, group after group…we looked around, we couldn’t believe it! We were in Israel!”
In another testimony, the Israeli complicity in the slaughter seems evident, from his description of how it started: “We had arrived at 6pm, a little before sunset, while Elie Hobeika was meeting with some Israeli officers in a nearby building. We were certain that the Palestinians had killed Bashir Gemayel and we wanted to avenge his death…we wanted to wipe them off the face of the earth.” Another person says in his testimony: “We were seething…an Israeli called Shlomo – I can still recall him uptil now – came and asked us to accompany him to Sabra and Shatila.” Another LF Officer says: “On September 16 [1982], an order reached our base, weapons and ammunition were given to my men and Israeli cars were put under our bidding.”
After the murder of defenseless Palestinian refugees carried out in the refugee camps, the LF had to carry the corpses in trucks and dump them far away. Another group was dumping corpses in a large well, or putting them in bags and sprinkling chemicals on them and then burying them in the dirt. Bergman asks one of them: “Where did you get the bags from?” He answers: “The Jews brought them…they said we would need them. They prepared everything…they had thought of all the details.”
Folman in the Reserves
In this film, Israeli cinema once again repeats the discourse of the soldier as the victim of the wars he wages. The Nazi Holocaust should not be absent from our minds – it is on screen. Folman’s psychotherapist friend tells him: “For you this massacre is linked to another one, that of your family in Auschwitz” – another confirmation that the Israeli soldier is a victim of his own wars.
Folman follows the same path that justifies the Israeli military’s crimes - the blame for committing the massacres falls on that damn Nazi Holocaust!
In the commentary accompanying the film, Folman says: “I don’t think the human mind can believe that there are people murdering families for no reason just meters away from you!” Then, at another point, he says: “I don’t understand the point of wars being waged and people fighting each other over a piece of land.”
Put simply, this is an antiwar stance, a noble humanitarian stance, but it is also extremely vile in its neutrality and two-facedness, especially when we know that Folman remained a reservist in the Israeli army, writing scripts for its propaganda films until a few years ago.
The Israeli Soldier as a Victim of His Own Wars
One of the soldiers in the film, whose job was to take photographs, sorrowfully describes a scene in Beirut in which horses die: “What fault is it of these horses that they should have to die in the wars of humans?” Another confirmation of the pills of neutrality that the film tries to make the viewer swallow…
Waltz with Bashir can be added to the list of films that serve to beautify the offensive face of Israel. The Israeli Foreign Ministry has proudly adopted it and Folman boasts in interviews that Israeli ambassadors have received him everywhere he has gone to screen the film.
Folman did not condemn the recent war on Gaza when he was on various podiums to receive his prizes. It is clear that he has not stepped out of the consensus on killing Arabs from the time of Deir Yassin until Rafah. Given this, Waltz with Bashir is another film in the same apparatus that sees the Arab either though camera lenses or the barrels of guns; the same apparatus that justifies the crimes Israel commits, relying on the soldier’s lost memory and military’s selective memory. Without doubt, these are Israeli characteristics par excellence!
Salim Abu Jabal is a critic from the occupied Golan Heights, residing in Haifa.
Saturday, 18 April 2009
They Waltz Like This with Bashir...
Link By sunbula
Reham Alhelsi - Palestinian Prisoners: Imprisoned for their Love of Freedom
Link
Reham Alhelsi • Apr 18th, 2009 at 10:34 • Category: Biography, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Zionism
Every year, on April 17, Palestinians commemorate the Palestinian Political Prisoners Day. On 17.4.1974 the first Palestinian political prisoner, Mahmoud Baker Hijazi, was released from Israeli prisons in the first prisoner exchange deal with Israel. That same year, the Palestinian National Council declared the 17th of April a day of solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners, to be commemorated every year. In Occupied Palestine prison and imprisonment are as common as sunrise and sunset. There is almost no family that had not been subjected to Israeli imprisonment one way or the other. Palestinians are being detained on a daily basis, making them the most imprisoned people on earth. It is difficult to estimate their number, but several sources put the number of Palestinians detained or imprisoned by Israel since 1967 at over 750,000 Palestinians, making 20% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories, and approximately 40% of the total Palestinian male population. With the outbreak of the 2nd Intifada in September 2000 until September 2008 some 65,000 men, 750 women and 7,500 children were arrested by Israel. According to the ICRC, in October 2008 there were 10,500 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Addammeer puts the number at 9,493, 750 of which are administrative detainees, 349 aged 18 and under, and 75 are females. Among those detained are political figures and some 47 Palestinians parliamentarians.
The IOF can arrest anyone and anywhere, without giving a reason. Palestinians are arrested at home, on the way to school or work, at universities, in hospitals, at checkpoints. Mass arrests, as form of collective punishment, are also very common. Curfews would be imposed on villages, towns or refugees camps, houses would be raided and Palestinians arrested. I have witnesses a number of these mass arrests, but never did the IOF bother to tell the residents why they were forced to leave their homes in the middle of the night and stand in the cold and the darkness for long hours. Under the cover of darkness and the curfew, the IOF would demand with loudspeakers that all men, usually those between 16 and 45, gather in the school yard or on the main street. We used to sit in the darkness at the windows and try and recognize the men standing in line and questioned by the IOF; relatives, friends and neighbours. Sometimes the men are blindfolded and handcuffed. They would wait for this to end, while being harassed, shouted at and kicked by the Israeli soldiers. We would wait with them, behind windows, hoping that they would all be released soon and come home safe. Sometimes, they are all sent back home after a night of harassment, but often this ends with mass arrest for no given reason.
Another form of collective punishment is house arrests. I have witnessed so many house arrests, and all were accompanied by violence and harassment and the wilful destruction of property by the IOF. They would turn the house over, destroying the furniture and even the food, as if the person they are searching for would be hiding in the wheat or the sugar, and if there was any money or valuables in the house, it was sure they would never be found again after the IOF had left the house. Family members trying to protect their home or their children are beaten. We would tell them that the person they are looking for is not in the house, we would try and reason with them, but it is all useless. They come on a mission to harass, destroy and arrest. Often I thought they knew they wouldn’t find what or who they are looking for, and that the whole operation of house raid is purely to punish the family and pressure it to hand over their son. During such house searches, the IOF would push us against the wall, kick us with their boots and beat us with the butts of their rifles. They didn’t care that they were beating children and elderly.
Upon arrest, detainees are often blindfolded and handcuffed. Not only is the detainee physically abused and humiliated, but other members of the family as well. Also, it is common practice by the IOF to use family members as human shields during such raids. The detainee is taken without informing the family about where he is taken to. Usually it takes days, if not more, before the family finds out where a detainee is. There are many incidents where families realized that their sons were in a certain prison months after they were arrested, and only after another detainee was released and informed that family about their son. One summer afternoon, my uncle and I were playing football in the garden. He was on the IOF list of wanted persons and was staying in our house. Nearby, there was a huge fruit tree, and when I was a child my father told me as way of a joke that a soldier was buried under that tree. At nights, when the leaves of the tree would move with the wind, I used to imagine the sound they made the murmuring of that soldier, and with all the Russian books we had in our library, I gave that imaginary soldier the name Yuri. My uncle and I made bets as to who would win the football game, we joked and laughed and I remember telling my uncle that Yuri would come and take him. After I explained to him what I was talking about, he said: I think you mean Uri and not Yuri, meaning that if any soldier came to take him away, it would be an Israeli soldier, not a Russian. That night at 2 in the morning, I was awakened by hurrying footsteps outside the window. The minute I fully woke up and stood, there was loud knocking on the front door. My father asked who it was, and removed the side of the curtain to see who stood outside. Standing near him, I could see the face of my grandfather and behind him nothing but darkness, complete darkness. The minute my grandfather said it was him, my father opened the door immediately, only to see grandfather practically thrown inside the house. In a matter of seconds, the house was full of IOF soldiers, some in army uniform, others in civil uniform. They had finally figured out were my uncle was hiding and had come to arrest him. They brought my grandfather, an old man, in the middle of the night as a human shield, in case anything happened. My uncle was still in bed, and the minute the Bethlehem area commander saw him, he jumped on the bed and held his throat in his arms, wanting to strangle him, shouting repeatedly: you were here the whole time. My mother tried to get them off my uncle, but the commander pushed her away. And while my uncle was putting on his clothes and shoes, the commander was slapping him and kicking him. The other area commander, responsible for Sawahreh and the surroundings, told his colleague not to do any beating in his area, meaning that since the prisoner was from the Bethlehem area, the beating was okay once they reached that area. I remember we had a huge poster on the wall, one of “Guevara Gaza”, and the commander asked my sister if she knew who it was. The name was written on the poster for all to see, so when she replied yes, he ordered her to remove the poster. When they left, we realized that they had surrounded the whole area around our house. IOF vehicles had blocked the way in case anyone thought of escaping, and I am sure that if an ant moved in the darkness that night, it would have been shot dead immediately. My uncle was taken to interrogation and tortured to confess to things he never did, and when they failed to get a confession from him, he was held in administrative detention, which is a detention without trial or charge, often used by Israel. When he was finally released, he told us that they couldn’t wait for the interrogation to start the torture, and that he was beaten by the soldiers all the way from Sawahreh till they reached the Israeli detention facility.
Sometimes, injured or sick prisoners are taken from their homes, from hospitals, or after being wounded in a demonstration. They rarely get the needed medical help, and often get Aspirin as treatment for everything. Health examinations are conducted through a fence and additional medical treatment or hospital transfers are often postponed for long periods of time. Withholding medical treatment is one method used to pressure detainees into collaboration. There are more than 800 Palestinian detainees who suffer from bad health conditions, much of which as a result of the arrest or the interrogation. According to Palestinian researcher Abdul-Naser Farawna, 196 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli prisons since 1967 due to medical negligence and torture, 49 of whom died due to medical negligence. Alone last year, 2 detainees died because they were not given the needed medical assistance. During the 2nd Intifada 72 Palestinian detainees have died in detention, 17 due to medical negligence, 3 as a result of torture, 51 were executed by the IOF after being arrested and 1 prisoner was killed during prison protests.
Often Palestinians are arrested for breaking one of the over 2,000 military orders governing the Occupied Palestinian Territories, some of which they have never heard of before their arrest. Women and children are often arrested to pressure detained family members into confessing or pressure other family members wanted by Israel to hand themselves in. The Palestinian Prisoners Society reports that between September 2000 and September 2008 some 750 women and 7,500 Palestinian children were arrested by Israel. In September 2008 there were 69 Palestinian female political prisoners held in Israeli prisons, 2 of them in solitary confinement and 5 in administrative detention. There are 6 female child prisoners and 4 detainees imprisoned as well as their husbands. One detainee has her baby with her who was born in prison. Palestinian female prisoners are placed in 2 Israeli prisons: Hasharon-Telmond and Neve Tertza prison, where they are detained in the same section as Israeli female criminals accused of murder, drug use and prostitution. Like Palestinian male prisoners, Palestinian female prisoners face torture and humiliation. Strip search, brutal body searches and sexual harassment are frequent.
Contrary to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines a child as being under 18, Israeli military orders consider a child over 16 an adult, to be treated, tried and sentenced as such. In practice, Palestinian children as young as 12 may be arrested, charged and sentenced in Israeli military courts, since there are no juvenile courts. According to several reports, there are over 400 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons today, including 7 girls and 6 administrative detainees. These child detainees are aged between 13 and 18, more than 54 of whom are not older than 16. They are detained in Israeli prisons together with adults. 50 of these child prisoners are held in Ofer, 100 in Magiddo, 7 in Atzion, 22 in the Negev, 105 in Hasharon-Telmond and the rest in other prison facilities. Today, more than 450 Palestinian adult prisoners were children upon arrest and turned 18 in Israeli prisons. Like adult prisoners, Palestinian child prisoners are subjected to physical and psychological torture to extract confessions from them. During interrogation, they are not allowed to have any family member or a lawyer attending. Although I was practically a child when arrested, I was placed in a small empty room. I had been separated from my sister, and didn’t know where they had taken her. I stood waiting for a life sign from anyone, and I didn’t know how long I stood there, but I remember well how tired I was of standing and how thirsty I was. After some time, I could hear the cries of a boy in the room next to where I was. I thought, they were either torturing him or someone was making these noises to make me scared before it was my turn to be interrogated. I kept thinking of everything I ever heard, of how to keep still, stay brave and remember that they are only playing games with us to scare us into confessing to things we didn’t do. When I was finally led into a room with a number of IOF soldiers, all males, the soldier in charge checked my school bag and found my biology textbook. He looked through the book and saw a drawing of the anatomy of a human tooth. He showed it to me and asked smirking in a disgusting way if I knew what it was. I knew what it was and knew what he thought it was and what his plan was by asking me about it. At that moment I didn’t feel scared anymore, because I realized how stupid they are. Not only didn’t he know it was a tooth, the textbook was in English and it was written below the drawing what it was, but most probably he didn’t know a word of English and was acting so superior. I looked at him and said: yes, this is a tooth. My suspicions were confirmed when, upon not believing me, he asked one of the other soldiers in the room and the other confirmed what I said.
Child prisoners are held up in overcrowded cells, face torture and solitary confinement and don’t receive the needed medical treatment. In the last couple of months there has been an increase in the number of Palestinian children arrested. They are either arrested at home, at checkpoints or in streets, and are often accused of throwing stones without any proof. DCI-Palestine reports that the number of children brought before Israeli military courts in pre-trial hearing in the first two weeks of January was twice as high as in 2008. It added that its legal department receives a monthly average of 10 to 15 new cases of children for legal representation in Military courts, and that alone for the first two weeks of January 2009 it received 10 new cases. In one incident, 7 children were arrested in Toura Al Gharbieh in Jenin on 20.1.2009 and were detained at the Salim detention and interrogation centre. Two of the children were 12, two 13, two were 15 and the last 17 years old. Under pressure and with no lawyer present, the children confessed they had thrown stones at the Apartheid Wall. In another incident, during an invasion of Hares in the West Bank on the night of 12/13.3.2009, the IOF arrested a 17 year old boy suffering from kidney malfunction.
Palestinians prisoners are held in facilities run by the Israeli Prison Services (IPS) or the IDF. There are 30 detention centres that include 21 prisons and military camps, 5 detention and holding centres and 4 interrogation centres. Also, there is at least one known secret prison, Facility 1391, which is renowned for its severe torture methods. The exact location of this prison is unknown and lawyers and the ICRC have no access to it. The majority of these facilities are located outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and transferring Palestinian prisoners to these facilities constitutes a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention, and making family visits almost impossible. Some of these facilities are buildings while others are tents within military camps like the Ketzion Military prison camp in the Negev, exposing detainees to harsh weather conditions. They are all overcrowded, with little hygiene, prisoners have to sleep on wooden planks and covers are often provided by the families or human rights organizations. The food provided is insufficient and of poor quality. Palestinian detainees have to live in appalling conditions in these facilities, are humiliated and subjected to inhuman treatment. In some cases, detainees are deported, either abroad or to the Gaza Strip. After the siege of the Nativity Church in 2003, Israel deported 13 Palestinian detainees to Europe and 26 to the Gaza Strip. During the Gaza war, hundreds of Palestinian civilians were arrested, including minors. They were handcuffed and blindfolded, and had nothing to shelter them from the harsh weather. Many held for days in pits dug in the ground. Reports added that some of the detainees were held near tanks and in combat area, making them human shields for the IOF.
Prison visits usually take the whole day, although the visit itself lasts less than an hour. We would set off in the very early morning, when it was dark outside and everyone else was still sleeping. The bus of the ICRC would be full with Palestinians from everywhere, mostly elderly women and children, all anxious to see their relatives. And before we would finally be able to see our loved ones, we would undergo one checkpoint after the other and one search after the other. I remember during one visit, when we were finally allowed into the visit room, I walked quickly looking for my uncle. I hadn’t seen him in years, and after I finally sat opposite him, we started talking through the barbed wire. We were both so happy. It was after a few minutes that someone from my family came and told me to come and say hello to my uncle. I was talking to the wrong person, and I was so embarrassed I didn’t even say goodbye or look back to see if that prisoner had any visitors that day. Later, I thought he too might have not seen his family since so long that he too mistook me for a relative, or maybe he was just anxious to speak to someone. During another visit, I remember sitting and talking to my uncle and at the same time trying to ignore the rain drops that were seeping through the roof and hitting me on the head and running down my face. My uncle must have found it amusing, because every time a raindrop would hit me in the face he would smile, but I would ignore it and continue talking, and by the end of the visit my hair was totally soaked and I was freezing. There was no possibility of kissing or hugging a relative, and the only thing we could do in way of shaking hands was to stretch our fingers through the barbed net separating us. Saying goodbye was always difficult, because we knew we were going back to our homes, to the relatively bigger prison, while leaving them behind in the small overcrowded cells. And when we finally reached home, it would be dark again and most people would be sleeping, a day spent between checkpoints and searches for a 45 minute visit of loved ones.
One time, on the way to my aunt’s house in Dheisheh, a friend of mine and I passed a young man, who was walking up and down one narrow alley of the refugee camp. The man was most probably mid twenty and was good looking. He was walking that alley and was arguing with someone. I looked around and saw no one in the whole area. I looked up to see if he was addressing someone sitting at a window or on the roof, but could see no one. I pointed the man to my friend, who told me not to worry. She said the young man had been recently released from an Israeli prison, where he was tortured. Since then he had been roaming the streets of Dheisheh, arguing with an invisible friend. As I listened closer, I realized he was talking politics with himself, discussing the occupation and life in prison. They had not released him, for he was still in that Israeli cell, being tortured every minute. Last winter when I was in Palestine, I wanted to take some photos of old UNRWA rooms, built for the Palestinians in 1949. Most old UNRWA rooms were being destroyed to build new houses, and I wanted to keep a record of the last remaining rooms that are a synonym to the Nakba and refugee camps. The wife of one of my uncles accompanied me in my search since she was born and grew up in Dheisheh and knew where to find a few old rooms. Most of these tiny rooms are deserted now, standing empty near larger family houses. I would take photos from the outside and if the room had no door or the door was open, I would take photos from the inside. As we came to inspect one room, we were surprised to find an old man lying on the ground, wrapped in a torn out winter coat. The old man opened his eyes as he saw us, he made a move as if to stand up, but my uncle’s wife told him not to leave and apologized for disturbing him, since we thought the room was deserted. A few minutes later, my mother’s aunt saw us invited us for some tea. Inside, we told her about the old man, and as she and my uncle’s wife talked about the old man and giving him something to eat and warm himself, since they knew who he was, I realized it must be the young man I saw long time ago. He was still imprisoned in that cell, a whole life wasted, and all I could do was to shake my head at the injustice of it all.
Under international humanitarian law, torture is strictly forbidden. The world was shocked when the torture in Abu Ghreib came to light, there were condemnations from everywhere and demands were made to close that prison. But the Zionist state, which conducts one war crime after the other, never hesitates in using torture. The forms of torture used in Abu Ghreib were not new to Palestinians, because they have been used since decades by the IPS against Palestinians. Was it not revealed that Israeli IOF and Shin Bet interrogators were hired by the Pentagon to brutally interrogate prisoners in Abu Ghreib? Was it not revealed that the American interrogates implicated in the torture had attended an “anti terror” training camp in Israel, and that many of the torture methods used in Abu Ghreib resembled those applied by Israel against Palestinian detainees? Much is documented about torture in Israeli prisons, but we rarely hear of any condemnation or demand to close these torture facilities. According to B’Tselem, 85% of the Palestinian detainees have been subjected to torture, adding that “Since 1987, the GSS (Israeli General Security Service) interrogated at least 850 Palestinians a year by means of torture …. (a)ll governmental authorities - from the Israeli army to the Supreme court - take part in approving torture, in developing new methods, and in supervising them.” In 1999 the Israeli High Court superficially outlawed the use of arbitrary torture as an interrogation method, but in reality it did not ban it and till today torture is still used by Israel. Physical ill treatment combined with humiliation begins with the arrest, whether at home or in the street. Palestinian detainees can be interrogated for 180 days, and can be denied a lawyer for a period of 60 days. During interrogation, torture is used and has led to the death of the detainee in some cases and confessions extracted under torture are admissible in Israeli courts.
Palestinians may be held for days without being brought before a judge or informed of the reason for the arrest, during which they are interrogated, which can last up to 180 days, or are administratively detained. Administrative detention is a detention without trial or charge or the continuation of imprisonment after the completion of a sentence. It is often used by Israel and is authorized by an administrative order of the IOF rather than by a judicial decree. Israeli Military Order 1229 of 1988 empowers IOF military commanders to detain Palestinians for up to 6 months, which can be extended indefinitely. Over the years, thousands of Palestinians, men and women and of all ages, have been held in administrative detention for periods ranging from 6 months to over 8 years, without being tried or charged. Families of detainees are not informed of a person’s arrest or the arrest location. Theoretically, detainees can appeal, but in reality neither they nor their lawyers are informed of the reason for the detention or examine the evidence, which makes defending their clients very difficult. The Orders governing administrative detention were also modified in 1999. MO 1466 - Temporary Order, Modification 13 states that a detainee must be brought before a military judge within 10 days of his arrest, and authorizing the military judge to approve, cancel or decrease the time of administrative detention order. This modification is also superficial, since the judges are military personnel who give legal legitimacy to the illegal actions of the IOF and the IPS. In reality, Palestinians are tried by Israeli military courts consisting of a panel of 3 judges appointed by the IOF. These judges often have no legal background and thus don’t fulfil international standards of a fair trial. Since the beginning of the 2nd intifada in September 2000 some 20,000 Palestinians were held in administrative detention. By April 2009 there were more than 560 Palestinian administrative detainees, held in Israeli prisons without trial. 372 of these detainees have been held without trial or charge for at least two consecutive periods, 47 of them for over two years, and 23 for over two and a half years including two who have been imprisoned for over four and a half years.
While a Palestinian may be held in custody for 18 days before being brought to a judge, an Israeli can be held in custody for a maximum of 48 hours before being brought before a judge. While a Palestinian can be held for 30 days without charges which can be extended indefinitely, an Israeli can be held for 15 days without a charge which can be extended for only another 15 days. Palestinians brought to court on accusation of murder are always convicted, even without evidence, and are always sentenced to life imprisonment. Most cases against Israeli soldiers or illegal Jewish settlers accused of murdering Palestinians are closed without any charges, even with the existence of evidence or witnesses. The few who do get sentenced are imprisoned for short periods ranging from 6 months to 7 and a half years or to community service. Palestinian Prisoners have been used by Israel at politically convenient moments, whereby Palestinians who had already served out their sentences with only a few days remaining would be released as “gestures of good will”. At the same time hundreds others would be arrested. For example, on 25.8.2008 Israel released 198 prisoners as a “gesture of good will”, however statistics for August 2008 show that another 338 Palestinians were arrested. Today there are some 81 “old detainees” i.e., detainees who are in continuous imprisonment since over 20 years, 2 of whom since over 30 years, and some 290 prisoners who have been in prison since over 15 years.
Although they have modern deadly weapons, are top recipients of military assistance, have their war crimes justified by a biased western media, and their interests protected by Zionist lobbies all over the world, the Zionists still fear us because they know we are the rightful owners of the land and that alone by existing we are defying them and their power and countering the myths and lies on which their state is built. Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman said on the release of Palestinian prisoners: “It would be better to drown these prisoners, in the Dead Sea if possible, since that’s the lowest point in the world.” They not only deny us our rights and our freedom, they want to kill our spirit and see us dead. What they haven’t understood by now is that the more they humiliate us, harass us, imprison us, take away our freedom from us, the more we value that freedom and the stronger becomes our belief in our just cause and our will to be free.
Tagged as: Israel, Palestine, Palestinian prisoners, prisoners, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance
Reham Alhelsi • Apr 18th, 2009 at 10:34 • Category: Biography, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Zionism
Every year, on April 17, Palestinians commemorate the Palestinian Political Prisoners Day. On 17.4.1974 the first Palestinian political prisoner, Mahmoud Baker Hijazi, was released from Israeli prisons in the first prisoner exchange deal with Israel. That same year, the Palestinian National Council declared the 17th of April a day of solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners, to be commemorated every year. In Occupied Palestine prison and imprisonment are as common as sunrise and sunset. There is almost no family that had not been subjected to Israeli imprisonment one way or the other. Palestinians are being detained on a daily basis, making them the most imprisoned people on earth. It is difficult to estimate their number, but several sources put the number of Palestinians detained or imprisoned by Israel since 1967 at over 750,000 Palestinians, making 20% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories, and approximately 40% of the total Palestinian male population. With the outbreak of the 2nd Intifada in September 2000 until September 2008 some 65,000 men, 750 women and 7,500 children were arrested by Israel. According to the ICRC, in October 2008 there were 10,500 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Addammeer puts the number at 9,493, 750 of which are administrative detainees, 349 aged 18 and under, and 75 are females. Among those detained are political figures and some 47 Palestinians parliamentarians.
The IOF can arrest anyone and anywhere, without giving a reason. Palestinians are arrested at home, on the way to school or work, at universities, in hospitals, at checkpoints. Mass arrests, as form of collective punishment, are also very common. Curfews would be imposed on villages, towns or refugees camps, houses would be raided and Palestinians arrested. I have witnesses a number of these mass arrests, but never did the IOF bother to tell the residents why they were forced to leave their homes in the middle of the night and stand in the cold and the darkness for long hours. Under the cover of darkness and the curfew, the IOF would demand with loudspeakers that all men, usually those between 16 and 45, gather in the school yard or on the main street. We used to sit in the darkness at the windows and try and recognize the men standing in line and questioned by the IOF; relatives, friends and neighbours. Sometimes the men are blindfolded and handcuffed. They would wait for this to end, while being harassed, shouted at and kicked by the Israeli soldiers. We would wait with them, behind windows, hoping that they would all be released soon and come home safe. Sometimes, they are all sent back home after a night of harassment, but often this ends with mass arrest for no given reason.
Another form of collective punishment is house arrests. I have witnessed so many house arrests, and all were accompanied by violence and harassment and the wilful destruction of property by the IOF. They would turn the house over, destroying the furniture and even the food, as if the person they are searching for would be hiding in the wheat or the sugar, and if there was any money or valuables in the house, it was sure they would never be found again after the IOF had left the house. Family members trying to protect their home or their children are beaten. We would tell them that the person they are looking for is not in the house, we would try and reason with them, but it is all useless. They come on a mission to harass, destroy and arrest. Often I thought they knew they wouldn’t find what or who they are looking for, and that the whole operation of house raid is purely to punish the family and pressure it to hand over their son. During such house searches, the IOF would push us against the wall, kick us with their boots and beat us with the butts of their rifles. They didn’t care that they were beating children and elderly.
Upon arrest, detainees are often blindfolded and handcuffed. Not only is the detainee physically abused and humiliated, but other members of the family as well. Also, it is common practice by the IOF to use family members as human shields during such raids. The detainee is taken without informing the family about where he is taken to. Usually it takes days, if not more, before the family finds out where a detainee is. There are many incidents where families realized that their sons were in a certain prison months after they were arrested, and only after another detainee was released and informed that family about their son. One summer afternoon, my uncle and I were playing football in the garden. He was on the IOF list of wanted persons and was staying in our house. Nearby, there was a huge fruit tree, and when I was a child my father told me as way of a joke that a soldier was buried under that tree. At nights, when the leaves of the tree would move with the wind, I used to imagine the sound they made the murmuring of that soldier, and with all the Russian books we had in our library, I gave that imaginary soldier the name Yuri. My uncle and I made bets as to who would win the football game, we joked and laughed and I remember telling my uncle that Yuri would come and take him. After I explained to him what I was talking about, he said: I think you mean Uri and not Yuri, meaning that if any soldier came to take him away, it would be an Israeli soldier, not a Russian. That night at 2 in the morning, I was awakened by hurrying footsteps outside the window. The minute I fully woke up and stood, there was loud knocking on the front door. My father asked who it was, and removed the side of the curtain to see who stood outside. Standing near him, I could see the face of my grandfather and behind him nothing but darkness, complete darkness. The minute my grandfather said it was him, my father opened the door immediately, only to see grandfather practically thrown inside the house. In a matter of seconds, the house was full of IOF soldiers, some in army uniform, others in civil uniform. They had finally figured out were my uncle was hiding and had come to arrest him. They brought my grandfather, an old man, in the middle of the night as a human shield, in case anything happened. My uncle was still in bed, and the minute the Bethlehem area commander saw him, he jumped on the bed and held his throat in his arms, wanting to strangle him, shouting repeatedly: you were here the whole time. My mother tried to get them off my uncle, but the commander pushed her away. And while my uncle was putting on his clothes and shoes, the commander was slapping him and kicking him. The other area commander, responsible for Sawahreh and the surroundings, told his colleague not to do any beating in his area, meaning that since the prisoner was from the Bethlehem area, the beating was okay once they reached that area. I remember we had a huge poster on the wall, one of “Guevara Gaza”, and the commander asked my sister if she knew who it was. The name was written on the poster for all to see, so when she replied yes, he ordered her to remove the poster. When they left, we realized that they had surrounded the whole area around our house. IOF vehicles had blocked the way in case anyone thought of escaping, and I am sure that if an ant moved in the darkness that night, it would have been shot dead immediately. My uncle was taken to interrogation and tortured to confess to things he never did, and when they failed to get a confession from him, he was held in administrative detention, which is a detention without trial or charge, often used by Israel. When he was finally released, he told us that they couldn’t wait for the interrogation to start the torture, and that he was beaten by the soldiers all the way from Sawahreh till they reached the Israeli detention facility.
Sometimes, injured or sick prisoners are taken from their homes, from hospitals, or after being wounded in a demonstration. They rarely get the needed medical help, and often get Aspirin as treatment for everything. Health examinations are conducted through a fence and additional medical treatment or hospital transfers are often postponed for long periods of time. Withholding medical treatment is one method used to pressure detainees into collaboration. There are more than 800 Palestinian detainees who suffer from bad health conditions, much of which as a result of the arrest or the interrogation. According to Palestinian researcher Abdul-Naser Farawna, 196 Palestinian detainees have died in Israeli prisons since 1967 due to medical negligence and torture, 49 of whom died due to medical negligence. Alone last year, 2 detainees died because they were not given the needed medical assistance. During the 2nd Intifada 72 Palestinian detainees have died in detention, 17 due to medical negligence, 3 as a result of torture, 51 were executed by the IOF after being arrested and 1 prisoner was killed during prison protests.
Often Palestinians are arrested for breaking one of the over 2,000 military orders governing the Occupied Palestinian Territories, some of which they have never heard of before their arrest. Women and children are often arrested to pressure detained family members into confessing or pressure other family members wanted by Israel to hand themselves in. The Palestinian Prisoners Society reports that between September 2000 and September 2008 some 750 women and 7,500 Palestinian children were arrested by Israel. In September 2008 there were 69 Palestinian female political prisoners held in Israeli prisons, 2 of them in solitary confinement and 5 in administrative detention. There are 6 female child prisoners and 4 detainees imprisoned as well as their husbands. One detainee has her baby with her who was born in prison. Palestinian female prisoners are placed in 2 Israeli prisons: Hasharon-Telmond and Neve Tertza prison, where they are detained in the same section as Israeli female criminals accused of murder, drug use and prostitution. Like Palestinian male prisoners, Palestinian female prisoners face torture and humiliation. Strip search, brutal body searches and sexual harassment are frequent.
Contrary to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines a child as being under 18, Israeli military orders consider a child over 16 an adult, to be treated, tried and sentenced as such. In practice, Palestinian children as young as 12 may be arrested, charged and sentenced in Israeli military courts, since there are no juvenile courts. According to several reports, there are over 400 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons today, including 7 girls and 6 administrative detainees. These child detainees are aged between 13 and 18, more than 54 of whom are not older than 16. They are detained in Israeli prisons together with adults. 50 of these child prisoners are held in Ofer, 100 in Magiddo, 7 in Atzion, 22 in the Negev, 105 in Hasharon-Telmond and the rest in other prison facilities. Today, more than 450 Palestinian adult prisoners were children upon arrest and turned 18 in Israeli prisons. Like adult prisoners, Palestinian child prisoners are subjected to physical and psychological torture to extract confessions from them. During interrogation, they are not allowed to have any family member or a lawyer attending. Although I was practically a child when arrested, I was placed in a small empty room. I had been separated from my sister, and didn’t know where they had taken her. I stood waiting for a life sign from anyone, and I didn’t know how long I stood there, but I remember well how tired I was of standing and how thirsty I was. After some time, I could hear the cries of a boy in the room next to where I was. I thought, they were either torturing him or someone was making these noises to make me scared before it was my turn to be interrogated. I kept thinking of everything I ever heard, of how to keep still, stay brave and remember that they are only playing games with us to scare us into confessing to things we didn’t do. When I was finally led into a room with a number of IOF soldiers, all males, the soldier in charge checked my school bag and found my biology textbook. He looked through the book and saw a drawing of the anatomy of a human tooth. He showed it to me and asked smirking in a disgusting way if I knew what it was. I knew what it was and knew what he thought it was and what his plan was by asking me about it. At that moment I didn’t feel scared anymore, because I realized how stupid they are. Not only didn’t he know it was a tooth, the textbook was in English and it was written below the drawing what it was, but most probably he didn’t know a word of English and was acting so superior. I looked at him and said: yes, this is a tooth. My suspicions were confirmed when, upon not believing me, he asked one of the other soldiers in the room and the other confirmed what I said.
Child prisoners are held up in overcrowded cells, face torture and solitary confinement and don’t receive the needed medical treatment. In the last couple of months there has been an increase in the number of Palestinian children arrested. They are either arrested at home, at checkpoints or in streets, and are often accused of throwing stones without any proof. DCI-Palestine reports that the number of children brought before Israeli military courts in pre-trial hearing in the first two weeks of January was twice as high as in 2008. It added that its legal department receives a monthly average of 10 to 15 new cases of children for legal representation in Military courts, and that alone for the first two weeks of January 2009 it received 10 new cases. In one incident, 7 children were arrested in Toura Al Gharbieh in Jenin on 20.1.2009 and were detained at the Salim detention and interrogation centre. Two of the children were 12, two 13, two were 15 and the last 17 years old. Under pressure and with no lawyer present, the children confessed they had thrown stones at the Apartheid Wall. In another incident, during an invasion of Hares in the West Bank on the night of 12/13.3.2009, the IOF arrested a 17 year old boy suffering from kidney malfunction.
Palestinians prisoners are held in facilities run by the Israeli Prison Services (IPS) or the IDF. There are 30 detention centres that include 21 prisons and military camps, 5 detention and holding centres and 4 interrogation centres. Also, there is at least one known secret prison, Facility 1391, which is renowned for its severe torture methods. The exact location of this prison is unknown and lawyers and the ICRC have no access to it. The majority of these facilities are located outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and transferring Palestinian prisoners to these facilities constitutes a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention, and making family visits almost impossible. Some of these facilities are buildings while others are tents within military camps like the Ketzion Military prison camp in the Negev, exposing detainees to harsh weather conditions. They are all overcrowded, with little hygiene, prisoners have to sleep on wooden planks and covers are often provided by the families or human rights organizations. The food provided is insufficient and of poor quality. Palestinian detainees have to live in appalling conditions in these facilities, are humiliated and subjected to inhuman treatment. In some cases, detainees are deported, either abroad or to the Gaza Strip. After the siege of the Nativity Church in 2003, Israel deported 13 Palestinian detainees to Europe and 26 to the Gaza Strip. During the Gaza war, hundreds of Palestinian civilians were arrested, including minors. They were handcuffed and blindfolded, and had nothing to shelter them from the harsh weather. Many held for days in pits dug in the ground. Reports added that some of the detainees were held near tanks and in combat area, making them human shields for the IOF.
Prison visits usually take the whole day, although the visit itself lasts less than an hour. We would set off in the very early morning, when it was dark outside and everyone else was still sleeping. The bus of the ICRC would be full with Palestinians from everywhere, mostly elderly women and children, all anxious to see their relatives. And before we would finally be able to see our loved ones, we would undergo one checkpoint after the other and one search after the other. I remember during one visit, when we were finally allowed into the visit room, I walked quickly looking for my uncle. I hadn’t seen him in years, and after I finally sat opposite him, we started talking through the barbed wire. We were both so happy. It was after a few minutes that someone from my family came and told me to come and say hello to my uncle. I was talking to the wrong person, and I was so embarrassed I didn’t even say goodbye or look back to see if that prisoner had any visitors that day. Later, I thought he too might have not seen his family since so long that he too mistook me for a relative, or maybe he was just anxious to speak to someone. During another visit, I remember sitting and talking to my uncle and at the same time trying to ignore the rain drops that were seeping through the roof and hitting me on the head and running down my face. My uncle must have found it amusing, because every time a raindrop would hit me in the face he would smile, but I would ignore it and continue talking, and by the end of the visit my hair was totally soaked and I was freezing. There was no possibility of kissing or hugging a relative, and the only thing we could do in way of shaking hands was to stretch our fingers through the barbed net separating us. Saying goodbye was always difficult, because we knew we were going back to our homes, to the relatively bigger prison, while leaving them behind in the small overcrowded cells. And when we finally reached home, it would be dark again and most people would be sleeping, a day spent between checkpoints and searches for a 45 minute visit of loved ones.
One time, on the way to my aunt’s house in Dheisheh, a friend of mine and I passed a young man, who was walking up and down one narrow alley of the refugee camp. The man was most probably mid twenty and was good looking. He was walking that alley and was arguing with someone. I looked around and saw no one in the whole area. I looked up to see if he was addressing someone sitting at a window or on the roof, but could see no one. I pointed the man to my friend, who told me not to worry. She said the young man had been recently released from an Israeli prison, where he was tortured. Since then he had been roaming the streets of Dheisheh, arguing with an invisible friend. As I listened closer, I realized he was talking politics with himself, discussing the occupation and life in prison. They had not released him, for he was still in that Israeli cell, being tortured every minute. Last winter when I was in Palestine, I wanted to take some photos of old UNRWA rooms, built for the Palestinians in 1949. Most old UNRWA rooms were being destroyed to build new houses, and I wanted to keep a record of the last remaining rooms that are a synonym to the Nakba and refugee camps. The wife of one of my uncles accompanied me in my search since she was born and grew up in Dheisheh and knew where to find a few old rooms. Most of these tiny rooms are deserted now, standing empty near larger family houses. I would take photos from the outside and if the room had no door or the door was open, I would take photos from the inside. As we came to inspect one room, we were surprised to find an old man lying on the ground, wrapped in a torn out winter coat. The old man opened his eyes as he saw us, he made a move as if to stand up, but my uncle’s wife told him not to leave and apologized for disturbing him, since we thought the room was deserted. A few minutes later, my mother’s aunt saw us invited us for some tea. Inside, we told her about the old man, and as she and my uncle’s wife talked about the old man and giving him something to eat and warm himself, since they knew who he was, I realized it must be the young man I saw long time ago. He was still imprisoned in that cell, a whole life wasted, and all I could do was to shake my head at the injustice of it all.
Under international humanitarian law, torture is strictly forbidden. The world was shocked when the torture in Abu Ghreib came to light, there were condemnations from everywhere and demands were made to close that prison. But the Zionist state, which conducts one war crime after the other, never hesitates in using torture. The forms of torture used in Abu Ghreib were not new to Palestinians, because they have been used since decades by the IPS against Palestinians. Was it not revealed that Israeli IOF and Shin Bet interrogators were hired by the Pentagon to brutally interrogate prisoners in Abu Ghreib? Was it not revealed that the American interrogates implicated in the torture had attended an “anti terror” training camp in Israel, and that many of the torture methods used in Abu Ghreib resembled those applied by Israel against Palestinian detainees? Much is documented about torture in Israeli prisons, but we rarely hear of any condemnation or demand to close these torture facilities. According to B’Tselem, 85% of the Palestinian detainees have been subjected to torture, adding that “Since 1987, the GSS (Israeli General Security Service) interrogated at least 850 Palestinians a year by means of torture …. (a)ll governmental authorities - from the Israeli army to the Supreme court - take part in approving torture, in developing new methods, and in supervising them.” In 1999 the Israeli High Court superficially outlawed the use of arbitrary torture as an interrogation method, but in reality it did not ban it and till today torture is still used by Israel. Physical ill treatment combined with humiliation begins with the arrest, whether at home or in the street. Palestinian detainees can be interrogated for 180 days, and can be denied a lawyer for a period of 60 days. During interrogation, torture is used and has led to the death of the detainee in some cases and confessions extracted under torture are admissible in Israeli courts.
Palestinians may be held for days without being brought before a judge or informed of the reason for the arrest, during which they are interrogated, which can last up to 180 days, or are administratively detained. Administrative detention is a detention without trial or charge or the continuation of imprisonment after the completion of a sentence. It is often used by Israel and is authorized by an administrative order of the IOF rather than by a judicial decree. Israeli Military Order 1229 of 1988 empowers IOF military commanders to detain Palestinians for up to 6 months, which can be extended indefinitely. Over the years, thousands of Palestinians, men and women and of all ages, have been held in administrative detention for periods ranging from 6 months to over 8 years, without being tried or charged. Families of detainees are not informed of a person’s arrest or the arrest location. Theoretically, detainees can appeal, but in reality neither they nor their lawyers are informed of the reason for the detention or examine the evidence, which makes defending their clients very difficult. The Orders governing administrative detention were also modified in 1999. MO 1466 - Temporary Order, Modification 13 states that a detainee must be brought before a military judge within 10 days of his arrest, and authorizing the military judge to approve, cancel or decrease the time of administrative detention order. This modification is also superficial, since the judges are military personnel who give legal legitimacy to the illegal actions of the IOF and the IPS. In reality, Palestinians are tried by Israeli military courts consisting of a panel of 3 judges appointed by the IOF. These judges often have no legal background and thus don’t fulfil international standards of a fair trial. Since the beginning of the 2nd intifada in September 2000 some 20,000 Palestinians were held in administrative detention. By April 2009 there were more than 560 Palestinian administrative detainees, held in Israeli prisons without trial. 372 of these detainees have been held without trial or charge for at least two consecutive periods, 47 of them for over two years, and 23 for over two and a half years including two who have been imprisoned for over four and a half years.
While a Palestinian may be held in custody for 18 days before being brought to a judge, an Israeli can be held in custody for a maximum of 48 hours before being brought before a judge. While a Palestinian can be held for 30 days without charges which can be extended indefinitely, an Israeli can be held for 15 days without a charge which can be extended for only another 15 days. Palestinians brought to court on accusation of murder are always convicted, even without evidence, and are always sentenced to life imprisonment. Most cases against Israeli soldiers or illegal Jewish settlers accused of murdering Palestinians are closed without any charges, even with the existence of evidence or witnesses. The few who do get sentenced are imprisoned for short periods ranging from 6 months to 7 and a half years or to community service. Palestinian Prisoners have been used by Israel at politically convenient moments, whereby Palestinians who had already served out their sentences with only a few days remaining would be released as “gestures of good will”. At the same time hundreds others would be arrested. For example, on 25.8.2008 Israel released 198 prisoners as a “gesture of good will”, however statistics for August 2008 show that another 338 Palestinians were arrested. Today there are some 81 “old detainees” i.e., detainees who are in continuous imprisonment since over 20 years, 2 of whom since over 30 years, and some 290 prisoners who have been in prison since over 15 years.
Although they have modern deadly weapons, are top recipients of military assistance, have their war crimes justified by a biased western media, and their interests protected by Zionist lobbies all over the world, the Zionists still fear us because they know we are the rightful owners of the land and that alone by existing we are defying them and their power and countering the myths and lies on which their state is built. Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman said on the release of Palestinian prisoners: “It would be better to drown these prisoners, in the Dead Sea if possible, since that’s the lowest point in the world.” They not only deny us our rights and our freedom, they want to kill our spirit and see us dead. What they haven’t understood by now is that the more they humiliate us, harass us, imprison us, take away our freedom from us, the more we value that freedom and the stronger becomes our belief in our just cause and our will to be free.
Sources:
Tagged as: Israel, Palestine, Palestinian prisoners, prisoners, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance
Reham Alhelsi is a Jerusalem-born Palestinian. She has worked extensively in the Palestinian Broadcasting Company and since 2000, when she moved to Germany, has trained at various radio and TV networks including Deutsche Welle, SWR and WDR. She is currently writing her PhD in Regional Planning with a focus on Palestinian Land Management and local government.
Palestinians get less water than Israel-World Bank
Link
JERUSALEM, April 20 (Reuters) - Israelis have access to more than four times more water than do Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the World Bank said in a report on Monday.
It said that a 1995 interim peace accord that governs the allocation of water has proven inadequate, as the Palestinian Authority has been fragmented by the last eight years of fighting while Israel has improved its own water facilities.
Improving conditions for Palestinians is central to peace strategies sponsored by the United States.
Peace talks launched in 2007 have stalled and the new right-leaning Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has so far balked at committing to restart them.
Efforts have been stymied by Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and a Palestinian schism over the takeover of Gaza by the Islamist group Hamas.
An Israeli official said the World Bank report was "grossly misleading". Israel has a much more developed industrial sector than the Palestinians and this can skew per capita assessments of water consumption, the official said. "It's like comparing apples to watermelons," the official said.
The World Bank urged international donors to come up with a mechanism to help improve the Palestinian water infrastructure and allow for long-term planning on water distribution despite the vicissitudes of the conflict with Israel.
Source
It said that a 1995 interim peace accord that governs the allocation of water has proven inadequate, as the Palestinian Authority has been fragmented by the last eight years of fighting while Israel has improved its own water facilities.
Improving conditions for Palestinians is central to peace strategies sponsored by the United States.
Peace talks launched in 2007 have stalled and the new right-leaning Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has so far balked at committing to restart them.
Efforts have been stymied by Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and a Palestinian schism over the takeover of Gaza by the Islamist group Hamas.
An Israeli official said the World Bank report was "grossly misleading". Israel has a much more developed industrial sector than the Palestinians and this can skew per capita assessments of water consumption, the official said. "It's like comparing apples to watermelons," the official said.
The World Bank urged international donors to come up with a mechanism to help improve the Palestinian water infrastructure and allow for long-term planning on water distribution despite the vicissitudes of the conflict with Israel.
Source
THE WRITING/GRAFFITI ON THE WALL
April 17, 2009 at 11:35 am (Activism, Apartheid, International Solidarity, Israel, Palestine, People's Art)
Anyone that has ever visited New York City surely saw the subway car graffiti. As you can see by the image at the left, books were written about these images. Some are quite amusing, some are political, and of course you find the rude ones from mindless ‘artists’….
Graffiti has long been used as a political weapon…. and it has been used as a means of protest for years. It will soon become a protest of mass proportion in Palestine…. as can be seen from the following article.
Kudos to the artists involved…. be assured that we will spread your message and works to the entire world!
The video below shows Bansky, a well known artist/activist against apartheid, at work in Palestine.
Palestinian activists plan massive graffiti protest on West Bank fence
By Cnaan Liphshiz
The separation barrier will receive its largest piece of graffiti yet when Dutch and Palestinian activists scrawl on it a 2,000-word letter by a South African scholar arguing that “Israeli apartheid” is “far more brutal” than Pretoria’s was.
The letter by Farid Esack will be put on the eastern face of the wall this week by activists belonging to Sendamessage - a Dutch group that collects money over the Internet for painting messages to protest against the barrier Israel is building along the West Bank.
According to Israel, the barrier is designed to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out, but Palestinians say it juts into their land. The letter, to be sprayed in a single line against a white-paint background, is expected to take up over 2,500 meters of concrete beginning near Ramallah.
“Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation?” Esack writes to Palestinian readers. “In your land, we are seeing something far more brutal, relentless and inhuman than what we have ever seen under apartheid.”
In another segment, he writes: “The apartheid police never used kids as shields … nor did the apartheid army ever use gunships and bombs against largely civilian targets.”
Esack is a Muslim writer and political activist appointed by Nelson Mandela to preside as gender equity commissioner. His text, which deplores Israel’s “targeted killings of those who dare to resist,” does not mention Hamas’ anti-Semitic ideology, the Palestinians’ firing of rockets on Israeli civilians or suicide bombings.
“We chose this letter because it holds no provocation, but is a balanced and academic text, not cheap propaganda,” the Dutch site’s operator and concept designer, Justus van Oel, told Haaretz.
“We do not contest that the wall is protecting Israelis from attacks. But it’s a short-term solution. Apartheid can never be a long-term solution,” said van Oel, who works in part as a communications consultant.
He added that the cost of the letter project is estimated at 12,500 euros and that advertisers and private individuals sponsor 1.5-meter segments. The sponsors’ signatures will be sprayed at the bottom of Esack’s text.
The spraying, which begins Thursday, will be the work of Sendamessage’s three Palestinian partners, led by Faris Arouri. “We think that we can get it done within eight full days,” van Oel said. “It’s impossible, but it’s no reason not to do it.” A documentary on the project will be filmed by Federico Campanale and Iona Hoogendoorn.
The open letter will be sprayed along with Sendamessage’s other works, in which the spraying team puts up messages they receive from clients through the Internet for 30 euros. Since the group came into being in December 2007, it has put some 850 messages on the wall for around $33,500, according to van Oel.
Part of the money Sendamessage receives stays in Holland “to cover the minimal costs,” van Oel says, with the bulk of the profits going to Palestinian non-governmental charities. “All recipients are linked to the network of ICCO, a large Dutch-Christian nonprofit, which only accepts legal organizations,” he said.
Asked whether the money could go to educational projects that could be seen as hateful to Israelis and Jews, van Oel said: “I don’t have an intelligence service there. It’s about trust, and I do trust the people involved in this project.”
Remember Qana...Israel’s Turning Point?
Remember Qana...Israel’s Turning Point?
Mohamad Shmaysani
Readers Number : 313
17/04/2009 They could have been fathers and mothers today telling their children the stories of what’s right and what’s wrong.
They could have been grandmothers and grandfathers.
They could have been vivid young men and young women working on their future.
106 people could have been anything other than mere remains and anyplace other than under the ground of Qana.
13 years ago, Qana was the scene of an obscene massacre caused by one of Israel’s “Grapes of Wrath.”
Few know that the name the Grapes of Wrath has religious implications. Israeli Rabbi Moshe Cohen explained that the word "grapes" came from the fact that grapes occupied the first position among the seven fruits mentioned in the Talmud, which means that the "grapes of wrath" means anger of the Jewish people.
Israel had bombed the UNIFIL headquarters in the southern town of Qana with “pinpoint accuracy” just after dozens of Lebanese refugees had sheltered there. More than half of the 106 martyrs were children.
One really must have a heart of stone not to feel compassion for those children who became numbers on plastic bags and in some cases small body parts in carpets.
The gruesome pictures of the massacre were published in most Arab newspapers. In the West, however, publishers spared their readers the terrible pictures of how an ill-minded entity steels the future from children. True they respect the dead, but did they respect them when they were alive. The 155mm shell that killed those children was made in the US, and so was the missile that killed the children of the Nabatiyeh massacre on that same day and the children of the Mansouri ambulance massacre earlier and the many Israeli slaughters to follow.
Israel said it was returning fire at Hezbollah and that technical failures might have occurred.
THE UN REPORT
The UN appointed military advisor Major-General Franklin van Kappen of the Netherlands to investigate the massacre. He said in his conclusion that: “a) The distribution of impacts at Qana shows two distinct concentrations, whose mean points of impact are about 140 meters apart. If the guns were converged, as stated by the Israeli forces, there should have been only one main point of impact.
b) The pattern of impacts is inconsistent with a normal overshooting of the declared target (the mortar site) by a few rounds, as suggested by the Israeli forces. c) During the shelling, there was a perceptible shift in the weight of fire from the mortar site to the United Nations compound. d) The distribution of point impact detonations and air bursts makes it improbable that impact fuses and proximity fuses were employed in random order, as stated by the Israeli forces.
e) There were no impacts in the second target area which the Israeli forces claim to have shelled.
f) Contrary to repeated denials, two Israeli helicopters and a remotely piloted vehicle were present in the Qana area at the time of the shelling. While the possibility cannot be ruled out completely, it is unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors.”
SACRIFICED AT THE ALTAR OF ZIONISTS
Then U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali released the report after coming under severe pressure not to release it Shamefully though the U.N. Security Council has refused to act on the report or to hold the Israelis accountable. Of course the American veto threat and tremendous pressures upon Boutros-Ghali and member states at the U.N. was behind this further demonstration of U.N. impotence and cowardice. For his crime, Ghali was later sacrificed at the altar of the Zionist masters who controlled the Oval Office.
THE ISRAELI RESPONSE
Israel responded by categorically rejecting the findings of the UN report and insisted that “their investigation” has shown that the UN position was hit by artillery fire “due to incorrect targeting based on erroneous data.”
THE COURSE OF THE WAR
Israel needed to get rid of the July 1993 understanding that put the conflict between occupation forces and the resistance in its absolute military form, excluding civilians from military operations. Moreover, then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Perez was accused by the Likud and his own Labor party of helplessness in dealing with the Lebanese resistance attacks. Perez was facing election before the summer of 1996. With an American blessing, he exploited the international sympathy with Israel in the wake of the Palestinian resistance attacks. This sympathy was established in the Sharm el-Sheikh summit in Egypt on the 13th of March 1996, which gave Israel full rein to crush resistance forces in Palestine and Lebanon; a plan was set.
Israeli occupation forces opened artillery fire at the southern village of Yater and killed several people. It was the first fruit of the Israeli plot, grapes of wrath. Bit by bit, yet in a fast pace, Israeli artillery fire and air raids expanded to reach the Bekaa region and southern populated areas. The Israeli fire was accompanied by a psychological warfare assumed by the (Voice of the South) radio, controlled by the pro-Israeli militias of chief collaborator Antoine Lahed. Beirut's southern suburbs were targeted with four laser-guided missiles near Hezbollah's Shoura council announcing the beginning of a fierce war. The party's Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah announced that Hezbollah will retaliate to the Israeli aggression by bombing settlements in northern occupied Palestine.
And so it happened.
Rounds of Katyusha missiles fell on the settlements of Keryat Shmonah, Nahariya and Metula.
On the fifth day of the aggression, it became evident that the initiative was in the hands of the resistance.
The Israeli command realized that "grapes of wrath" had backlashed. To escape this situation, it intensified military assaults, while the resistance raised its tone and threatened to attack more settlements. In the meantime, Damascus, Tehran and Beirut were confronting the Israeli-American axis, while Paris and Moscow which intervened for calm down had their initiatives hindered by the American demand that concerned parties sign a document calling in one of its article for the deletion of resolution 425; the UN resolution that demanded Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon. Washington was also protecting Israel at the Security Council by vetoing any resolution that condemned Israeli aggressions against Lebanon, including the massacres in Qana, Nabatiyeh and other places.
Realizing Israel was heading to abyss, the Americans launched their own initiative.
Then US Ambassador to Lebanon Richard Jones told the Lebanese government of martyr Rafik Hariri that to end Israeli hostilities in Lebanon, the resistance had to stop attacking Israeli forces in the south, whereas Israeli forces preserved the right to attack Hezbollah positions if they attacked "northern Israel."
Lebanon seemed to be fighting this war alone, amid Arab silence.
Beirut and the Lebanese backed the resistance and Lebanon's allies were working on a cease-fire. The Americans acknowledged that Sayyed Nasrallah had become a major player in any attempt to reach a cease-fire.
Israel's goal to crush and disarm Hezbollah had turned into a request to stop firing Katyusha missiles at settlements in return for a stop of Israel's military campaign.
Then US Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, failed to press for Israel's demands. After seven days of political wrangling, Christopher called up Lebanese Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Rafik Hariri for a meeting in Damascus. The April understanding, as it was later known, announced the end of the 16-day Israeli aggression. The signed understanding stated that Israel and its collaborators would not fire at civilian targets and the resistance would not attack "northern Israel" with Katyusha missiles or any other kind of weapons. The understanding included an article to form a monitoring group made up of observers from the US, France, Syria, Lebanon and Israel to oversee the implementation of the understanding.
Operation grapes of wrath ended and the Israeli military assessment concluded it was a failed operation while the political aftermath saw Shimon Peres defeated in Israeli elections.
Ten years later, Israel launched an unprecedented war against Lebanon, in yet another attempt to crush Hezbollah. In the "Second Lebanon War" Qana was again the turning point that changed the course of the war. Israel committed a massacre there killing dozens of people, mainly children and women, hiding from Israeli bombs.
This historical village in south Lebanon has contributed at least twice in hitting the last nails in the coffin of Israel.
According to the Winograd report, the Second Israeli war constituted a humiliating defeat to Israel.
Religiously speaking, the Israelis believe that the beginning of their entity’s end starts with their first defeat – which took place in 2000 and then enhanced by another resounding defeat in 2006.
The resistance remains strong and Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah's promises are fulfilled. Today, despite attempt to distort the resistance and Sayyed Nasrallah’s image, his eminence's pledge, in case of a new Israeli war, is to let the world witness new surprises that would change the course of the battle and the face of the whole region.
Hamsa’s new horse
Hamsa’s new horse
April 17, 2009, 7:30 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
Filed under: Uncategorized
“White donkeys are better,” Hamsa said. Curious as to how colour might make a difference to performance I inquired. “They’re more beautiful,” he answered, explaining the obvious.
But Hamsa did have practical information on what to look for in a donkey, or as it was, a horse.
“Females are better. They bite and kick less than males.”
We trawled the Friday animal market, eying possible replacements for Hamsa’s donkey, killed by Israeli shelling during the 3 weeks of war on Gaza.
Hamsa pointed out a horse with a strip of hair standing up along its spine, saying that these horses are esteemed and get better with age.
The market is a large open area, one portion of which is covered with a simple, high-ceilinged tin roof structure which now, after the last war, is more holes than roof.
Moatez, a young man and one of those trying to earn a shekel, heated a large kettle of hot water for tea sales. His younger siblings loaded smaller teapots and toured the market, selling tea for a shekel a cup. It’s their only business, Moatez said, only on Fridays.
Hamsa’s last donkey, pregnant when he bought it, was 700 Jordanian Dinars (JOD), roughly $900 at the time. He had hoped to sell the baby for 300 JOD. Nowadays, post-war and with the siege in full force, donkeys and horses both average 1100 JOD for a healthy animal.
The first horse to catch Hamsa’s eye was a male cross between a donkey and a horse, a handsome animal. However, at a high price and without a cart, it wasn’t practical. Shaddi, a friend along to translate during the purchase, flagged down a Khan Younis neighbour, a local at the markets, and sought his help in securing a good deal.
Shortly after, Abu Mohammed, had negotiated Hamsa’s next choice, another male, chocolate coloured and young, along with a cart. Abu Mohammed warned the seller, “I’ll see you every day. If you sell Hamsa a bad horse, I’ll never buy from you.” This threat carried enough weight, Hamsa got a good horse and decent deal.
Abu Mohammed wasn’t finished, had some advice to pass along. “If your horse works too hard and you give him water, he’ll die right away,” he said, to my surprise. Hamsa, having worked with horses and donkeys for 4 years, knew this. I was thrilled that, in contrast to some I see whipping their donkeys mercilessly, ignorantly, Hamsa had no intention nor practice of doing that. Over a cup of coffee on the street earlier, before we’d left Gaza city, I asked his philosophy on working with donkeys/horses. “You have to treat them gently, with respect,” he summarized, adding that hitting them was pointless and ‘haram’, forbidden.
So we left the market, Hamsa leading his new horse, Shaddi and I on the cart beside him. “God sent me this,” he said in disbelief. “I never imagined I’d get another donkey or horse.”
We passed through Sheyjaiee’s Israel-war-ravaged backstreets of plain, grey cement houses contrasted by lush cascades of vibrant flowers. A father or older brother, not noticing us, kissed and adored a toddler, immersed in his affection.
Hamsa shared his plans. “Today I will let my horse rest and eat well. Tomorrow I’ll start to work.”
Talk turned to Hamsa’s family needs: His pregnant wife, Iman, needs healthy food -fruit, vegetables, chicken. Chicken now sells for roughly 24 shekels/kilo (~$6). Before the siege and the war (which destroyed many chicken farms), it went for 7 shekels/kilo.
With new inspiration, and the same resolve I’d seen in the first meetings, when he’d pointed out his bicycle he was using for work, Hamsa resolved to set aside 10 shekels/day, and to use only 5-10 shekels/day, using the rest of an average 30-40 shekels/day income with horse and cart to buy food for his horse, which will cost 10-15 shekels/day. But he is optimistic. “Now that I have a horse and cart, I have many options on how to earn money.” With his broken bicycle and small basket, Hamsa was limited. “I’ll try vegetables first,” he says, explaining he’ll buy them at the market and peddle them in the backstreets.
“I’ll never forget this favour,” he said, thanking me another time. Again, I pointed out this was an act of solidarity from people outside of Palestine. Many people, I told him, have responded to my call for support for Palestinians in Gaza. Canadian and UK donors, including a UK-based group which has formed under the name Ground Force Gaza, came together to buy this horse, an investment which will allow Hamsa to earn a living and provide for his wife and soon-to-be-born child.
We pulled into the narrow lane leading to the cluster of homes where Hamsa lives, each family desperately poor. Fudall al Bateran, father of teenage Hanin, shot dead by Israeli soldiers during the war on Gaza, was there smiling, echoing thanks.
“You’ve brought happiness to this family,” Shaddi said.
Thank you solidarity supporters!
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Netanyahu
link
By Rannie Amiri
It is one of the great paradoxes of the modern Middle East:
When peace with the Palestinians is in sight, Israel will turn violent.
This is quite understandable though, when one realizes that the entire raison d’être of the Jewish state is based on the principle of establishing “greater Israel.” That could not happen of course, were there to be a just peace. As the country’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion infamously proclaimed, “To maintain the status quo will not do. We have to set up a dynamic state bent upon expansion.”
Relinquishing conquered territory, ending occupation, halting further settlement activity (let alone dismantling existing ones), stopping home demolitions or anything deemed to conflict with this fundamental objective will never be (seriously) considered.
Israel has also attempted to persuade us that it cannot but be on a constant war-footing. The reality is however, that an enemy must necessarily be present – or created – so it can avoid having to reach an equitable settlement with the Palestinians.
Israel’s siege and subsequent attack on Gaza was a prime example.
Enemy at The Gates?
Waged under the pretext of ending the launch of crude, home-made, fertilizer-based rockets from Gaza into southern Israel (which killed 16 Israelis in seven years and none in the year prior) and after a crippling 18-month siege left Gaza’s population starving and destitute, Israel claimed to be acting in “self-defense” when it attacked the territory. We now know the war was planned six months in advance.
The real motives for it were multifactorial. They included crushing any hopes or aspirations Palestinians may have had of establishing a fully independent, sovereign state under a freely elected leadership – one not under the diktats of Washington or Tel Aviv. It was also meant to collectively punish the people for having elected Hamas in that capacity.
But often overlooked and of equal importance was Hamas’ willingness to accept a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders with Israel. This was clearly stated by both Hamas chief Khaled Meshal and the elected Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyah.
Without any rejectionist party present, Israel has no basis in refusing substantive talks. Hence, a premeditated and barbarous war initiated on flimsy and hyped pretense was conducted to ensure the people of Gaza and Hamas remain resentful, angry, and far less likely to sit at the negotiating table.
More of the Same, Only Different?
It is well known that all Israeli governments, be they Labor, Likud or Kadima, are interchangeable in terms of their foreign policy. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu though, has been exceptional in broadcasting its political platform.
Avigdor Lieberman, a veritable child-abuser and former member of the Kach party – a extremist group outlawed in Israel for its violently racist nature – was granted one of the most important portfolios in the administration, that of foreign minister. His approach to Hamas (“Do to Hamas what the U.S. did to Japan”), the loyalty oath he wants all Palestinians living in Israel to take, and his proposed annexation of Palestinian land have certainly given him a great deal of notoriety.
Regardless of whether Lieberman will ultimately make Netanyahu out to be the “moderate,” his positions underscore the moral temperament the government has adopted.
Just this week for example, Israeli transport minister Yisrael Katz called for Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyid Hasan Nasrallah’s assassination, while the “dovish” President Shimon Peres threatened Israel would strike Iran. With an aim to further incite, Peres felt he too must jump on the sectarian bandwagon, saying a clash between Sunni Arabs and [Shia] Iran was “inevitable.”
Netanyahu has remained silent during all this, including Lieberman’s recent declaration that the 2007 Annapolis peace conference (where parties agreed final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would involve two states) “is dead.” Netanyahu himself has been adamant there will be no withdrawal from the Golan Heights or dismantlement of settlements.
The confrontational and hostile tone of Netanyahu’s government has occurred, quite predictably, against the backdrop of a renewed atmosphere of engagement. There are now increasing calls for dialogue with Hamas, the United Kingdom has lifted its ban on speaking with Hezbollah and the U.S. rapprochement with Iran is slowly taking shape. Even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaimed Iran “… may forget the past and start a new era …” in its relationship with the U.S.
Like Benjamin Button, Israel is regressing; not in age, but politically and morally. And as its enemies become involved in more constructive talks with the U.S. and Europe, Netanyahu – or whoever the prime minister may be – will inevitably seek to instigate a new crisis in order to justify continuing Israel’s aggressive policies.
This explains why many who follow the Middle East, including this writer, remain pessimistic at the prospects for peace in the region.
- Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator.
Posted by JNOUBIYEH at 6:41 PM
"We consider our relation with the resistance and Iran a strategic relation.”
“Politics is trade with ethics. We have been practicing politics as such. We have determined our options regarding our relation with the resistance and Iran which we consider a strategic relation.”Assad: Acknowledging Mistakes Means Rejecting Them
Mohamad Shmaysani
17/04/2009 Syrian President Bashar Assad stressed that acknowledging mistakes in Lebanese-Syrian relations was aimed at rejecting and rectifying them.
“Syria has spared no effort and will not spare any effort that would contribute to consolidating relations and to serving the interests of the two brotherly peoples in all domains,” the Syrian president said.
Assad was speaking during a meeting with Lebanese and Syrian academics taking part in a conference held in Damascus on Syrian-Lebanese relations. According to the state-run Syrian News Agency, SANA, the president highlighted the leading role of the two countries’ scholars in confronting the challenges facing Syria and Lebanon, and their efforts to boost the “fraternal and historical ties that bind them together.”
Assad told the gathering that the Taef Accord had put an end to the civil war in Lebanon and founded an interim phase that enabled some who have political and sectarian interests to engage in a negative role. “Because the interim phase had stretched, mistakes happened and we had to deal with those people with those interests so as to put an end to war and to restore stability in Lebanon; it was an inescapable priority. However Lebanon did not move to the next phase, neither did the political regime that caused strife and wars develop. This is a Lebanese affair. Our role is limited to assistance. Of course there are two aspects for this matter, one that reflects ill-intentions like corruption and negligence and another that expresses good intentions like having to deal with a de facto situation in Lebanon that we cannot be against. When we dealt with sectarian forces, we lost part of the Lebanese because of sectarian interests and we did not succeed in exiting the interim phase; and this was one of our mistakes.”
President Assad also asked: “Who has the will to make a change in Lebanon, the political or the popular class? Some countries have their own elites who can make a change, yet Syria’s role with regards to Lebanon is to assist whoever wants to stand on his feet to fulfill this goal, but certainly not to stand in his place. Sectarian and militia leaderships do not have the will to change. Change cannot be achieved without a mechanism...And here I ask: Is there any mechanism for change in Lebanon so that we can help?”
“Dialogue should not be limited to countries. It should expand to reach the peoples and their elites that can express their interests. It is not enough to address the differences between regimes and states. In this domain, the intellectual role is fundamental and this is, in fact, the actual characteristic of this conference. Without an intellectual essence, there will be no value for any goal we set.”
President Assad said that his country’s support to Hezbollah was not because the resistance party was a Lebanese faction but because it was a resistance movement against Israel.
“Politics is trade with ethics. We have been practicing politics as such. We have determined our options regarding our relation with the resistance and Iran which we consider a strategic relation.”
On delineating the Lebanese-Syrian border, Assad stressed the process had begun in the same way the Syrian Jordanian border was delineated. “However, what’s on the table today is not delineating the border; it is rather politicizing the Shebaa Farms issue. We are ready to delineate all the border line except in Shebaa Farms because Israel is still occupying it. Raising this matter only serves Israel. UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon had spoken to me about this and I told him that the UN was not concerned in delineating the border and that it would be notified when the process was completed between the two concerned countries. In fact, there is only one three-phase solution for delineation: The pullout of Israel from the Farms, the delineation of the Lebanese-Syrian border there and informing the UN. Therefore, the occupation must end first.”
On the indirect Syrian-Israeli talks, President Assad explained that what had been taking place were not indirect negotiations. “It was more like former US Secretary of State James Baker’s marathon tours between Syria and Israel to lay the foundation for negotiations between the two countries. The same thing is happening through Turkey that is playing the same role...Of course there is coordination with Lebanese President Michel Sleiman and I have raised the issue with him. We are interested in not being independent from Lebanon or the general Arab position, otherwise our stance will become weak.”
The Syrian President was asked about the fate of “the missing Lebanese in Syria”. “After I was elected president, I took the personal initiative and ordered the release of 40 detained Lebanese. However, the Lebanese currently detained in Syria are charged with cooperating with Israel and spying on Syria, and they are subject to Syrian laws. They cannot be released because they are serving time. But the issue, as some are trying to raise by speaking about a list of 800 people missing in Syria is not true. What would I do with them? Do I swap them? Raising the issue as such is irrational. A large number of those claimed to be in Syria had been killed in Lebanon. They are either in mass graves or they never entered Syria in the first place. It is true that there are 15 detained Lebanese in Syria but those have been legally tried and sentenced; this is a point in Syria’s favor not against it. But should it be forgotten that the civil war had erupted in Lebanon, not in Syria? This is why, their fate, their whereabouts in Lebanon should be determined before accusing Syria which does not have any Lebanese detainee outside the framework of court rulings,” President Assad said.
He added that “we also have 1200 missing Syrians in Lebanon. Where are they? I am calling for a rational and transparent solution to this matter in Lebanon first, to determine how they went missing or killed. When the Syrian army entered eastern Beirut in the 90’s, it was shot at with bullets and artillery fire and they fired back. Are those killed in these battles considered missing in Syria?”
President Assad also encouraged holding a similar conference in Beirut.
In your face America! Adding Insult to Injury
Lieberman taps Franklin case diplomat for top slot
Ron Kampeas in JTA, here
Avigdor Lieberman asked an Israeli diplomat involved in a Pentagon classified leaks case to be his chief of staff. Lieberman, the foreign minister in the new Benjamin Netanyahu government, has asked Naor Gilon to take the top career slot at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, JTA has learned, effectively making Gilon his right hand man....
Gilon, then the political officer at Israel's Washington embassy, allegedly met multiple times between 2002 and 2005 with Lawrence Franklin,,,,,Franklin's indictment alleges that Gilon did minor favors for Franklin and on at least one occasion the two men discussed classified information. Franklin also allegedly relayed information to Gilon through Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He has resisted requests to testify in their defense....
Another Israeli official with a lesser involvement in the AIPAC/Pentagon leaks case, Uzi Arad, is slated to be Netanyahu's national security adviser. Arad was denied entry to the United States two years ago, reportedly because of his involvement in the case; that status was removed in recent weeks when it became clear Netanyahu would hire him for a top job...."
Posted by G, Z, & or B at 3:01 PM
Adding Insult to Injury–Powerful Jewish Groups Demand Case Against Accused Spies Be Dropped
Source
Published April 17, 2009
It has been a common mantra now–not for years, but rather decades–”Israel does not spy on the United States” and God help anyone who says different.
With the same kind of drama as Khrushchev’s infamous shoe-beating shtick at the United Nations half a century ago, the aforementioned vaudeville number began immediately after that “nice Jewish boy” Jonathon Pollard (working as an analyst for US Naval Intelligence) was caught pilfering and then selling to America’s “bestest buddy” in the whole world–Israel–close to 1 million pages of material with the highest classification that exists in the US intelligence community. Shortly after the theft of these secrets (an act making the Rosenbergs’ treason appear like mere petty thievery of two small-time Gypsy pick-pockets by comparison) the Jewish state then did what any “bestest buddy” would do to a friend who has supplied her with billions of dollars yearly and stood as the only barrier between her and a sea of oppressed, grieving Arabs who (for justifiable reasons) would love to see her wiped off the map–she sold them, to the Soviet Union of all places, America’s “worstest enemy“ in the whole wide world.
For her part, Israel was rewarded for her treachery and betrayal of America with increased immigration quotas from the USSR to the Jewish state, and for her part America was rewarded with the “neutralization” of over 1,000 intelligence assets working behind the Iron Curtain. Besides the tens of millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man-hours spent training and placing these assets, their liquidation also resulted in America having sand thrown in her eyes when it came to the field of human intelligence at a time she faced the most formidable threat in her history, and again, all thanks to her bestest buddy, Israel. To this day the Jewish state has returned only a few dozen pages of the material she stole, despite America’s “WE’RE NOT KIDDING–GIVE THEM BACK” demands for the rest.
It is the general consensus of the US intelligence community that the possession of those documents by such an aggressive, hostile entity wielding immeasurable political and media power within the US poses a clear and present danger to America’s national security interests, both at home and abroad.
In the meantime, there has been no decrease in the billions Israel receives from America yearly. The “painful consequences” suffered by the Jewish state resulting from having driven the blade deeply into America’s back has been that not one dime less than 15 million dollars a day has poured into Israel’s coffers, the same nation that “does not spy” on the United States, money that could then be re-circulated into her spying and sabotage agencies to be used for even more treachery and subterfuge against her “bestest buddy”, America. Short of a few notable exceptions, the same public servants in Congress who swore an oath to defend America against all enemies–foreign and domestic–have continually tried outdoing each other in making sure that pipeline of American cash, military technology and political protection remains open at full-bore like a severed jugular.
Adding insult to injury and demonstrating her complete absence of remorse over Pollard’s infamous betrayal (just as she has done before with similar circumstances, including but not limited to her deliberate attack on the USS Liberty, the Lavon Affair, the Marine barracks bombings in 1983 and many more) semi-regularly now for the last 23 years various “advocates” for the Jewish state–including Prime Ministers, Rabbis, lawyers, pundits and all-around fanatical loudmouths devoted to all things Jewish have regularly cried “no mas” and demanded this “Prisoner of Zion” be released from his cage in Butner, North Carolina. In the interests of having Pollard return to Israel and aid in the process of “re-sanctifying” the land by increased Jewish presence, in that same haughty, pushy, arrogant demeanor (long-associated with this peculiar cast of characters) these same devil’s advocates have declared that indeed Jonathan Judas Pollard has “paid his debt” and, pulsating with chutzpah like some infected pimple ready to burst–have demanded that America “turn the other cheek“, let “bygones be bygones”, etc, etc, etc and this at a time when “never forget“ is heard–not only in justifying Israel’s most vicious, bloodthirsty behavior on any given day, but in consecrating it.
And, as if all THIS were not enough, like a nest of hissing, spitting vipers, Jewish groups (including but not limited to the infamous Anti-Defamation League) have targeted for destruction patriotic Americans who dared be more than a little miffed over what was unquestionably an act of war against the American people with Israel’s theft and then remission of these life-and-death-on-a-mass-scale secrets to America’s sworn enemies in the Soviet Union. For over 20 years the aforementioned patriots (whether from the military, intelligence, politics, academia or media) have had their good names savaged by 5th columnist-hyenas who with bared teeth have snarled at anyone daring to question the propriety of America maintaining a “friendship” with such a dangerous creature as Israel.
Putting this in perspective and pondering the “what-ifs” in all this, one can just imagine the result if the situation were reversed. Had the US utilized one of its moles working within the intelligence apparatus of the Jewish state who then stole and sold close to 1,000,000 pages of “life and death” secrets to Israel’s sworn enemy at the time (or even to one of her “allies” such as Jordan or Egypt for that matter) the noise coming out of the Jewish community would be unbearable, both in its volume, quality and duration. All the snickering, smirking, half-assed arguments and explanations used by Israel in excusing Pollard’s treachery that “Israel is America’s ally” and therefore had a “right” to the classified information would have died a loud, nasty and messy death in the realm of public discourse if the situation were reversed. Any person–including those from amongst the most influential social, economic or political spheres–even suggesting the convicted spy be released from prison (assuming he had not been executed for his crimes) would find himself lucky to get a job flipping burgers at the average fast food joint. The $15,000,000.00 a day Israel gets from the US would be doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled, etc, etc, etc, until America had “paid her debt“ to the Jewish state, which means being bled white. Doubtlessly destined to be knick-named “Kristallnacht, Pt II”, a “day of remembrance” would be instituted–not just in Israel, but indeed throughout worldwide Jewry–marking that infamous day where America stabbed her “bestest buddy” in the back. Museums would be erected, movies by the hundreds would be produced and America would be destroyed by any and all means possessed by the Jewish state.
However, when Israel does it, sells her “ally” down the river and passes along the most sensitive of America’s life-and-death secrets to her enemy and persons are understandably outraged, it becomes an issue of “anti-Semitism” and an over-developed sense of vengeance on the part of the victims. Such is the logic as it exists only among Chosenites who do not understand “alien” notions such as shame or guilt.
Had Israel’s treachery with Pollard ended there, that would certainly have been enough. The number of intelligence assets lost as a result of the Judas state selling America’s secrets to the Soviets was almost equal in number to the number of Americans killed when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and which brought America into WWII.
However, as it turns out, it did not end there, for (as unpredictable as vultures on a dead carcass) during this “penitential” period following Pollard’s treason (yes, that same period when Israel “did not spy on the United States“) and when Jewish groups were (allegorically-speaking) burning Stars of David on the front lawns of anyone suggesting maybe Israel wasn’t America’s bestest buddy in the whole wide world after all…
BATTA BOOM!!–Two MVPs from AIPAC, the most powerful Jewish group in the US are arrested by US authorities and charged with–hold on to something heavy here–spying. Specifically, the two (Steve Rosen and Kenneth Weissman) were charged with passing information pertaining to Iran they knew to be highly-classified onwards to “home, sweet home”–meaning to the Jewish state–through one Naor Gilon, resident spymaster at the Israeli embassy in Washington DC working in tandem with Benjamin Netanyahu’s current National Security Advisor, Uzi Arad, who stands as person non-grata in Uncle Sam’s neighborhood as a result of his “likelihood” to “commit sabotage” against the US.
Their arrest by the FBI was the result of a pre-9/11 investigation that (understandably) was kicked into high gear after hundreds of Israeli spies were captured following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, some in circumstances as incriminating as being strategically-placed to film and celebrate the destruction of the Twin Towers, while others were apprehended driving explosives-laden vans towards vulnerable spots in New York City such as bridges and tunnels while dressed as Arabs.
Predictably, in typical wiseguy fashion the entire discussion surrounding the treacherous activities of the 2 spies working for that same Jewish state that “does not spy on America” was immediately changed from being a case of continued betrayal and espionage against America to one of–surprise, surprise–bigotry and persecution. Like Al Capone alleging his arrest and indictment were all the result of “anti-Italianism” rather than the fact he was personally responsible for the murder of dozens of people and all the well-known political corruption he personally cultivated, likewise Jewish groups in America immediately engaged in a similar campaign of “Can we talk about something else here people?“ When asked for his reaction concerning the arrests, Abe Foxman (“capo di tutti capi” of the Mossad-linked ADL) with quivering lip, panicky eyes and shaky voice affected a look of great emotional distress as if a holocaust were about to erupt any moment and stated with a straight face that the USDOJ investigation and subsequent arrests had nothing to do with Israel spying on America but rather the fact that “One out of three Americans believes American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the United States”, finishing his verbal defecation by saying the Justice department’s actions were all the result of “classic anti-Semitism”.
Unfortunately (but not surprising in the least) Foxman and his ADL were not alone. Like some spoiled, undisciplined child being dragged kicking and screaming by several adults to the principle’s office in order to get the paddling he justly deserves and trying to disrupt what would otherwise be a productive school day, so too has Jewish pressure been brought to bear in trying to prevent the American people from having their day in court. Paying reverence to David Ben Gurion’s infamous words concerning the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that “The old will die and the young will forget” and perhaps hoping the prosecution would eventually grow weary of delay after delay and thus throw in the towel, the defense team for the two spies Rosen and Weissman have erected every conceivable roadblock in trying to keep the case from ever being heard, including the aforementioned business of “anti-Semitism“.
Besides the legal vultures defending the two spies, news outlets surreptitiously working for Israel’s interests have chimed in as well and joined their voices to the persecution chorus and have agreed that indeed “anti-Semitism” was and is the driving force behind mean old Uncle Sam’s pursuit of these pure-as-the-wind-driven-snow Jews caught red-handed spying against America. Dorothy Rabinowitz–Queen Esther of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote in her piece “First They Came for the Jews–A prosecution under the Espionage Act threatens the First Amendment” that the activities of the USDOJ were akin to what the Nazis did generations ago, that the two spies were simply exercising their rights to “free speech” under the 1st Amendment and that if convicted all freedoms in America would be seriously jeopardized.
Other news outlets regurgitated similar arguments, that the real issue here was not espionage and treason against America, but rather one of free speech, and who else but tyrannical regimes opposed such a thing? The Washington Post recently did her part in giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies with an OP-Ed entitled “Time to Call It Quits–The Justice Department should drop its misguided prosecution of two former AIPAC officials” in which it says that although the government has the right to demand strict confidentiality from government officials it nevertheless “errs egregiously” and risks “profound damage to the First Amendment” by insisting that private citizens are also legally bound to keep the nation’s secrets, saying that doing so “criminalizes” the exchange of information.
Ominously and yet curiously, after their initial statements that the whole case involving AIPAC and the 2 spies was all the result of “anti-Semitism” powerful Jewish groups including the aforementioned ADL and the American Jewish Congress slithered back into the safe darkness of the shadows and have remained conspicuously silent on the matter. Perhaps not wanting to risk too much before “the fix” had been put in or perhaps maybe even fearing they may be next on the indictment list for espionage and treason against the United States, they have had little to say publicly about it–until recently.
Now however for exact reasons unknown, both the ADL and the American Jewish Committee have decided to throw their 2 shekels into the kitty and are also calling for the US Justice Department to drop the charges leveled against the two spies. Continuing the aforementioned chorus begun with the WSJ and Washington Post, AJC Executive Director David Harris recently issued a statement saying “The prosecution creates a chilling effect on legitimate speech and we hope the Department of Justice will take a close look at this case and reconsider whether it should be pursued further.” Following on the heels of the AJC statement, the Anti-Defamation League released a statement of its own in a letter previously (and privately) sent last September to the deputy attorney general to “review the charges, the investigation, and the prosecution of this case” saying the “prosecution of this case endangers core First Amendment protections”. In typical patronizing, condescending fashion, the ADL (an organization created in the interests of protecting the “good name” of a Jew–Leo Frank–convicted of raping and murdering a young girl) then ended its letter with “We fully support our government’s need to protect sensitive national security information. This prosecution, however, is not necessary for such protection” as if it were some special branch of the US Supreme Court tasked with deciding what actions are and are not necessary when it comes to the national security interests of the United States.
It is quite interesting to note that the very same ADL now found wringing its hands in fear over the dangers to “free speech” and “protecting the 1st Amendment” when it comes to prosecuting spies for Israel–is at the same time at the very forefront in pushing laws aimed at curtailing “free speech” in America when that “free speech” threatens Jewish issues. Although having been defeated time and again, nevertheless like a nasty virus that hangs around week after week the same ADL busted for wiretapping the phones of American citizens has made it priority numero uno to criminalize freedom of expression in America when such threatens the well-being of that same country that does not spy on the US, Israel.
Underscoring the ADL’s selectiveness when it comes to appreciating the very first on the list of America’s Bill of Rights, it should also be recalled that it was none other than “chairman of the board” Abe Foxman himself who personally arranged (ordered) a “sit down“ with the heads of Fox News after that network ran an explosive, 4-part series dealing with Israeli spying in the US in the aftermath of 9/11 and who subsequently threatened all sorts of holy hell against the network if it continued exercising its rights to free speech. Drawing from interviews with various federal agencies (including the FBI, DEA and others) the 4-part series detailed a vast network of spies operating in the US and arrested after 9/11 (including the aforementioned team seen witnessed cheering the destruction that day) but who were then quietly skedaddled back to Israel by then-US Justice Department official Michael Chertoff, who (cutting his teeth on what it means to be a “good Jew” from his orthodox rabbi father and Israeli intelligence agent mother) had obvious reasons for sending these saboteur/spies back to Israel.
Predictably, shortly thereafter Fox News did a cost/profit analysis and decided that freedom of speech issues were not worth all the headaches that the “pro-freedom of speech” ADL was dishing out to them and thus removed the series from its website.
One MUST (and especially these days when the King Kong in the room no one wants to acknowledge is tearing the place apart piece by piece) ask certain pertinent questions here. Firstly, if the two spies–instead of being Jews named Rosen and Weissman working for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee were two Muslims named Rashid and Walid working for the Arab Islamic Political Activism Council and were accused of passing along secrets to any other country besides the Jewish state, would there be all the present wailing and gnashing of teeth for protecting the 1st Amendment and free speech? Would the case now be dragging on into its 5th year with no end in sight? Would anyone of ANY STRIPE–Muslim or otherwise–write any career-destroying articles alleging the brouhaha was all the result of “bigotry” and calling for the case to be dropped and the two spies released?
The answer to such a scenario is obvious to a blind man. Were they Muslims (or anyone else, for that matter) passing along information to one of Israel’s enemies–even something as unimportant as the required air pressure for tires on American military vehicles being used in fighting Israel’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan–it would get more attention than the OJ Simpson saga of many, many years ago. The accused could forget about any chances of ever again seeing the light of day or of ever again breathing free air and anyone writing anything remotely fair and balanced about the case–before or after the reading of the verdict–would find themselves in the unemployment lines looking for a new job. Or worse.
The very real danger to US national security resulting from the case against the aforementioned spies being dropped should be obvious to all who understand the “existential threat“ America faces as a result of its dangerous relationship with the Jewish state. The release of the spies from the long arm of American law (and especially if made to appear all the result of pressure from powerful Jewish interests) would result in a deluge of spying and sabotage against America by moles working for a nation tacitly at war with the United States and hell-bent on getting America involved in as many wars as possible with the 7 dozen Muslim nations around the world. Knowing the coast was clear, sleeper cells dormant since the aftermath of the huge spy network busted up following 9/11 would then be re-activated, re-energized and reassured that nothing untoward would come their way and would thus devour the national security well-being of America as if it were a wheat field and they the plague of locusts described in the biblical story involving Moses.
Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution defines treason as “levying war” against the United States or by “adhering” to America‘s enemies by giving them “Aid and Comfort…”
It is high-time that America come to understand that the section dealing with treason in the US Constitution–the only crime defined in the Supreme Law of the Land–was not inserted by accident or as “filler”. Treason is mass-murder of a nation’s people, and since patriotism begins with recognizing who the country’s enemies are, in the case of the Judas state that time and again has betrayed (and continues to betray) America with the bitter kiss of espionage and sabotage–there is no enemy worth more recognition than Israel and her supporters, both in America and elsewhere.
(c) 2009 Mark Glenn
Correspondent, American Free Press Newspaper
www.americanfreepress.net
nomorewarsforisrael@gmail.com
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