By Rev. Ted Pike
2 Aug 10
Few familiar with the 97 year history of the Anti-Defamation League would deny its ambition to destroy the Christian/conservative right. ADL’s first great step was passing its federal hate crimes law last fall. The next stage was indicated last week by national director Abe Foxman. He said 80 million Americans are “anti-Semitic”—40 million “seriously infected” and 40 million “mildly” so.
What is Foxman’s reason for ensnaring so many in such a preposterously wide net? He is spinning a mythology that anti-Semitism in America is a “serious national problem”—one, like the “epidemic” of hate crimes, to be met with federal legislation.
Foxman is moving us toward a federal “anti-Semitism” law - probably under the expanded jurisdiction of ADL's Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. If Foxman has his way, it could become a federal hate crime to engage in speech he considers anti-Semitic: alleging Jews have too much power in government, finance, or media, as well as voicing "strong" criticism of Israel. It would also include the New Testament claim that Jews killed Christ.
To understand the future, know the past. Over the last 25 years, ADL has persuaded liberals that hate crimes had indeed escalated to the point of crisis—a crisis that only a federal hate law could cope with. ADL thinks big—the bigger the lie, the bolder ADL states it as fact.
But ADL does more than distort facts. It turns upside down the most fundamental terms and values that govern civilization.
In 1988, ADL sponsored a national competition to create a model anti-hate law for America. At the time, few outside Canada and Sweden had ever heard of a “hate crime.” From the beginning, ADL lassoed its conceptual hate crimes noose around the largest number of people. It redefined a characteristic we all possess for good or bad: “bias.” ADL blackened the reputation of all bias (except bias against Christian/conservative values). ADL made bias equivalent to “hate.” It then relentlessly conditioned police, educators, the media, etc., that prejudice and intolerance (i.e., hate) were so evil, especially when motivating a crime, that a biased criminal act should be punished with at least triple penalties.
Quantifying “Hate”
But did hate crimes of the magnitude ADL claims really exist? No. ADL had to create its own hate crime reality. In 1990, it persuaded Congress to enact its Hate Crimes Statistics Act, empowering the federal government to require annual reporting of hate crimes from the states. ADL also instructed police in America on its twisted definitions, permitting them to report to the FBI as a “hate crime” any altercation, name-calling, or accusation which police believed was motivated by bias. As a result, ADL was able to “document” about 7500 hate crimes annually. At least 95 percent were never determined to be an actual crime in a court of law. Even when so ludicrously inflated, such “crimes” constitute 1/15 th of 1 percent of actual, documented annual crime in America.
Yet the sleight of hand worked. After sensitizing America to the threat of “hate,” and stacking up an annual 7500 “hate crimes,” ADL was able to dramatize the “epidemic” of hate enough to put President Obama’s signature on the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2010.
The federal hate law now exalts homosexuals, Jews, blacks, Muslims and women with preferential rights to federal hate crimes protection. The only reason the hate law has not been implemented with the kind of persecutive force felt in Canada, Sweden, and Australia is that the Christian/conservative right (very largely educated by the National Prayer Network over the past 20 years) has at last made hate laws an extremely volatile issue. Indeed, this issue could unseat Democrats in November. Nevertheless, ADL’s federal law pulsates in its potential to persecute Christians and conservatives as soon as the time is favorable.
ADL doesn’t want to wait. Ever proactive, ADL now wants the public to believe that the potential hate crime of anti-Semitism pervades America especially among Christians and conservatives. To this end, Foxman began his latest video with the biggest lie he could muster: that 45 years ago, one of three Americans was “seriously infected” with anti-Semitism. That’s nearly 65 million people! This incredibly audacious lie is to confirm ADL’s constant assertion that America has a long and stubborn history of Jew hatred residing in the "extremist" right - bigotry which ADL and its 45 state hate laws helped subdue. Foxman implies that with 80 million anti-Semites in America today, we must more than ever depend on ADL.
In 1965, when a third of Americans were supposedly anti-Semitic, I was a freshman in college. In my entire life to that time, outside of our family, I cannot remember hearing Israel or Jews criticized. Forty-five years ago, Israel was riding a titanic wave of popularity—practically the whole western world unconditionally cheered its “miraculous” rebirth. Israel was not criticized for its terrorist expropriation of 800,000 Palestinians in 1948 or any of its actions in the 1967 or 1973 wars against the Arabs. Except for its participation in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon, there was almost no worldwide criticism of Israel’s saturation bombing of 19,500 innocent refugees in southern Lebanon. Not until Sharon’s brutal invasion of the West Bank in 2002 did world opinion significantly rise against Israel. It has especially escalated since the 2009 siege of Gaza, and recently, its terrorist raid on the "Free Gaza" flotilla, killing nine activists.
In 1965, there did exist a small minority of opinion critical of Jewish supremacism, largely subsisting off earlier information provided by voices such as Winston Churchill, Charles Lindberg, Father Coughlin, Gerald L. K. Smith, and Elizabeth Dilling. The largest emerging anti-Zionist voice came from Liberty Lobby out of Washington, DC. Yet such relatively underground dissent did not translate into any appreciable degree of popular criticism of Jews or Israel. Where does Foxman, then, get his figure of 1 in 3 Americans at that time being “seriously infected” with anti-Semitism? It comes from the same place he gets his assertion that 80 million Americans are Jew haters—his creativity as a liar. Such incredible prevarication springs from his desire to condition the American public that anti-Semitism, like hate crimes, is now a much greater national epidemic than anyone imagined. Foxman, a primary architect of the federal hate bill knows exactly what he is doing—what works.
With great forethought, he thus defines in his latest video that anti-Semitism is belief in the New Testament account that the Jews had Christ killed —implicating as anti-Semites all Bible-believing Christians worldwide. Foxman claims that, from the time of the church fathers, the charge that Jews were “Christ-killers” has been a homicidally destructive feature of Christianity. It, more than anything else, has provided fuel for the ovens of Dachau and Auschwitz. In his book, Never Again: The Threat of the New Anti-Semitism, Foxman says of European Christians what he largely still believes about many Bible-believing Christians today: “...the political and social atmosphere in which the persecution and killing of millions of Jews could be seen as broadly acceptable could not have existed without the tacit acceptance of the Christian churches, as well as the ingrained anti-Semitism of 20 centuries of dogma, doctrine and preaching that demonized Jews.” He quotes Elie Wiesel, “…the killings could not have happened without the sins of millions of Christians, sins of commission as well as sins of omission.” (pg. 94)
Foxman contends that Christianity’s anti-Semitism is so intrinsic that belief in a literal interpretation of the New Testament remains a potent threat to the Jewish people. Thus, Christianity’s capacity to create more Holocausts won’t end until laws in every nation proscribe public proclamation of New Testament teaching, especially concerning the Jews. Such "anti-Semitism" includes Christian evangelism of Jews, which Foxman in his book says, "is inherently anti-Semitic in that it implicitly denigrates the value of Jewish belief." (pg. 138)
ADL: Anti-Semitism is a “Disease”
In Foxman’s latest video, he also insinuates that the 80 million Americans “infected” with anti-Semitism are victims of a disease. This suggests that criticism of matters Jewish is a psychiatric disorder. Foxman’s Bolshevik forbearers confined critics of Jewish communists, not just to prisons, but psychiatric hospitals. Reputable Swedish evangelists testify that under Sweden’s ADL-inspired hate law, just criticizing Jews or Israel can land you in a psychiatric hospital for up to a year of drug rehabilitation—even before trial!
I had hoped the power of the evangelical right could thwart the momentum of ADL’s federal hate law. It couldn’t—very largely because leaders of the New Right knew ADL was behind hate laws and feared being called “anti-Semitic” by criticizing a venerable Jewish “civil liberties” organization. Their fear of ADL still exceeds their fear of a Christian-persecuting Gestapo – and, I believe, their fear of a God who commands they speak the whole, undiminished truth.
ADL is now in stage two, encircling the religious right with its “noose” of accusation, negatively stereotyping Bible-believers as those who portray Jews as “Christ-killers.” Will Christian/conservative leaders still refuse to publicly acknowledge ADL’s threat to the survival of Christianity? Probably. As ADL pushes for punishment of anti-Semitism under the present federal hate law, it knows Evangelical leaders will never want to seem to be in favor of anti-Semitism by opposing such inclusion. Far from exposing and resisting ADL such leaders will doubtless continue to respond to ADL in a way that delights it and is crucial to its ultimate success.
They give ADL what it wants most from them: silence.
Source
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
The ADL Spying Case Is Over, But The Struggle Continues
By Jeffrey Blankfort, Anne Poirier and Steve Zeltzer – Plaintiffs in the of ADL Spying Case
In 1993, the District of Attorney of San Francisco released 700 pages of documents implicating the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that claims to be a defender of civil rights, in a vast spying operation directed against American citizens who were opposed to Israel’s policies in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza and to the apartheid policies of the government of South Africa and passing on information to both governments.
Under great political pressure, Smith later dropped the charges. One wonders what would have happened had an Arab-American or Muslim organization been caught spying with the names of 10,000 people and 600 organizations in their files.
Not only were critics of Israel under ADL’s surveillance, including thousands of Arab-Americans, but labor organizations such as the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, and the Oakland Educational Association, and civil rights groups such as the NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council and the Asian Law Caucus were also found in the “pinko” files of ADL’s undercover operative, Roy Bullock.
Moreover, Bullock, who had worked, off the books, for the ADL for more than 25 years, admitted that he had been reporting on the activities of black South African exiles and American anti- apartheid activists for South African intelligence.
Bullock, pretending to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, came to the founding meeting of the Labor Committee of the Middle in 1987 at the home of plaintiff Steve Zeltzer, having met Zeltzer at meetings of the Free Moses Mayekiso Defense
Committee, a South African labor solidarity committee in which he also infiltrated under false pretenses.
Having been responsible for exposing Bullock as an ADL agent to the media, we joined together with other Bay Area activists in filing a suit against the ADL for violation of our privacy rights as provided in California law.
Almost a decade later the suit has been settled with a significant cash payment by the ADL and, we wish to emphasize, without our signing any agreement for confidentiality which the ADL had previously demanded. Our efforts to expose the organization’s work in defending the policies of the Israeli government and stifling its opponents will continue, using new information gained in the pursuance of the suit.
The ADL spent millions of dollars preventing this case from coming to trial through costly appeals and exploiting the judicial process but, at the end, it had to give up..
During the course of the suit we learned that:
Bullock, the ADL’s top “fact finder” had sold confidential information to a South African intelligence agent in San Francisco for $15,000.
Ten days before he was assassinated in South Africa, Chris Hani, the man who would have succeeded Nelson Mandela as the country’s president, was trailed by Bullock on a trip through California who reported on it to the South African government.
ADL agent Roy Bullock was discovered to have a floor plan of murdered Los Angeles Arab American leader Alex Odeh and a key to his office.
The ADL supplied confidential information to foreign governments that it obtained from police and federal agencies in the US,
Having infiltrated the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the ADL’s “fact finder” performed a COINTEL-type operation at the convention of the Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review when he put ADC’s literature on convention tables as a way of smearing the committee for “working with anti- Semites.”
The ADL has organized to silence and eliminate all critical voices of Israel from academia and the media and has targeted professors , particularly those who are African American, and who are critical of Israel.
That at least 51% of the activities of its San Francisco office were devoted to defending Israel.
The ADL provided secret files to police agencies when these police agencies were prevented by law from collecting the files themselves,
Many questions must still be answered about the activities of the ADL and it’s non-profit status as an “education organization”. The settlement offered by the ADL is recognition on its part that it could not afford to go to a trial in front of a jury and face the likelihood that more of its dirty secrets would be revealed.
We call on all people to make sure that these practices on the part of the ADL are not allowed to continue and that the double standard that presently dominates this country on issues dealing with Israel be eliminated.
Finally, we wish to thank our attorney, former congressman Pete McCloskey, himself a victim of the ADL and the Israel Lobby, for his years of work on our behalf and his steadfast commitment to the pursuit of justice.
Source
In 1993, the District of Attorney of San Francisco released 700 pages of documents implicating the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that claims to be a defender of civil rights, in a vast spying operation directed against American citizens who were opposed to Israel’s policies in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza and to the apartheid policies of the government of South Africa and passing on information to both governments.
Under great political pressure, Smith later dropped the charges. One wonders what would have happened had an Arab-American or Muslim organization been caught spying with the names of 10,000 people and 600 organizations in their files.
Not only were critics of Israel under ADL’s surveillance, including thousands of Arab-Americans, but labor organizations such as the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, and the Oakland Educational Association, and civil rights groups such as the NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council and the Asian Law Caucus were also found in the “pinko” files of ADL’s undercover operative, Roy Bullock.
Moreover, Bullock, who had worked, off the books, for the ADL for more than 25 years, admitted that he had been reporting on the activities of black South African exiles and American anti- apartheid activists for South African intelligence.
Bullock, pretending to be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, came to the founding meeting of the Labor Committee of the Middle in 1987 at the home of plaintiff Steve Zeltzer, having met Zeltzer at meetings of the Free Moses Mayekiso Defense
Committee, a South African labor solidarity committee in which he also infiltrated under false pretenses.
Having been responsible for exposing Bullock as an ADL agent to the media, we joined together with other Bay Area activists in filing a suit against the ADL for violation of our privacy rights as provided in California law.
Almost a decade later the suit has been settled with a significant cash payment by the ADL and, we wish to emphasize, without our signing any agreement for confidentiality which the ADL had previously demanded. Our efforts to expose the organization’s work in defending the policies of the Israeli government and stifling its opponents will continue, using new information gained in the pursuance of the suit.
The ADL spent millions of dollars preventing this case from coming to trial through costly appeals and exploiting the judicial process but, at the end, it had to give up..
During the course of the suit we learned that:
Bullock, the ADL’s top “fact finder” had sold confidential information to a South African intelligence agent in San Francisco for $15,000.
Ten days before he was assassinated in South Africa, Chris Hani, the man who would have succeeded Nelson Mandela as the country’s president, was trailed by Bullock on a trip through California who reported on it to the South African government.
ADL agent Roy Bullock was discovered to have a floor plan of murdered Los Angeles Arab American leader Alex Odeh and a key to his office.
The ADL supplied confidential information to foreign governments that it obtained from police and federal agencies in the US,
Having infiltrated the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the ADL’s “fact finder” performed a COINTEL-type operation at the convention of the Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review when he put ADC’s literature on convention tables as a way of smearing the committee for “working with anti- Semites.”
The ADL has organized to silence and eliminate all critical voices of Israel from academia and the media and has targeted professors , particularly those who are African American, and who are critical of Israel.
That at least 51% of the activities of its San Francisco office were devoted to defending Israel.
The ADL provided secret files to police agencies when these police agencies were prevented by law from collecting the files themselves,
Many questions must still be answered about the activities of the ADL and it’s non-profit status as an “education organization”. The settlement offered by the ADL is recognition on its part that it could not afford to go to a trial in front of a jury and face the likelihood that more of its dirty secrets would be revealed.
We call on all people to make sure that these practices on the part of the ADL are not allowed to continue and that the double standard that presently dominates this country on issues dealing with Israel be eliminated.
Finally, we wish to thank our attorney, former congressman Pete McCloskey, himself a victim of the ADL and the Israel Lobby, for his years of work on our behalf and his steadfast commitment to the pursuit of justice.
Source
Revered Rabbi Preaches Slaughter Of Gentile Babies
Nazareth: A rabbi from one of the most violent settlements in the West Bank was questioned on suspicion of incitement last week as Israeli police stepped up their investigation into a book in which he sanctions the killing of non-Jews, including children and babies.
Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira is one of the leading ideologues of the extreme wing of the religious settler movement. He is known to be a champion of the “price-tag” policy of reprisal attacks on Palestinians, including punishing them for attempts by officials to enforce Israeli law against the settlements.
So far the policy has chiefly involved violent harassment of Palestinians, with settlers inflicting beatings, attacking homes, throwing stones, burning fields, killing livestock and poisoning wells.
It is feared, however, that Shapira’s book The King’s Torah, published last year, is intended to offer ideological justifications for widening the scope of such attacks to include killing Palestinians, even children.
Although Shapira was released a few hours after his questioning last Monday, dozens of rabbis, as well as several members of parliament, rallied to his side, condemning the arrest.
Shlomo Aviner, one of the settlement movement’s spiritual leaders, defended the book’s arguments as a “legitimate stance” and one that should be taught in Jewish seminaries.
But in a sign of mounting official unease at Shapira’s influence on the settlement movement, the Israeli military authorities also threatened last week to enforce a decade-old demolition order on Yitzhar’s seminary, which was built without a permit.
Dror Etkes, a Tel Aviv-based expert on the settlements, said the order was unlikely to be carried out but was a way to pressure Yitzhar’s 500 inhabitants to rein in their more violent attacks.
He said the authorities had begun taking a harder line against Yitzhar only since Shapira and several of his students were suspected of torching a mosque in the neighbouring village of Yasuf last December.
“Shapira is trying to redefine the conflict with the Palestinians, turning it from a national conflict into a religious one. That frightens Israel. It doesn’t want to look as though it is fighting the whole Islamic world,” Etkes said.
He added that the rabbi and his supporters were closely associated with Kach, a movement founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane that demands the expulsion of all Palestinians from a “Greater Israel”. Despite Kach being banned, officials have largely turned a blind eye as its ideology has flourished in the settlements.
“It may be illegal to call oneself Kach but the authorities are more than tolerant of settlers who hold such views and carry out violent attacks. In fact, what Kahane was doing in the 1980s seems like child’s play compared with today’s settlers.”
In the 230-page book, Shapira and his co-author, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, also from Yitzhar, argue that Jewish law permits the killing of non-Jews in a wide variety of circumstances. The terms “gentiles” and “non-Jews” in the book are widely understood as references to Palestinians.
They write that Jews have the right to kill gentiles in any situation in which “a non-Jew’s presence endangers Jewish lives” even if the gentile is “not at all guilty for the situation that has been created”.
The book sanctions the killing of non-Jewish children and babies: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”
The rabbis suggest that harming the children of non-Jewish leaders is justified if it is likely to bring pressure to bear on them to change policy.
The authors also advocate committing “cruel deeds to create the proper balance of terror” and treating all members of an “enemy nation” as targets for retaliation, even if they are not directly participating in hostile activities.
The rabbis appear to be offering justifications in Jewish law for collective punishment and other war crimes of the kind committed by the Israeli army in its attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008.
Pamphlets similarly calling on soldiers to “show no mercy” were distributed by the army’s rabbinate as troops prepared for the Gaza operation, in which 1,400 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, were killed. Religious settlers have come to dominate many combat units.
An investigation last year by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, found Shapira’s seminary had received government funds worth at least $300,000 in recent years. American and British groups have also contributed tens of thousands of dollars in tax-deductible donations.
According to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, the Yitzhar settlers have responded to the demolition order against their seminary by threatening to publish documents showing that the housing and transport ministries were closely involved in the project too.
The settlers have repeatedly rampaged through nearby Palestinian villages, most notoriously in September 2008, when they were filmed shooting at homes in Assira al-Kabaliya, smashing properties and daubing Stars of David on homes. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of the time, termed the settlers’ actions a “pogrom”.
The same year a religious student from Yitzhar was arrested for firing home-made rockets at Palestinian villages close by.
In April, Yitzhar’s settlers marched through the village of Huwara and pelted a Palestinian family’s home with stones in “reprisal” for the arrest of 11 of their number.
A settler from Yitzhar was questioned last month over the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old Palestinian, Aysar Zaban, in May, reportedly after stones were thrown at the settler’s car. The teenager was shot in the back.
Last week, the settlers attacked Burin, shooting at villagers and burning fields.
In most of these cases, the settlers who were arrested were released a short time later either by the police or the courts. In January, a Jerusalem judge freed Rabbi Shapira for lack of evidence in the arson attack on the mosque.
Yitzhak Ginsburg, an authority on Jewish law and a mentor to Shapira, was questioned by police last Thursday over his endorsement of the book. In the past Ginsburg has praised Baruch Goldstein, a settler who opened fire in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque in 1994, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers.
In 2003 Ginsburg was accused of incitement for publishing a book that called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories, but the charges were dropped after he issued a “clarification statement”.
A group calling itself “Students of Yitzhak Ginsburg” recently distributed a leaflet urging Israeli soldiers to “spare your lives and the lives of your friends and show no concern for a population that surrounds us and harms us”.
What is Kach?
Kach was founded in 1971 by the late Meir Kahane, an American rabbi who immigrated to Israel. He won a seat in the Israeli parliament in 1984 on a platform of expelling all Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories. As an MP, he drafted legislation to revoke the Israeli citizenship of non-Jews and ban sexual relations between Jews and gentiles.
The political party was banned from running for the Israeli parliament in 1988 and the movement was outlawed six years later. Although the group is considered a terrorist organisation in the United States and most of Europe, its ideology has been allowed to thrive in the settlements.
Today, dozens of rabbis espouse an interpretation of Jewish religious law identical to or worse than Kahane’s.
Michael Ben Ari, a former Kach leader, was elected as an MP last year for the far-right National Union party, which holds four seats in the 120-member parliament.
Avigdor Lieberman, who leads the parliament’s third largest party and is foreign minister, briefly joined the party before it was banned. His own party’s anti-Arab “No loyalty, no citizenship” programme includes echoes of Kahane’s ideology.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
Source
Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira is one of the leading ideologues of the extreme wing of the religious settler movement. He is known to be a champion of the “price-tag” policy of reprisal attacks on Palestinians, including punishing them for attempts by officials to enforce Israeli law against the settlements.
So far the policy has chiefly involved violent harassment of Palestinians, with settlers inflicting beatings, attacking homes, throwing stones, burning fields, killing livestock and poisoning wells.
It is feared, however, that Shapira’s book The King’s Torah, published last year, is intended to offer ideological justifications for widening the scope of such attacks to include killing Palestinians, even children.
Although Shapira was released a few hours after his questioning last Monday, dozens of rabbis, as well as several members of parliament, rallied to his side, condemning the arrest.
Shlomo Aviner, one of the settlement movement’s spiritual leaders, defended the book’s arguments as a “legitimate stance” and one that should be taught in Jewish seminaries.
But in a sign of mounting official unease at Shapira’s influence on the settlement movement, the Israeli military authorities also threatened last week to enforce a decade-old demolition order on Yitzhar’s seminary, which was built without a permit.
Dror Etkes, a Tel Aviv-based expert on the settlements, said the order was unlikely to be carried out but was a way to pressure Yitzhar’s 500 inhabitants to rein in their more violent attacks.
He said the authorities had begun taking a harder line against Yitzhar only since Shapira and several of his students were suspected of torching a mosque in the neighbouring village of Yasuf last December.
“Shapira is trying to redefine the conflict with the Palestinians, turning it from a national conflict into a religious one. That frightens Israel. It doesn’t want to look as though it is fighting the whole Islamic world,” Etkes said.
He added that the rabbi and his supporters were closely associated with Kach, a movement founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane that demands the expulsion of all Palestinians from a “Greater Israel”. Despite Kach being banned, officials have largely turned a blind eye as its ideology has flourished in the settlements.
“It may be illegal to call oneself Kach but the authorities are more than tolerant of settlers who hold such views and carry out violent attacks. In fact, what Kahane was doing in the 1980s seems like child’s play compared with today’s settlers.”
In the 230-page book, Shapira and his co-author, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, also from Yitzhar, argue that Jewish law permits the killing of non-Jews in a wide variety of circumstances. The terms “gentiles” and “non-Jews” in the book are widely understood as references to Palestinians.
They write that Jews have the right to kill gentiles in any situation in which “a non-Jew’s presence endangers Jewish lives” even if the gentile is “not at all guilty for the situation that has been created”.
The book sanctions the killing of non-Jewish children and babies: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”
The rabbis suggest that harming the children of non-Jewish leaders is justified if it is likely to bring pressure to bear on them to change policy.
The authors also advocate committing “cruel deeds to create the proper balance of terror” and treating all members of an “enemy nation” as targets for retaliation, even if they are not directly participating in hostile activities.
The rabbis appear to be offering justifications in Jewish law for collective punishment and other war crimes of the kind committed by the Israeli army in its attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008.
Pamphlets similarly calling on soldiers to “show no mercy” were distributed by the army’s rabbinate as troops prepared for the Gaza operation, in which 1,400 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, were killed. Religious settlers have come to dominate many combat units.
An investigation last year by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, found Shapira’s seminary had received government funds worth at least $300,000 in recent years. American and British groups have also contributed tens of thousands of dollars in tax-deductible donations.
According to the Jerusalem Post newspaper, the Yitzhar settlers have responded to the demolition order against their seminary by threatening to publish documents showing that the housing and transport ministries were closely involved in the project too.
The settlers have repeatedly rampaged through nearby Palestinian villages, most notoriously in September 2008, when they were filmed shooting at homes in Assira al-Kabaliya, smashing properties and daubing Stars of David on homes. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of the time, termed the settlers’ actions a “pogrom”.
The same year a religious student from Yitzhar was arrested for firing home-made rockets at Palestinian villages close by.
In April, Yitzhar’s settlers marched through the village of Huwara and pelted a Palestinian family’s home with stones in “reprisal” for the arrest of 11 of their number.
A settler from Yitzhar was questioned last month over the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old Palestinian, Aysar Zaban, in May, reportedly after stones were thrown at the settler’s car. The teenager was shot in the back.
Last week, the settlers attacked Burin, shooting at villagers and burning fields.
In most of these cases, the settlers who were arrested were released a short time later either by the police or the courts. In January, a Jerusalem judge freed Rabbi Shapira for lack of evidence in the arson attack on the mosque.
Yitzhak Ginsburg, an authority on Jewish law and a mentor to Shapira, was questioned by police last Thursday over his endorsement of the book. In the past Ginsburg has praised Baruch Goldstein, a settler who opened fire in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque in 1994, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers.
In 2003 Ginsburg was accused of incitement for publishing a book that called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories, but the charges were dropped after he issued a “clarification statement”.
A group calling itself “Students of Yitzhak Ginsburg” recently distributed a leaflet urging Israeli soldiers to “spare your lives and the lives of your friends and show no concern for a population that surrounds us and harms us”.
What is Kach?
Kach was founded in 1971 by the late Meir Kahane, an American rabbi who immigrated to Israel. He won a seat in the Israeli parliament in 1984 on a platform of expelling all Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories. As an MP, he drafted legislation to revoke the Israeli citizenship of non-Jews and ban sexual relations between Jews and gentiles.
The political party was banned from running for the Israeli parliament in 1988 and the movement was outlawed six years later. Although the group is considered a terrorist organisation in the United States and most of Europe, its ideology has been allowed to thrive in the settlements.
Today, dozens of rabbis espouse an interpretation of Jewish religious law identical to or worse than Kahane’s.
Michael Ben Ari, a former Kach leader, was elected as an MP last year for the far-right National Union party, which holds four seats in the 120-member parliament.
Avigdor Lieberman, who leads the parliament’s third largest party and is foreign minister, briefly joined the party before it was banned. His own party’s anti-Arab “No loyalty, no citizenship” programme includes echoes of Kahane’s ideology.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
Source
40 Bizarre Statistics That Reveal The Horrifying Truth About The Collapse Of The U.S. Economy
Most Americans still appear to be operating under the delusion that the "recession" will soon pass and that things will get back to "normal" very soon. Unfortunately, that is not anywhere close to the truth. What we are now witnessing are the early stages of the complete and total breakdown of the U.S. economic system. The U.S. government, state governments, local governments, businesses and American consumers have collectively piled up debt that is equivalent to approximately 360 percent of GDP. At no point during the Great Depression (or at any other time during our history) did we ever come close to such a figure. We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt that the world has ever seen, and now that gigantic debt bubble is beginning to pop. As this house of cards comes crashing down, the economic pain is going to become almost unimaginable.
Already, things are really, really, really bad out there. Unemployment is at shockingly high levels. Foreclosures and personal bankruptcies continue to set new all-time records. Businesses are being shut down at a staggering rate, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. government continues to pile up debt at blinding speed.
There is no use sugar-coating it.
The U.S. economy is collapsing.
The following are 40 bizarre statistics that reveal the truth about the collapse of the U.S. economy....
1 - According to one shocking new survey, 28% of U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.
2 - A recent Pew Research survey found that 55 percent of the U.S. labor force has experienced either unemployment, a pay decrease, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work since the recession began.
3 - There are 9.2 million Americans that are unemployed but that are not receiving an unemployment insurance check.
4 - In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
5 - According to one analysis, the United States has lost 10.5 million jobs since 2007.
6 - China's trade surplus (much of it with the United States) climbed 140 percent in June compared to a year earlier.
7 - This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
8 - According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck. That was up significantly from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
9 - According to a recent poll conducted by Bloomberg, 71% of Americans say that it still feels like the economy is in a recession.
10 - Banks repossessed 269,962 U.S. homes during the second quarter of 2010, which was a new all-time record.
11 - Banks repossessed an average of 4,000 South Florida properties a month in the first half of 2010, up 83 percent from the first half of 2009.
12 - According to RealtyTrac, a total of 1.65 million U.S. properties received foreclosure filings during the first half of 2010.
13 - The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that demand for loans to purchase U.S. homes has sunk to a 13-year low.
14 - Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
15 - 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 - a 32 percent increase over 2008.
16 - Back in 1950 each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers. Today, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers. By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.
17 - According to a new poll, six of 10 non-retirees believe that Social Security won't be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.
18 - 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement.
19 - According to one survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
20 - According to one recent survey, 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
21 - The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index declined sharply to 52.9 in June. Most economists had expected that the figure for June would be somewhere around 62.
22 - Retail sales in the U.S. fell in June for a second month in a row.
23 - Vacancies and lease rates at U.S. shopping centers continued to get worse during the second quarter of 2010.
24 - Consumer credit in the United States has contracted during 15 of the past 16 months.
25 - During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.
26 - Things are now so bad in California that in the region around the state capital, Sacramento, there is now one closed business for every six that are still open.
27 - The state of Illinois now ranks eighth in the world in possible bond-holder default. The state of California is ninth.
28 - More than 25 percent of Americans now have a credit score below 599, which means that they are a very bad credit risk.
29 - On Friday, U.S. regulators closed down three banks in Florida, two in South Carolina and one in Michigan, bringing to 96 the number of U.S. banks to be shut down so far in 2010.
30 - The FDIC's deposit insurance fund now has negative 20.7 billion dollars in it, which represents a slight improvement from the end of 2009.
31 - The U.S. federal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion with three months still to go in the current budget year.
32 - According to a U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.
33 - The M3 money supply plunged at a 9.6 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2010.
34 - According to a new poll of Americans between the ages of 44 and 75, 61% said that running out money was their biggest fear. The remaining 39% thought death was scarier.
35 - One study found that as of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
36 - The bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
37 - The number of Americans with incomes below the official poverty line rose by about 15% between 2000 and 2006, and by 2008 over 30 million U.S. workers were earning less than $10 per hour.
38 - According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
39 - For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
40 - A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey has found that just 23% of American voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed.
Source
Already, things are really, really, really bad out there. Unemployment is at shockingly high levels. Foreclosures and personal bankruptcies continue to set new all-time records. Businesses are being shut down at a staggering rate, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. government continues to pile up debt at blinding speed.
There is no use sugar-coating it.
The U.S. economy is collapsing.
The following are 40 bizarre statistics that reveal the truth about the collapse of the U.S. economy....
1 - According to one shocking new survey, 28% of U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job.
2 - A recent Pew Research survey found that 55 percent of the U.S. labor force has experienced either unemployment, a pay decrease, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work since the recession began.
3 - There are 9.2 million Americans that are unemployed but that are not receiving an unemployment insurance check.
4 - In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
5 - According to one analysis, the United States has lost 10.5 million jobs since 2007.
6 - China's trade surplus (much of it with the United States) climbed 140 percent in June compared to a year earlier.
7 - This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
8 - According to a poll taken in 2009, 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck. That was up significantly from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
9 - According to a recent poll conducted by Bloomberg, 71% of Americans say that it still feels like the economy is in a recession.
10 - Banks repossessed 269,962 U.S. homes during the second quarter of 2010, which was a new all-time record.
11 - Banks repossessed an average of 4,000 South Florida properties a month in the first half of 2010, up 83 percent from the first half of 2009.
12 - According to RealtyTrac, a total of 1.65 million U.S. properties received foreclosure filings during the first half of 2010.
13 - The Mortgage Bankers Association recently announced that demand for loans to purchase U.S. homes has sunk to a 13-year low.
14 - Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
15 - 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 - a 32 percent increase over 2008.
16 - Back in 1950 each retiree's Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 workers. Today, each retiree's Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 workers. By 2025 it is projected that there will be approximately two workers for each retiree.
17 - According to a new poll, six of 10 non-retirees believe that Social Security won't be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.
18 - 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved for retirement.
19 - According to one survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
20 - According to one recent survey, 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
21 - The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index declined sharply to 52.9 in June. Most economists had expected that the figure for June would be somewhere around 62.
22 - Retail sales in the U.S. fell in June for a second month in a row.
23 - Vacancies and lease rates at U.S. shopping centers continued to get worse during the second quarter of 2010.
24 - Consumer credit in the United States has contracted during 15 of the past 16 months.
25 - During the first quarter of 2010, the total number of loans that are at least three months past due in the United States increased for the 16th consecutive quarter.
26 - Things are now so bad in California that in the region around the state capital, Sacramento, there is now one closed business for every six that are still open.
27 - The state of Illinois now ranks eighth in the world in possible bond-holder default. The state of California is ninth.
28 - More than 25 percent of Americans now have a credit score below 599, which means that they are a very bad credit risk.
29 - On Friday, U.S. regulators closed down three banks in Florida, two in South Carolina and one in Michigan, bringing to 96 the number of U.S. banks to be shut down so far in 2010.
30 - The FDIC's deposit insurance fund now has negative 20.7 billion dollars in it, which represents a slight improvement from the end of 2009.
31 - The U.S. federal budget deficit has topped $1 trillion with three months still to go in the current budget year.
32 - According to a U.S. Treasury Department report to Congress, the U.S. national debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.
33 - The M3 money supply plunged at a 9.6 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2010.
34 - According to a new poll of Americans between the ages of 44 and 75, 61% said that running out money was their biggest fear. The remaining 39% thought death was scarier.
35 - One study found that as of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
36 - The bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
37 - The number of Americans with incomes below the official poverty line rose by about 15% between 2000 and 2006, and by 2008 over 30 million U.S. workers were earning less than $10 per hour.
38 - According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
39 - For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
40 - A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey has found that just 23% of American voters nationwide believe the federal government today has the consent of the governed.
Source
Mike Rivero Is Leaving GCN
ANNOUNCEMENT
As of the end of August I will be leaving GCN to do my show over at Republic Broadcasting. My first day at Republic will be Monday August 23rd, followed by a week of doing both shows, with my last day at GCN Friday August 27th. The Saturday show is still up in the air at this time. My show will air earlier in the day on Republic, running from 2PM to 4PM Central Time. As usual, podcasts will be available.
UPDATE:
I have just been informed by the Alex Jones show that they are canceling my monthly interviews commencing this coming Tuesday. Imagine my shock and disappointment. No, really, just imagine it!
WRH
Alex Jones Banishes Mike Rivero
Jones and his handlers decide Michael Rivero must go. Not only from the Jones radio sideshow but from the GCN network as well. AJ waves his 'magic' zionist flag and makes things disappear.
Announcement from Mike ...
"I have just been informed by the Alex Jones show that they are canceling my monthly interviews commencing this coming Tuesday. Imagine my shock and disappointment. No, really, just imagine it!"
A little more info from Mike ...
WRH: "I have not made a big deal about the reasons for the move, but in a nutshell, GCN is a reflection of Alex Jones' views of the world, and more and more our points of view regarding Israel are diverging. I get a lot of email asking why I do not challenge Alex on his defense of Israel, or asking why every time I am on his show Alex feels obligated to have a pro-Israel representative on immediately afterwards to counter the points that I made.
I view the attack by Israel on a US flagged ship and Americans in international waters as an act of war and all who defend said attack as traitors to the USA. Alex holds a different view and I guess the breaking point was his rant in which he said that anyone who is a critic of Israel is a "weak-minded fool". That made it a personal attack, and I decided it was time to step out of Alex's shadow and go in a different direction."
Looks like a good thing to me. Keeping a good distance from AJ will be for the best in the long run. Maybe Mike will quit linking anything from the Jones world. Not to retaliate but just to be on the side of good taste.
I think most of us will have some disagreements with Rivero on certain issues, that's to be expected when folks are passionate about finding truth, but once again the bottom line is whether one has the courage to challenge Israel, their lobbyists and supporters in the media and both in and out of government Doing so can be dangerous to your health ... both economically and possibly otherwise.
-----
From a comment at WRH ...
READER: With all of the "anti-semitic" accusations being thrown around lately, it might be wise to try and define just what "semitism" really is so that we can be sure not to be "anti-semitic".
1) If "semitism" is stealing your neighbor's land, destroying his house and imprisoning and torturing his family, then yes, I am anti-semitic.
2) If "semitism" is committing terrible acts of violence and framing someone else for them, then yes, I am anti-semitic.
3) If "semitism" is compromising the USA government through blackmail and other threats, then yes, I am anti-semitic.
4) If "semitism" is imprisoning millions of improvised and brutalized people, cutting off all basic necessities for life, then yes, I am antisemitic.
5) If "semitism" is taking billions in aid from the USA and then murdering Americans with impunity, then yes, I am anti-semitic.
6) If "semitism" is ignoring all UN Resolutions critical of you and then using the same UN to raise trumped-up charges against an INNOCENT nation, then yes, I am anti-semitic.
7) If "semitism" is coercing the USA government and fooling the American people into attacking an INNOCENT nation, costing millions of innocent lives, including American soldiers, then yes, I am anti-semitic.
8) If "semitism" is attacking unarmed humanitarian ships in INTERNATIONAL waters, murdering at least nine people, including an American, shot FOUR times in the head, then yes, I am anti-semitic.
9) If "semitism" is thinking that you are a master and superior race that has to answer to NO one, then yes, I am anti-semitic.
10) If "semitism" is taking American tax dollars and then sptting in America's face, then yes, I am anti-semitic.
11) If "semitism" is suppressing any and all discussion of high crimes against humanity then yes, I am anti-semitic.
12) If "semitism" is constant lying and deception to achieve a goal that is illegal and immoral then yes, I am anti-semitic.
13) If "semitism" is arming yourself to the teeth, threatening other nations with attack AND attacking other nations because they are supposedly armed to the teeth and threatening you, then yes, I am anti-semitic.
14) If "semitism" is staging 911 with the help of traitorous Americansin high positions of power, murdering over 3,000 innocent Americans so that the USA will attack your "enemies" blamed for doing 911(and in the process blackmailing those same officials who helped you pull of 911!) then yes, I am anti-semitic.
15) If "semitism" is calling anyone critical of you or revealing of your actions "anti-semitic" then yes. I am anti-semitic.
Of course, these are not the real definitions of semitism, but "semitism" has become the cloak to shield crimes against humanity! But one thing is clear to me- those throwing this accusation around are the ones who are REALLY dragging REAL semtism though the mud! They are the real anti-semites!
Kenny's Sideshow
How surprising. Mike speaks entirely too much truth exposing Zionist crimes against humanity. If this doesn't begin to open people's eyes to Jones' intentions, I don't know what will. I wish Mike all the luck in the future. The further he can distance himself from Jones, the better.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Palestinian Detainees Abuse during Operation Cast Lead by Stephen Lendman
August 1, 2010
On July 6, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PACTI) and Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel released a report titled, "Exposed: The Treatment of Palestinian Detainees During Operation Cast Lead," detailing their horrific treatment.
Transferred to Israel for interrogation, detainees related grim details of their ordeal - grave human rights violations, showing Israel's "contempt for the rule of law."
Their "fundamental due process rights were trampled on and the rule of law brutally disregarded during and after the fighting," providing compelling evidence of collective punishment since Israel's 2005 "disengagement," followed by an embargo, a medieval siege, regular incursions, Cast Lead, and continued oppression of 1.5 million people - isolated, surrounded, attacked, brutalized, and slowly suffocated into submission, what hasn't happened and won't, but it doesn't deter Israel from trying, or America from providing weapons and funding its lawlessness.
Seizure and Detention in Gaza
Under Article 92 of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners relating to family notification about an individual's seizure, the ICRC says it must be "as soon as (someone is) interned, or at the latest not more than one week after....arriv(ing) in a place of internment" or a temporary camp.
Israeli law also obligates authorities to comply with international law, its High Court recognizing notification as a basic detainee right, ruling that relatives must be informed within 24 hours:
"of his arrest and his place of detention so that they will be apprised of what befell their detained relative, and how they are able to offer him the assistance he requires to safeguard his liberty. This is a natural right derived from human dignity and general principles of justice, and accrues both to the detainee himself and to his relatives."
Israeli human rights organizations tried to locate detainees, several complaining to Israel's Chief Military Advocate General (CMAG) demanding full information.
CMAG stonewalled, saying only that the ICRC was informed of detentions, including required information of their names, where held and why.
The IDF's Supervision and Control Center (SCC), responsible for collecting and maintaining detainee information, declined to provide HaMoked, the Center for the Defense of the Individual, with the information it requested.
In response to its habeas petition for 15 detainees, SCC said that "As long as the fighting continues.....the IDF may detain more Palestinian residents," their names given to the SCC within 48 hours of their transfer to Israel - an interpretation violating international law requiring prompt notification. Failure to do so may subject detainees to human rights abuses, including torture, use as human shields and other forms of abuse and humiliation, precisely what the evidence below shows.
Using Protected Persons as "Human Shields"
Under detention in Gaza, they were exploited for military purposes, including as human shields, for 10 days or longer - a grave violation of international and Israeli law.
Fourth Geneva explicitly prohibits using protected persons for any military purpose, including as human shields or hostages. It also bans threats to harm family members to extract information about their relatives.
The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is also explicit, its Article 8 defining war crimes as grave Fourth Geneva breaches, including taking protected persons hostage and/or compelling they help their captor militarily.
In addition, Israel's High Court banned using protected persons as hostages or human shields, ruling unequivocally that it's forbidden to exploit civilians for any military purpose, citing international humanitarian law. The Court emphasized that noncombatants mustn't be taken to military conflict areas, even if willing, understanding that "consent" would be forced and untrue.
Yet detainee testimonies confirmed the opposite - that they were compelled to serve militarily as the example below shows:
On January 4, 2009, Jabalia resident Abed Elkarim Mustafa Abu Salah said 20 soldiers burst into his home, damaged contents searching it, handcuffed him and his son, arrested them, then used them as human shields for 10 days in a combat area.
"During this whole period, my son and I were transported with the soldiers and in the night they would take us back to sleep in the house of Ismail Nabhan. Over this period, (we were) sent....into countless homes" to search and open doors and windows.
Declared an "unlawful combatant," Abu Salah was detained in Israel for four months, then released. Adalah complained to the CMAG on his behalf, demanding a investigation. On August 27, 2009, Israel's Military Police Criminal Investigations Division (CID) began one, Abu Salah and his son testifying on November 24. No decision was announced. If one comes, it will whitewash IDF responsibility.
Numerous other accounts reported similar mistreatment, one saying "IDF soldiers cuffed me and three of my brothers, and for three days had us walk ahead of them, and made sure we did so at gunpoint. They used us as human shields by ordering us to go into houses ahead of them."
At the time, an IDF spokesman denied it, saying:
"Regrettably, PACTI keeps rehashing allegations which have been heard - and dismissed by the High Court," even though true. Breaking the Silence Israeli soldiers confirmed it, one saying:
"The method used has a new name now - no longer 'neighbor procedure.' Now people are called 'Johnnie.' They're Palestinian civilians, and they're called Johnnies....To every house we close in on, we send the neighbor in, 'the Johnnie,' and if there are armed men inside, we start, like working the 'pressure cooker' in the West Bank."
He explained that "pressure cooker" meant using civilians to check if armed men were inside houses, "Johnnies" to smash walls for Israeli troops to storm through.
Amnesty International, other human rights groups, and the Goldstone Commission also found evidence of human shield use, confirming PACTI and Adalah, discrediting Israel's denial, its inexcusable cover-up.
Detention Conditions
One account, similar to others, was as follows:
"I was held inside the crater together with some 70 other civilians, most of whom I know from the neighborhood. During this period, I was not interrogated and to the best of my knowledge no one else was....either. On Wednesday (January 7, 2009), they put everyone on a truck, covered our eyes and we drove, with a tank in front of us, to an army post near the sea which was built after the Disengagement. The post was five kilometers from the place in which I was held. My son Hussein was left in the crater and I do not know what happened to him."
As protected persons, international and Israeli law demand humane treatment at all times. Fourth Geneva's Article 27 says: "They shall at all times be humanely treated."
Article 10(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states: "All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person."
Israel's High Court ruled that the nation's Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty obligates authorities to abide by ICCPR's Article 10. It's principles are also affirmed in Article 16(1) of the UN's Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), and in Article 1 of the General Assembly's Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment."
Fourth Geneva requires that detention conditions must ensure detainee hygiene and health, including protection from weather conditions; that detention space must be adequately heated and lit; that sleeping quarters be spacious and well-ventilated, with suitable bedding and blankets; and that sufficient food and water be provided. These are universally accepted standards, ones Israeli systematically spurns, despite its own law stipulating that:
"Detainee(s) must be held under appropriate conditions that do not harm his Health and dignity." Article 9 of the Detentions Law and related regulations guarantees their bodily integrity, spirit and dignity, affording them sanitary conditions, a mattress, bed, food, light, ventilation, a daily walk, the right to communicate with visitors, to send letters, and other basic considerations."
Detention Regulation 22 differentiates between "regular" and "security" prisoners, latter ones denied or only partially afforded the above rights, in violation of international law making no distinction, without exception, obliging Israel to comply. Even detainees suspected of serious crimes are entitled to the same treatment as others with regard to their basic needs - an inviolable minimum threshold.
Prisoner accounts, however, related otherwise - that "from the moment of their arrest and detention, the detainees were held in disgraceful and inhuman conditions - from their detention in (Gaza) to their time in temporary military facilities for the purpose of absorption, and continuing in their cells in IPS detention centers in Israel."
Gaza Detention
Detainees, including children, were taken from their homes, held in large pits (two - three meters deep), unsheltered from the bitter cold for days, each pit holding 60 - 70 prisoners, their hands shackled and eyes covered. They couldn't even leave their pits to relieve themselves. The sanitary conditions were appalling, the amount of food, water, and blankets negligible.
Detainees complained of hunger, thirst and cold, adjacent to combat areas, endangering their lives. A PACTI/Adalah complaint to CMAG was unanswered.
Sameer Ali Muhammad Attar described his experience after being arrested on January 5, 2009 with his young son, saying:
"We arrived at the place where the tanks were posted, and at that moment (they) were firing shells on Beit Lahiya. (Israelis) dug out a crater with a dirt wall of some two meters. (We were) ordered to climb down the dirt walls and into the crater while shackled, and we were held there under the bare sky for two days (exposed) to the bitter cold, and only (on the second day given one blanket for two people). During the whole period we were shackled and we slept on the dirt."
Once or twice a day, they got food...."as for water, we would ask for it and sometimes they would bring us some, in delay. There were no toilets and they did not provide us with hygienic products like toilet paper. I was (with) 70 other civilians, most of whom I know from the neighborhood."
Other testimonies provided similar accounts, detailing horrific, abusive treatment.
Military Detention in Israel
Detainees were then taken to army facilities "Zikim" and "Sde Teiman," the latter for "unlawful combatants." In all cases, their human rights were denied. After being photographed and medically checked, they were held in cramped quarters, given inadequate food, thin mattresses and blankets, too little to protect against the bitter cold. They were shackled when given access to toilets. Some were placed in dark trailers with no showers, toilets, mattresses or blankets. Detainees related stories of violence and illegal interrogations.
Held as an "unlawful combatant," Muhammad Kisab was taken to Sde Teiman, put on a gravel floor with his father and two brothers, then moved to a trailer made of canvas with no mattresses or blankets. "The room was closed. It had one ventilation hole on the roof and it was completely dark. There was no toilet." Other detainees related similar accounts.
"The conditions (at) military facilities were far from meeting the minimum standards for the protection of the health and dignity of the detainees." Yet former High Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak ruled that even in emergencies, detention facilities must meet minimum international law criteria, Israeli authorities even defying their own Supreme Court.
Detainee Conditions in Interrogation and Detention Facilities
Detainees also endured abusive and humiliating conditions in Israel Prison Service (IPS) detention centers for interrogations. During breaks and when concluded, they were transferred to narrow, dark, foul smelling cells used for solitary confinement, given thin mattresses, little hygiene, and kept under 24-hour lighting that interrupted or prevented sleep.
Wa'el Atamneh had only a metal bed with no mattress or blanket for protection, nor a toilet, a privilege given once a day, and a shower after 10 days.
Imad Hamad said he was held in solitary confinement, interrogated 18 hours a day during his first three days, then transferred to Ketziot Prison under better conditions.
All detainees complained of abusive treatment in solitary confinement, cut off from attorneys and families, in cold, small, smelly cells, thin mattresses or none, deprived of sleep, showers and washing, and subjected to 24-hour lighting and grueling interrogations, at times including torture.
The psychological pressure was intense. Their bodies became weak. Sensory deprivation took its toll, caused by the inability to keep track of time and disconnect from normal human contact and social stimuli.
Torture and Ill-Treatment
Under customary humanitarian law, torture is prohibited at all times under all circumstances with no allowed exceptions. In all its forms, it's a war crime, according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Israel's High Court banned it in its HCJ 5100/94 Public Committee against Torture in Israel v. Government of Israel, leaving a giant loophole in "ticking bombs" situations, giving authorities wide latitude to use it, PACTI and Adalah confirming various detainees affected.
"PACTI's experience over the years shows that from the moment detainees are deprived of their liberty until the end of their interrogation, they are exposed to acts which constitute torture and ill-treatment," including "punches, blows, kicks and slaps; shackling in painful positions....; verbal ill-treatment which includes threats to life, health and welfare of the interrogee and threats of injuring his or her family members; and curses and swearing towards the detainee, his family and his religion," and more.
Other abuses include physical and psychological torment, sleep deprivation for long periods, loud yelling in the ear, spitting in the face, withholding enough food and water, preventing access to toilets, and various other cruel and inhuman treatments.
IDF Violence against Detainees in Gaza
One detainee (anonymous for his safety) explains what happened after Israeli forces stormed his house, destroying everything in it:
"The next day, after having slept shackled on the second floor of our home, I heard the voices of my father and brothers....screaming from the blows they were taking from the soldiers. I started to yell that I want to (see) my mother. Then one of the soldiers took off his helmet and hit me on the head with it. I lost consciousness. I woke up later in the bathroom with three soldiers. One....took out his sexual organ and began to urinate on me while I was lying on the floor; meanwhile the two (others) laughed. I was completely soaked and there was a repulsive smell of urine. When the soldier who had urinated on me realized that I had woken up, he began to kick my upper body on the left side."
Other detainees described similar experiences, including some taken to border areas and "harshly physically assaulted," one saying "I prayed to god to arrive anywhere, even to die....just to stop this terrible suffering."
PACTI, Adalah, ACRI and HaMoked demanded these and other incidents be investigated. "To date, more than one and a half years (later), no answer has been received from the CMAG."
During grueling interrogations, detainees said they were shackled, blindfolded, humiliated, deprived of sleep, and beaten, some threatened by dogs, with death, or harm to family, one interrogator saying "we want your mother to suffer because of you."
Testimonies provided clear evidence of torture, soldiers and interrogators having immunity to commit it, PACTI saying:
"Israel's indifference to its moral and legal obligations to detainees is particularly objectionable in view of the fact (soldiers and interrogators ignored) the basic rights of the detainees and captives" under international law, violations committed against everyone seized.
Unlawful Combatants under Israel's Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law (UCL)
Forty Cast Lead detainees were designated either "security" ones or "unlawful combatants (UCs)" a bogus category under international law. Yet all were indicted, 23 security prisoners sentenced to 12 - 84 months, the 17 UCs held as bargaining chips for future prisoner exchanges.
Israel defines UCs as "person(s) who (have) participated either directly or indirectly in hostilities against the State of Israel or is a member of a force perpetrating hostilities against the State of Israel, where the conditions prescribed in (Third Geneva's) Article 4 (regarding POW status) do not apply to him."
As a result, they're denied all rights, and "may be attacked in time of war or military operation because of their being 'combatants,' but who if captured are not entitled to the rights and protections to which combatants are entitled."
Although Israel's High Court rejected UC designation, it ruled imprisoning UCs constitutional, Israel's UCL permitting indefinite detentions, designees denied all rights, including to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence.
At Ketziot Prison, they've been harshly treated in small windowless cells with no toilet or electricity, spending most of the day and night in total darkness.
According to the UN Committee Against Torture:
"All of the persons held were civilians and protected under (Fourth Geneva's) Article 4....The Mission does not accept the proposition that the (detained) men (are) unlawful combatants" to be denied international law protections. Doing so constitutes a crime of war and against humanity, Israeli specialties.
The Duty to Investigate Complaints
Under international humanitarian and human rights laws, Israel is required to conduct comprehensive, thorough, independent investigations, and prosecute persons guilty of detainee mistreatment and other types of abuse, including torture.
This obligation is anchored in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Under Fourth Geneva's Article 46:
"The High Contracting Parties undertake to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the grave breaches of the present Convention," including willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, inflicting suffering or injuries, denying the right to a fair trial, unlawfully transferring a protected person to the occupier's territory, or committing any act not justified by military necessity.
The scale and severity of Cast Lead violations demand a full investigation, including "a re-evaluation of the laws and rulings which allow for and authorize (such extreme) violation(s) of human rights and international humanitarian law." Yet Israel willfully and egregiously "violated its duty," defying its sworn obligation, another Israeli specialty along with obstruction, cover-up, and denial.
Over many years, PACTI and other human rights organizations have filed complaints of mistreatment and other forms of abuse, including torture, mainly to Israel's Attorney General. Yet accusations against General Security Service (GSS) employees "are systematically rejected," suggesting that "Israel's law enforcement system supports and permits....violent interrogation methods," including torture.
See this writer's August 2008 article, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2008/08/torture-as-official-is
raeli-policy.html
A Final Comment
Every violation above "is grave enough on its own, (but combined) constitute a complete debasement of the detainees' rights and of Israel's moral and legal obligations."
No wonder an earlier European Commission poll designated Israel the top threat to world peace, and an April 22, 2010 BBC one gave it a 19% approval rating, only Pakistan, North Korea and Iran scoring lower.
No wonder also that growing millions reject Israel's lawlessness, demanding full accountability, boycotts, divestment, sanctions, criminal prosecutions, and expulsion from the UN until it complies with international law, recognizes Palestinian self-determination, ends its illegal occupation, returns confiscated land, dismantles its Separation Wall, grants Israeli Arabs the same rights as Jews, and lets Palestinian refugees return home to their land or be paid just compensation if they choose. Committed grassroots pressure is crucial to achieving these goals - for justice, genuine peace, and an end to decades of Israeli hellishness.
Source
On July 6, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PACTI) and Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel released a report titled, "Exposed: The Treatment of Palestinian Detainees During Operation Cast Lead," detailing their horrific treatment.
Transferred to Israel for interrogation, detainees related grim details of their ordeal - grave human rights violations, showing Israel's "contempt for the rule of law."
Their "fundamental due process rights were trampled on and the rule of law brutally disregarded during and after the fighting," providing compelling evidence of collective punishment since Israel's 2005 "disengagement," followed by an embargo, a medieval siege, regular incursions, Cast Lead, and continued oppression of 1.5 million people - isolated, surrounded, attacked, brutalized, and slowly suffocated into submission, what hasn't happened and won't, but it doesn't deter Israel from trying, or America from providing weapons and funding its lawlessness.
Seizure and Detention in Gaza
Under Article 92 of the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners relating to family notification about an individual's seizure, the ICRC says it must be "as soon as (someone is) interned, or at the latest not more than one week after....arriv(ing) in a place of internment" or a temporary camp.
Israeli law also obligates authorities to comply with international law, its High Court recognizing notification as a basic detainee right, ruling that relatives must be informed within 24 hours:
"of his arrest and his place of detention so that they will be apprised of what befell their detained relative, and how they are able to offer him the assistance he requires to safeguard his liberty. This is a natural right derived from human dignity and general principles of justice, and accrues both to the detainee himself and to his relatives."
Israeli human rights organizations tried to locate detainees, several complaining to Israel's Chief Military Advocate General (CMAG) demanding full information.
CMAG stonewalled, saying only that the ICRC was informed of detentions, including required information of their names, where held and why.
The IDF's Supervision and Control Center (SCC), responsible for collecting and maintaining detainee information, declined to provide HaMoked, the Center for the Defense of the Individual, with the information it requested.
In response to its habeas petition for 15 detainees, SCC said that "As long as the fighting continues.....the IDF may detain more Palestinian residents," their names given to the SCC within 48 hours of their transfer to Israel - an interpretation violating international law requiring prompt notification. Failure to do so may subject detainees to human rights abuses, including torture, use as human shields and other forms of abuse and humiliation, precisely what the evidence below shows.
Using Protected Persons as "Human Shields"
Under detention in Gaza, they were exploited for military purposes, including as human shields, for 10 days or longer - a grave violation of international and Israeli law.
Fourth Geneva explicitly prohibits using protected persons for any military purpose, including as human shields or hostages. It also bans threats to harm family members to extract information about their relatives.
The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is also explicit, its Article 8 defining war crimes as grave Fourth Geneva breaches, including taking protected persons hostage and/or compelling they help their captor militarily.
In addition, Israel's High Court banned using protected persons as hostages or human shields, ruling unequivocally that it's forbidden to exploit civilians for any military purpose, citing international humanitarian law. The Court emphasized that noncombatants mustn't be taken to military conflict areas, even if willing, understanding that "consent" would be forced and untrue.
Yet detainee testimonies confirmed the opposite - that they were compelled to serve militarily as the example below shows:
On January 4, 2009, Jabalia resident Abed Elkarim Mustafa Abu Salah said 20 soldiers burst into his home, damaged contents searching it, handcuffed him and his son, arrested them, then used them as human shields for 10 days in a combat area.
"During this whole period, my son and I were transported with the soldiers and in the night they would take us back to sleep in the house of Ismail Nabhan. Over this period, (we were) sent....into countless homes" to search and open doors and windows.
Declared an "unlawful combatant," Abu Salah was detained in Israel for four months, then released. Adalah complained to the CMAG on his behalf, demanding a investigation. On August 27, 2009, Israel's Military Police Criminal Investigations Division (CID) began one, Abu Salah and his son testifying on November 24. No decision was announced. If one comes, it will whitewash IDF responsibility.
Numerous other accounts reported similar mistreatment, one saying "IDF soldiers cuffed me and three of my brothers, and for three days had us walk ahead of them, and made sure we did so at gunpoint. They used us as human shields by ordering us to go into houses ahead of them."
At the time, an IDF spokesman denied it, saying:
"Regrettably, PACTI keeps rehashing allegations which have been heard - and dismissed by the High Court," even though true. Breaking the Silence Israeli soldiers confirmed it, one saying:
"The method used has a new name now - no longer 'neighbor procedure.' Now people are called 'Johnnie.' They're Palestinian civilians, and they're called Johnnies....To every house we close in on, we send the neighbor in, 'the Johnnie,' and if there are armed men inside, we start, like working the 'pressure cooker' in the West Bank."
He explained that "pressure cooker" meant using civilians to check if armed men were inside houses, "Johnnies" to smash walls for Israeli troops to storm through.
Amnesty International, other human rights groups, and the Goldstone Commission also found evidence of human shield use, confirming PACTI and Adalah, discrediting Israel's denial, its inexcusable cover-up.
Detention Conditions
One account, similar to others, was as follows:
"I was held inside the crater together with some 70 other civilians, most of whom I know from the neighborhood. During this period, I was not interrogated and to the best of my knowledge no one else was....either. On Wednesday (January 7, 2009), they put everyone on a truck, covered our eyes and we drove, with a tank in front of us, to an army post near the sea which was built after the Disengagement. The post was five kilometers from the place in which I was held. My son Hussein was left in the crater and I do not know what happened to him."
As protected persons, international and Israeli law demand humane treatment at all times. Fourth Geneva's Article 27 says: "They shall at all times be humanely treated."
Article 10(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states: "All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person."
Israel's High Court ruled that the nation's Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty obligates authorities to abide by ICCPR's Article 10. It's principles are also affirmed in Article 16(1) of the UN's Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), and in Article 1 of the General Assembly's Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention or Imprisonment."
Fourth Geneva requires that detention conditions must ensure detainee hygiene and health, including protection from weather conditions; that detention space must be adequately heated and lit; that sleeping quarters be spacious and well-ventilated, with suitable bedding and blankets; and that sufficient food and water be provided. These are universally accepted standards, ones Israeli systematically spurns, despite its own law stipulating that:
"Detainee(s) must be held under appropriate conditions that do not harm his Health and dignity." Article 9 of the Detentions Law and related regulations guarantees their bodily integrity, spirit and dignity, affording them sanitary conditions, a mattress, bed, food, light, ventilation, a daily walk, the right to communicate with visitors, to send letters, and other basic considerations."
Detention Regulation 22 differentiates between "regular" and "security" prisoners, latter ones denied or only partially afforded the above rights, in violation of international law making no distinction, without exception, obliging Israel to comply. Even detainees suspected of serious crimes are entitled to the same treatment as others with regard to their basic needs - an inviolable minimum threshold.
Prisoner accounts, however, related otherwise - that "from the moment of their arrest and detention, the detainees were held in disgraceful and inhuman conditions - from their detention in (Gaza) to their time in temporary military facilities for the purpose of absorption, and continuing in their cells in IPS detention centers in Israel."
Gaza Detention
Detainees, including children, were taken from their homes, held in large pits (two - three meters deep), unsheltered from the bitter cold for days, each pit holding 60 - 70 prisoners, their hands shackled and eyes covered. They couldn't even leave their pits to relieve themselves. The sanitary conditions were appalling, the amount of food, water, and blankets negligible.
Detainees complained of hunger, thirst and cold, adjacent to combat areas, endangering their lives. A PACTI/Adalah complaint to CMAG was unanswered.
Sameer Ali Muhammad Attar described his experience after being arrested on January 5, 2009 with his young son, saying:
"We arrived at the place where the tanks were posted, and at that moment (they) were firing shells on Beit Lahiya. (Israelis) dug out a crater with a dirt wall of some two meters. (We were) ordered to climb down the dirt walls and into the crater while shackled, and we were held there under the bare sky for two days (exposed) to the bitter cold, and only (on the second day given one blanket for two people). During the whole period we were shackled and we slept on the dirt."
Once or twice a day, they got food...."as for water, we would ask for it and sometimes they would bring us some, in delay. There were no toilets and they did not provide us with hygienic products like toilet paper. I was (with) 70 other civilians, most of whom I know from the neighborhood."
Other testimonies provided similar accounts, detailing horrific, abusive treatment.
Military Detention in Israel
Detainees were then taken to army facilities "Zikim" and "Sde Teiman," the latter for "unlawful combatants." In all cases, their human rights were denied. After being photographed and medically checked, they were held in cramped quarters, given inadequate food, thin mattresses and blankets, too little to protect against the bitter cold. They were shackled when given access to toilets. Some were placed in dark trailers with no showers, toilets, mattresses or blankets. Detainees related stories of violence and illegal interrogations.
Held as an "unlawful combatant," Muhammad Kisab was taken to Sde Teiman, put on a gravel floor with his father and two brothers, then moved to a trailer made of canvas with no mattresses or blankets. "The room was closed. It had one ventilation hole on the roof and it was completely dark. There was no toilet." Other detainees related similar accounts.
"The conditions (at) military facilities were far from meeting the minimum standards for the protection of the health and dignity of the detainees." Yet former High Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak ruled that even in emergencies, detention facilities must meet minimum international law criteria, Israeli authorities even defying their own Supreme Court.
Detainee Conditions in Interrogation and Detention Facilities
Detainees also endured abusive and humiliating conditions in Israel Prison Service (IPS) detention centers for interrogations. During breaks and when concluded, they were transferred to narrow, dark, foul smelling cells used for solitary confinement, given thin mattresses, little hygiene, and kept under 24-hour lighting that interrupted or prevented sleep.
Wa'el Atamneh had only a metal bed with no mattress or blanket for protection, nor a toilet, a privilege given once a day, and a shower after 10 days.
Imad Hamad said he was held in solitary confinement, interrogated 18 hours a day during his first three days, then transferred to Ketziot Prison under better conditions.
All detainees complained of abusive treatment in solitary confinement, cut off from attorneys and families, in cold, small, smelly cells, thin mattresses or none, deprived of sleep, showers and washing, and subjected to 24-hour lighting and grueling interrogations, at times including torture.
The psychological pressure was intense. Their bodies became weak. Sensory deprivation took its toll, caused by the inability to keep track of time and disconnect from normal human contact and social stimuli.
Torture and Ill-Treatment
Under customary humanitarian law, torture is prohibited at all times under all circumstances with no allowed exceptions. In all its forms, it's a war crime, according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Israel's High Court banned it in its HCJ 5100/94 Public Committee against Torture in Israel v. Government of Israel, leaving a giant loophole in "ticking bombs" situations, giving authorities wide latitude to use it, PACTI and Adalah confirming various detainees affected.
"PACTI's experience over the years shows that from the moment detainees are deprived of their liberty until the end of their interrogation, they are exposed to acts which constitute torture and ill-treatment," including "punches, blows, kicks and slaps; shackling in painful positions....; verbal ill-treatment which includes threats to life, health and welfare of the interrogee and threats of injuring his or her family members; and curses and swearing towards the detainee, his family and his religion," and more.
Other abuses include physical and psychological torment, sleep deprivation for long periods, loud yelling in the ear, spitting in the face, withholding enough food and water, preventing access to toilets, and various other cruel and inhuman treatments.
IDF Violence against Detainees in Gaza
One detainee (anonymous for his safety) explains what happened after Israeli forces stormed his house, destroying everything in it:
"The next day, after having slept shackled on the second floor of our home, I heard the voices of my father and brothers....screaming from the blows they were taking from the soldiers. I started to yell that I want to (see) my mother. Then one of the soldiers took off his helmet and hit me on the head with it. I lost consciousness. I woke up later in the bathroom with three soldiers. One....took out his sexual organ and began to urinate on me while I was lying on the floor; meanwhile the two (others) laughed. I was completely soaked and there was a repulsive smell of urine. When the soldier who had urinated on me realized that I had woken up, he began to kick my upper body on the left side."
Other detainees described similar experiences, including some taken to border areas and "harshly physically assaulted," one saying "I prayed to god to arrive anywhere, even to die....just to stop this terrible suffering."
PACTI, Adalah, ACRI and HaMoked demanded these and other incidents be investigated. "To date, more than one and a half years (later), no answer has been received from the CMAG."
During grueling interrogations, detainees said they were shackled, blindfolded, humiliated, deprived of sleep, and beaten, some threatened by dogs, with death, or harm to family, one interrogator saying "we want your mother to suffer because of you."
Testimonies provided clear evidence of torture, soldiers and interrogators having immunity to commit it, PACTI saying:
"Israel's indifference to its moral and legal obligations to detainees is particularly objectionable in view of the fact (soldiers and interrogators ignored) the basic rights of the detainees and captives" under international law, violations committed against everyone seized.
Unlawful Combatants under Israel's Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law (UCL)
Forty Cast Lead detainees were designated either "security" ones or "unlawful combatants (UCs)" a bogus category under international law. Yet all were indicted, 23 security prisoners sentenced to 12 - 84 months, the 17 UCs held as bargaining chips for future prisoner exchanges.
Israel defines UCs as "person(s) who (have) participated either directly or indirectly in hostilities against the State of Israel or is a member of a force perpetrating hostilities against the State of Israel, where the conditions prescribed in (Third Geneva's) Article 4 (regarding POW status) do not apply to him."
As a result, they're denied all rights, and "may be attacked in time of war or military operation because of their being 'combatants,' but who if captured are not entitled to the rights and protections to which combatants are entitled."
Although Israel's High Court rejected UC designation, it ruled imprisoning UCs constitutional, Israel's UCL permitting indefinite detentions, designees denied all rights, including to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence.
At Ketziot Prison, they've been harshly treated in small windowless cells with no toilet or electricity, spending most of the day and night in total darkness.
According to the UN Committee Against Torture:
"All of the persons held were civilians and protected under (Fourth Geneva's) Article 4....The Mission does not accept the proposition that the (detained) men (are) unlawful combatants" to be denied international law protections. Doing so constitutes a crime of war and against humanity, Israeli specialties.
The Duty to Investigate Complaints
Under international humanitarian and human rights laws, Israel is required to conduct comprehensive, thorough, independent investigations, and prosecute persons guilty of detainee mistreatment and other types of abuse, including torture.
This obligation is anchored in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. Under Fourth Geneva's Article 46:
"The High Contracting Parties undertake to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the grave breaches of the present Convention," including willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, inflicting suffering or injuries, denying the right to a fair trial, unlawfully transferring a protected person to the occupier's territory, or committing any act not justified by military necessity.
The scale and severity of Cast Lead violations demand a full investigation, including "a re-evaluation of the laws and rulings which allow for and authorize (such extreme) violation(s) of human rights and international humanitarian law." Yet Israel willfully and egregiously "violated its duty," defying its sworn obligation, another Israeli specialty along with obstruction, cover-up, and denial.
Over many years, PACTI and other human rights organizations have filed complaints of mistreatment and other forms of abuse, including torture, mainly to Israel's Attorney General. Yet accusations against General Security Service (GSS) employees "are systematically rejected," suggesting that "Israel's law enforcement system supports and permits....violent interrogation methods," including torture.
See this writer's August 2008 article, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2008/08/torture-as-official-is
raeli-policy.html
A Final Comment
Every violation above "is grave enough on its own, (but combined) constitute a complete debasement of the detainees' rights and of Israel's moral and legal obligations."
No wonder an earlier European Commission poll designated Israel the top threat to world peace, and an April 22, 2010 BBC one gave it a 19% approval rating, only Pakistan, North Korea and Iran scoring lower.
No wonder also that growing millions reject Israel's lawlessness, demanding full accountability, boycotts, divestment, sanctions, criminal prosecutions, and expulsion from the UN until it complies with international law, recognizes Palestinian self-determination, ends its illegal occupation, returns confiscated land, dismantles its Separation Wall, grants Israeli Arabs the same rights as Jews, and lets Palestinian refugees return home to their land or be paid just compensation if they choose. Committed grassroots pressure is crucial to achieving these goals - for justice, genuine peace, and an end to decades of Israeli hellishness.
Source
The Tragic Death of a Night Porter
…what possesses greater intrinsic value? Maintaining the mainstream version of the Holocaust at any cost, or the life of a single human being whose only offence was to engage in historical research in a quest for the truth?
LES MISERABLES
The Tragic Death of a Night Porter
IN MEMORIAM
By JPBellinger
On June 11, 2010, a badly decomposed body was discovered wedged in between the seat of a parked vehicle in a shopping center located in Karolinka, Opole, in Poland. The cadaver was decomposed beyond recognition, and DNA tests turned out to be inconclusive in establishing the identity of the victim. However, papers and documents discovered inside the vehicle led police to conclude that the deceased individual was Dariusz Ratajczak, a professor of history who formerly taught at the University of Opole. He was 48 years old at the time of his death. Family members confirmed the fact that the decedent was indeed Dariusz Ratajczak. After being questioned, a number of witnesses told the police that the car had only recently been parked there. In fact, just prior to his demise, Ratajczak had been planning a business trip to Holland, where he had been hired to work as a translator.
In fact, Dariusz Ratajczak’s troubles began with the publication of his booklet, “Dangerous Topics,” in March, 1999. The treatise was self-published and limited to only 320 copies, but gave credence to the old maxim that the ‘pen is mightier than the sword. Ratajczak’s essay provoked a firestorm of criticism among his contemporaries. In the month following the book’s publication, a rather surprised Ratajczak was summoned to the editorial offices of the Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish newspaper, where he was sneeringly told, “We’ll trample you into the ground for the little book, and the little sub-chapter on the Holocaust.”
True to their word, the editor of the newspaper proceeded to do just that. The Gazeta Wyborcza instituted a smear campaign of harassment and intimidation calculated to ruin the man’s life and livelihood – and it succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Ratajczak was charged under Poland’s ‘Holocaust denial’ law, which had been passed by the legislature as a result of pressure from the Jewish lobby. Even though the court eventually dismissed the charges against him, the smears, lies and libels emanating from the media continued to dog him with the fanatical persistence of an Inspecteur Javert. Instigated by the media assault, others joined the chorus to expel Ratajczak from his teaching position.
The director of the Auschwitz Museum referred to him as a “Nazi,” and the spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Poland, Michael Sobelman, publicly expressed his “surprise” that “such a man works at a Polish university.” Unsurprisingly, the Simon Wiesenthal Center joined in the chorus, accusing Ratajczak of being an ‘anti-Semite,’ to which the Professor responded rather phlegmatically:
At present, the charge of anti-Semitism has become a sort of exceptionally brutal weapon, which the “Establishment” uses ruthlessly against independent thinking men (for the greater fun of it, also against Jews, such as Dr. Israel Shahak.) Write, in accordance with truth, about the almost racist character of the state of Israel, and you will be an anti-Semite. Point to Simon Wiesenthal, his errors of the past, or rub Mr. Adam Michnik his Gazeta Wyborcza up the wrong way, and you will be an anti-Semite. Write a few words of truth about all those Wiesels, Kosinskis, or a few anti-Polish Australian liars of Jewish extraction, and you will be an anti-Semite, of course… And so on, on, on. Sheer paranoia, or – and here we are going back to the source – an important element of political correctness.
Perplexed by the ferocity and persistence of the attacks launched against him, Ratajczak commented–
“What hurts me most is that I found myself in a group of historians who have been muzzled. After all, please see: from 45 years to now the number of Jews murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau has dropped from six million to less than one million. It’s official data. Indeed, even if they had killed one man, that would be a tragedy. But how is it that some historians may legitimately question the numbers of the Holocaust, and others can not? How is it that some people can reduce the six million to less than a million and nothing bad is happening to them? How is it that some people are not allowed to examine this subject and even be wrong, while other historians are allowed all this?” [1]
Expelled from his teaching position at the University of Opole on charges of ‘denying the Holocaust,’ he was compelled to seek work as a menial laborer. Prior to dismissing him, Ratajczak suffered the indignity of being ordered by his superiors at the University to submit to psychiatric treatment for presuming to question any aspect of the holocaust. A colleague advised him that the only option available to him would be to move out of Opole and change his identity. The slander campaign became so unbearable that it alienated his spouse and destroyed his marriage, and the once celebrated professor was reduced to penury and destitution. Wherever he applied for work, prospective employers would receive telephone calls from ‘yellow’ journalists informing them that the applicant was a ‘holocaust denier,’ and that hiring him would be ‘bad for business.’ The hint alone sufficed to induce employers to subtly drop his application into the nearest wastebasket.
In the weeks preceding his death, Dariusz Ratajczak turned into a phantom of his former self, abandoned and shunned by family, friends, and former colleagues alike. The disturbing news of Ratajczak’s death shocked traditionalist and patriotic organizations in Poland, whose spokespersons lambasted Ratajczak’s detractors as people having the blood of an innocent man on their heads.
For them, Professor Ratajczak’s death prompts a serious moral dilemma: Is questioning the holocaust, or holocaust ‘denial’ of more intrinsic worth than the life of any human being?
In a moral sense, what possesses greater intrinsic value? Maintaining the mainstream version of the Holocaust at any cost, or the life of a single human being whose only offence was to engage in historical research in a quest for the truth? Disturbingly, there are those who would stop at nothing to silence any and all independent inquiries into the historical event known to historians as the Holocaust, a fact best illustrated by the response of those who supported the willful and malicious persecution of a man for exercising his God given right of intellectual freedom. Unfazed by the news of his death, Ratajczak’s detractors gloated over his demise, intractable in their cynical hatred for the man. One critic mockingly commented that he ‘lived off his wife and could not find a better job than a waiter and a night porter. He lied, and had mental health problems, and led a miserable life and had a miserable death.” As if lying, personal misfortune and mental health problems warrant a miserable death for anyone!
Moreover, the obvious point was deliberately overlooked: The man was once gainfully employed, and highly respected, and his ‘mental problems’ did not exist until the usual merchants of sleaze and smear sunk their hooks into him, but by resorting to this process of vilification, the victim is dehumanized and condemned, and the assassins are cheered and comforted.
The reader may catch a glimpse of Professor Ratajczak’s profound insights and spontaneous genius, as revealed during the course of an interview where he proffered an assessment of “politically correct” establishment historians:
It is they who, deliberately, convert history into a handmaid of current political interests of equally morally and intellectually cheap ruling elites. Finally, it is they who decide which fact or historical figure to make prominent, and about which to keep silent to the death. Of course, they do it from the angle of current political usefulness….
Everywhere half-truths, lies, propaganda. But it is not at all madness, but a method leading to the destruction of historical consciousness, to the cutting off from the truly Polish historical heritage, without which the nation cannot exist. A nation is, after all, past, present, and future generations. If we break the first element of the triad, the whole starts making no sense. And that is where the “creativity” of the politically correct correctors of history is leading.
If there is an uninvestigated historical fact, I investigate it, whether somebody likes it, or not. If there is a problem which requires at least reporting about, or expounding, I report about and expound it. Regardless of whether they accuse me, for instance, of breaking the law. Because of this, I am an easy target for attacks. Such is the lot of a man not caring about censorship (the communist one before, and the politically correct one today). Good God, I didn’t become a historian to write between lines. A historian has one basic role to perform. It is to reach the truth. In essence, truth is a historian’s only friend. A historian ought to know that truth has no hues; truth is always clear, and one.
Professor Ratajczak’s death was ruled a ‘suicide,’ but skeptical people, perhaps bearing in mind the recent arrest of a Mossad assassin operating in Poland, are asking how a person in an advanced staged of composition was able to drive to a public parking lot and park a car?
In the preface to his prescient treatise, “Dangerous Topics” Professor Ratajczak opined:
“Writing about Polish – Jewish relations is a risky activity. Especially for the Pole, who believes that these relations should be presented on the basis of truth. It’s easy then – paradoxically – to be exposed to charges of extreme nationalism, xenophobia and Anti-Semitism. The consequences are often sad: a social boycott (everyone has those friends they deserve), racial and publishing blacklisting. In the end-occupational death.”
Unfortunately, and certainly unforeseen by Professor Ratajczak, ‘occupational death’ transformed into physical extinction.
Prior to his unforgiveable transgression, Professor Ratajczak was feted as one of Poland’s most brilliant historians, and highly regarded by his students. He leaves behind a wife and two orphaned children. His funeral was held in secret, without notifying the public, and the results of a mandated autopsy are said to be forthcoming.
What may be said as his epitaph? Dariusz Ratajczak shall most likely be remembered as the victim of a cruel, relentless fate at the hands of cruel, relentless people who used his book, “Dangerous Themes, to drive the nail into his coffin. On the day Dariusz Ratajczak died, free speech in Poland died with him.
[1] Bibula pismo niezalezne, http://macgregor.salon24.pl/195441,dr-dariusz-Ratajczak jczak-nie-zyje
Source
LES MISERABLES
The Tragic Death of a Night Porter
IN MEMORIAM
By JPBellinger
On June 11, 2010, a badly decomposed body was discovered wedged in between the seat of a parked vehicle in a shopping center located in Karolinka, Opole, in Poland. The cadaver was decomposed beyond recognition, and DNA tests turned out to be inconclusive in establishing the identity of the victim. However, papers and documents discovered inside the vehicle led police to conclude that the deceased individual was Dariusz Ratajczak, a professor of history who formerly taught at the University of Opole. He was 48 years old at the time of his death. Family members confirmed the fact that the decedent was indeed Dariusz Ratajczak. After being questioned, a number of witnesses told the police that the car had only recently been parked there. In fact, just prior to his demise, Ratajczak had been planning a business trip to Holland, where he had been hired to work as a translator.
In fact, Dariusz Ratajczak’s troubles began with the publication of his booklet, “Dangerous Topics,” in March, 1999. The treatise was self-published and limited to only 320 copies, but gave credence to the old maxim that the ‘pen is mightier than the sword. Ratajczak’s essay provoked a firestorm of criticism among his contemporaries. In the month following the book’s publication, a rather surprised Ratajczak was summoned to the editorial offices of the Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading Polish newspaper, where he was sneeringly told, “We’ll trample you into the ground for the little book, and the little sub-chapter on the Holocaust.”
True to their word, the editor of the newspaper proceeded to do just that. The Gazeta Wyborcza instituted a smear campaign of harassment and intimidation calculated to ruin the man’s life and livelihood – and it succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Ratajczak was charged under Poland’s ‘Holocaust denial’ law, which had been passed by the legislature as a result of pressure from the Jewish lobby. Even though the court eventually dismissed the charges against him, the smears, lies and libels emanating from the media continued to dog him with the fanatical persistence of an Inspecteur Javert. Instigated by the media assault, others joined the chorus to expel Ratajczak from his teaching position.
The director of the Auschwitz Museum referred to him as a “Nazi,” and the spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Poland, Michael Sobelman, publicly expressed his “surprise” that “such a man works at a Polish university.” Unsurprisingly, the Simon Wiesenthal Center joined in the chorus, accusing Ratajczak of being an ‘anti-Semite,’ to which the Professor responded rather phlegmatically:
At present, the charge of anti-Semitism has become a sort of exceptionally brutal weapon, which the “Establishment” uses ruthlessly against independent thinking men (for the greater fun of it, also against Jews, such as Dr. Israel Shahak.) Write, in accordance with truth, about the almost racist character of the state of Israel, and you will be an anti-Semite. Point to Simon Wiesenthal, his errors of the past, or rub Mr. Adam Michnik his Gazeta Wyborcza up the wrong way, and you will be an anti-Semite. Write a few words of truth about all those Wiesels, Kosinskis, or a few anti-Polish Australian liars of Jewish extraction, and you will be an anti-Semite, of course… And so on, on, on. Sheer paranoia, or – and here we are going back to the source – an important element of political correctness.
Perplexed by the ferocity and persistence of the attacks launched against him, Ratajczak commented–
“What hurts me most is that I found myself in a group of historians who have been muzzled. After all, please see: from 45 years to now the number of Jews murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau has dropped from six million to less than one million. It’s official data. Indeed, even if they had killed one man, that would be a tragedy. But how is it that some historians may legitimately question the numbers of the Holocaust, and others can not? How is it that some people can reduce the six million to less than a million and nothing bad is happening to them? How is it that some people are not allowed to examine this subject and even be wrong, while other historians are allowed all this?” [1]
Expelled from his teaching position at the University of Opole on charges of ‘denying the Holocaust,’ he was compelled to seek work as a menial laborer. Prior to dismissing him, Ratajczak suffered the indignity of being ordered by his superiors at the University to submit to psychiatric treatment for presuming to question any aspect of the holocaust. A colleague advised him that the only option available to him would be to move out of Opole and change his identity. The slander campaign became so unbearable that it alienated his spouse and destroyed his marriage, and the once celebrated professor was reduced to penury and destitution. Wherever he applied for work, prospective employers would receive telephone calls from ‘yellow’ journalists informing them that the applicant was a ‘holocaust denier,’ and that hiring him would be ‘bad for business.’ The hint alone sufficed to induce employers to subtly drop his application into the nearest wastebasket.
In the weeks preceding his death, Dariusz Ratajczak turned into a phantom of his former self, abandoned and shunned by family, friends, and former colleagues alike. The disturbing news of Ratajczak’s death shocked traditionalist and patriotic organizations in Poland, whose spokespersons lambasted Ratajczak’s detractors as people having the blood of an innocent man on their heads.
For them, Professor Ratajczak’s death prompts a serious moral dilemma: Is questioning the holocaust, or holocaust ‘denial’ of more intrinsic worth than the life of any human being?
In a moral sense, what possesses greater intrinsic value? Maintaining the mainstream version of the Holocaust at any cost, or the life of a single human being whose only offence was to engage in historical research in a quest for the truth? Disturbingly, there are those who would stop at nothing to silence any and all independent inquiries into the historical event known to historians as the Holocaust, a fact best illustrated by the response of those who supported the willful and malicious persecution of a man for exercising his God given right of intellectual freedom. Unfazed by the news of his death, Ratajczak’s detractors gloated over his demise, intractable in their cynical hatred for the man. One critic mockingly commented that he ‘lived off his wife and could not find a better job than a waiter and a night porter. He lied, and had mental health problems, and led a miserable life and had a miserable death.” As if lying, personal misfortune and mental health problems warrant a miserable death for anyone!
Moreover, the obvious point was deliberately overlooked: The man was once gainfully employed, and highly respected, and his ‘mental problems’ did not exist until the usual merchants of sleaze and smear sunk their hooks into him, but by resorting to this process of vilification, the victim is dehumanized and condemned, and the assassins are cheered and comforted.
The reader may catch a glimpse of Professor Ratajczak’s profound insights and spontaneous genius, as revealed during the course of an interview where he proffered an assessment of “politically correct” establishment historians:
It is they who, deliberately, convert history into a handmaid of current political interests of equally morally and intellectually cheap ruling elites. Finally, it is they who decide which fact or historical figure to make prominent, and about which to keep silent to the death. Of course, they do it from the angle of current political usefulness….
Everywhere half-truths, lies, propaganda. But it is not at all madness, but a method leading to the destruction of historical consciousness, to the cutting off from the truly Polish historical heritage, without which the nation cannot exist. A nation is, after all, past, present, and future generations. If we break the first element of the triad, the whole starts making no sense. And that is where the “creativity” of the politically correct correctors of history is leading.
If there is an uninvestigated historical fact, I investigate it, whether somebody likes it, or not. If there is a problem which requires at least reporting about, or expounding, I report about and expound it. Regardless of whether they accuse me, for instance, of breaking the law. Because of this, I am an easy target for attacks. Such is the lot of a man not caring about censorship (the communist one before, and the politically correct one today). Good God, I didn’t become a historian to write between lines. A historian has one basic role to perform. It is to reach the truth. In essence, truth is a historian’s only friend. A historian ought to know that truth has no hues; truth is always clear, and one.
Professor Ratajczak’s death was ruled a ‘suicide,’ but skeptical people, perhaps bearing in mind the recent arrest of a Mossad assassin operating in Poland, are asking how a person in an advanced staged of composition was able to drive to a public parking lot and park a car?
In the preface to his prescient treatise, “Dangerous Topics” Professor Ratajczak opined:
“Writing about Polish – Jewish relations is a risky activity. Especially for the Pole, who believes that these relations should be presented on the basis of truth. It’s easy then – paradoxically – to be exposed to charges of extreme nationalism, xenophobia and Anti-Semitism. The consequences are often sad: a social boycott (everyone has those friends they deserve), racial and publishing blacklisting. In the end-occupational death.”
Unfortunately, and certainly unforeseen by Professor Ratajczak, ‘occupational death’ transformed into physical extinction.
Prior to his unforgiveable transgression, Professor Ratajczak was feted as one of Poland’s most brilliant historians, and highly regarded by his students. He leaves behind a wife and two orphaned children. His funeral was held in secret, without notifying the public, and the results of a mandated autopsy are said to be forthcoming.
What may be said as his epitaph? Dariusz Ratajczak shall most likely be remembered as the victim of a cruel, relentless fate at the hands of cruel, relentless people who used his book, “Dangerous Themes, to drive the nail into his coffin. On the day Dariusz Ratajczak died, free speech in Poland died with him.
[1] Bibula pismo niezalezne, http://macgregor.salon24.pl/195441,dr-dariusz-Ratajczak jczak-nie-zyje
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