One year after FBI subpoena, civil liberties protections in US frighteningly eroded even further
By Maureen Clare Murphy | The Electronic Intifada | December 22, 2011
A year ago yesterday, I got the dreaded house call from the FBI. I was at home working when two agents rang my buzzer and asked to speak with me.
I had been expecting such a visit; on 24 September 2010 the FBI raided the homes of prominent anti-war and international solidarity organizers I have worked with over the years in Chicago, as well as the homes of activists in the Twin Cities and the office of the Anti War Committee there. In the weeks that followed, more Palestine solidarity organizers and Palestinian Americans in Chicago were delivered subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago as part of an investigation into violations of the laws banning material support for foreign terrorist organizations.
I declined to speak with the two agents who visited me; they then gave me a subpoena to appear before a federal grand jury on 25 January 2011. I spent last Christmas and New Year convinced that I would soon be in federal prison for civil contempt of court. Even though it meant we risked being jailed, all 23 of us who have been subpoenaed as part of this grand jury fishing expedition have refused to testify. We have asserted that our first amendment rights guaranteed by the US Constitution, protecting free speech and freedom of association, are being trampled on.
A first amendment issue
The grand jury — essentially a secret court in which you’re not allowed to have a lawyer, and there is not even a judge presiding over the proceedings — has been long abused as a tool of inquisition into domestic political movements. Indeed, no specific crime has been identified related to our case.
The FBI’s operations manual for the September raids, discovered last April to have been accidentally left amongst a raided activist’s files, make it clear that they wanted to question activists about associational information — who activists know and work with in the US, Colombia and Palestine, and how activists organize and what they believe. They wanted people to name everyone they know who has ever traveled to the Middle East or South America.
It is also obvious the FBI put up the LA County Sheriff to raid the home of veteran Chicano liberation activist Carlos Montes last May; he faces trumped-up technical firearms violation charges and serious prison time. The FBI was on hand during the raid to question Montes about his political associations (an organizer of the 2008 Republican National Convention protests, he was named in the search warrant used to raid the Anti War Committee office) and took material from his home related to his long history of political organizing. They even took a kuffiyeh — the traditional checkered Palestinian scarf — only one example of many demonstrating how federal agents so arbitrarily confiscated property from activists’ homes.
And while the threat of indictments looms, I am not spending Christmas and new year’s in federal prison for civil contempt of court. This is, I believe, thanks to the vocal protest that countless people around the US and around the world have made in support of the 24 of us and in support of civil liberties. This is a huge victory. But at the same time, civil liberties and constitutional protections have further eroded even in the last year. More protest must be shown before the situation gets even worse.
A bad time for civil liberties
Even The New York Times has excoriated the Obama administration over its civil liberties record after its justice department went even further than Bush’s to expand the FBI’s powers to investigate US citizens, “even when there is no firm basis for suspecting any wrongdoing.” In an editorial entitled “Backward at the FBI,” the Times takes the FBI’s new operations manual to task, as revised guidelines “will give agents significant new powers to search law enforcement and private databases, go through household trash or deploy surveillance teams, with even fewer checks against abuse.”
The Times adds:
They also expand the special rules covering “undisclosed participation” in an organization by an FBI agent or informant. The current rules are not public, and, as things stand they still won’t be. But we do know the changes allow an agent or informant to surreptitiously attend up to five meetings of a group before the rules for undisclosed participation — whatever they are — kick in.[…]
The FBI’s recent history includes the abuse of national security letters to gather information about law-abiding citizens without court orders, and inappropriate investigations of antiwar and environmental activists. That is hardly a foundation for further loosening the rules for conducting investigations or watering down internal record-keeping and oversight.
After that editorial was published in June, things only got worse. The United States government sanctioned and carried out the assassination of one of its citizens on foreign soil despite the fact that he posed no immediate danger to public safety. Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, stated after the Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a US drone in Yemen:
The targeted assassination program that started under President Bush and expanded under the Obama Administration essentially grants the executive the power to kill any US citizen deemed a threat, without any judicial oversight, or any of the rights afforded by our Constitution. If we allow such gross overreaches of power to continue, we are setting the stage for increasing erosions of civil liberties and the rule of law.
Other stains on civil liberties this year included the persecution and conviction of the the Irvine 11 — a group of students (all of the Muslim, all of them young men) who were subjected to a criminal trial for briefly and nonviolently disrupting the speech of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren.
We unequivocally condemn these charges, which unfairly single out and criminalize Muslim students who chose to exercise their First Amendment right to speak out against Israel’s human rights abuses. Had the speaker not been Israeli, had the issue not been Palestine, had the students not been Muslim, these charges never would have been pursued. Rather, these charges reflect a climate of Islamophobia and an irrational exceptionalism for Israel when it comes to free speech. The charges chill the free exchange of ideas and students’ right to protest at universities nationwide.
Guantanamo comes to the US
But perhaps the scariest development in the war on civil liberties this year is the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2012, which if enacted would allow the indefinite detention of US citizens without trial, not unlike Israel’s use of administrative detention. Indeed, as Human Rights Watch summarizes, “In addition to codifying indefinite detention without charge in US law, the bill would require that the military, rather than federal, state, or local law enforcement, handle certain terrorism cases.”
The bill has been already passed by Congress, and now Obama has dropped his threats to veto the bill. Constitutional law attorney Glenn Greenwald described the potential ramifications of the legislation on Democracy Now!:
it will be the first time that the United States Congress has codified the power of indefinite detention into the law since the McCarthy era of the 1950s. The 1950 Congress passed a bill saying that communists and subversives could be imprisoned without a trial, without full due process, based on the allegation that they presented a national threat, an emergency, a threat to the national security of the United States. President Truman, knowing that the bill would—the veto would be overridden, nonetheless vetoed it and said that it made a mockery of the Bill of Rights. That law was repealed in 1971 with the Non-Detention Act, that said you cannot hold people in prison without charging them with a crime. The war on terror has eroded that principle, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, but Congress is now, with the Democrats in control of the Senate and a Democratic president, is about to enact into law the first bill that will say that the military and the United States government do have this power. It’s muddled whether it applies to US citizens on U.S. soil, but it’s clearly indefinite detention, and there’s a very strong case to make that it includes US citizens, as well, which, as we know, the Obama administration already claims anyway, and that’s what makes it so dangerous.
Not only is the Obama administration not closing Guantanamo, but it is paving the way for more Guantanamo-style indefinite detention of US citizens in a military court system.
Of course, there are already so-called “litte Guantanamos” around the US — “Communications Management Units,” or secret prisons populated almost exclusively with Arab and Muslim detainees so as to segregate them from the general prison population.
Following the dismissing of an appeal for the Holy Land Foundation Case, Noor Elashi described on Counterpunch last week how her father — one of five men persecuted and convicted in the US because of the their humanitarian work in support of Palestinians living under US-funded Israeli occupation — has ended up in one of these facilities, and how his “significantly diminished phone calls and visitations are scheduled in advance and live-monitored from Washington DC.”
Will this become the bleak reality for not just Palestinian political prisoners in the US, but also those who stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people? It’s a serious question as the US government moves to further criminalize solidarity with the Palestinian people — as they have criminalized almost all of Palestinian society itself by placing all the major Palestinian political parties (except that which collaborates with the US and Israel) on the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list.
The US State Department has threatened more than once to use the material support laws against organizers of the US Boat to Gaza. And if passed, a bill introduced in Congress in October would require the State Department to investigate US Boat to Gaza organizers for “terrorist” ties, as Ali Abunimah reported last month.
Who’s a “domestic terrorist”?
The proposed legislation to allow the US military to indefinitely detain without trial “domestic terrorism” suspects who are US citizens is especially scary considering that political activists are increasingly being treated as terrorists — whether it be animal welfare activists investigating factory farms or activists who organized in protest of the 2008 Republican National Convention. And now the Chicago Police Department is creating a counterterrorism unit for the May 2012 NATO and G8 summits in Chicago, at the same time that the city refuses to meet with or issue protest permits to antiwar activists mobilizing large demonstrations against the meetings.
Political repression in the US
Prosecuting Palestine solidarity activists for support of terrorism and going after environmentalists and animal rights organizers is not about protecting public safety. It’s about crushing dissent.
The laws banning material support to foreign terrorist organizations have been expanded so broadly in recent years that the US government defines as “material support” immaterial things like political speech, and travel to places like Colombia and Palestine are now grounds for a judge to approve a search warrant on someone’s home — things thought to be protected by the first amendment.
And Glenn Greenwald, the aforementioned constitutional law attorney, had this to say about the use of para-militarized forces to crush Occupy Wall Street protests around the US:
A country cannot radically reduce quality-of-life expectations, devote itself to the interests of its super-rich, and all but eliminate its middle class without triggering sustained citizen fury.
The reason the U.S. has para-militarized its police forces is precisely to control this type of domestic unrest, and it’s simply impossible to imagine its not being deployed in full against a growing protest movement aimed at grossly and corruptly unequal resource distribution. As Madeleine Albright said when arguing for U.S. military intervention in the Balkans: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” That’s obviously how governors, big-city Mayors and Police Chiefs feel about the stockpiles of assault rifles, SWAT gear, hi-tech helicopters, and the coming-soon drone technology lavished on them in the wake of the post/9-11 Security State explosion, to say nothing of the enormous federal law enforcement apparatus that, more than anything else, resembles a standing army which is increasingly directed inward.
Most of this militarization has been justified by invoking Scary Foreign Threats — primarily the Terrorist — but its prime purpose is domestic. As civil libertarians endlessly point out, the primary reason to oppose new expansions of government power is because it always — always — vastly expands beyond its original realm.
Reasons to be hopeful
It’s easy to get depressed about the increasingly repressive conditions in the US. But there are reasons to be hopeful.
I’m inspired and humbled by the courage shown by campus solidarity activists in the wake of the Irvine 11 convictions. Students are showing that they have not been intimidated into silence and are continuing to challenge Israeli government spokespersons and their propagandists.
The potential for true change was made brilliantly clear this year when huge numbers of people come out into the streets for a common goal — whether it be protecting workers’ rights in Wisconsin, calling for the downfall of the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt or for economic justice on Wall Street. Or when young Palestinians born refugees in Syria and Lebanon attempted to march back to their homeland, unafraid of Israel’s landmines and machine guns.
Because of collective action’s power to change, this is precisely why it is being so severely repressed in the US right now. We must stay strong, keep our chins up and keep fighting for a better future.
Update:
Christmas, take II
Gaza Gateway | December 22, 2011
Last Monday we put up a post about the narrowed criteria for allowing Christians to travel out of the Gaza Strip over Christmas this year, which the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) called “easings”.
Adv. Nomi Heger, director of Gisha’s Legal Department, wrote a letter to the Ministry of Defense raising questions about the narrowing of criteria. We can’t tell whether the letter had its intended effect or whether it was our short post on the subject, or perhaps the security establishment’s goodwill, but it appears that COGAT has retreated. The age criterion, which was set this year at allowing travel for those over 46 and under 16, was restored to last year’s age range of over 35 and under 16.
COGAT didn’t bother to post a separate update notifying about its decision to change the criteria but instead chose to quietly alter the original notice posted on its website, the one that reported the “easings” in the first place. It’s unclear how the word “easings” can be used to describe the act of leaving the situation exactly as it was previously. But then again, COGAT is good at coming up with creative uses for this and other words .
Click here to view Google cached version of the original notice, before COGAT decided to change it.
1500 deaths reported in India custody
Press TV – December 22, 2011
A human rights body says more than 1,500 people died in custody in India in 2010, most of them from being tortured.
According to the data released by India’s Human Rights Commission, most of the deaths in prison and police custody took place in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
After Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Maharasthra recorded most deaths in custody with 136 and 130 counts respectively.
Twenty-two custodial deaths were also reported from the capital, New Delhi.
This is while the Indian government routinely attributes deaths in custody to illness, attempted escape, suicide and accidents.
The New Delhi-based Asian Center for Human Rights (ACHR) said in a report released on November 28, 2011, that 12,727 also died in judicial custody across India between 2001 and 2010.
“A large majority of these deaths are a direct consequence of torture in custody,” the ACHR said. “These deaths reflect only a fraction of the problem with torture and custodial deaths in India.”
“Torture remains endemic, institutionalized and central to the administration of justice and counter-terrorism measures,” the report added, urging the Indian government to demonstrate the “political will” to end the abuse.
Mehanna verdict compromises First Amendment, undermines national security
US Citizen Convicted of Providing ‘Material Support’ to Terrorists
ACLU | December 20, 2011
BOSTON — The following statement on the conviction today of Tarek Mehanna may be attributed to American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts executive director Carol Rose:
“The ACLU of Massachusetts is gravely concerned that today’s verdict against Tarek Mehanna undermines the First Amendment and threatens national security.
“Under the government’s theory of the case, ordinary people–including writers and journalists, academic researchers, translators, and even ordinary web surfers–could be prosecuted for researching or translating controversial and unpopular ideas. If the verdict is not overturned on appeal, the First Amendment will be seriously compromised.
“The government’s prosecution does not make us safer. Speech about even the most unpopular ideas serves as a safety valve for the expression of dissent while government suppression of speech only drives ideas underground, where they cannot be openly debated or refuted.
“The ACLU believes that we can remain both safe and free, and, indeed, that our safety and our freedom go hand in hand.”
The ACLU of Massachusetts has condemned the use of conspiracy and material support charges where the charges are based largely on First Amendment-protected expression.
In Mr. Mehanna’s case, the charges against him have been based on allegations of such activity, such as watching videos about “jihad”, discussing views about suicide bombings, translating texts available on the Internet, and looking for information about the 9/11 attackers. Historically, government prosecutors have used conspiracy charges as a vehicle for the suppression of unpopular ideas, contrary to the dictates of the First Amendment and fundamental American values.
After the ACLU of Massachusetts submitted a memorandum of law in support of Mehanna’s motion to dismiss the parts of the indictment against him that were based on protected expression, U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole denied permission for the memorandum to be filed with the court. A copy of the memorandum is available here.
For more information, go to:
http://aclum.org/usa_v_mehanna
City lights spy on Farmington Hills, Michigan
RT | 01 November, 2011
City lights spy on Farmington Hills, Michigan
In Farmington Hills, Michigan, things just got a whole lot creepier. Officials say the installation of ten new high-tech light posts will curb crime and cut energy costs for the Midwest community.
All the townspeople have to do in return is give up their privacy.
Farmington Hills just became the first city in America to host a state-of-the-art system of lampposts that make up something called the Intellistreets system. Farmington Hills native Ron Harwood worked over ten years to make the project a reality, and as of Friday his dream had fully come to fruition. For his neighbors that dream of a future where their every move won’t be monitored, however, they might want to think about heading out of Michigan.
Simply put, the Intellistreets project is a system of Internet-connected luminaries that communicate with one another across the city. In addition to lighting the area, they can broadcast verbal and written messages, monitor rainfall and give directions.
According to their own website, the system is also great for “data harvesting.”
Not only does Intellistreets offer information about the neighborhood and provide light, it also monitors the conversations of pedestrians, records video, monitors foot-traffic and counts heads — all of which is recorded and stored for possible analysis. And according to Harwood, the tiny 80,000 community of Farmington Hills isn’t going to be the only town using his technology — Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh have placed orders and the inventor claims that he is in talks with the Department of Homeland Security.
“This is not a system with spook technology,” Harwood tells WXYZ News. To placate that argument, however, one must be comfortable knowing that their every move and whisper is recorded and monitored by a network of computers between posts that can be controlled by a central hub, iPhone or tablet.
Harwood’s cohort, Illuminating Concepts business development director Jeff Stribbell has the same thoughts. At the unveiling of the system in Farmington Hills last week, Stribbell acknowledged that the posts do make recordings — but that doesn’t mean you should be scared.
“These issues of security don’t always mean that you’re being videotaped. They mean, in some cases, that you’re being informed,” said Stribbell.
Harwood himself adds that he thinks airport body scanners are more invasive than his own system. Regardless of which one he favors, it is no lie that the two are totally on par with one another. And although a festive media event accompanied the ribbon-cutting last week, outlets are quickly ignoring Harwood’s claims of using the technology to better the community and are dismissing them for the sneaky truth.
“The transformation of street lights into surveillance tools for Homeland Security purposes will only serve to heighten concerns that the United States is fast on the way to becoming a high-tech police state,” Infowars reported recently. Even abroad, London’s Daily Mail has singled out the project for infringing on civil liberties.
As a backlash began to hit Intellistreets, the company removed a YouTube video that offered an eerie insight into the surveillance capabilities, touts itself as “The solution for all college campuses” and discusses the system’s ability to store and analyze data. The video was also quick to once again note the Homeland Security features which have the potential to link up to government agencies. Infowars has since responded, asking, “If Intellistreets is such a cutting-edge concept that presents an array of wonderful benefits, as the promo video claims, then why remove it from You Tube?”
“Now that the company has tried to hide the video, it will only generate more suspicion about the true purpose behind Intellistreets and the level of involvement on behalf of Homeland Security,” reads a blog post on the site.
At $3,000 a piece, IntelliStreets luminaries have the potential of lowering energy costs by adjusting brightness to match the appropriate atmosphere and location. Additionally, the company says it has an endless number of entertainment options and can serve as a public address system of sorts and offer advertisements up to passersby. That’s right — it records video, counts heads and spews propaganda! When you put it that way, it’s no wonder that Harwood is in cahoots with Homeland Security.
As of Friday, Farmington Hills has nearly a dozen of the posts, which was afforded through $791,300 in federal Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) funds the city was awarded in 2009.
In blow to Israel, French BDS activists acquitted of crime in calling for boycott
By Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada – 12/18/2011
Twelve French activists from a group called Boycott 68 have been acquitted on charges of “inciting discrimination and racial hatred” for calling on French shoppers to boycott Israeli goods.
The court judgment in the eastern city of Mulhouse deals a blow to efforts by French prosecutors and Zionist groups to outlaw the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The acquittal received wide coverage in French media.
Campagne BDS France declared in a statement (my translation), on the day of the verdict:
Thursday, 15 December will be a historic date for the Campaign in France. The court at Mulhouse has in effect acquitted the 12 activists prosecuted for their participation in the BDS campaign.
They had been pursued by the usual conveyers of Israel’s policies, as well as by the LICRA [International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism] for “discrimination and inciting hatred and violence toward a group or nation” for having participated in two boycott actions in the Carrefour supermarket in Illzach.
The protests took place in September 2009 and May 2010. The statement noted that similar cases, have been brought against French activists in the cities of Perpignan, Paris, Bordeaux and Pontoise and that on 8 July a court in Paris had acquitted another activist on a similar charge. More cases are pending.
Zionist, anti-Palestinian groups behind charges
Charges against the activists in Mulhouse were brought, according to Reuters, after complaints by the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, known by its French acronym BNCVA, the France Israel Chamber of Commerce and LICRA.
BNCVA is an unofficial group that purports to fight against anti-Semitism, but its website indicates that it is closely affiliated with and perhaps a project of the Paris-based European branch of the extreme anti-Palestinian Simon Wiesenthal Center.
The California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center is notoriously behind the destruction of Muslim graves in Jerusalem to build a so-called “Museum of Tolerance.” Shimon Samuels is the director of both the European Wiesenthal Center and the BNCVA.
The real agenda of the BNCVA was revealed in a comment by its president Sammy Ghozlan in reaction to the court judgment. It appears to be to conflate support for Palestinian rights with anti-Semitic statements and acts – which are illegal in France and many other European countries.
The decision, Ghozlan told Reuters, would encourage more “pro-Palestinian propaganda.” “We know,” Ghozlan said, “that such propaganda is the essential source of anti-Semitic acts that take place on our soil.”
The Mulhouse judgment is thus a blow to Israeli-inspired efforts to criminalize support for Palestinian rights in Europe and to legally declare all such speech and action as “anti-Semitic.”
A “civil right” to call for boycott
French prosecutors had asked the court to fine each of the activists €500 ($650), but the judges instead released the defendants. One of the lawyers for the activists hailed the decision, according to Reuters (my translation):
For Attorney Antoine Compte, lawyer for the accused in Mulhouse, the new jurisprudence that appears to be taking root in France signifies that calling for boycott “is a civil right as long as it is accompanied neither by violence nor by pressure on people.” He noted that previous boycott movements in the past, against the Spain of General Franco, or the Olympic Games in China were never the target of legal pursuit.
Even the France-Israel Chamber of Commerce conceded on its website that “BDS won an important legal battle in Mulhouse.”
French BDS activists’ distinctive form of protest
The multiplying efforts to use criminal charges to suppress free speech in France and shield Israel from accountability are an indication of how widespread BDS activism has become, and the distinctive forms of protest French activists have adopted – particularly highly visible actions in supermarkets.
Activists posted a video of such an action at a Carrefour supermarket in southern France on 26 November.
A recent brief documentary that you can view online profiles the increasingly bold protests by French activists and the mounting prosecutions that they have faced.
Israeli authorities inaugurate new checkpoint in Shufat
Ma’an – 12/12/2011
JERUSALEM – Israeli authorities officially inaugurated a new military checkpoint on Monday at the main entrance to the Shufat refugee camp in north Jerusalem.
Israeli forces had clashed on Sunday with youth in the camp on Sunday, as residents protested against the construction of a checkpoint which they say will cut the 45,000-strong community from the rest of the city and control their movements.
Shufat is the only Palestinian refugee camp within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem and is administered by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights slammed the encirclement of Shufat on Monday.
“This crossing, deep in Palestinian territory, is part of Israeli policies aimed at cutting Jerusalem off from the West Bank, and perpetuating Israel’s annexation of the city in violation of international humanitarian law,” a press statement said.
Israeli excuses on death of Mustafa Tamimi don’t hold up
By Alex Kane | Mondoweiss | December 12, 2011
Mustafa Tamimi, a 28-year-old Palestinian from the village of Nabi Saleh, moments before he was shot by the Israeli army and killed. “Circled in red are the barrel of the gun and the projectile that hit him,” according to the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (Photo: Haim Scwarczenberg)
The Israeli spin doctors are at it again.
Haaretz reports on the Israeli military claiming that the killing of Mustafa Tamimi was an “exceptional” incident and that the soldier who fired the tear-gas canister at him “didn’t see” Tamimi “because his visual field was obscured by the gas mask he was wearing.”
Let’s take apart these claims.
The killing of Tamimi was not “exceptional”–at least not in the way that the Israel wants you to believe. What was “exceptional” about the killing was that the entire incident was caught on camera and shown to the world, and that there is little dispute about the facts (unlike in the case of Jawaher Abu Rahmah). The fact that Mustafa Tamimi is dead, though, is not “exceptional.” +972 Magazine‘s Noam Sheizaf has more on why:
… officials have told Haaretz that Tamimi’s death was “an exceptional incident.” Still, as we have reported here in the past, firing tear gas canisters at protesters from close range (in violation of army orders) is a common practice in the West Bank. A couple of years ago, Palestinian protester Bassam Abu-Rahmeh of Bil’in died after getting hit in the chest by a tear gas canister [video]. A year later, his sister, Jawahar, collapsed from the effect of a tear gas and later died in a Ramallah hospital.
I have seen tear gas canisters shot directly at protesters (including myself) in several demonstrations in Bil’in, in Hebron and in Nabi Saleh.
When you viciously fire tear-gas canisters like the IDF does, someone is bound to die. The IDF is lying when it implies that incidents like these don’t happen often.
There are also glaring problems with the second claim that the Israeli soldier “didn’t see” Tamimi because he was wearing a gas mask. Anne Paq, a French photographer based in Palestine, tweeted, “I am wearing gas mask all time to take pics. I can tell u, u can see if somebody is 5 meters in front of you! more lies from IOF.”
And even if the Israeli claim were true, Haaretz notes:
… rules of engagement prohibit the firing of tear gas grenades from a rifle pointed directly at demonstrators or from a distance of less than 40 meters away. They also stipulate that the shooter must use the rifle sight and verify that no one is in the line of fire. Central Command and the Military Police are conducting separate investigations into the incident.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has more on the military violating its own rules of engagement:
For several years now, B’Tselem has been warning officials that security forces’ fire tear-gas canisters directly at persons during demonstrations. The organization has demanded – both in meetings with senior military officials and by letter – that commanders clarify to soldiers serving in the field that firing tear-gas canisters directly at a person is unlawful. Tear gas is supposed to serve as a non-lethal crowd control measure, and using it as a substitute for live fire is forbidden. Therefore, firing tear-gas canisters directly at persons breaches the rules of engagement.
Such firing has resulted in serious injury and death. In April 2009, Bassem Abu-Rahmah, from the village of Bi’lin, was killed by a tear gas canister that struck him in the chest. B’Tselem knows of 13 cases in which persons were seriously injured in similar circumstances since the beginning of the second intifada. B’Tselem has also documented direct firing of canisters that did not result in injury, and has provided the Military Advocate General Corps and the commander of Judea and Samaria Brigade with video footage of such firing.
In response to B’Tselem’s demands, the then-legal advisor for Judea and Samaria, Col. Sharon Afek, replied in April 2009 that, “direct firing [of tear-gas canisters] at persons is prohibited” and that, “very soon, an explicit and broad directive will be issued that will prohibit the firing of a tear-gas canister directly at a person.” In July 2011, following further requests by B’Tselem, after the direct firing continued to occur at demonstrations, Major Uri Sagi, of the office of the legal advisor for Judea and Samaria, replied that, “following your letter, we have again clarified to the forces operating in Central Command the rules relating to firing of tear-gas canisters at persons, including the prohibition on directly firing a tear-gas canister at a person.” At meetings with B’Tselem, senior military officials claimed that such firing is forbidden and does not occur.
However, B’Tselem has since documented more cases in which security forces fired tear-gas canisters directly at persons. As far as B’Tselem knows, no soldier has been prosecuted for such firing. In the abovementioned case of Abu-Rahmah, which occurred in April 2009, a Military Police investigation was opened only in July 2010, and only after B’Tselem and Attorney Micha’el Sfard threatened to petition the High Court of Justice if an investigation were not initiated.
B’Tselem wrote to the office of the military advocate for operational matters to verify that an MPIU investigation had been opened in the case of a-Tamimi, in accordance with the new policy that the MAG Corps declared before the High Court of Justice. B’Tselem demanded that the investigation examine not only the conduct of the soldier who fired the canister, but also the responsibility of the command echelon, including the orders given to the soldier.
B’Tselem will provide all the material in its possession and will follow the case to make sure the investigation is effective and professional.
Israeli soldiers assault taxi driver at West Bank crossing
Ma’an – 10/12/2011
JENIN – Israeli soldiers manning a West Bank crossing to the Jenin village of Barta assaulted a taxi driver on Saturday.
Haitham Ibrahim Kabha, 37, is in al-Razi hospital suffering from bruising on his neck and back, a Ma’an reporter said.
Official news agency Wafa reported that Kabha suffered a fracture in his back.
“I was planning to go to Jenin through Barta crossing which is the only entrance and exit to the town,” Kabha, a taxi driver, said, but he was prevented from leaving by soldiers.
He then asked to speak to a senior official.
“When the officer came, he accused me of insulting a soldier. He asked me to step out of the car and with 8 other soldiers they beat me with their feet, hands and the back of their guns.
“After that I didn’t feel a thing until I woke up in the hospital,” Kabha said.
Kabha’s brother, Baha, said that despite screaming in pain, soldiers kept on beating him until he passed out. A Magen David Adom ambulance was close by but didn’t offer any help, Baha added.
“Israeli soldiers prevented any Palestinian ambulance from helping Haitham when he lost consciousness; they kept back the ambulance for half an hour until they were pressured by protests at the crossing,” he said.
The eastern section of Barta is completely enclosed by the separation wall and there are two crossing points to the village.
An Israeli military spokeswoman deferred calls to the Israeli Defense Ministry who did not answer a call from Ma’an seeking comment.
Where’s My Friend?
Walid with his children. (Photo: Via Sam Bahour)
By Sam Bahour | Palestine Chronicle | December 9, 2011
My friend is Walid Abu Rass. He is the Finance and Administration Manager for the Health Work Committees (HWC, at www.hwc-pal.org), one of the largest community health service providers in the occupied Palestinian territory. HWC serves over 500,000 patients/beneficiaries per year! More on HWC in a second.
I had not seen Walid for a while. We are both knee deep in Palestine’s daily rat race. About two months ago, Walid and his HWC colleagues called for a meeting of their circle of friends. They sought assistance. HWC was going through some financial hard times, especially with the financial crisis in Europe, where many of their donors are based.
Given it was close to the end of year, a season when I usually donate some time to assist a community based organization to fundraise, I offered to volunteer. Walid was my counterpart. During the past weeks, we were in daily phone and email contact, and every few days we met up to visit a potential local donor. Progress was being made. We then started to plan, with a few others, an end-of-year fundraising raffle. Plans were coming together, and there was excitement among the team and staff that we were taking our fundraising needs to our local community to compensate for the loss in European institutional funding. This is even more significant since HWC does not accept funding with strings attached (“conditional donor funds”), so they have to struggle just to keep the doors open in this tainted donor-driven market.
For nearly a week I was emailing Walid with no reply. This was not like him. He and I nearly live behind our keyboards. The deadline for the raffle details was rapidly approaching and if we did not get started, we would miss the end of year opportunity for fundraising. I started to think Walid was mad at me for some reason. I rethought our last few weeks of working together. There was absolutely nothing there to cause him to just ignore my calls; after all, I was his volunteer counterpart.
Then, last night I learned why Walid stopped replying to me. On November 22nd, Israeli occupation soldiers arrived at his home at 1:30 A.M. Walid lives in Ramallah with his wife, Bayan, and two daughters, Mais, 13 years old, and Malak, 4 years old, who were all frighteningly awakened during his arrest. Walid was taken into custody and transported in the bone chilling cold of the night to Israel’s Ofer Military Detention Center where hundreds of Palestinians are detained, the vast majority with absolutely no knowledge of why.
The Israelis have been arresting Palestinians nightly for years now. Israel releases a few hundred prisoners in a media frenzy and then, the same night, starts to refill its prisons, a few Palestinians at a time. Although, as per the Oslo Agreements, the Palestinian side is responsible for security inside the Palestinian cities, Israeli armed forces routinely—read nightly, every night—enter the cities in their armored vehicles in the middle of the night and arrest a dozen or so Palestinians from their homes. Walid was merely the latest victim of this kidnap-by-night strategy.
The routine then goes something like this. Within eight days he will be brought before an Israeli military “judge” for the sake of processing only, not deliberating. The entire kangaroo court then, without sharing the reason why the Palestinian detainee is being held, flashes the security card to justify not sharing information on why they have acted against a specific individual. Then the court slaps a six month Administrative Detention Order on the detainee. That means you sit in prison for six months for no reason at all. Walid has already been given just such an order.
Your wife, your children, your work, your end-of-year fundraising campaign, your 500,000 patients/beneficiaries, your life, all abruptly stop. Then, usually, that six month order gets extended a few times before you are released. Walid is not unacquainted with this Orwellian mess. He previously spent nearly five years in and out of detention, never once being charged with anything!
The Health Work Committees association is registered as a not-for profit organization with the Palestinian Ministry of the Interior and also has a Jerusalem registration since they work in Jerusalem as well. HWC employees over 300 persons and operates 14 clinics throughout the West Bank, providing primary health services via these health clinics, mostly in areas not fully covered by the Ministry of Health. HWC also has a community development aspect of their work and operate the following: Jadal Center for Culture and Social Development, Nidal Center (providing health education to East Jerusalem schools), Community Development Plan, Oasis Rehab Center, Community Based Rehabilitation, and the Elderly Care Nursery and Kindergarten. One of the success stories of HWC is its partnership with the Dunya Women’s Cancer Clinic.
All of these activities need health care administrators, of which Walid is one. At a time when the Israeli closure system is making life hell for Palestinians, especially those living in marginalized areas or areas directly affected by the Separation Wall, HWC is needed more than ever. Likewise, at a time when international organizations, like USAID, have dramatically cut funding and laid off staff from their heath care programs (such as Flagship) as punishment to the Palestinians for pursuing membership in UNESCO, HWC’s services are needed more than ever.
The era of silence is over. Also, over for me are the slogans that can’t be operationalized. Yes, we want all 5,000 or so Palestinian detainees released. Yes, the policy of administrative detention is inhumane and must end. However, these slogans, although needed at times, must be matched with action items. Each life being destroyed by the Israeli revolving door policy of detainment is a person with a name and a family and a job. And when the person is my friend or colleague, I refuse to swallow the fact that Israel has carte blanche to act above the law.
Help me get Walid back to his family and his desk so we can get back to the work of improving the Palestinian health care system. Consider contacting your local Israeli Embassy and any or all of the following and demanding his immediate release. Reference his name, Walid Abu Rass, and his ID # 9-9702819-6.
Judea and Samaria Region
Office of the Legal Advisor
P.O. Box 5
Beit El, 90631
via Israel
Tel: +972-2-997-7071
Fax: +972-2-997-7326
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Office of the Prime Minister
3 Kaplan Street
PO Box 187
Kiryat Ben-Gurion
Jerusalem 91919
Fax: +972-2-651-2631 or +972-2-670-5475
E-mail: rohm@pmo.gov.il or pm_eng@pmo.gov.il
Deputy Prime Minister & Minister of Defence Ehud Barak
Ministry of Defence
37 Kaplan Street
Hakirya, Tel Aviv 61909
Israel
Fax: +972.3.691.6940
Email: minister@mod.gov.il
For more information on Administrative Detention see ADDAMEER (Arabic for conscience) Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association at www.addameer.org.
– Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American business consultant from Youngstown living in the Palestinian city of Al-Bireh in the West Bank. He is co-author of “Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians” (1994) and may be reached via www.ePalestine.ps.
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New Book
The silver that medicine dropped — four thousand years of clinical use, four decades to erase.
Colloidal Silver — First Edition, 2026, Paperback
Lies are Unbekoming | October 16, 2026
Silver was medicine. Not alternative medicine. Not folk medicine. Medicine. In surgery. In obstetrics. In the burn ward. In water treatment. In the household medicine chest. Every physician before 1938 knew this.
By the 1870s, silver nitrate was standard in surgical wound care across the leading hospitals of Britain, Germany, and the United States. Colloidal silver preparations — Collargol, Argyrol, Protargol — entered European and American practice through the 1890s and early 1900s and became standard antiseptics in military field medicine. By the time Fleming grew his first penicillin mould in 1928, silver was the first-line antimicrobial of the Western pharmacopoeia. The Lancet and the British Medical Journal carried the clinical reports in volume. The practice ran continuously through the Victorian era, the Edwardian era, the First World War, the interwar period. By 1980, almost all of it was gone.
What has not been treated at book length, until now, is how a four-thousand-year clinical record disappeared from mainstream medicine within four decades of the Flexner Report — and what the honest account of silver looks like once that record is reassembled.
Colloidal Silver reconstructs the pre-1938 record from The Lancet, the British Medical Journal, and the primary literature of the era; recovers Robert Becker’s bioelectric framework from the regeneration research the pharmaceutical model buried; and places silver inside a practical terrain-paradigm guide to its current place — in water, on the body, inside the body, and in the chronic conditions where antibiotics have failed. … continue
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