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Rights groups challenge Israeli secret service impunity

The Electronic Intifada | 30 May 2011

For Omar Said, the time he spent in the custody of Israeli secret service agents — and the emotional ordeal that accompanied his interrogation and detention — won’t soon be forgotten.

“You can’t imagine how many hours and how many questions. [The secret service agents] were all the time with me. It’s like your shadow, all the time with you,” Said told The Electronic Intifada. “This measure is very, very heavy and very, very effective. Many of the people can be convinced [to confess to anything] just to get some rest.”

A pharmacologist and expert in traditional Arab medicine based in the Galilee region, Said was arrested by agents from Israel’s General Security Service (GSS, also known as the Shin Bet or Shabak, according to its Hebrew acronym) on 24 April 2010 at the King Hussein/Allenby border crossing with Jordan.

Shortly after being stopped at the border, Said explained that Shabak agents searched his car, home and office and seized files and computers, including those of his children. He later learned that he was being accused of having contact with a foreign agent — a man with connections to the Lebanese resistance movement Hizballah — while on vacation in Egypt. He was also accused of endangering the security of the State of Israel.

“They took me to [Shabak prison in] Petach Tikva [for investigation]. They put me in a very small cell. It’s very dirty and it was cold all the time because they used air conditioning. The light was on all the time,” said Said, who is also active in the Balad party, a Palestinian political party in Israel.

After spending several days on virtually no sleep and under continued interrogation, Said explained that he was transferred to another Shabak-run prison facility in Ashkelon. There, the interrogations continued.

“They [held] me 18 or 17 days without meeting my lawyer. I felt it was like two years when you are there alone, you feel isolated and [like] you will be a victim [because they can do anything they want]. This is a very, very, very dangerous situation,” Said said.

Around the time that Said was arrested, Haifa-based Palestinian political activist Ameer Makhoul was also detained by Shabak and interrogated under the same pretenses: that he had made contact with an agent of Hizballah and was a danger to Israeli security.

Makhoul signed a plea deal in his case late last year, and was sentenced to nine years in prison in January 2011. Said, for his part, was charged with “servicing an illegal organization” after agreeing to a plea bargain and sentenced to seven months in prison.

He was released in September 2010.

“[Shabak] can do whatever they want but I think they are also very, very careful,” Said told The Electronic Intifada. “They can choose their targets. There is logic behind this. It’s not just to take people and put them in prison. They want to send a message to the people.”

Challenging inhuman and degrading conditions

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority rights in Israel, and Nadi al-Aseer, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, filed a pre-petition on 11 May demanding an end to detention in prison facilities run by Shabak.

Presented to the Israeli Attorney General, the Minister of Internal Security and the Head of the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), the pre-petition argued that holding detainees in Shabak-run facilities — the Ashkelon, Jalameh, Petach Tikva and Russian Compound facilities — should stop due to “the inhuman and degrading conditions to which detainees are subjected in them” (“Adalah and Nadi al-Aseer Demand an End to the Detention of Palestinian Detainees in Shabak Facilities Due to Inhuman and Degrading Conditions,” 12 May 2011).

“The pre-petition is targeting the physical conditions of the Shabak interrogation cells,” Adalah attorney Abeer Baker, who presented the pre-petition on behalf of Adalah, told The Electronic Intifada.

“What we asked first is to close these cells as long as the conditions there are not improved. The second issue we said [is] that all of the physical conditions of the detainees should be equal, whether they are security or criminal detainees. We asked a demand for external supervision of these cells,” she added.

Baker explained that after Shabak agents interrogate security detainees — detainees who are suspected of being a security threat to the State of Israel — the detainees are sent into very narrow cells, similar to cells used for solitary confinement, in an attempt to break their spirit.

According to Baker, the Shabak facilities are also not inspected or supervised by external bodies. Human rights organizations examine the physical conditions of prisons of every other Israeli prison in the country, but not the Shabak facilities, thereby making them exempt from outside scrutiny and accountability, Baker said.

“These bad conditions are made on purpose in order to affect the personality of the detainee and make him confess and break him, break his spirit,” Baker said.

“We are talking about the dignity of detainees, a process that should be monitored by law,” Baker added. “We are not talking about something which is not embodied in law. We are talking about the right for dignity. These are the basic constitutional rights of every detainee.”

In the case of detainees and prisoners, Article 10 of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that “all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person.”

Regarding Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza who are also often detained and interrogated by Shabak agents inside Israel, Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention stipulates that “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”

“They violate international law which demands that putting people under custody must maintain dignity. Especially people from occupied territories, you have the Geneva Conventions which demands this also,” Baker said.

“By interrogating these people in these facilities, they are facilitating the process to criminalize the Palestinian people to put them behind bars. It’s political.”

Shabak impunity cemented in Israeli law

In 1987, the Landau Commission — an Israeli governmental commission charged with examining the interrogation methods used by the Israeli General Security Services — found that the continued use of “physical force” in interrogations was acceptable.

Twelve years later, in 1999, the Israeli high court finally prohibited torture of any kind in Israel, and outlawed certain interrogation techniques. In “ticking time bomb” situations, however, the court found that the use of physical force could be justified.

This caveat, otherwise known as “the necessity defense,” has been used to justify the use of physical force and torture by Shabak interrogators since the high court’s ruling. While meant only for use in extreme cases, human rights groups have criticized the “ticking time bomb” defense for its widespread and inappropriate use.

The GSS argues that its agents should be exempt from criminal prosecution during these types of situations due to Article 34K of Israel’s Penal Code, which states that “no person shall bear criminal responsibility for an act that was immediately necessary in order to save his own or another person’s life, freedom, bodily welfare or property from a real danger of severe injury, due to the conditions prevalent when the act was committed, there being no alternative but to commit the act.”

According to a December 2009 report released by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), Shabak interrogators “are protected by layers of concealment, the withholding of information, and immunity shielding them like the layers of an onion.”

Titled “Accountability Denied: The Absence of Investigation and Punishment of Torture in Israel,” the PCATI report found that the levels of protection include the fact that Shabak employees are not required to identify themselves, that Shabak interrogations are exempt from any video or audio documentation, and that detainees are denied from speaking with an attorney or anyone else from the “outside world” during most of the interrogation process (“Accountability Denied,” December 2009 [PDF]).

A “facade of investigations into complaints of torture and abuse” also points to the impunity with which Shabak (GSS) interrogators operate, the report found.

“Complaints of torture by GSS interrogators submitted to the Attorney General are forwarded for inspection by the Officer in Charge of GSS Interrogee Complaints (OCGIC), a function filled by a GSS agent. Thus complaints of torture during GSS interrogations are examined by a GSS employee who does not constitute an independent or impartial investigator,” the report stated.

As such, more than 600 complaints have been submitted between 2001 and 2008 about mistreatment by Shabak interrogators, but not a single complaint has developed into a criminal investigation, according to the PCATI report.

In late March of this year, various nongovernmental organizations — including Adalah, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and PCATI — petitioned the Israeli high court to investigate the mistreatment and torture of detainees at the hands of Shabak interrogators.

According to PCATI, this latest petition aims to bring an end “the long standing refusal of the Attorney General to open criminal inquiries into cases of alleged torture and ill treatment which has effectively granted long-term immunity from prosecution to interrogators who use illegal methods that have and continue to include torture and ill treatment” (“PCATI Petitions the High Court of Justice: Order the Attorney General to Investigate Torture and Ill treatment,” 23 March 2011).

Cutting ties to the outside world

According to Omar Said, while he wasn’t tortured during Shabak custody, his interrogation and imprisonment were extremely difficult experiences that still affect him today.

“A man like me who was arrested many times, it was very hard and difficult for me. I can’t imagine what will happen to other people who haven’t been arrested before [to be arrested by Shabak],” Said said.

By persecuting Palestinian political leaders, Shabak is trying to intimidate the Palestinian community inside Israel and cut its ties to the wider Arab world, Said said.

“He told me from the beginning: we will teach the Arab population here how to behave and who [they can] contact. The first day, the Shabak interrogator said that. He said, ‘We cannot live with that connection that you made, and the Arabs here made, with the Arabs outside Israel,’” he recalled.

“We are activists in our societies and we represent the new generation of the community and we have wide connections with Arab activists and social activists. They want to cut these relationships.”

May 30, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Bias at the BBC

InFocus | May 29, 2011

This program is about the claims, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the BBC is biased to Israelis. The edition of InFocus provides some examples as proof and raises the question whether the bias is an internal agenda or an external pressure. However, the BBC management dismisses the claim and says the network has always followed professionalism. Experts on this program say otherwise.

May 30, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Cleaning up city squares in ‘democratic’ Spain

By Pablo Ouziel | Intrepid Report | May 30, 2011

On Friday the 27th of May, five days after an overwhelming victory by centre-right political parties in the local and regional elections across Spain, the country woke up to the bitter reality of how nonviolent movements calling for economic democracy, political justice and peace are going to be dealt with by the country’s police forces in this new era of right-wing political dominance.

Just twenty-four hours after Spain’s largest telecom company, Telefonica, announced a new round of layoffs affecting 8,500 people, 25 percent of the work force, and as the G8 was meeting in Deauville, France, to discuss amongst other things the discontent sweeping across Europe, the Catalan police force—the Mossos d’Esquadra—following orders from the Town Hall’s new Catalan Nationalist Party (CiU) government, surrounded the nonviolent citizens camped at the Plaza Cataluña in Barcelona’s city centre. Armed with full riot gear, batons and machine-guns with rubber bullets, the police kettled in the protestors, making it impossible for them to leave or others to enter.

With the excuse of cleaning up the square for safety reasons, in preparation for Saturday’s Champions League soccer final between Barcelona and Manchester United, the city government called for the dispersal of the crowds in order to allow for clean-up teams to enter. Although this was the official stance, it soon became apparent that cleaning garbage from the square was not the true intent, and that the real aim of the operation was to seize computers, printers and documents from the movement’s steering committees, and to put an end to this popular uprising which is posing a threat to the country’s political and economic elites.

As soon as the police surrounded the crowds and the news aired on local television stations and radios, citizens from across the city began to leave their work places and made their way to the square in order to show their solidarity with those being harassed by the police. The scene they encountered resembled one of Gandhi’s legendary acts of civil disobedience—the demonstrators sitting on the floor, in silence, with their legs crossed and hands up in the air, symbolizing their defiance to the oppressive and brutal nature of this unannounced police action.

Unlike during pre-election campaigning time, 11 days ago, when the 15M Movement began to congregate in city squares across the country with shouts of indignation, this time the police did not hesitate, the orders were clear. The police began to point their guns at those outside the square that were shouting “This is our democracy,” and one by one they began to pull those sitting down inside the square—beating them with their batons. I have just heard that economics professor Arcadi Oliveras, was amongst those on the receiving end of the police’s indiscriminate use of batons.

At the time of writing, thousands of citizens are making their way to the square in Barcelona, and following two arrests and 99 injured, around 5,000 protestors have already reclaimed the city square. In Madrid Esperanza Aguirre, who presides over the autonomous region and who also heads Madrid’s Partido Popular, has asked the ministry of the Interior to evict the protestors at the Puerta del Sol. On their part, the protestors at Madrid’s plaza have sent messages of solidarity to those being attacked in Barcelona. The police force in the city of Lerida has also evicted the crowds camped in the city square using water canons, and two protesters have been arrested. While in the city of Granada, the town hall is in negotiations with the central government about how to empty the city’s square.

The ambiance in Barcelona’s plaza is now jovial, once the city showed its support to the protestors, the police were forced to leave, and despite the fact that they have confiscated many laptops and pamphlets, and have destroyed tents and equipment, which the protestors have been using for their popular assemblies, people intend to stay. A large banner in the middle of the square reads in Spanish: “You have cleaned up our exhaustion and now we are back”

Despite the fact that the political elites in Spain, in this new era of right-wing dominance are showing their mass use of force, they have encountered a well-organized nonviolent movement. If the movement holds to its principles, and other European countries join in the struggle, it will be the European Union which will be forced to restrain this police brutality, and which will eventually have to make concessions to democratic citizens fighting non-violently for change. If the movement spreads, as many signs already seem to indicate, European political and economic elites will have to decide between reform and revolution.

Pablo Ouziel is a sociologist and freelance writer based in Spain.

May 30, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Israel Prevents University Lecturer From Traveling To Jordan

By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – May 29, 2011

On Friday, Israeli soldiers prevented university lecturer, Dr. Farid Abu Dheir, from traveling to Jordan as he was trying to cross the Allenby bridge to be with his son who has surgery scheduled at a Jordanian hospital. Abu Dheir teaches at the Al Najah University in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Abu Dheir managed to obtain all needed documents and permits from the Israeli side, but as he entered the crossing, he was detained and questioned for two hours before he was ordered back home.

He slammed the Israeli violation, adding that it violates the International Law and the freedom of movement.

Abu Dheir further stated that Israel has been preventing him for leaving the country for five years now, and that this issue made him miss several international conferences and prevented, him from seeing family members living abroad.

He called on different human rights groups to intervene and expose the illegal Israeli practices.

On Friday at dawn, Israeli soldiers kidnapped Palestinian researcher and author, Firas Salah Ed Deen Jaber, 30, after breaking into and violently searching his home in Kufur Aqeb village, between Ramallah and Jerusalem.

He was cuffed and blindfolded before he was moved to the Al Makobiyya Interrogation center in Jerusalem.

Jaber, born in Jerusalem, works as a researcher at the Bissan Center; he wrote several books including “The Privatization of Palestine”, and “The Effects of Conflicts on Palestinian Women”. He recently received his M.A Degree from the Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah.

May 29, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Another Zionist Attack on Academic Freedom

By Daniel McGowan / Dissident Voice / May 28th, 2011

This is an attempt, admittedly futile, to remove some of the slime thrown at me in a letter addressed to President Gearan and circulated to over 250 people on October 3, 2009. It was written by Jim McKinster and five other faculty members and allegedly signed by 32 people in all. I heard about it by happenstance soon after it was circulated, but neither the President nor any of the six who circulated it was willing to provide me with a copy. That is a typical cowardly response employed by those who use this smear method to accuse, try, and censure someone who dares to speak truth to power. (I finally got a copy last week, hence the 20-month delay in my response.)

Their letter and with a copy of the op-ed I wrote in the Finger Lakes Times are attached.

Allow me to refute the lies and innuendos that these “colleagues” have levied against me, behind my back. Since each of you received the detractors’ letter, I am sending you this rebuttal.

1. The purpose of my op-ed was to define Holocaust denial. That should be clear from the byline “What do deniers really mean?” It was submitted in response to the media frenzy and demonization of President Ahmadinejad who addressed the UN General Assembly and whose picture was shown above my guest appearance piece. Instead of acknowledging this, my faculty detractors feigned outrage that it appeared on the eve of Yom Kippur. I had nothing to do with the timing of the article and make no apology for when it appeared vis-à-vis a Jewish holiday.

2. More egregiously these faculty detractors claimed to know my “personal beliefs” and claimed that I mis-used my title of professor emeritus at Hobart and William Smith Colleges to lend them credence. That is simply a lie. Nowhere are my personal beliefs stated. Moreover my op-ed included an exceptionally long disclaimer showing The Colleges neither condone nor condemn what I had written.

3. The faculty detractors claim that “Holocaust denial carries absolutely no weight among academic scholars in any field whatsoever.” That is simply not true. There are a number of scholars who write about the typical Holocaust narrative and are willing to fight the slime hurled at them by ardent Zionists and by others who feel it their duty to protect the narrative which serves as the sword and shield of apartheid Israel. (BTW, our former provost and former William Smith Dean both demanded that I not use the word “apartheid” in connection with Israel; granted the term was used in the Israeli press and later by President Carter, but it was not “suitable discourse” on our campus where we routinely claim to support free speech and diversity of opinion.)

4. The faculty detractors write that “denying undisputed facts of the holocaust (sic) is not a way to show support for the Palestinians.” First, the three tenets of Holocaust revisionism are clearly not “undisputed. To the contrary, they are hotly and passionately disputed; people’s lives are ruined when they even question these “facts.” In fourteen countries you can get jail time for disputing “facts” surrounding the Holocaust.

Second, disputing “facts” is what science and historical analysis is all about. We academics have no problem discussing and disputing whether or not Jesus Christ is truly the son of God, or if President Obama’s birth certificate is real, or if President Roosevelt knew a Japanese attack on Hawaii was imminent, but we are not allowed to discuss or dispute the six-million figure.

Third, what gives these detractors the credentials to pontificate on what supports or hurts Palestinians? Some of them have been responsible for feting at Hobart and William Smith Colleges anti-Palestinian demagogues including Wiesel and even Netanyahu. They helped give Madeleine Albright our highest humanitarian award, which is a disgrace in light of her statement that the death of over 500,000 Iraqi children was “worth it.” Was I the only one to protest that award?

I have team-taught a senior course on the Palestinians. I have published books and articles on the Palestinian Naqba and the massacre of Arab civilians by Jewish terrorists at Deir Yassin. I have built the only United States memorial to their dispossession and ethnic cleansing. I don’t need, nor accept, biased comments on how to support Palestinians.

5. Calling Holocaust historical revisionism “Holocaust denial” is unnecessarily pejorative. It might be fine for Fox News, but it is not conducive to academic discourse. To call Holocaust revisionism “thinly veiled anti-Semitism” is simply untrue and it demeans scholars and others, including Jews, who question the Holocaust doctrine as we are fed it in hundreds of films, books, articles, and commentaries. Terms like Holocaust Industry, Holocaust Fatigue, Holocaust professional, Holocaust wannabes, and Holocaust High Priest were not coined by “deniers” or anti-Semites; they were coined by Jews. (The High Priest quip is an obvious reference to Wiesel; it was made by Tova Reich in her book My Holocaust. Tova’s husband, Walter Reich, was the former director of the US Holocaust Museum in Washington.)

In 1946 the US government told us that over 20 million people were murdered by Hitler. Now that figure is said to be 11 million; it is literally carved in stone at the US Holocaust Memorial. For years we were told that over 4 million were killed at Auschwitz, but by the early 1990s that figure was reduced to 1.5 million. Wiesel tells us that people were thrown alive onto pyres; he claims to have seen it with his own eyes; today Yad Vashem trained guides at Auschwitz say that is not true. These are examples of historical revisionism and they are not inherently anti-Semitic.

6. It is most interesting to see academic colleagues say, “(a)s we all know … the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ was introduced to make genocide sound more palatable.” That means they either deny that Palestinians have been (and continue to be) ethnically cleansed or they agree that Israel is performing genocide of the Palestinian people.

7. While the faculty detractors found my speech to be “abhorrent,” they seemed unable to find fault with a single fact I presented. So they resorted to name-calling and labeled the piece “hate speech” and “unsupported vitriol” and smeared my name to hundreds of people. I am surprised that Abe Foxman or the Mossad did not come calling.

8. The detractors genuinely were concerned about the op-ed’s impact on our Jewish students, staff, and faculty. But maybe it is time for all members of the community to see the Holocaust for what it really was and not the unquestionable, unimpeachable, doctrine that makes Jewish suffering superior to that of other people. Maybe it is time to recognize that Zionism as a political movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine began long before the Holocaust and that Zionist discrimination, dehumanization, and dispossession of the Palestinian people should not be excused by it. Maybe it is time to see that since over half the population (within the borders controlled by Israel) is not Jewish, the dream of creating a Jewish state has failed. Walling in the non-Jews or putting them in Bantustans or driving them into Jordan will not make it a purely Jewish state. The nationalist allegiance to “blood and soil” has been a failure and that should be the real lesson of the Holocaust.

9. To say that my op-ed “does not meet our expectation of minimally rational and minimally humane discourse’ is nonsense. The piece is well written, well substantiated, and quite humane.

10. But the faculty detractors are quite right about one thing; they were deeply disturbed and saddened to see a Hobart and William Smith title attached to it. Diversity and perspectives outside the mainstream are to be encouraged, but not if they question Jewish power, Israel, or Holocaust doctrine. Apparently that is beyond the pale.

11. The demand to President Gearan to remove my title of Professor Emeritus is both classic and stupid. Consider how little it would accomplish. I would be supposedly ashamed and I would have to buy a walking pass at the gym that would cost me $40 a year. Would it save HWS from being associated with my writings? Of course not; I would simply use the title of “Former Professor Emeritus at Hobart and William Smith Colleges” with no disclaimer.

But what it would really do is to cast me into the briar bush with Norm Finkelstein, Marc Ellis, Paul Eisen, Henry Herskovitz, Gilad Atzmon, Rich Siegel, and Hedy Epstein (a Holocaust survivor), all friends of mine and all anti-Zionists. Professors Ost, Linton, and Mertens apparently saw this and I credit (or blame) them for my still having the emeritus title.

Lest I seem irreverent or unscathed by this widely-circulated smear letter from my detractors, allow me to admit that I have been hurt by it. Many faculty and other HWS folks now shun me as a persona non grata largely because they only read the slime and never a rebuttal. Of course until now there could be no rebuttal because the smear letter was withheld from me. (Even the Provost’s request to send me a copy was refused.)

My former student and long-time friend, David Deming, who is now the Chair of the HWS Board does not answer my letters. President Gearan does not answer them either. Board member, Roy Dexheimer, disparages me and wonders if I fell “off my meds.” Another Board member, Stuart Pilch, took it a step further and made a threatening phone call to my home and a promise “to hunt me down.”

But the biggest disappointment is with those faculty detractors who never came to discuss or complain about what I had written, but instead chose to spin their own interpretation, which was full of lies and half truths, and then disseminate their smear as widely as possible. Should any of you be one of the signatories, my door is open for further discussion. And if you know the names of the other signatories, I would appreciate your sharing that information with me.

~

Daniel McGowan is a Professor Emeritus at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Because of admonishment by the administration, it is hereby stated that the above remarks are solely those of the author. Hobart and William Smith Colleges neither condone nor condemn these opinions. Furthermore, the author has been instructed to use his personal email address of mcgowandaniel@yahoo.com and not his college email at mcgowan@hws.edu for those wishing to contact him with comments or criticisms.

May 28, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

International Federation of Journalists Condemns Brutal Assault of Journalist in Bahrain

Moqawama | May 27, 2011

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) joined its affiliate in Bahrain, the Bahrain association of Journalists (BJA) in condemning the savage beating and inhuman treatment of reporter Nazeeha Saeed who was arrested on 22 May over the story she had filed about the repression of anti-government protesters.

The female reporter, who was covering the uprising for France24 and Radio Monte Carlo in the of Pearl Square area, suffered severe injuries at the Rafa police station where she was badly beaten by her interrogators. She also bore torture marks, according to the reports.

“We are appalled by this senseless and cruel treatment of a working journalist and we urge the Bahraini authorities to hold accountable the officers involved,” said Jim Boumelha, IFJ President. “The brutal behavior of security forces towards Saeed shows there is no end to media repression in Bahrain and the world must make it clear that these gross violations of peaceful protesters’, women’s and journalists’ rights will not go unpunished.”

Saeed was summoned to the Rafa police for questioning over her report on the death of Ali Abdelhassan who was allegedly killed by security forces during the anti-government protests of 17 February 2011. She was detained for 12 hours during which she reportedly was savagely beaten and tortured. After her release, the French consulate arranged for the journalist to receive medical treatment in France due to the gravity of her condition.

The BJA has also called for a full investigation into the allegations of torture and requested from the authorities a copy of the complaint made by the reporter, stressing the need for transparency and independence in the investigation in this case.

The IFJ has accused the Bahraini government of widespread intimidation and systematic harassment against journalists which have already led to the arrests and sackings of at least 68 media personnel in the country since the start of the protests for political reforms.

May 27, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Students boycott University of Bahrain

Press TV – May 24, 2011

Hundreds of students have reportedly quit the University of Bahrain to protest against the ruling regime’s brutal crackdown on their anti-government peers.

Students say they left classrooms due to the government’s so-called protection measures and tight security at the campus.

Classes at the University of Bahrain resumed a couple of days ago after authorities installed new surveillance cameras across the university.

The facility was ransacked around two months ago during the unrest that has gripped the Persian Gulf state for over three months.

All students must now re-register with the university and sign a code of conduct. Each student is given a compulsory identification card that must be worn at all times on campus.

According to Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR), the University of Bahrain is planning to accept only pro-government students and those refusing to sign a pledge of loyalty to the government will be expelled from the only national higher education institution in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom.

Since the beginning of anti-regime protests in Bahrain in mid-February, Manama has launched a harsh crackdown on anti-government protesters, rounding up senior opposition figures and activists in dawn raids and arresting doctors, nurses, lawyers and journalists who have voiced support for the protest movement.

Scores of protesters have been killed and many others have gone missing since the protests broke out.

May 24, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Israel detains mother of senior Hamas official

Palestine Information Center – 23/05/2011
Arouri’s mother hugs him when he was released from an occupation jail

RAMALLAH — Israeli forces arrested the mother of senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri Monday morning after raiding her home in Aroura village near Ramallah.

Soldiers surrounded the Arouri residence in the village and then tampered with the contents inside while searching the premises, Salama al-Arouri told the Palestinian Information Center.

He added that they notified Arouri’s mother Aisha, 70, that an arrest warrant had been issued against her. The soldiers brutally apprehended her when she expressed refusal to respond.

Arouri said his mother suffers from several illnesses and is unable to walk without the help of others. He held Israel liable for harm caused to her.

Arouri’s son Asim was arrested a few days back for questioning.

The Hamas politburo member spent a total of 18 years in Israeli prisons before Israel exiled him to Syria last year.

The Ahrar prisoner studies center said in a statement that the ”cowardly act” was aimed at pressuring the Arouris, an active Palestinian family.

It was not the first incident where Israel abducted the mothers of activists, said Fuad al-Khuffash, Ahrar center director. A year back, Rabi’a Bilal was arrested to pressure her sons during interrogations. Israel also arrested the mother and wife of Yahya Ayyash, who was wanted and on the run.

May 23, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Arab League Silences Libyan TV

By Thomas C. Mountain | Sri Lanka Guardian | May 19, 2011

The new supremo of the Arab League kept his promise, the first he was to make, and has chopped off the head of Libyan television, so to speak, by blocking any further Libyan government satellite television broadcast by the middle east and Africa’s most watched network, Arabsat.

By the time I arrived home for lunch on Tuesday, May 17 and my thrice daily dose of Al Jammahariya TV all five Libyan government satellite channels had gone dark.

No more splinted, bandaged and sewn back together Libyan children clutching Muammar Gaddafi’s picture with one cast encased arm while the other is raised in that signature Libyan clenched fist salute.

No more images of blood splattered bed sheets in pediatric wards where victims of previous bombings were shredded by flying glass blown in on them from NATO bombs next door.

No more scenes of Muammar Gaddafi driving through the smoke shrouded streets of Tripoli standing in the open sunroof of a SUV, almost daring NATO to do its worst.

And no more press conferences with Libyan Imams standing side by side with their Christian brethren, raging at the world for allowing the NATO crusaders to slaughter men of peace who had gathered to try and end the bloodshed of Libyan against Libyan.

I cant say I was surprised when the ax dropped for I had been wondering for months now that those that only know “rule by force” in the Arab world didn’t realize how much damage they were inflicting on themselves by allowing their subjects to see what the USA and NATO’s wrath had wrought on a long peaceful Arab people in North Africa.

Arab Awakening? No, the revolution in the third world is Arabsat via satellite dishes popping up like mushrooms all over Africa, south Asia and the middle east. With hundreds of channels to choose from including the likes of Al Manar of Hezbollah, Al Jammahariya from Libya, and of course, the unchallenged elephant on the airwaves, Al Jazeera, broadcasting from the home of an absolute monarch, the Emir of Qatar.

Twitter, Facebook and the internet in general has little meaning to those Egyptians from the poorest of the most desperately poor neighborhoods of Cairo who were the first to pour into Tahir Square in protest against the hated Mubarak regime. When one cannot afford to buy your daily bread or sugar for your morning tea life quickly becomes unendurable and those of enough means to own a laptop find fertile ground for their Facebook based protests. And even if the internet and cell phone service is cut, somewhere in even the most squalid slums and shantytowns there will be a satellite dish and a television screen showing the exploding anger of those like themselves who have nothing left to lose.

Arab street or Arab sheep? Satellite news channels can inform or disinform. One must only see how the Libyan rebels hit the big time to see how dangerous the propaganda arms of hereditary rulers can be, especially when their message falls on ears only to eager for change, any change, no matter the disastrous consequences for themselves and their neighbors.

Still, there is something about seeing with ones own eyes and hearing with ones own ears that allows one to try to best judge what is and what isn’t true. After a lifetime of strictly controlled propaganda, we finally have a choice, maybe limited, but a choice of what propaganda we would try and digest. An important part of that choice is gone now that Libyan TV is off the satellite airwaves.

So farewell to the battle cries of the foes of the NATO crusaders, the voice of Libya for LIbyans one might say, axed by the new Prince of the Arab League. I for one, will miss you.

~

Thomas C. Mountain can be reached at thomascmountain@yahoo.com

May 19, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Haifa university prevents Arab MK Zoabi from delivering lecture

Palestine Information Center – 16/05/2011

HAIFA — The Haifa university administration disallowed a lecture for Arab MK Hanin Zoabi on the occasion of Nakba under the title of “No to racism on Nakba anniversary”.

The administration, which cancelled another earlier lecture for Sheikh Raed Salah the leader of the Islamic movement in 1948 occupied Palestine, prohibited all activities for the Arab students.

The students branch of Zoabi’s party in the university said that the administration’s practice had turned into a routine, vowing to protest the practice and not to remain silent.

May 17, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Israeli soldier shoots photographer

Press TV – May 17, 2011

An Israeli soldier has deliberately shot Palestinian photographer Mohammad Othman as he was covering protests in the Gaza Strip, says Reporters Without Borders.

The group said on Tuesday that Othman was clearly identifiable as a journalist at the time of the shooting and was deliberately targeted on Sunday.

The photographer was covering demonstrations near the Erez crossing in northern Gaza Strip.

On Sunday, thousands of Palestinians staged protests to mark the anniversary of the Nakba Day or “day of the catastrophe,” May 15, 1948, when Palestine was occupied by Israel.

Israeli Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter planes flew over the demonstrators, whereas troops fired tank shells near marching protesters on the border crossing.

Medical sources and Othman’s family told AFP on Tuesday that he was still in hospital in a “critical but stable” condition.

“He underwent an operation early this morning to remove a piece of shrapnel from his spine,” said Adham Abu Selmiya, a spokesman for the medical services in Gaza.

A doctor said the 26-year-old Othman was shot in the arm and was hit in the chest by shrapnel, which entered his lungs and spine.

May 17, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

‘Bahraini government hits social networkers’

PressTVGlobalNews on May 15, 2011


President of Bahrain’s Center for Human Rights Nabeel Rajab says the Bahraini regime has dismissed people from their jobs for sending information of the government’s harsh crackdown on protesters via social networks.

An interview with President of Bahrain’s Center for Human Rights, Nabeel Rajab

May 15, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture, Video | Leave a comment

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