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US wants Guantanamo force-feeding hearing to stay secret

RT | September 29, 2014

Attorneys for the United States government say that an upcoming court hearing concerning the force-feeding practices used on a Guantanamo Bay detainee should be held almost entirely behind closed doors.

The motion, filed by US attorneys on Friday in District Court for the District of Columbia, asks that the preliminary injunction hearing for Gitmo detainee Abu Wa’el Dhiab scheduled for early next month be conducted largely in secret over supposed national security concerns.

“As an initial matter, the hearing should be closed in order to prevent any unauthorized disclosure of classified or protected information,” the motion reads in part. “Furthermore, the hearing should be closed because, although portions of the materials in the record in this case are unclassified, conducting an open hearing in this case would impose significant burdens on the parties and the Court.”

Dhiab, a Syrian national, was cleared for release by the US in 2009 but remains in Pentagon custody at the Guantanamo Bay facility where he and dozens others engaged in a hunger strike last year to protest their continued confinement. To avoid having detainees die from malnourishment, the US has routinely subjected those individuals to force-feeding practices that their attorneys and human rights workers alike have raised concerns about.

Earlier this year in May, US District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the Obama administration to temporarily stop force-feeding Dhiab and release his medical records and 34 of 136 videotapes of force-feeding sessions taken between April 9, 2013 and February 19, 2014.

“It’s 12 years late, but it’s fantastic, it’s the first time a federal court has started paying attention to the conditions of confinement in Guantanamo, that’s a huge step,” Clive Stafford Smith, the director of human rights group Reprieve said at the time.

Now as a District Court judge prepares to consider arguments from attorneys representing both the US government and Dhiab, federal attorneys are asking that the public be excluded from key elements of the hearing.

“It’s obvious what is really going on here,” Cori Crider, an attorney for Dhiab with Reprieve, said to The Guardian this week. “The government wants to seal the force-feeding trial for the same reason it is desperate to suppress the tapes of my client being hauled from his cell by the riot squad and force-fed. The truth is just too embarrassing.”

“There is no reason to close the upcoming hearing, other than the government’s intense desire to hide from public scrutiny the evidence we have managed to uncover over the past few months,” co-counsel Jon Eisenberg told POLITICO over the weekend. “This evidence, which consists of videotapes of Mr. Dhiab’s force feedings, his medical records and some key new admissions by military officials, vividly establishes that the force feeding at Guantanamo Bay is the opposite of humane. Its overarching purpose is to cause the hunger strikers a great deal of pain and suffering, in hopes that they are convinced to give up this peaceful protest of their indefinite detention without trial.”

“If, during any part of this hearing, the judge feels there is a need to protect national security information from public disclosure, she can simply close the courtroom for that part of the hearing. That’s how these sorts of cases are commonly handled, and that’s how this one should be handled,” he said.

According to the government, however, opening and closing the hearing because of classified information being presented would “interrupt the natural flow of the hearing, preventing full, frank and uninhibited discussion of the record necessary to conduct the hearing.” As a compromise, acting assistant attorney general Joyce Branda wrote for the government on Friday that “Respondents will create a public version of the transcript of hearing on an expedited basis and, consistent with the practice in many other Guantanamo Bay merits hearings, Respondents agree the parties should begin the hearing by delivering unclassified opening statements in public.”

According to the Guardian, several news organizations, including the British paper, plan to file a motion challenging the government’s request to keep the hearing largely secret.

September 29, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

On Israel’s little-known concentration and labor camps in 1948-1955

Civilians captured during the fall of Lydda and Ramle around the time of July 12, 1948 and taken to labour camps.
By Yazan al-Saadi | Al-Akhbar | September 29, 2014

Much of the grim and murky circumstances of the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the late 1940s have gradually been exposed over time. One aspect – rarely researched or deeply discussed – is the internment of thousands of Palestinian civilians within at least 22 Zionist-run concentration and labor camps that existed from 1948 to 1955. Now more is known about the contours of this historical crime, due to the comprehensive research by renowned Palestinian historian Salman Abu Sitta and founding member of the Palestinian resource center BADIL Terry Rempel.

The facts are these.

The study – to be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies – relies on almost 500 pages of International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) reports written during the 1948 war, that were declassified and made available to the public in 1996, and accidentally discovered by one of the authors in 1999.

Furthermore, testimonies of 22 former Palestinian civilian detainees of these camps were collected by the authors, through interviews they conducted themselves in 2002, or documented by others during different moments of time.

With these sources of information, the authors, as they put it, pieced together a clearer story of how Israel captured and imprisoned “thousands of Palestinian civilians as forced laborers,” and exploited them “to support its war-time economy.”

Digging up the crimes

“I came across this piece of history in the 1990s when I was collecting material and documents about Palestinians,” Abu Sitta told Al-Akhbar English. “The more and more you dig, the more you find there are crimes that have taken place that are not reported and not known.”

At that time, Abu Sitta went to Geneva for a week to check out the newly-opened archives of the ICRC. According to him, the archives were opened to the public after accusations that the ICRC had sided with the Nazis during World War II. It was an opportunity that he could not miss in terms of seeing what the ICRC had recorded of the events that occurred in Palestine in 1948. It was there he stumbled onto records discussing the existence of five concentration camps run by the Israelis.

He then decided to look for witnesses or former detainees, interviewing Palestinians in occupied Palestine, Syria, and Jordan.

“They all described the same story, and their real experience in these camps,” he said.

One question that immediately struck him was why there were barely any references in history about these camps, especially when it became clearer the more he researched that they existed, and were more than just five camps.

“Many former Palestinian detainees saw the concept of Israel as a vicious enemy, so they thought their experience labouring in these concentration camps was nothing in comparison to the other larger tragedy of the Nakba. The Nakba overshadowed everything,” Abu Sitta explained.“However, when I dug into the period of 1948-1955, I found more references like Mohammed Nimr al-Khatib, who was an imam in Haifa, who had written down interviews with someone from al-Yahya family that was in one of the camps. I was able to trace this man all the way to California and spoke with him in 2002,” he added.

More references were eventually and slowly discovered by Abu Sitta that included information from a Jewish woman called Janoud, a single masters thesis in Hebrew University about the topic, and the personal accounts of economist Yusif Sayigh, helped to further flesh out the scale and nature of these camps.

After more than a decade, Abu Sitta, with his co-author Rempel, are finally presenting their findings to the public.

From burden to opportunity: concentration and labor camps

The establishment of concentration and labor camps occurred after the unilateral declaration of Israel’s statehood on May 1948.

Prior to that event, the number of Palestinian captives in Zionist hands were quite low, because, as the study states, “the Zionist leadership concluded early on that forcible expulsion of the civilian population was the only way to establish a Jewish state in Palestine with a large enough Jewish majority to be ‘viable’.” In other words, for the Zionist strategists, prisoners were a burden in the beginning phases of the ethnic cleansing.

Those calculations changed with the declaration of the Israeli state and the involvement of the armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan, after much of the ethnic cleansing had occurred. From that moment, “the Israeli forces began taking prisoners, both regular Arab soldiers (for eventual exchange), and – selectively – able-bodied Palestinian non-combatant civilians.”

The first camp at Ijlil, which was about 13 km northeast of Jaffa, on the site of the destroyed Palestinian village Ijlil al-Qibiliyya, emptied of its inhabitants in early April. Ijlil was predominately made up of tents, housing hundreds and hundreds of prisoners, categorized as POWs by the Israelis, surrounded by barbed wire fences, watchtowers, and a gate with guards.

As the Israeli conquests grew, in turn exceedingly increasing the number of prisoners, three more camps were established. These are the four “official” camps that the Israelis acknowledged and were actively visited by the ICRC.

The study notes:

All four camps were either on or adjacent to military installations set up by the British during the Mandate. These had been used during World War II for the interment of German, Italian, and other POWs. Two of the camps – Atlit, established in July about 20 kms south of Haifa, and Sarafand, established in September near the depopulated village of Sarafand al-Amar in central Palestine—had earlier been used in the 1930s and 1940s to detain illegal Jewish immigrants.

Atlit was the second largest camp after Ijlil, it had the capacity of holding up to 2,900 prisoners, while Sarafand had the maximum capacity of 1,800, and Tel Letwinksy, near Tel Aviv, held more than 1,000.

All four camps were administered by “former British officers who had defected their ranks when British forces withdrew from Palestine in mid-May 1948,” and the camp’s guards and administrative staff were former members of the Irgun and the Stern Gang – both groups designated as terrorist organizations by the British before their departure. In total, the four “official” camps were staffed by 973 soldiers.

A fifth camp, called Umm Khalid, was established at a site of another depopulated village near the Zionist settlement of Netanya, and was even assigned an official number in the records, but never attained “official” status. It had the capacity to hold 1,500 prisoners. Unlike the other four camps, Umm Khalid would be “the fist camp established exclusively as a labor camp” and was “the first of the “recognized” camps to be shut down… by the end of 1948.”

Complementing these five “recognized” camps, were at least 17 other “unrecognized camps” that were not mentioned in official sources, but the authors discovered through multiple prisoner testimonies.

“Many of [these camps],” the authors noted, “[were] apparently improvised or ad hoc, often consisting of no more than a police station, a school, or the house of a village notable,” with holding capacities that ranged from almost 200 prisoners to tens.

Most of the camps, official and unofficial, were situated within the borders of the UN-proposed Jewish state, “although at least four [unofficial camps] – Beersheba, Julis, Bayt Daras, and Bayt Nabala – were in the UN-assigned Arab state and one was inside the Jerusalem “corpus separatum.”

The number of Palestinian non-combatant detainees “far exceeded” those of Arab soldiers in regular armies or bona fide POWs. Citing a July 1948 monthly report made by ICRC mission head Jacques de Reynier, the study states that de Reynier noted, “that the situation of civilian internees was ‘absolutely confused’ with that of POWs, and that the Jewish authorities ‘treated all Arabs between the ages of 16 and 55 as combatants and locked them up as prisoners of war.’” In addition, the ICRC found among the detainees in official camps, that 90 of the prisoners were elderly men, and 77 were boys, aged 15 years or younger. The study highlights the statements by an ICRC delegate Emile Moeri in January 1949 of the camp inmates:

It is painful to see these poor people, especially old, who were snatched from their villages and put without reason in a camp, obliged to pass the winter under wet tents, away from their families; those who could not survive these conditions died. Little children (10-12 years) are equally found under these conditions. Similarly sick people, some with tuberculosis, languish in these camps under conditions which, while fine for healthy individuals, will certainly lead to their death if we do not find a solution to this problem. For a long time we have demanded that the Jewish authorities release those civilians who are sick and need treatment to the care of their families or to an Arab hospital, but we have not received a response.

As the report noted, “there are no precise figures on the total number of Palestinian civilians held by Israel during the 1948-49 war” and estimates tend to not account for “unofficial” camps, in addition to the frequent movement of prisoners between the camps in use. In the four “official” camps, the number of Palestinian prisoners never exceeded 5,000 according to figures in Israeli records.

Taking account of the capacity of Umm Khalid, and estimates of the “unofficial camps,” the final number of Palestinian prisoners could be around the 7,000 range, and perhaps much more when, as the study states, taking into account a November 17, 1948 diary entry by David Ben-Gurion, one of the main Zionist leaders and Israel’s first prime minister, who mentioned “the existence of 9,000 POWs in Israeli-run camps.”

In general, the living conditions in the “official” camps were far below what would be considered appropriate by international law at that time. Moeri, who visited the camps constantly, reported that in Ijlil in November 1948:

“[m]any [of the] tents are torn, that the camp was “not ready for winter,” the latrines not covered, and the canteen not working for two weeks. Referring to an apparently ongoing situation, he stated that “the fruits are still defective, the meat is of poor quality, [and] the vegetables are in short supply.”

Furthermore, Moeri reported that he saw for himself, “the wounds left by the abuse” of the previous week, when the guards had fired on the prisoners, wounding one, and had beaten another.”

As the study shows, the civilian status of the majority of the detainees were clear for the ICRC delegates in the country, who reported that the men captured “had undoubtedly never been in a regular army.” Detainees who were combatants, the study explains, were “routinely shot on the pretense that they had been attempting to escape.”

The Israeli forces seemed to always target able-bodied men, leaving behind women, children, and the elderly – when not massacring them – the policy continued even after there were low levels of military confrontation. All in all, as the Israeli records show and the study cites, “Palestinian civilians comprised the vast majority (82 percent) of the 5,950 listed as internees in the POW camps, while the Palestinians alone (civilian plus military) comprised 85 percent.”

The wide-scale kidnapping and imprisonment of Palestinian civilians tend to correspond with the Israeli military campaigns. For example, one of the first major roundups occurred during Operation Danj, when 60-70,000 Palestinians were expelled from the central towns of Lydda and Ramleh. At the same time, between a fifth and a quarter of the male population from these two towns who were over the age of 15 were sent to the camps.

The largest round-up of civilians came from villages of central Galilee who were captured during Operation Hiram in the fall of 1948.

One Palestinian survivor, Moussa, described to the authors what he witnessed at the time.

“They took us from all villages around us: al-Bi’na, Deir al-Asad, Nahaf, al-Rama, and Eilabun. They took 4 young men and shot them dead… They drove us on foot. It was hot. We were not allowed to drink. They took us to [the Palestinian Druze village] al-Maghar, then [to the Jewish settlement] Nahalal, then to Atlit.”

A November 16, 1948 UN report collaborated Moussa’s account, stating that some 500 Palestinian men “were taken by force march and vehicle to a Jewish concentration camp at Nahlal.”

Maintaining Israel’s economy with “slave labor”

The policy of targeting civilians, particular “able-bodied” men, was not accidental according to the study. It states, “with tens of thousands of Jewish men and women called up for military service, Palestinian civilian internees constituted an important supplement to the Jewish civilian labor employed under emergency legislation in maintaining the Israeli economy,” which even the ICRC delegation had noted in their reports.

The prisoners were forced to do public and military work, such as draining wetlands, working as servants, collecting and transporting looted refugee property, moving stones from demolished Palestinian homes, paving roads, digging military trenches, burying the dead, and much more. As one former Palestinian detainee named Habib Mohammed Ali Jarada described in the study, “At gunpoint, I was made to work all day. At night, we slept in tents. In winter, water was seeping below our bedding, which was dry leaves, cartons and wooden pieces.”

Another prisoner in Umm Khalied, Marwan Iqab al-Yehiya said in an interview with the authors, “We had to cut and carry stones all day [in a quarry]. Our daily food was only one potato in the morning and half dried fish at night. They beat anyone who disobeyed orders.” This labor was interspersed with acts of humiliation by the Israeli guards, with Yehiya speaking of prisoners being “lined up and ordered to strip naked as a punishment for the escape of two prisoners at night.”

“[Jewish] Adults and children came from nearby kibbutz to watch us line up naked and laugh. To us this was most degrading,” he added.

Abuses by the Israeli guards were systematic and rife in the camps, the brunt of which was directed toward villagers, farmers, and lower class Palestinians. This was so, the study said, because educated prisoners “knew their rights and had the confidence to argue with and stand up to their captors.”

What is also interestingly noted by the study is how ideological affiliations between prisoners and their guards, had another effect in terms of the relationship between them. The study, cites the testimony of Kamal Ghattas, who was captured during the Israeli attack in the Galilee, who said:

We had a fight with our jailers. Four hundred of us confronted 100 soldiers. They brought reinforcements. Three of my friends and I were taken to a cell. They threatened to shoot us. All night we sang the Communist Anthem. They took the four of us to Umm Khaled camp. The Israelis were afraid of their image in Europe. Our contact with our Central Committee and Mapam [Socialist Israeli party] saved us .… I met a Russian officer and told him they took us from our homes although we were non-combatants which was against the Geneva Conventions. When he knew I was a Communist he embraced me and said, “Comrade, I have two brothers in the Red Army. Long live Stalin. Long Live Mother Russia”.

Yet, the less fortunate Palestinians faced acts of violence which included arbitrary executions and torture, with no recourse. The executions were always defended as stopping “escape attempts” – real or claimed by the guards.

It became so common that one former Palestinian detainee of Tel Litwinsky, Tewfic Ahmed Jum’a Ghanim recounted, “Anyone who refused to work was shot. They said [the person] tried to escape. Those of us who thought [we] were going to be killed walked backward facing the guards.”

Ultimately, by the end of 1949, Palestinian prisoners were gradually released after heavy lobbying by the ICRC, and other organizations, but was limited in scale and very focused to specific cases. Prisoners of Arab armies were released in prisoner exchanges, but Palestinian prisoners were unilaterally expelled across the armistice line without any food, supplies, or shelter, and told to walk into the distance, never to return.

It would not be until 1955 that most of the Palestinian civilian prisoners would finally be released.

An enduring crime

The importance of this study is multi-faceted. Not only does it reveal the numerous violations of international law and conventions of the age, such as 1907 Hague Regulations and the 1929 Geneva Conventions, but also shows how the event shaped the ICRC in the long run.

Because the ICRC was faced with an Israeli belligerent actor who was unwilling to listen and conform to international law and conventions, the ICRC itself had to adapt in what it considered were practical ways to help ensure the Palestinian civilian prisoners were protected under the barest of rights.

Citing his final report, the study quotes de Reynier:

[The ICRC] protested on numerous occasions affirming the right of these civilians to enjoy their freedom unless found guilty and judged by a court. But we have tacitly accepted their POW status because in this way they would enjoy the rights conferred upon them by the Convention. Otherwise, if they were not in the camps they would be expelled [to an Arab country] and in one way or another, they would lead, without resources, the miserable life of refugees.

In the end, the ICRC, and other organizations, were simply ineffective as Israel ignored its condemnations with impunity, in addition to the diplomatic cover of major Western powers.

More importantly, the study sheds more light on the extent of the Israeli crimes during its brutal and bloody birth. And “much more remains to be told,” as the final line of the study states.

“It is amazing to me, and many Europeans, who have seen my evidence,” Abu Sitta said, “that a forced labor camp was opened in Palestine three years after they were closed in Germany, and were run by former prisoners – there were German Jewish guards.”

“This is a bad reflection of the human spirit, where the oppressed copies an oppressor against innocent lives,” he added. The study essentially shows the foundations and beginnings of Israeli policy towards Palestinian civilians that comes in the form of kidnapping, arrest, and detainment. This criminality continues till this day. One merely has to read the reports on the hundreds of Palestinians arrested prior, during, and after Israel’s latest war on Gaza mid-summer of this year.

“Gaza today is a concentration camp, no different than the past,” Abu Sitta concluded to Al-Akhbar English.

Yazan is a staff writer for Al-Akhbar English. Follow him on Twitter: @WhySadeye

September 29, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces destroy power grid in Nablus village

Ma’an – 29/09/2014

NABLUS – Israeli military forces on Monday destroyed an electricity network in the Nablus village of Aqraba, a Palestinian official said.

Ghassan Daghlas, an official who monitors settlement activity, told Ma’an that Israeli military bulldozers raided the Khirbet al-Tawil area of the village and demolished the main power line established in 2004.

Israeli soldiers destroyed over 80 electricity pylons and wires, he added.

Israel is using demolitions to “pressure residents to leave their houses for the sake of nearby settlements.”

In August, Israeli forces demolished four houses in the al-Tawil neighborhood, some of which were over 100 years old.

The al-Tawil neighborhood is on the outskirts of Aqraba and locals say Israeli forces have targeted several properties in the area under the pretext that they were built without a permit.

September 29, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

The Yellow Book: a secret document of the Army of El Salvador

The Yellow Book: The first document from the secret archives of the Army of El Salvador during the civil war comes to light September 28, 2014, International Right to Know Day

National Security Archive

A 1980s-era document from the archives of El Salvador’s military intelligence identifies almost two thousand Salvadoran citizens who were considered “delinquent terrorists” by the Armed Forces, among them current President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, a former guerrilla leader. Other individuals listed include human rights advocates, labor leaders, and political figures, many known to have been victims of illegal detention, torture, extrajudicial execution, forced disappearance, and other human rights abuses.

Called the Libro Amarillo or Yellow Book, the report is the first-ever confidential Salvadoran military document to be made public, and the only evidence to appear from the Salvadoran Army’s own files of the surveillance methods used by security forces to target Salvadoran citizens during the country’s 12-year civil war. Now the Yellow Book has been posted on-line, along with related analysis and declassified U.S. documents, through a collaboration between the National Security Archive, the University of Washington Center for Human Rights and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG).

According to the document’s introduction, the Yellow Book, dated July 1987, was compiled by the Intelligence Department (C-II) of the Estado Mayor Conjunto de la Fuerza Armada Salvadoreña (EMCFA, Joint Staff of the Armed Forces). It consists of a systematic list with 1,915 entries on targeted individuals, 1,857 identified by name, along with corresponding photographs, and notes on their alleged connections to suspect organizations including unions, political parties, and rebel groups of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN). A hand-written note on its cover page indicates the report was intended to aid security forces in identifying the opposition. “Use it,” the note says, “Make copies of the photographs and put them on your bulletin board so you will know your enemies.”

Although analysis of the Yellow Book continues, preliminary research makes clear that some of the individuals listed in it were killed or disappeared and never seen again; others were captured, tortured, and later released. Under the direction of HRDAG Executive Director Patrick Ball, researchers cross referenced names listed in the Yellow Book with four historical databases of reports of human rights violations collected from 1980-1992. This process found 273 names in the Yellow Book, or 15%, that matched reports of killings or extrajudicial executions; 233 or 13% matching reports of forced disappearance; 274 or 15% matching reports of torture; and 538 or 29% matching reports of detention or arrest. In total, at least 43% of names listed in the Yellow Book correspond with these historical human rights databases. View the full report here.

A former U.S. military source who served in El Salvador during the 1980s, who declined to be named, has stated that the Yellow Book appears to be an authentic product of Salvadoran military intelligence, one of many related documents created to track and register perceived threats. The original document, a photocopy of an unknown master copy, was donated to a Salvadoran civil society organization by an individual who claimed to have found it in a house during a move.  […]

Research by the UWCHR and the National Security Archive explains the Yellow Book in relation to the Salvadoran intelligence services and their historical connection to the United States. Our analysis of the document, spreadsheet of the 1,857 of names, and a translated glossary are intended to serve future researchers as well as survivors and advocates seeking accountability for war crimes.

The appearance of the Yellow Book challenges years of stonewalling by El Salvador’s army and security forces about their role in the bloody civil war that left at least 75,000 civilians dead, and an estimated 8,000 missing or disappeared, according to the United Nations. The refusal of the Salvadoran government to release its official records was especially frustrating to the UN Truth Commission, established in 1992 by the peace accords. While the commission had access to survivor testimonies, evidence gathered from exhumations, published human rights reports, and thousands of declassified U.S. documents made available by the National Security Archive, its repeated requests to the Salvadoran government for access to state archives were ignored. The Yellow Book’s posting today is in recognition of International Right to Know Day, celebrated around the world to promote the right of all citizens to have access to information about their governments.

The publication of the Yellow Book also comes at a time when the Salvadorans are re-evaluating the history of human rights abuses committed during the conflict. Organizations such as the Human Rights Institute of the Central American University (IDHUCA), Asociación Pro-Búsqueda, and others have presented dozens of criminal complaints for crimes against humanity related to torture, forced disappearance, extrajudicial executions, and massacres, and are calling on the government to release the historical records of the security forces for a full accounting of the past.

In this charged climate, in which prominent organizations seeking justice have been shuttered and attacked, human rights advocates await a decision by the Supreme Court, which is reviewing the amnesty law passed in 1993, guaranteeing impunity for perpetrators of grave human rights violations. If the law is nullified or found unconstitutional by the Court, a major roadblock to accountability will be lifted. As a record of the Salvadoran state’s surveillance and persecution of its own citizens, the Yellow Book may serve as evidence in future claims for justice.

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September 28, 2014 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Mexico Police Kill 2 Students During Protest, 25 Missing

teleSUR | September 28, 2014

Local police shot and killed two students during a civil disobedience action in protest of their college’s underfunding.

A group of protestors from teacher-training college Normal de Ayotzinapa in Iguala, Guerrero privince, attempted to seize three buses on Friday night in an escalation of their campaign against their college´s poor conditions.

Representative of the Student’s Committee, Pedro David Garcia, said the protesters were unarmed and non-violent.

“We were trying to raise money, we took these measures because the government always ignores us. We spoke to the bus drivers and they agreed to give us the buses, but we did not threaten them, because we are students,” said Garcia.

According to the demonstrators, two of them tried to negotiate with police when officers arrived on the scene, but they were shot dead. The police continued firing at the protesters.

After the shootings, the students ran away. At least 25 of them have not yet been found.

Representatives of the Mexican Human Rights Commission went to Iguala to investigate allegations of police brutality and to support the victims of the attack.

Another shooting occured the same night near Iguala city’s highway. A teenage amateur football player traveling with his team in a bus was killed. The bus driver was badly injured and died some hours later. Another woman traveling in a taxi was also killed.

Members of Mexican federal police have come to Iguala to take charge of the city’s security while the incidents are investigated. The local police force has been detained, while their weapons were seized.

At least 25 students and four other football players were injured during the attacks.

Guerrero is one of the poorest states in Mexico, and violent episodes are frequent due to the presence of drug cartels in the state.

September 28, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

The CIA, the President, and the Senate’s Torture Report

By Rob Crawford | CounterPunch | September 26, 2014

Astounding events over the last several weeks have once again put U.S. torture in the spotlight. Evidence of spying by the CIA on Senate staffers investigating the Agency provoked an unprecedented apology from CIA director John Brennan, calls for his removal, and a response from President Obama at his August 1st press conference.

The backdrop is the long delayed but pending public release of the summary of the over 6000 page investigative report of the Senate Intelligence Committee on CIA torture. The investigation was initiated over five years ago. The report was approved by the committee 20 months ago and approved for release 5 months ago. As we move into autumn, the date of its official release is still in question.

I. The CIA

The CIA has done everything possible to undermine any investigation into its secret rendition, detention and interrogation program. There have been several facets to the CIA’s defensive strategy:

The Senate report will purportedly accuse the CIA of lying to the public and to Congress. That will be unsurprising to anyone who knows the long history of the CIA, first revealed in detail by the Church Committee in 1975.  Secrecy and lying have been an Agency hallmark. The pre-9/11 history of CIA involvement with torture in Latin America and Southeast Asia is just one example.

In 2005, the CIA destroyed videotape evidence of interrogations involving torture. In 2009, the it orchestrated a media campaign warning of the consequences for national security of a criminal investigation, capped by a letter to Obama from seven former directors of the CIA warning that the extremely limited, preliminary investigation of CIA personnel who went “beyond guidance” would severely compromise the Agency. (The investigation eventually closed with no criminal charges filed.)

When the Senate committee began its work, the CIA insisted investigators use a special CIA facility for the review of documents. It then monitored Senate staff computers, read staffers’ emails and removed a damning internal report. Brennan denied that the CIA had spied on the Senate staff, calling the allegations “beyond reason” but in late July the CIA’s Inspector General’s investigation confirmed it. In March, the CIA countered the charges of spying along with a referral to the Justice Department by asking the DOJ to open an investigation of illegal behavior of committee staff. In response, Diane Feinstein, the normally hawkish chair of the Senate committee, gave an unprecedented, angry speech on the Senate floor about CIA bullying.

Further, CIA officials have publicly accused the committee of bias and the Agency will write a dissent that will be appended to the report. Not least, the CIA can virtually dictate redactions. It is extraordinary that the very agency being investigated by the Senate has the power to redact the Senate’s report of its investigation. The CIA’s redaction review took months and has now moved to the center of a controversy between Feinstein and the White House (which coordinated, participated in and approved the redaction process). Feinstein asserted that the proposed redactions “eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions.” She further said that she will not make the report public “until these redactions are addressed to the committee’s satisfaction.”

II. The President

At a news conference on August 1st, President Obama was asked about Brennan. First, Obama expressed “full confidence” in Brennan, referring to CIA spying on the Senate staff as a matter that “CIA personnel did not properly handle …” and “some very poor judgment was shown.” Given the enormous implications for a functioning democracy of the CIA’s unlawful misconduct, Obama’s language seems mild.

Second, the president acknowledged “we did some things that were wrong.” “We tortured some folks.” These comments were qualified by “in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.” Some commentators laud the president for using the word “torture” but others point out that his language actually minimized what happened.  From 2002 to 2009, hundreds of people were tortured and hundreds more subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. There have been over 100 deaths of people in detention, many likely to be a direct result of torture. The torture and abuse went on for years.  (I leave aside here continuing accusations of U.S. personnel being involved in torture since 2009.)

Third, Obama then claimed to “understand what happened.” His explanation emphasized “how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell,” “people did not know whether more attacks were imminent,” and national security officials felt “enormous pressure.” He told us that we should “not … feel too sanctimonious in retrospect,” given that officials had a “tough job.” This framing is a version of the fall-back position accompanying the more assertive claims that “enhanced interrogation” kept America safe.  Whether or not torture was ineffective; whether or not it was, as the president said, “contrary to our values”; and whether or not it was illegal, in the end it was, Obama is suggesting, understandable—that is, excusable under the circumstances.

After all, Obama asserted, the acts in question were committed by “real patriots”—i.e., right-minded people who simply acted out of love of country. The implication is that the torture is pardonable and that it would be ungrateful to criticize patriots for anything more than misjudgment under extraordinary circumstances. The logic of this nationalist rhetoric is to place off limits the harder questions about what happened and why: Why did state institutions routinely operate outside the law, lie to Congress, destroy evidence, and adopt a “by any means necessary,” “gloves-off” approach to problems of national security? Whether CIA operatives or presidents, patriots cannot be held accountable for committing war crimes. For love of country, let’s just move on. As Andrew Sullivan put it, “We tortured. It was wrong. Never mind.”

Next, Obama—again using the word “torture” and saying that “we crossed a line”–called on the country “to take responsibility for that so that hopefully we don’t do it again in the future.” Certainly. Yet, the president might have been more explicit that the line crossed was not only moral; it was legal—and no amount of Office of Legal Counsel “guidance” (based on radically distorted interpretations of what is legally permissible) or even immunities provided by Congress can alter that fact. Moreover, the “we” who “crossed a line” remains purposefully vague. After all, specific officials crossed that line, acting through the CIA, the military, the executive branch, and with possible complicity by individual members of Congress.

Finally, what does Obama mean when he urges the “country” to take responsibility? Remember it was the same Obama who in 2009 urged the country to “look forward rather than look backward,” who refused to pursue criminal accountability or even a bipartisan commission of inquiry. It is the same Obama who appears to be supporting a redaction process that Feinstein says undermines the conclusions of the report. Obama’s statement that the country should take responsibility is contradicted by his own actions.

Obama is right that Americans should grapple with their government’s use of torture. Too many Americans have chosen simply to look the other way. However, the president has not fulfilled his own responsibility to exercise moral leadership. The task of getting to the real truth of U.S. torture is difficult. To own up to the moral and criminal failure of our national leaders is even more challenging. Meaningful accountability is impossible without genuine soul-searching among leaders in government, media and in civil society. The Senate torture report is a necessary step in that direction.

III. The Report

I offer five reasons why the Senate report is important:

1)  To date, there has been no official report focusing on the CIA’s central role in carrying out the Bush-Cheney administration’s adoption of torture post-9/11.  Although the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report will be compromised by the continued suppression of the full report, by extensive redactions, and by an inevitably limited analysis, it will be the most significant government report to date on U.S. torture.  Torture will once again be given national prominence in the media.

This has not happened since 2009, a pivotal year in “the torture debate” when a series of shocking revelations unsettled the normal timidity of the media establishment.  Then, editors provided space for opinions highly critical of Bush and Cheney’s interrogation program along with views defending the policies. Anxieties swelled among perpetrators and their defenders about how far Obama might go in revealing the full scope of the torture program or who might be held accountable and how.  In a highly charged partisan atmosphere, Republican hawks, led by Cheney, attacked the new president’s change of torture policy and warned of serious consequences that would follow attempts to hold perpetrators accountable.

As it turns out, perpetrators had little to worry about.  After changing torture policy, Obama quickly signaled that accountability was off the table and he remained largely silent in face of the barrage of justifications from Cheney and conservative media commentators.  This silence allowed Cheney and his supporters to shape the narrative.   Since 2009, there have been only a few brief moments—at least within the U.S media–where the torture issue resurfaced, most prominently concerning continuing claims that “enhanced interrogation” was effective in keeping America safe from another terrorist attack.  At the very least, the Senate report will provide a refutation of this argument, although the CIA and defenders of the Bush-Cheney program will mount a vigorous counter-attack.  The debate over the efficacy of torture is crucial.

2) Torture is a high crime under international and domestic law.  Whether or not the Senate report names the crime or recommends legal solutions (not likely; leaks suggest that the report doesn’t even use the word “torture”), the truth of government lawlessness will be laid before the public and will re-energize calls for legal accountability for officials at the top of the political, military and CIA chain of command.  Human rights organizations will recall that the legal prohibition of torture as reaffirmed in the UN Convention Against Torture (ratified by the U.S.) permits no exceptions whatsoever.

They will also remind Americans that their government is under legal obligation to investigate and prosecute those who authorized and carried out torture.  They will emphasize that failure to assign responsibility for past wrongful acts creates a climate of impunity and that the rule of law means nothing if state crimes are exempted.

3) The Senate torture report will also present an opportunity for commentators to ask critical questions about threats to liberal democracy inherent to a national security state.  Already critics are making parallels between the rogue behavior of the CIA and the NSA’s Orwellian, “collect it all” surveillance.  The truth is that post-9/11 was not the first time that the security agencies (CIA, FBI, NSA, Special Forces, and other components of the secret state) have deliberately disregarded, or have been ordered by a president to disregard, legal and moral restraints.  Open government groups are now citing the CIA’s conduct in relation to the Senate committee and its report as exhibit A in their case against unaccountable government agencies and how national security and presidential authority are used to justify the twin abuses of excessive secrecy and evasions of congressional or judicial oversight.  Just as Watergate era revelations led to the Church Committee hearings and reforms, the renewal of the torture debate will raise fundamental questions about the dangers of unaccountable security agencies and the requirements for reassertion of democratic control.

4) Most commentators have focused on the substantial partisan differences over the use of torture and the struggle between those who are fighting for the release of the report with few redactions and those who want to bury it.  These differences are politically significant.  Which side prevails may shape public attitudes toward torture for years to come. However, I want to suggest another dimension.  Powerful forces on both sides of the partisan divide want the torture issue to disappear altogether.  Many military, security and political elites recognize that U.S. torture, approved at the highest levels of government, created an unsurpassed crisis of legitimacy for the country.  Their foremost objective is to restore that legitimacy.

Arguably, this is the principal reason why Obama issued his executive order rejecting torture in 2009 (I believe that McCain would have likely done the same).  It is why the new president counseled amnesia about torture and why he refused to initiate criminal investigations or even a commission of inquiry.  It is why he has fallen mostly silent about the issue of torture.  The U.S. relies on an image that it conducts its wars humanely and in accordance with international law.  Brutality and illegality belong to the enemy.  Occasionally, however, the brutal and unlawful exercise of state violence becomes public knowledge.  The inhumanity of violence “shocks the conscience.”  Legitimacy crises follow.  For the U.S., the Abu Ghraib photos were a disaster but the disaster kept growing with a cascade of revelations that included documentation of torture of prisoners in Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan and CIA kidnapping, renditions, and torture in secret prisons.  The reverberations are still being felt.

In 2014, national security elites in both political parties, including those who disagree about the permissibility of “enhanced interrogation,” are worried that the Senate report will further aggravate the prolonged crisis of legitimacy caused by U.S. torture—a crisis made worse by the government’s refusal to undertake criminal proceedings and support civil suits, and partisan politics resulting in continuing indefinite detention at Guantanamo prison camp and military commission trials that admit torture as evidence.  Most Americans are still unfamiliar with the grizzly details of what their government authorized and which high officials did the authorizing.  Globally, especially in the Middle East, the report will likely reactivate multiple resentments; and it may reinforce dismay among allies.

National security elites will disagree about the efficacy of torture and other aspects of the report, but they will be united in wanting to forestall public disclosure and critical examination of America’s use of coercive power, past and present.  Torture, after all, is not the only inhumane use of state violence; nor is U.S. torture solely an aberration of the Bush-Cheney years.  For the national security elite as a whole, the history of state violence is better left buried or forgotten and dissident voices about current inhumane operations ignored.  Above all, the use of violence as an instrument of policy must remain unencumbered.

For these reasons, even though the CIA will be rebuked by liberal Democrats and perhaps some legislative reforms will be attempted, calls for accountability will continue to be opposed.  For national security elites, the release of the Senate report summary will be treated as the end of the story—time to turn the page to narratives more consistent with the myth of American Exceptionalism.  This closure will be opposed by some, especially by those who understand that post-9/11 torture was not a one-off event and that torture shares characteristics with other forms of state violence.

5) If torture is not wrong, nothing is wrong.  If torture is not wrong, any degradation of human beings in the name of national security is permitted.  The logic of torture not only reflects but also promotes acceptance of a “whatever it takes” paradigm of military power.  Once torture is accepted, anything goes.

Yet, the opposite is also possible. It is not a big jump from abhorrence of torture to revulsion to what other forms of military violence do to human beings.  If the U.S. adoption of torture has shattered the myth of American humane warfare, other aspects of military policy that contravene that myth may come under greater scrutiny.  I do not underestimate the power of nationalist blindness to the suffering of “enemy” others or the misleading language of “precision targeting,” “accidental” civilian casualties and “collateral damage;” but, there are simply too many examples of both global and domestic responses to the inhumane violence of war to be ignored.  In fact, threats to legitimacy stemming from that violence, as I have contended, are a principal concern of national security elites.

If a “by any means necessary” paradigm of national power is the problem rather than officials working under “enormous pressure” in a terrorist emergency, the Senate report–in criticizing claims of efficacy and CIA malfeasance—will fall short.  Nonetheless, the report will lay bare a core contradiction for any state that relies on violence as an instrument of foreign policy: the clash between an inhumane logic of war that resists moral and legal restraint and humane responses to the terrible consequences of that logic.  The best hope for modifying unrestrained violence emerges directly from such a response.

Thus, with the release of the Senate report, human rights and other civic organizations, dissenting journalists, religious organizations, the newly radicalized legal profession, and humane people everywhere have an opportunity to work against the semi-coerced silencing of critical debate not only about torture but also about the link between torture, militarism and all inhumane acts of war.

Rob Crawford is Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences University of Washington, Tacoma.

September 27, 2014 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Israel bars entry to Al-Aqsa mosque to Palestinians for third consecutive day

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Al-Akhbar | September 26, 2014

Israel on Friday imposed restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the Al-Aqsa Mosque in annexed East Jerusalem for the third consecutive day.

Israeli police stepped up security around the mosque, deploying 2,000 troops in Jerusalem and erected roadblocks at entrances to Jerusalem’s Old City.

“Police prevent men under 50 and West Bankers from entering Al-Aqsa compound or Friday prayers,” Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, director-general of the Organization for Muslim Endowments and Al-Aqsa Affairs, told the Turkish Anadolu Agency.

Jews celebrated the start of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) on Wednesday evening, the first day of new Jewish year of 5775.

Israel typically imposes restrictions on Muslim worshipers’ access to Al-Aqsa during Jewish holidays

The Israeli authorities also closed the Ibrahimi Mosque to Muslims in the West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday and Thursday for Rosh Hashanah.

Israel is also closing the Gaza Strip’s only functioning commercial crossing – the Kerem Shalom border terminal – for four days starting Thursday for the Jewish holiday.

Khatib said that while Israel restricts the entry of Palestinians into Al-Aqsa mosque compound, it facilitates the entry of Zionist settlers into the holy site.

He said that at least 300 Zionist settlers and 120 Israeli soldiers had forced their way into the compound in the past three days.

In recent months, groups of extremist settlers – often accompanied by Israeli security forces – have repeatedly forced their way into the flashpoint compound.

The frequent violations anger Palestinian Muslims and occasionally lead to violent confrontations.

For Muslims, Al-Aqsa represents the world’s third holiest site.

Jews, for their part, refer to the area as the “Temple Mount,” claiming it was the site of two prominent Jewish temples in ancient times.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the Zionist state – a move never recognized by the international community.

In September 2000, a visit to the site by controversial Israeli leader Ariel Sharon sparked what later became known as the “Second Intifada” – a popular uprising against the Israeli occupation in which thousands of Palestinians were killed.

(Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)

September 26, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Two Palestinians shot dead by Israeli forces lead to clashes with over 30 injured

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International Solidarity Movement | September 23, 2014

Hebron, Occupied Palestine – Violence broke out on the streets of Hebron’s university district (al-Khalil) this morning when Israeli soldiers opened fire on unarmed demonstrators who had been protesting the murders of two Palestinians earlier that day.

Protestors took to the streets after Marwan Kawasme, 29, and Amar Abu Aisha, 32, were killed and burned by Israeli soldiers in the very early hours of this morning. The Israeli military alleged that the two men were behind the deaths of the three settler teenagers in June of this year.

The soldiers used tear gas canisters and live ammunition bullets during the clashes, with numerous injuries including a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the head and is now in a critical condition in hospital. A representative of the Red Cross stated to ISM that there were over 30 injuries, though the exact number is still unknown.

The building where the murders took place was also set on fire and destroyed.

Tensions had been high all morning as word of the two dead Palestinians spread throughout the area. By 8 am around 200 Palestinian residents had gathered to show their frustration at the senseless taking of life. Although stones were thrown, the protesters were unarmed and did not pose a threat to the violent occupying military. The Israeli army, still present after the earlier incident, unleashed dozens of canisters of tear gas leaving many people unable to breath and in need of medical help. Hemmed in and with nowhere to escape to, the protestors hid behind what ever they could find.

The situation further deteriorated when the Israeli soldiers, without warning began to fire live bullets at the protestors, hitting one boy in the head and injuring a number of others.

After an hour of further violence by the Israeli soldiers, the protestors cleared and the injured were taken away.

Throughout the earlier afternoon however similar incidents of unrest were reported around Hebron (al-Khalil).

September 23, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces detain 11 Palestinians overnight, 152 last week

Ma’an – September 21, 2014

RAMALLAH – Israeli forces detained 11 Palestinians overnight and a total of 152 during the third week of September, a rights group said Sunday.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said in a statement that Israeli soldiers raided Jenin overnight and detained Mahmoud Tawfiq Yahya.

In the Bethlehem district, forces detained Hamza Maali, Muhammad Maali, and Baha al-Teen.

Additionally, in Hebron, Wahid Sabarna, Faris al-Titi, Ahmad al-Qaqasmeh, and Muhammad al-Adra were arrested overnight, the statement said.

Soldiers also detained three Palestinians in the Nablus district — university lecturer Raed Abu Badawiyya, human rights activist Abd al-Rahman Rihan, and Fahd Sharaya.

Israeli forces have detained 152 Palestinians across the West Bank last week — 50 in Hebron, 40 in Jerusalem, 17 in Bethlehem, 16 in Ramallah, seven in Jenin, six in Tulkarem, six in Nablus, and ten in Salfit and Tubas, according to PPS.

September 21, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Florida Sheriffs Used SWAT-Style Attack to Enforce Barbershop License

By Noel Brinkerhoff and Steve Straehley | AllGov | September 20, 2014

Florida sheriff’s deputies, under the guise of checking professional licenses, raided an Orlando-area barbershop using SWAT-like tactics back in 2010 and now a federal appeals court has ruled that the search was illegal.

In a ruling that allows a lawsuit against the department to proceed, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals strongly criticized the Orange County Sheriff’s Office for storming the Strictly Skillz barbershop four years ago. “With some team members dressed in ballistic vests and masks, and with guns drawn, the deputies rushed into their target destinations, handcuffed the stunned occupants—and demanded to see their barbers’ licenses,” the court wrote. The raid was one of several deputies carried out against minority-owned barbershops and salons in 2010.

The justices said the deputies went too far in using a SWAT-like approach just to check whether barbers were licensed. In fact, inspectors from Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR) had inspected Strictly Skillz only two days prior to the raid and found everything in order.

Describing the raid as a “scene right out of a Hollywood movie,” the panel of judges wrote: “Unlike previous inspections of Strictly Skillz…the August 21 [2010] search was executed with a tremendous and disproportionate show of force, and no evidence exists that such force was justified.” The Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel reported that “no illegal or unlicensed activity was found” at the Pine Hills barbershop.

Working with DBPR, the deputy sheriffs claimed they suspected unlawful activity had taken place at the shop, which caters to minority customers, and others like it.

Tuesday’s ruling was a result of two deputies, Keith Vidler and Travis Leslie, petitioning  that they should be immune from any civil litigation brought against them for doing their jobs. But the judges rejected their position, noting that they had twice before ruled in other cases that those participating in a warrantless criminal raid were not entitled to immunity. “Today, we repeat that same message once again,” the court wrote. “We hope that the third time will be the charm.”

Both the DBPR and the Sheriff’s Office launched internal investigations following a report by the Orlando Sentinel exposing the raids.

The DBPR terminated several employees and settled out of court with barbers. But the Sheriff’s Office concluded deputies did nothing wrong.

To Learn More:

Excessive Force Used in 2010 Barbershop Raid, Appeal Court Says (by Jeff Weiner, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel)

SWAT-Style Barbershop Raid Nets Harsh Rebuke (by Lorraine Bailey, Courthouse News Service)

Brian Berry v. Travis Leslie (Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals) (pdf)

September 20, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | | Leave a comment

Jewish Groups Pay to Send U.S. Police to Train in Israel

By Danny Biederman and Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | September 19, 2014

The militarization of American police forces hasn’t been paid for by just the federal government. Pro-Israel groups in the U.S. have also played a role by financing trips for hundreds of law enforcement officers to travel to the Middle East for counterterrorism training, according to Ali Winston, a contributor to the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR).

Monies provided by such groups as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have made it possible for “at least 300 high-ranking sheriffs and police from agencies large and small – from New York and Maine to Orange County and Oakland, California” to attend privately funded seminars in Israel since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Winston discovered.

There, they have learned how Israeli security forces deal with demonstrators and armed threats by terrorists. The seminars include field trips to such sites as military installations, surveillance outposts, and checkpoints at the West Bank and the Israeli-Egyptian border. The training includes spending time observing operations conducted by Israel’s Border Patrol, Defense Forces, national police and intelligence services.

U.S. police officials who have undergone such training have come from the Los Angeles and New York police departments, the New York and New Jersey Port Authority Police Department, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police, and the Major County Sheriffs’ Association. The fact that the former chief of Missouri’s St. Louis County Police Department trained in Israel in 2011 recently came to light following the well-armed police response to protestors in St. Louis-based Ferguson.

Israeli training of U.S. police has also influenced the type of equipment being used. Security forces from both countries are now using some identical gear, including stun and tear gas grenades manufactured by the same U.S. companies—Combined Systems Inc. and Defense Technology Corp. A long-range “sound rifle” that emits ear-shattering noise to disperse crowds, which was used against 2005 West Bank protestors, was also used in the recent police action against protestors in Ferguson.

Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, told CIR that American police are often copying what Israel does in terms of crowd control and other techniques.

“Whether it is in Ferguson or L.A., we see a similar response all the time in the form of a disproportionate number of combat-ready police with military gear who are ready to use tear gas at short notice,” Syed said. “Whenever you find 50 people at a demonstration, there is always a SWAT team in sight or right around the corner.”

Israel’s security forces have also trained police in Mexico since 1994, originally in response to the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas.

September 19, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Indictment in case of US citizen beaten by Israeli soldiers an anomaly

By Jessica Purkiss | MEMO | September 16, 2014

Last Wednesday Israeli Police filed an indictment against an officer who was filmed beating Tariq Abu Khdeir, a 15 year old Palestinian-American teenager from Florida. He was beaten and arrested during a demonstration to protest the brutal murder of his cousin Mohammed Abu Khdeir. On 2nd July 16 year old Mohammed was abducted and burned alive by Israeli extremists in supposed revenge for the killing of three Israeli teenagers.

Tariq’s bruised face caused outrage in the United States and the State Department called for a “speedy, transparent and credible investigation and full accountability for any excessive use of force” used against the American teen. As a result of mounting pressure from the US, Tariq was released and able to fly home just under two weeks after the ordeal.

Speaking at a press conference following the news of the charges filed, Abu Khdeir and his mother called it “groundbreaking.” Suha Abu Khdeir, the boy’s mother, said it was “a shame that in order for [Israeli authorities] to take action it had to be an American citizen that this happened to.” They believe that the charges were only filed because the incident was recorded and because Tariq is a citizen of the United States.

In sharp contrast, at the time US pressure was mounting for the soldiers behind Tariq’s beating to be held accountable, Israeli General Danny Efrni, closed the investigation into the killing of Yousef Sami Shawamreh.

In March, Yousef and his two friends had gone to pick the thistle like plant gundelia which farmers from his village in the South of Hebron harvest at the same time every year, when he was fatally shot in the hip by an Israeli soldier.

According to the army, three Palestinians approached the fence and started cutting it. The guards performed the standard procedure for stopping a suspect, shooting first in the air and then toward the Palestinian. According to local residents, the separation wall annexed some of the villages land, including the land of Shawamreh family, and so the boys had crossed over to harvest the crop on the other side of it, a routine that the soldiers were aware of.

The two boys who were with Yousef claim they heard three shots, causing them to get down on the floor. Yousef then reportedly got up to cross back over into the village, when another shot was fired causing him to fall. One of the boys, Muntaser, attempted to carry him to safety, but was told by 6 soldiers who arrived at the scene to put Yousef down, threatening to shoot him if he did not obey.

The prosecution, however, found that, “the force prepared for the operation professionally and acted in line with rules for opening fire”- concluding there was no suspicion of a criminal act on their part.

Yousef’s case joins the hundreds of cases that fail to end in an indictment. An Amnesty International report found that 41 Palestinians had been killed by live ammunition in the West Bank between 2011 and 2013 alone. The same report found that between September 2000 and June 2013, only 16 investigations ended in indictment of Israeli soldiers.

According to statistics released last week rights group Yesh Din, in 2013, out of the 239 notifications submitted to the Military Police Criminal Investigations Division (MPCID), the body which deals with complaints regarding offenses committed by Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers, only six resulted in indictments.

Neta Patrick, Executive Director of Yesh Din said: “Every year, we caution against the sorry state of the investigation system. However, it appears that Israel refuses to deal with these structural failings or take minimal steps to correct them, despite harsh criticism voiced by public commissions and by civil society organizations.”

She added: “The inescapable conclusion is that the Government of Israel is not willing to investigate harm caused to Palestinians.”

September 17, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

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