Justice for victims of the police
By Alessandro Tinonga | January 5, 2011
OAKLAND, Calif.–On New Year’s Day, nearly 100 people gathered at the Fruitvale BART station to remember Oscar Grant III and other victims of police brutality.
Grant died in the early morning of January 1, 2009, after he was shot in the back by BART cop Johannes Mehserle. The incident was caught on several cell phone videos that showed that Grant was face down on the ground, with his hands behind his back, and was unarmed when he was shot.
“Two years ago Oscar Grant was murdered up there,” said Jack Bryson, father of Grant’s friends who witnessed the shooting. My spirits are low since the courts passed the unjust sentence.”
Since Grant’s death, a deeply committed movement has pressed for justice–with mixed results. Following a public outcry, Mehserle was arrested and charged with murder. After the trial was moved to Los Angeles County, Mehserle became the first California officer convicted of a wrongful on-duty shooting. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and sentenced to two years with credit for time served.
He will most likely be released within the next few months.
“You always hope your children will bury you, you never imagine you’d bury your children,” said Wanda Johnson, Grant’s mother. “I hope there will be no more cover ups and the police take responsibility. My heart bleeds everyday.”
As if to remind us that Oscar’s murder was not an isolated event by a “bad apple” (the story advanced by the media and local politicians), five people have been shot to death by Bay Area police in the past two months.
In November, Oakland police shot and killed a local barber named Derrick Jones. Despite early claims by police, Derrick was unarmed and was shot from the front.
The killing sparked outrage by the community and led to several protests. Members of the Jones family attended the vigil to support the family of Oscar Grant.
“We’re trying to make people more aware about what has happened with these murders,” said Frank Jones, Derrick’s father. “We have to stop the killings, that’s the number one thing. We are waiting for city hall but nothing concrete has happened.”
Relations between police and the community are severely strained. The public’s expectation of police accountability is so low that Police Chief Anthony Batts actually asked the FBI to investigate the shooting of Jones. If federal investigators step in, they will join investigations already underway in the Oakland’s internal affairs unit, homicide team and the district attorney’s office.
In another case, an unarmed woman recently was shot dead by San Leandro police in Oakland following a car chase. Police said that they were pursuing a stolen car which led to a crash in a residential neighborhood. Allegedly, the woman was shot for fear she would use the car to assault officers and escape.
However, a witness interviewed by the San Jose Mercury News said, “They [the police] crashed the car and right away he said, ‘Get out, get out,’ two times, and then he started dumping the whole clip on her. He actually reloaded when he was done.”
Despite Johannes Mesherle’s wrist-slap punishment, the recent string of shootings by police and a heavy police presence at the New Year’s Day vigil (including over a dozen patrol cars and an armored personnel carrier), everyone in the crowd stood firm in their commitment to achieve justice.
“We’re gathered here to remember…and celebrate life,” said Cephus Johnson, Oscar Grant’s uncle. “This is a time of celebration, reflection, and to embrace each other.”
A common message that most speakers related at the vigil is their optimism that the struggle will continue.
“It’s good we still got people out here,” said Bryson. “We won’t let things fade away.”
Cephus Johnson added, “[The] community still standing gives us the strength to keep fighting.”
See also:
Brutal Reprisals Against Peaceful GA Inmate Strikers Confirmed, Was One Victim Hidden For Weeks By Prison Authorities?
By Bruce A. Dixon | Black Agenda Report | January 5, 2010
Black, brown and white inmates in 6 Georgia prisons nonviolently locked themselves in their cells for several days beginning December 9, demanding wages for work, educational opportunities, adequate food and medical care, just parole decisions and access to their families. The peaceful inmate strikers, as we reported the following day, were already victims of brutal retaliation on the part of correctional officials, ranging from cutoffs of heat and hot water to unprovoked assaults by correctional employees upon prisoners.
It now appears that at least one inmate, Terrance Dean of Bibb County GA was brutally assaulted by staff at Macon State Prison on or about December 16 was so severely injured prison officials secretly evacuated him to a hospital in Atlanta without bothering to inform his family. It’s not known at this time which Department of Corrections officials authorized the secret evacuation, who decided not to notify Dean’s family of either his injuries or his whereabouts, or whether the prisoner was transported the roughly 130 miles to Atlanta via ground or air ambulance. The first word the prisoner’s family received of either the beating or Dean’s whereabouts was when they were contacted December 30 or 31 by the friends and associates of other prisoners on the outside. Neither the Department of Corrections nor Atlanta Medical Center, where the prisoner was held for about two weeks, has released any information about the extent of the prisoner’s injuries, his current medical condition, or how he was injured.
The morning of Friday, December 31, Dean’s sister, along with ACLU attorney Chara Jackson and GA state NAACP chief Ed DuBose representing the Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoner’s Rights showed up at the Atlanta Medical Center demanding to see the injured prisoner or at least have his whereabouts confirmed. After several hours of delay, correctional officials said his mother and sister, along with the attorney would be allowed to visit him at Jackson State Prison Sunday, January 2, but they offered no explanation of the reasons for his secretive transfer. Hospital officials also refused to offer any information on Dean’s injuries, even to his family, on grounds of doctor-patient confidentiality.
“We assume that state officials have a written policy requiring them to inform family members in the event of the serious injury of their loved ones in prison,” said the Georgia Green Party’s Hugh Esco. “If Georgia corrections personnel did brutally beat Terrance Dean, transfer him secretly more than a hundred miles from the scene of the crime scene and neglect to inform his family about his injuries or whereabouts they could be parties to a criminal conspiracy. The Green Party has written a letter to the outgoing and incoming governors asking them to look carefully at the events surrounding the case of Mr. Dean. We also note that the Department of Corrections promised access to the 37 prisoners whom it transferred as a result of the inmate strike that began on December 9. We hope this is a promise they keep, so that the public can get a complete and accurate picture of what goes on behind those walls.”
Dean’s sister, attorney Chara Jackson, and the NAACP’s Ed DuBose briefed the press at Atlanta Medical Center, including representatives from at least one local TV station repeatedly beginning at noon on Friday, and assured Black Agenda Report that they will attempt to see Terrance Dean at Jackson State Prison on Sunday, January 2. But as of nearly 24 hours later, on the morning of January 1, 2011 no corporate news outlet is publicly asking or answering any of the key questions around the assault on Terrance Dean, or what look for all the world like official attempts to conceal it from his family and the public.
“This is no surprise,” offered BAR executive editor Glen Ford. “For corporate journalists, a story without input from government or corporate officials is no story at all. For these so-called reporters, the story has a big hole in it as long as state officials decline to comment, even though official misconduct on the part of government IS the story. If the state declines to comment until Sunday or Monday, they will sit on the story till then. Establishment journalists are nothing if not disciplined and well-trained.”
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, based in Marietta GA, and a member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. Both Black Agenda Report and the Georgia Green Party are members of the Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoner’s Rights.
Background:
GA Prison Inmate Strike Enters New Phase, Prisoners Demand Human Rights, Education, Wages For Work
Video interview:
Elaine Brown on GA Prison Strike, December 14 Democracy Now Video Interview
And related video report:
Torture: America’s Brutal Prisons
Savaged by dogs, Electrocuted With Cattle Prods, Burned By Toxic Chemicals, Does such barbaric abuse inside U.S. jails explain the horrors that were committed in Iraq?
They are just some of the victims of wholesale torture taking place inside the U.S. prison system that we uncovered during a four-month investigation for the UK’s Channel 4 originally aired in 2005.
Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza twice overnight
Ma’an – 05/01/2011
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s airforce struck two areas in the Gaza Strip overnight, in what a statement said was a “response to this morning’s firing of a Qassam Rocket,” which allegedly hit outside Ashkelon on Tuesday.
According to the military, the sites targeted were a “Hamas terror activity center” in the central Gaza Strip and a smuggling tunnel in the south near Rafah.
While the military said “Direct hits were confirmed,” there have been no reports of injuries.
No resistance faction has claimed to have launched a projectile toward Israel since the evening of January 2.
In its statement, Israel noted that it “holds the Hamas terrorist organization solely responsible for maintaining the calm in the Gaza Strip and for any terrorist activity emanating from it,” and added that its forces would “continue to respond harshly to any attempt to use terror against the State of Israel.”
Reports in the Israeli media last week said a meeting between factions in Gaza resulted in a decision to stem the flow of projectiles fired toward Israel.
Israeli officials have reported an increase in projectile launches toward Israeli targets from within the Gaza Strip, while a report from the country’s intelligence office said the number of projectile attacks by Gaza militants had sharply fallen in 2010.
Facts contradict Israel’s assertions in Bilin death
Press release, Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, 4 January 2011
The family of Jawaher Abu Rahmah mourns during her funeral in the West Bank village of Bilin, 1 January 2011 (Oren Ziv/Activestills)
The following edited press release was issued by the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee on 4 January 2010:
Since yesterday, the Israeli army has been promoting in the Israeli media a mendacious version regarding the events that led to the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah of Bilin on Friday, 31 December 2010. According to the army’s version, Jawaher was not injured by tear gas and was possibly not even present at the demonstration. The army spokesperson did not see fit to publish an official statement on the matter, instead passing the information to the media in the name of anonymous “army sources.”
The facts of the matter — which are supported by the testimony of eyewitnesses who were present at the demonstration, as well as by the ambulance driver who evacuated her to the hospital — contradict completely the army’s version:
Soubhiya Abu Rahmah, mother of Jawaher: “I was standing beside Jawaher on the hill that is near the place where the demonstration took place, when we were injured by a cloud of tear gas. Jawaher began to feel unwell from inhaling the gas and started to move back from the place; soon after that she vomited and collapsed. We took her to the nearest road, and from there she was evacuated by ambulance to the hospital, where she remained until her death. She was not sick with cancer, nor did she have any other illness; and she was not asthmatic.”
Ilham Fathi: “I was on the roof of my house, which is located a few meters from where Jawaher stood. When the cloud of tear gas moved in our direction, I went downstairs in order to close the windows. While I was closing one of the windows, I saw her lose consciousness from the gas and ran over to her, together with Islam Abu Rahmah, in order to pull her away. We picked her up together and carried her to my garden. We called for help and she began to vomit and foam at the mouth.”
Islam Abu Rahmah: “I was standing with Jawaher, her mother and my grandmother in order to watch the confrontation that was going on just in front of us, in the area of the fence. The wind moved the gas in our direction, making our eyes itch and tear up. After that she [Jawaher] began to cough and foam at the mouth. Soon after that she became weak and lay down on the ground. I succeeded in carrying her as far as the Abu Khamis home, about 40 meters in the direction of her house, but then she became terribly weak, vomited violently and foamed at the mouth. She was having difficult breathing and lost her sense of direction. We got a few women to help her by waving a paper fan over her face in order to provide some oxygen. After that she was taken to the hospital.”
Saher Bisharat, the ambulance who evacuated Jawaher: “We received Jawaher near the entrance that is parallel to the fence, which is where the demonstration was taking place. She was still partially conscious, answered questions, and said that she had choked on gas. I took her straight to the hospital” (See the Palestine Red Crescent Society report).
The army has also claimed that the reports about Abu Rahmeh’s injuries started to arrive only several hours after the incident, in the evening. That claim is contradicted by a tweet sent by the nongovernmental organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which reported the injury of Jawaher, including her name, in real time (see JVP’s Twitter feed). The tweet was sent at 2:36pm (4:36 am on the West Coast of the United States). Wafa, the Palestinian news service, published a report that includes the injury of Jawaher Abu Rahmah shortly after the event (Four civilians injured and Israeli journalist arrested in Bilin march“).
Also according to “army sources,” which remain anonymous, Jawaher Abu Rahmah suffered from a serious illness, possibly leukemia; the “sources” postulate that she died from a pre-existing condition rather than tear gas inhalation. Several sources reject that claim.
Dr. Uday Abu Nahlah: “Jawaher Abu Rahmah was employed in my home on a regular basis. On Thursday she was at work as usual, healthy, only one day before her death.”
Jawaher had an inner ear infection, which affected her balance, for which she was recently given a CT scan. The radiologist who performed the CT scan, Dr. Hamis Al Sahfi’i, confirmed that the brain scan was normal (see the CT scan results). Jawaher had a minor health issue involving fluids in her inner ear. Her physicians insist that she did not suffer from any illness or from any symptoms that might, if combined with tear gas, lead to her death.
There is not, nor could there be, any indication that Abu Rahmah had cancer; in fact, she was in good health. The director of the hospital refutes the claim that she died from a pre-existing condition:
Mohammed Aida, director of the Ramallah health center where Abu Rahmah received her care: “Jawaher Abu Rahmah died from lung failure that was caused by tear gas inhalation, leading to a heart attack. She arrived at the hospital only partly conscious, and then lost consciousness completely” (See the hospital’s official medical report [PDF]).
Mohammed Khatib, a member of Bilin’s Popular Coordinating Committee: “The army is trying to evade its responsibility for Jawaher’s death with lies and invented narratives that have no basis. They are spreading these lies and invented narratives via the media, which is not bothering to do basic fact checking. Our version is supported by named sources and with medical documents. In a properly functioning society, the army’s version, which has been spread by anonymous sources, would not be considered worthy of publication.”
Israeli troops– which killed 176 students, teachers in Gaza war– now raid Jenin university dorms
Ma’an 03/01/2011
JENIN — Israeli forces briefly detained one man after they entered the a university residence in Jenin, telling students they were searching for wanted Palestinians.
Soldiers also erected checkpoints around the city, targeting three Jenin-area villages.
Eight military units entered a dorm housing students from the Arab American University, onlookers estimated, but a security guard said he would not allow soldiers to enter rooms in the female dormitory.
When the soldiers reached the women’s dorm, a security guard prevented their access, witnesses said, [the soldiers] then detained him for over an hour.
Residents said troops also raided Kafr Ra’i and Fahma villages southwest of Jenin. Further, the army installed two checkpoints – one between Rummana and Zububa villages west of the city and another between Zabda village and the university, locals said.
An army spokeswoman said one new checkpoint had been installed near Zububa, but that it was later removed. She was not immediately familiar with raids in the area but said she would look into it.
No further detentions were reported.
Settlers attack Hebron popular committee official
Ma’an – 02/01/2011
HEBRON — Settlers in Hebron attacked a Popular Committee official on Sunday, leaving him unconscious, witnesses said.
Azmi Ash-Shuyukhi was transferred by ambulance to Hebron’s government hospital after he was beaten while leading a solidarity tour near Yatta, south of the West Bank city.
After regaining consciousness, Ash-Shuyukhi said 10 settlers punched and kicked him, leaving cuts and bruises all over his body.
Israeli soldiers were present and witnessed the attack but did not intervene, he added.
Ash-Shuyukhi is the secretary-general of the local popular committee.
Meanwhile, journalist Naser Ash-Shuyukhi said settlers punctured the tires of his car while he covered events in the area.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem describes attacks by settlers against Palestinians as “routine,” but says Israeli authorities “employ an undeclared policy of leniency and compromise toward Israeli civilians who harm Palestinians.”
A Tiny Slice of the Palestinian Experience
By Alex Kane | January 2, 2010
Ramallah, West Bank–It’s a far cry from the daily checkpoints, beatings, tear-gassing and harassment that Palestinians have to go through, but today I can say that a tiny slice of the Palestinian experience became alive to me.
My arrival at Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel early today was the start of a long trip down Israeli security harassment lane. After I showed my passport to an Israeli immigration agent, I was taken to a holding room, where I joined Palestinians trying to visit family and other–mostly non-white–people. Three hours later, I was taken to a separate room, where I was questioned by a bald Israeli who said he was from the Ministry of Defense.
They immediately knew that my back story of why I came to Israel was false, and I had to admit I planned on visiting the West Bank. After that came questions about my trip last year to Gaza, who I met with there, what I wanted to do in the West Bank and what the delegation I joined today was all about. Absurdly, the defense official hinted that I was suspected of “terrorism”–the term used by Israel and the U.S. to smear anyone who dissents against their inhumane policies of occupation and war. The agent also was curious to find out why I–as a Jew–was on the “Palestinian side,” working “against my homeland and my father’s,” to which I responded that Israel is not my homeland, and that I was for the human rights of all people, including Palestinians. While these questions were fired at me, pictures of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres stared down at me, as if to mock me.
I was sent back to the holding room without my passport, where I spent the rest of my time sleeping, watching Curb Your Enthusiasm (a perfect mood-lifter) and messaging Israeli blogger Didi Remez over Twitter with updates on what was going on.
Five hours later, after I though I was to be deported or detained, I was let out of the grasp of Israeli security on the condition that I not enter the Palestinian territories. As I drove to Ramallah, I passed by countless West Bank settlements–with their gleaming lights–and Palestinian villages surrounded by the illegal colonies. There was no discernible difference between Israel proper and settlement areas over the Green Line, something that I marveled at even though I knew that was the case.
And now I’m here, back in Palestine after one year. One can only be amazed that the Palestinian people remain so strong and steadfast after enduring 62 years of Israeli security harassment far worse than what I went through today.
Israeli Army Injured Over 1,000 Palestinian Demonstrators in 2010
02 January 2011 | Sergio Yahni, Alternative Information Center (AIC)
A report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that during the last week of 2010, Israeli forces injured 38 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, more than half of whom were participating in weekly demonstrations against the Separation Wall, settlements and land confiscations.
The report further notes that during 2010, Israeli forces injured 1,145 Palestinians in the West Bank, a 45% increase over 2009.
In confrontations that broke out on 27 December between Palestinian residents of the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan and Israeli forces, eight Palestinians were injured. The report also notes a number of injuries due to tear gas inhalation and the detention of five Palestinians, including a 13 year old child. The confrontations broke out as a result the large number of Israeli forces stationed in Silwan prior to a visit by Israeli Knesset members, who came to express solidarity with the settlement building Beit Yonathan, established in the middle of Silwan and part of which is supposed to be sealed by order of the court.
The report also details that 20 Palestinians and one international activist were injured in the weekly demonstrations in the West Bank against the Wall, settlement expansion, the total closure imposed on the main commercial road in Hebron and the uprooting of olive trees.
Five Palestinians and two international activists were injured in two additional demonstrations against restrictions on freedom of movement into East Jerusalem and Ramallah.
As a result of Israel’s violent policy of demonstration dispersal, on the first day of 2011 36 year old Bil’in resident Jawaher Abu Rahmah died from inhalation of tear gas.
According to demonstrators who were there, Israeli soldiers shot tremendous amounts of tear gas which was particularly strong. After breathing it Abu Rahmah choked, and was brought to a Ramallah hospital where it was diagnosed that she was suffering from gas poisoning. The doctors told her family members that she was not responding to treatment. Overnight her condition worsened and at 9.00 a.m. the next morning she was pronounced dead.
This is not the first time that a person is killed due to tear gas in 2010. On 24 September Mohammed Abu Sneneh, a 14 month old baby, died in the East Jerusalem village of Issawiya after he inhaled tear gas. The baby had been inside his house, into which tear gas shot by the Israeli police penetrated.
Activists in various Palestinian popular committees complain that in numerous cases, Israeli forces fire expired tear gas and that breathing this causes more damage.
Jawaher is the sister of Bassem Abu Rahmah, who was killed when Israeli soldiers shot an extended range tear gas canister directly at him during a demonstration in Bil’in on 17 April 2009.
Translated to English by the Alternative Information Center (AIC).
Detention and Torture
Obama’s Plan for Indefinite Detentions
By JENNIFER VAN BERGEN and DOUGLAS VALENTINE | December 30, 2010
Author’s Note: With the news of President Obama’s plan to make indefinite detentions a permanent feature of our legal landscape, we thought it apropos to re-publish an updated, edited excerpt from a law review article we wrote in 2006 THE DANGEROUS WORLD OF INDEFINITE DETENTIONS: VIETNAM TO ABU GHRAIB.
Where you find administrative detentions, you are likely to find torture. This connection exists even where it is clear that investigations and screenings leading to such detentions are, as Alberto Gonzales put it, “not haphazard, but elaborate, and careful . . . reasoned and deliberate.”
This reason is simple and can be traced to the elements of administrative detention itself: the absence of human rights safeguards and normal legal guarantees such as due process, habeas corpus, fair trial, confidential legal counsel, and judicial review; vague and confusing definitions, standards, and procedures; inadequate adversarial procedural oversight; excessive Executive Branch power stemming from prolonged emergencies; and the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency, or other secret, thus unaccountable, Executive Branch agencies.
Without such protections, justice does not work and human rights are jeopardized. As William F. Schultz, Executive Director of Amnesty International, put it:
“[W]e are witnessing not just a series of brutal but fundamentally independent human rights violations committed by disparate governments around the globe. [W]e are witnessing something far more fundamental and far more dangerous. [W]e are witnessing the orchestrated destruction by the United States of the very basis, the fragile scaffolding, upon which international human rights have been built, painstakingly, bit by bit by bit, since the end of World War II.”
This is a remarkable statement that was originally made about the Bush Administration, but it applies equally as well now to the Obama Administration. The system was intentionally broken by the Bush Administration, just as it was by the Johnson and Nixon Administrations during the Vietnam War. And now Obama plans to sanctify this wrong and make it a permanent feature of American law.
Obama’s indefinite detention follows, at least in idea, the precedent set by and codified in the PATRIOT Act, enacted six weeks after 9/11. Section 412, which is still on the books, provides for the “mandatory detention of suspected terrorists.” This section nowhere refers to the detentions as “administrative detentions,” which result from administrative (that is, Executive Branch), not judicial, determinations. Yet this is exactly what they are. And they have been used before. The U.S. government’s internment of Japanese immigrants during the Second World War is perhaps the most recognizable example.
Section 412(a) authorizes the Attorney General to take into custody any alien whom he certifies as a terrorist. The alien may be detained indefinitely, in renewable periods of six months, as long as the Attorney General determines that he is a threat to national security, or endangers some individual or the general public.
In addition to PATRIOT Act detentions, the November 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF), which preceded the PATRIOT Act, has been used by the DOJ to justify administrative detentions.
Scholars have raised concerns about the PATRIOT Act detention provisions, as well as detentions under AUMF, which allow the Secretary of Defense to detain designated alien terrorist suspects without the restrictions that Section 412 contains. Additionally, military detentions of U.S. citizens Yaser Esam Hamdi, Jose Padilla, and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri have raised concerns. President Bush, citing his power as Commander-in-Chief and the laws of war, unilaterally declared these individuals “unlawful enemy combatants” subject to indefinite detention without trial or access to an attorney and without providing for a status determination hearing by a competent tribunal, which is required by the Geneva Conventions. The central concern raised by qualified legal observers about these detentions generally involves the important issues of due process and other constitutional and/or human rights guarantees.
Administrative detentions — sometimes called preventive detentions — are, by definition and practice, sought only during “national emergencies.” The emergency is the rationale for depriving suspected terrorists of adequate due process or human rights safeguards. A declaration of a national emergency is generally made unilaterally by the President and, once declared, the administrative detention laws may stay on the books for decades. This is one of the primary reasons why they are so dangerous, for without any Congressional determination of the beginning or end of hostilities, these inherently anti-democratic laws may be used for purposes of political repression.
However, few legal scholars or government officials have discussed the historically established connection between administrative detentions and torture. The subject only came into public consciousness with the revelation that U.S. soldiers were torturing terrorist suspects at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and the detention facilities at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Since then, American and foreign journalists and human rights activists began to raise suspicions, subsequently borne out, that U.S. soldiers and CIA officers were routinely torturing terrorist suspects at numerous detention centers around the world. Nonetheless, to date, nothing has been done to ameliorate concerns about these detentions.
The conjoining of administrative detentions and torture is sadly by no means new to U.S. Government policies and practices. Specifically, during the Vietnam War, the United States engaged in a massive program of indefinite administrative detentions in South Vietnam of persons considered “dangerous to the national security” that engendered widespread torture and deaths of terrorist suspects.
There are many similarities between the Vietnam detentions and those used in the War on Terror, and those similarities are found not only within the procedures themselves but in the rationales for and policies behind them and even in the conditions of fear that created them.The Vietnam detention procedures provide a clear and compelling flow chart of the web of connections between administrative detentions, intelligence laws, national security courts (i.e. courts intended to deal exclusively with national security concerns), violations of international law (particularly the Geneva Conventions), and torture. These components now also appear in U.S. law and policies in the War on Terror and are continued, codified, and sanctified in Obama’s intended executive order.
One would have thought that a nation which was in large part responsible for the rescue of tens of thousands of Concentration Camp survivors and was a judicial participant in one of the most significant war crimes tribunals in history, the Nuremburg trials, would know better. How American officials could justify the detention camps in Vietnam, knowing about the torture and murders of innocents in them, after having witnessed Hitler’s internment camps and learned of the horrors he perpetrated in them, is an unanswered question. But, after the revelations of Vietnam — which all came out in congressional hearings in 1971 that led to both the repeal of the EDA and ultimately by degrees to “reforms” of the CIA’s Phoenix Program, contributing to the end of that protracted War, — Section 412 of the PATRIOT Act, Bush’s Military Commissions and unlawful enemy combatant designations, and now, Obama’s executive order establishing permanent indefinite detention are inexcusable.
For the full law review article, click here.
Jennifer Van Bergen, J.D., M.S.I.E., is the founder of the 12th Generation Institute, and author of THE TWILIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: THE BUSH PLAN FOR AMERICA (Common Courage Press, 2004) and Archetypes for Writers: Using the Power of Your Subconscious (Michael Weise Productions, 2007). She is currently working under contract with Bucknell University Press on a biography of Leonora Sansay, an early American novelist who was involved in the Aaron Burr Conspiracy, and on a screenplay about the conspiracy. She can be reached at jennifer.vanbergen@gmail.com.
Douglas Valentine is the author of numerous articles and five books: THE HOTEL TACLOBAN (1984), THE PHOENIX PROGRAM (1990), TDY (2000), THE STRENGTH OF THE WOLF (2004), and THE STRENGTH OF THE PACK (2009) (the latter two are histories of federal drug law enforcement). See: http://www.douglasvalentine.com/.
Related article
1,100 Palestinian Children Detained During 2010
By Ane Irazabal – IMEMC & Agencies – December 30, 2010
The Palestinian Authority Ministry of Detainees’ Affairs reported, on Wednesday, that Israeli forces arrested 1,100 Palestinian children in 2010, most of them in East Jerusalem and Hebron.
File (photo from Al-awda.org)
In a report, PA Detainees’ Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe claimed that these arrests are reflecting the systematic attacks that Palestinian youth suffer in the Occupied Territories on the daily basis.
He also stressed that during 2010 the higher number of detentions were made in the occupied East Jerusalem, about 500, and Hebron, stressing that children were often put under house arrest.
In addition, the report also denounced other practices that the Palestinian children suffer from the Israeli army, especially, its use as human shields.
According to Defence of Children International – Palestine, since April 2004, 16 Palestinian children suffered from this practice, although it is considered illegal by both international and Israeli law.
Recently, two soldiers from the Givati Brigade became the first soldiers to be charged and convicted of using a child as a human shield. The two soldiers were demoted from the rank of staff sergeant to sergeant and each given a three-month suspended prison sentence.
In Israel, Non-Violent Solidarity Activist Goes to Prison, Anti-Gay Terrorist Gets Community Service
By Max Blumenthal | Mondoweiss | December 28, 2010
On December 27, Anarchists Against the Wall co-founder Jonathan Pollak was slapped with a three month prison sentence for illegal assembly. He was convicted by an Israeli magistrate judge for his participation in a January 2008 Critical Mass bike ride through the streets of Tel Aviv in protest of Israel’s brutal military assault on the Gaza Strip. Though Pollak was offered community service, he accepted prison time because he was convinced that he had done nothing wrong.
The day before Pollak was sentenced, an Israeli judge handed down a sentence of six months of community service to Michael Naky. Naky’s crime? He helped devise and detonate a pipe bomb in order to kill as many homosexuals as possible at the 2007 Jerusalem gay pride parade.
In a single day in Israel’s kangaroo courts, a right-wing terrorist was sentenced to a few months of street cleaning while a non-violent activist dedicated to stopping the occupation was jailed under the most specious charges. And while Pollak’s sentencing was reported with great fanfare in Israel’s major papers, Naky’s passed below the radar (Yedioth devoted just six lines). The contrast in punishments represented just another symptom of a sick society unwilling to face the Molock in the mirror.
The state has made little effort to disguise the political nature of Pollak’s prosecution. He was not a ringleader of the Critical Mass protest, nor did he behave in an unusual manner. He simply rode his bike slowly, disrupting the normal flow of traffic along with dozens of demonstrators. However, the police recognized him as a prominent organizer of unarmed protests against the Israeli military repression in the West Bank, singled him out and arrested him.
I have documented Pollak’s actions at protests across the West Bank, where he spends most of his weekends, and I witnessed the respect he has earned from the residents of besieged Palestinian villages who count on him as their liaison to the outside world — a realm that the state of Israel has largely forbidden them from interacting with. Last summer, Pollak helped me gain entry into Ofer Military Prison to witness the show trials of Palestinian popular committee members who organize the unarmed protests against the Israeli segregation wall. He has done the same for numerous European diplomats, including British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who declared after a harrowing tour of the Israeli Occupation that Pollak helped arrange: “Popular resistance to the Occupation is the sole remaining possible alternative for the Palestinians to achieve their rights and avoid armed struggle.”
It is clear why the Israeli justice system acted in such a draconian fashion against Pollak: His activism is making an impact against the Occupation.
Association for Civil Rights in Israel chief legal counsel Dan Yakir described the political nature of Pollak’s prosecution succinctly when he said, “The fact that Pollak was the only one arrested, even though he behaved just like the rest of the protesters, and the fact that bicycle demonstrations are usually held without police involvement raises a strong suspicion regarding personal persecution and a severe blow for freedom of expression, just because of his opinions. A prison sentence in the wake of a protest is an extreme and exaggerated punishment.”
Naky’s lenient sentencing appeared to have been influenced by politics as well, especially when viewed in light of the state’s treatment of other right-wing terrorists. Chaim Pearlman, a fanatical settler suspected of stabbing to death three Palestinians in cold blood, was set free after a month in Shin Bet custody. And Jack Teitel, another Jewish settler convicted of randomly murdering several Palestinians and attempting to kill the Israeli left-wing intellectual Zeev Sternhell (Teitel also planned to attack the 2006 Jerusalem gay pride parade), was allowed to plead insanity and ruled unfit to stand trial.
The Israeli justice system has extended no such privileges to Palestinians like Ibrahim Amireh orAbdullah Abu Rahmeh, who rot in Israeli military prisons for resisting their dispossession through unarmed protest. And the state is leveling every legal weapon at its disposal against activists like Pollak, who declared at his sentencing hearing: “I will go to prison wholeheartedly and with my head held high. It will be the justice system itself, I believe, that ought to lower its eyes in the face of the suffering inflicted on Gaza’s inhabitants, just like it lowers its eyes and averts its vision each and every day when faced with the realities of the occupation.”
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From the Archives
Israel Is A Genocidal Society
The Israeli Political Spectrum From The “Liberal Left” To The Far Right, Is United In Genocide
The Dissident | May 5, 2026
… The fundamental issue of Israel is not Benjamin Netanyahu, but the fact that Israel is overwhelmingly a bloodthirsty, war-ready, genocidal society.
Historian Zachary Foster has documented that the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis have supported every Israeli war since the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, writing:
2006
86% of the Israeli adult population justified “the IDF operation in Lebanon against Hizbollah,” or 2006 Lebanon War, in which Israel killed 1,191 people, the vast majority civilians according to HRW (Note that the % of Jewish Israelis who supported the war was even higher)2008-2009
82% of the Israeli public thought that the 2008-9 war on Gaza was justified (in which Israel killed 1,417 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians.) Note that the % of Jewish Israelis who supported the war was even higher2012
90% of Israeli Jews supported war on Gaza ( in which Israel killed 160 Palestinians, 66% civilians)2014
95% of Jewish Israelis believed the war on Gaza was justified (in which Israel killed 2,310 Palestinians, 70% civilians)2021
72% of Israelis believed the war on Gaza should continue (as of May 21) after Israel had already killed 250 Palestinians in Gaza, vast majority civilians. The % of Jewish Israelis who supported killing more Palestinians was much higher.2024
A January poll found 95% of Jewish Israelis thought the Israeli military was using either the “appropriate” amount of force or “too little” force in Gaza at a time when Israel had already killed >25,700 Palestinians in Gaza.2024
In September, 90% of Jewish Israelis supported the war on Lebanon (in which Israel killed 800+, including hundreds of civilians)2025
In March, 82% of Israeli Jews supported the forced expulsion of residents of Gaza, Israel’s main goal in it’s genocide & war on Gaza.2025
In June, 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the war on Iran known as the “twelve day war”2026
On March 4, 93% of Israeli Jews expressed support for the war on Iran. 97% of “right-wing” Jewish Israelis support it, compared with 93% in the center and 76% on the left.
The overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis also have openly genocidal views towards Palestinians.
Polls in Israel have shown that:
- 84% of the (Israeli )public gives the IDF an excellent or very good grade regarding the moral conduct of the army
- 75% of Jewish Israelis agree with the idea that ‘there are no innocents in Gaza.’
- A vast majority of Israeli Jews – 79 percent – say they are ‘not so troubled’ or ‘not troubled at all’ by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza.
The fundamental problem in Israel is Zionism, not Benjamin Netanyahu. – Full article
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