Relocating Guantánamo
Silence of the Lamb-like Lawyers
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS | 12-22-09
Obama’s dwindling band of true believers has taken heart that their man has finally delivered on one of his many promises–the closing of the Guantanamo prison. But the prison is not being closed. It is being moved to Illinois, if the Republicans permit.
In truth, Obama has handed his supporters another defeat. Closing Guantanamo meant ceasing to hold people in violation of our legal principles of habeas corpus and due process and ceasing to torture them in violation of US and international laws.
All Obama would be doing would be moving 100 people, against whom the US government is unable to bring a case, from the prison in Guantanamo to a prison in Thomson, Illinois.
Are the residents of Thomson despondent that the US government has chosen their town as the site on which to continue its blatant violation of US legal principles? No, the residents are happy. It means jobs.
The hapless prisoners had a better chance of obtaining release from Guantanamo. Now the prisoners are up against two US senators, a US representative, a mayor, and a state governor who have a vested interest in the prisoners’ permanent detention in order to protect the new prison jobs in the hamlet devastated by unemployment.
Neither the public nor the media have ever shown any interest in how the detainees came to be incarcerated. Most of the detainees were unprotected people who were captured by Afghan war lords and sold to the Americans as “terrorists” in order to collect a proffered bounty. It was enough for the public and the media that the Defense Secretary at the time, Donald Rumsfeld, declared the Guantanamo detainees to be the “780 most dangerous people on earth.”
The vast majority have been released after years of abuse. The 100 who are slated to be removed to Illinois have apparently been so badly abused that the US government is afraid to release them because of the testimony the prisoners could give to human rights organizations and foreign media about their mistreatment.
Our British allies are showing more moral conscience than Americans are able to muster. Former PM Tony Blair, who provided cover for President Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq, is being damned for his crimes by UK officialdom testifying before the Chilcot Inquiry.
The London Times on December 14 summed up the case against Blair in a headline: “Intoxicated by Power, Blair Tricked Us Into War.” Two days later the British First Post declared: “War Crime Case Against Tony Blair Now Rock-solid.” In an unguarded moment Blair let it slip that he favored a conspiracy for war regardless of the validity of the excuse [weapons of mass destruction] used to justify the invasion.
The movement to bring Blair to trial as a war criminal is gathering steam. Writing in the First Post Neil Clark reported: “There is widespread contempt for a man [Blair] who has made millions [his reward from the Bush regime] while Iraqis die in their hundreds of thousands due to the havoc unleashed by the illegal invasion, and who, with breathtaking arrogance, seems to regard himself as above the rules of international law.” Clark notes that the West’s practice of shipping Serbian and African leaders off to the War Crimes Tribunal, while exempting itself, is wearing thin.
In the US, of course, there is no such attempt to hold to account Bush, Cheney, Condi Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the large number of war criminals that comprised the Bush Regime. Indeed, Obama, whom Republicans love to hate, has gone out of his way to protect the Bush cohort from being held accountable.
Here in Great Moral America we only hold accountable celebrities and politicians for their sexual indiscretions. Tiger Woods is paying a bigger price for his girlfriends than Bush or Cheney will ever pay for the deaths and ruined lives of millions of people. The consulting company, Accenture Plc, which based its marketing program on Tiger Woods, has removed Woods from its Web site. Gillette announced that the company is dropping Woods from its print and broadcast ads. AT&T says it is re-evaluating the company’s relationship with Woods.
Apparently, Americans regard sexual infidelity as far more serious than invading countries on the basis of false charges and deception, invasions that have caused the deaths and displacement of millions of innocent people. Remember, the House impeached President Clinton not for his war crimes in Serbia, but for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Americans are more upset by Tiger Woods’ sexual affairs than they are by the Bush and Obama administrations’ destruction of US civil liberty. Americans don’t seem to mind that “their” government for the last 8 years has resorted to the detention practices of 1,000 years ago–simply grab a person and throw him into a dungeon forever without bringing charges and obtaining a conviction.
According to polls, Americans support torture, a violation of both US and international law, and Americans don’t mind that their government violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and spies on them without obtaining warrants from a court. Apparently, the brave citizens of the “sole remaining superpower” are so afraid of terrorists that they are content to give up liberty for safety, an impossible feat.
With stunning insouciance, Americans have given up the rule of law that protected their liberty. The silence of law schools and bar associations indicates that the age of liberty has passed. In short, the American people support tyranny. And that’s where they are headed.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. His new book, How the Economy was Lost, will be published next month by AK Press / CounterPunch. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
British Army ‘waterboarded’ suspects in 70s
Evidence casts doubt on guilt of man sentenced to hang for killing soldier
* Ian Cobain
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 December 2009 21.52 GMT
Evidence that the British army subjected prisoners in Northern Ireland to waterboarding during interrogations in the 1970s is emerging after one of the alleged victims launched an appeal against his conviction for murder.
Liam Holden became the last person in the United Kingdom to be sentenced to hang after being convicted in 1973 of the murder of a soldier, largely on the basis of an unsigned confession. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he spent 17 years behind bars.
The jury did not believe Holden’s insistence that he made the confession only because he had been held down by members of the Parachute Regiment, whom he says placed a towel over his face before pouring water from a bucket over his nose and mouth, giving him the impression that he was drowning.
But now the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has referred Holden’s case to the court of appeal in Belfast after unearthing new evidence, and because of doubts about “the admissibility and reliability” of his confession. The commission says it believes “there is a real possibility” his conviction will be quashed. After a preliminary hearing earlier this month, Holden’s appeal was adjourned to the new year.
However, the account that Holden gave at his trial is remarkably similar to those that have emerged since the CIA began using waterboarding techniques while interrogating al-Qaida suspects during the so-called war on terror.
Lawyers who have taken up his case have identified a second man who gave a similar account of being waterboarded after being arrested by detectives of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and questioned about the murder of a police constable. In a statement to a doctor in April 1978, this man said officers had put a towel over his face and poured water over his nose and mouth, and that “this was frightening and was repeated on a number of occasions”. He was eventually released without charge. The CCRC also has a statement taken from a third man who says he was waterboarded by the British army in the early 70s.
All of the allegations of waterboarding come from a period after March 1972, when the then prime minister, Ted Heath, banned five other notorious torture methods which were subsequently condemned by the European court of human rights as being inhuman and degrading.
Holden, a Roman Catholic, was 19 and a chef when he was detained during a raid by soldiers of the Parachute Regiment on his parents’ home in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast in October 1972. Apparently acting on a tipoff from an informer, the soldiers accused Holden of being the sniper who, a month earlier, had shot dead Private Frank Bell of the regiment’s 2nd Battalion. Bell had just turned 18 and had joined the regiment six weeks earlier. He was the 100th British soldier to die in Northern Ireland that year.
When Holden came to trial in April 1973 he told the jury he had been playing cards with his brother and two friends in a public place at the time Bell was shot. He said that after being arrested in his bed the soldiers had taken him to their base on Black Mountain, west of Belfast, where he was beaten, burned with a cigarette lighter, hooded and threatened with execution.
Holden also gave a detailed account of being waterboarded, although he did not use that term. In a court report published the following day, the Belfast Telegraph said the defendant told the jury that he had been pushed into a cubicle where he was held down by six men, that a towel was placed over his head, and that water was then poured slowly over his face from a bucket. “It nearly put me unconscious,” Holden was quoted as saying. “It nearly drowned me and stopped me from breathing. This went on for a minute.” A short while later he was subjected to the same treatment again, he said.
A sergeant from the Parachute Regiment and a British army captain told the court that Holden had confessed to the shooting during an “interview”. The unnamed sergeant said Holden had wanted to confess to the murder because “he wanted to get it off his chest”, while the officer said the teenager had told him that he had left the IRA a short while later because he felt such remorse.
The jury took less than 75 minutes to convict Holden of capital murder, and the judge, Sir Robert Lowry, told him: “The sentence of the court is that you will suffer death in the manner authorised by law.” The then Northern Ireland secretary, William Whitelaw, commuted the sentence the following month, and the death penalty was abolished in Northern Ireland shortly afterwards. Holden did not appeal, however, with relatives saying at the time that he believed his trial had been “rigged” and a “farce”.
He was eventually released from prison in 1989.
Holden’s solicitor, Patricia Coyle, said: “At trial Mr Holden gave compelling evidence that the alleged confession was obtained by the army using water torture. He spent 17 years in jail. He is looking forward to the court hearing his appeal.”
The new evidence that the CCRC has submitted to the court of appeal is being kept secret. The CCRC is unwilling to discuss this material, other than to say that it has not yet been disclosed at the request of the public body from which it was obtained. Holden’s lawyers are now asking for it to be disclosed.
The Ministry of Defence said it was unable to confirm whether British service personnel had received instruction in waterboarding techniques as part of their counterinterrogation training at that time, and it would not disclose whether personnel currently receive such instruction “for reasons of operational security”.
There is evidence that such instruction has been given, however. In 2005 Rod Richard, the former Welsh Office minister, told a Welsh newspaper that he had been waterboarded during his counterinterrogation training as a Royal Marines officer in the late 60s.
The Guardian has spoken to a former Royal Marines officer who says that he and his fellow officers and their men were all waterboarded at the end of their escape and evasion training at Lympstone, Devon, in the late 60s and early 70s. “You were tied to a chair and they would tip you over on your back, put a towel over your face and pour water over you. I can’t recall what we called it – not waterboarding – but it produced a drowning sensation and it was pretty unpleasant.”
Seven months before Holden was detained by British soldiers, the Heath government had publicly repudiated and banned five “interrogation techniques”. RUC officers had learned the techniques – hooding, sleep deprivation, starvation and the use of stress positions and noise – from British military intelligence officers, but Heath assured the Commons that they “will not be used in future as an aid to interrogation”.
There were subsequently unconfirmed allegations that the British army had experimented with other methods of torture, including electric shocks, and the use of drugs. Towards the end of the decade, Amnesty International was reporting that terrorism suspects were again being mistreated, this time by RUC detectives, “with sufficient frequency to warrant the establishment of a public inquiry”.
A number of Republican former prisoners have told the Guardian that waterboarding was used as a form of punishment, as well as a means of extracting confessions.
Where is the Palestinian Gandhi? In Israeli prison, of course!
By Jo Ehrlich | December 21, 2009
Palestinian Joke #134
Question: Where can Israel find the Palestinian Gandhi?
Answer: Exactly where they put him, in administrative detention.
Not that I’m in any way playing into the Palestinian Gandhi dialogue, I think its actually pretty diversionary/racist. But sometimes you have to laugh in order not to cry right?
Jamal Juma’, the director of the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, also known as Stop the Wall, was summoned for interrogation on the night of December 15th. Jamal has been detained by the Israeli military and has not had access to a lawyer since the 16th of December. I was in the Stop the Wall Office on the 15th of December. I said hi to Jamal. I’ve met him on a couple of occasions. He is a quiet man with a commanding presence.
I read the news of his arrest last night, sitting in the home of another non-violent Palestinian activist, Musa Abu Maria of the Palestine Solidarity Project. He was not surprised to hear about Jamal’s arrest. He told me the story of his first arrest and time in prison. An IDF commander showed up at his home and asked him to come with him for a few hours to talk over a cup of tea. Musa asked if he could have a minute to say goodbye to his family. He knew what tea and talk were code words for. He was nineteen years old.
If past actions set precedence and they do. Jamal will likely not be charged with any crime (because he has not committed one) but will be held in prison for a long time (interrogated, tortured) without charges. Israel does this through a process called administrative detention that allows the state to hold Palestinians for periods of three months at a time (renewable indefinitely) without charges.
Mohammad Othman, another Stop the Wall executive member has been detained by Israel since September. His first administrative detention order expires this week. Jamal is set to be brought in front of a judge today.
Mohammad, Jamal and many of the scores of other Palestinian’s with orders of administrative detention, are in Israeli prisons not because they have committed a crime but because they are non-violent anti-occupation activists. Israel has begun to understand that non-violent activism in Palestine is a serious threat to the occupation. Those engaged in non-violent struggle often have an excellent analysis, they are determined and they are gaining traction domestically and platforms for spreading their message internationally. It scares the shit out of Israel so it is not surprising that they are responding with repressive military actions. This is a military occupation and it maintains itself by using the tactics military oppression.
Ahmadinejad to seek UN compensation for WWII
Press TV – December 19, 2009 07:45:26 GMT
Iranian workers are forced by occupying troops to load their own requisitioned trains during the Second World War.
Iran’s president says he will soon write to the UN Secretary-General asking for his country to be compensated for World War II damages.
“We will seek compensation for World War II damages. I have assigned a team to calculate the costs,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a Friday press conference in the Danish capital.
“I will write a letter to the UN Secretary-General [Ban Ki-moon] asking for Iran to be compensated for the damages,” he added, pointing out that such a move is necessary to ensure that justice was served.
Ahmadinejad told the reporters that the countries that won the Second World War had inflicted a lot of damage on Iran by invading the country and using its resources.
The president added that while the former Soviet Union, the United States and Britain received compensation after the conflict, Iran had been given nothing to make up for the suffering its people had endured.
“During this period, the Iranian people were subjected to a great deal of pressure and the country suffered a great deal of damages but Iran was not paid any compensation,” Ahmadinejad explained.
At the start of World War II, Iran declared its neutrality, but the country was soon invaded by both Britain and the Soviet Union on August 26, 1941 in Operation Countenance.
Iran’s refusal to give into Allied demands and expel all German nationals from the country was the excuse they needed to occupy the country. Within months of the invasion Iran became known as “The Bridge of Victory” to the Allies.
When invading the Soviet Union in 1941, the Allies urgently needed to transport war materiel across Iran to the Soviet Union.
The effects of the war, however, were very catastrophic for Iran. Food and other essential items were scarce and severe inflation imposed great hardship on the lower and middle classes as the needs of foreign troops were prioritized.
“Not only was Iran deprived of any compensation for World War II, but 10 years later, the Americans even went as far as arranging a coup to reverse a popular uprising that had led to the nationalization of oil,” said Ahmadinejad.
In 1953, Washington orchestrated a coup against the popular and democratically-elected Iranian prime minister of the time, Mohammad Mosaddeq, whose efforts led to the nationalization of the country’s oil industry.
Almost half a century later, former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright acknowledged the pivotal role that the US played in the coup, coming closer than any other American diplomat to apologizing for the intervention.
“The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons… But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America,” she said in March 2000.
Ahmadinejad who had travelled to Copenhagen to take part in the Climate Change Summit, returned to Iran on Saturday morning.
911-War Promises
Millions of people believe that evidence proves that Western intelligence services organized the hideous attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. Even the mainstream media have stopped defending the official version and now prefer to ignore the issue altogether.
Distrust in Western governments grows as the wars of aggression waged by the USA and NATO continue to be justified with these “false flag” operations. Ever harsher domestic laws are being passed to crush all outrage and resistance in Western populations; at the end of the day they aim to unleash the German military on German civilians, instead of allowing morality and ethics to flow into day-by-day policy-making.
That morality and ethics long ago stopped playing a part in political decision-making is shown by the use of internationally outlawed weapons in all the wars NATO has started. At best, one has heard of “depleted uranium” after seeing the film “Deadly Dust” by award-winning Frieder Wagner. But even that film is systemically blocked out and banished, although, or perhaps because, it shows the horrific consequences of the use of these uranium weapons.
Among those aghast at the actions of NATO and the complicity of Germany in such internationally illegal wars of aggression is Christoph Hörstel, for many years foreign correspondent and editorial head of the German public broadcasting network ARD. Of like mind is Giullietto Chiesa, a Member of the European Parliament, who slams the ignorance and disinterest of most of his fellow Members.
What they don’t know is explained in the film “War promises” by insiders and whistleblowers. Annie Machon was a spy with the British MI5 and reports on false flag operations, as do Andreas von Bülow and Jürgen Elsässer, who possess enormous insider knowledge from their membership of the parliamentary committee supervising the secret services, and want to bring it to the public.
Eight years after 9/11 millions of people have linked up through the Internet to jointly rebel against this criminal system. What was still dismissed as a wild conspiracy theory until just a few month ago is now regarded as proven, raising the question how we, the people, handle this situation, in which those who govern us have on their minds anything but our well-being.
War-Crimes and their Victims
War Crimes Caught on Video
Abu Ghraib
Watch also:
Lifting the Hood – Iraq
on youtube (26 min)
The Road to Guantanamo (Trailer)
Ex-Guantanamo Muslim chaplain speaks out
Former Guantanamo detainee returns home – 15-Dec-07
Israeli War Crimes & Chemical Weapons
Former pilot of the Israel’s air force accuses Israel of war-crimes, using chemical weapons against the people of Gaza
Israel bans tourists from key West Bank bus line
December 16, 2009
Bethlehem – Ma’an – Just days before Bethlehem’s busiest tourist season begins, Israeli authorities implemented a ban on foreign-passport holders traveling to Jerusalem on Palestinian buses.
On 11 December, Bethlehem tourists began to report being pulled off line 21, a route used predominantly by holders of East Jerusalem residency cards, as they stopped for inspection at the Jerusalem tunnel entrance into Israel.
For years, foreign-passport holders using public transportation could choose between the tunnel bus, which departs near Beit Jala, or Israel’s military checkpoint 300, known colloquially as Gilo or Rachel’s Tomb.
A high-ranking Israeli security official confirmed the policy change on Monday. “This issue is being resolved presently. Everything will be completed in a day or so, possibly even today,” the official said, confirming that, for now, redirecting foreign-passport holders from the tunnel to checkpoint 300 is a matter of policy.
Palestinian Authority security sources said the phenomenon follows a unilateral decision by Israeli authorities made months ago to ban foreigners from the route.
It was not clear, however, who ordered the changes, or why. Israeli army sources insisted they had nothing to do with the plan, but officials in the country’s Border Police, the paramilitary branch of the Israeli Police, said such orders could only have come from the military.
“The [army] commander makes the policy; we just implement it,” said a border guard official who insisted on anonymity. “If the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] says we can’t allow foreign people – it’s a policy.”
A PA police spokesman said he was aware of the issue but refused further comment, referring inquiries to the District Coordination Office (DCO), the local arm of Israel’s non-military, civil administration in the occupied Palestinian territories.
“We’ve been aware of the plan for three, maybe four months; I don’t know why they’d implement it now,” said a Palestinian who works with the DCO. Israel never provided any official or written explanation, he added, nor were local officials given a say in the matter.
Despite numerous inquiries this week to the Israeli military, Border Police, Civil Administration, and national police, no official was ever willing to offer an on-the-record explanation for the ban.
‘Rude’ and ‘threatening’ treatment
Among the first reports Ma’an received about the issue was from an American music teacher accessing Jerusalem to teach students of a local conservatory. She, along with three others, were told they could not re-board the bus after it was checked by soldiers. “They saw the foreigners and herded us to the side,” said 24-year-old Katie Rowold, a US citizen held up on Friday. “Then everyone got back on the bus except for us. … We had to get a service taxi to the walk-through checkpoint [300].”
Sandra Baille, a 64-year-old Canadian citizen, was on a bus with some luggage waiting to have her passport checked by soldiers. As custom generally allows women with children or bags, the sick, or the elderly to remain on the bus during inspections, Baille was surprised when a guard ordered her off the vehicle. “A young Israeli soldier with a mask on his face up to his nose boarded the bus and indicated to me with his arm to get off,” she explained. “I held out my passport so he could see I was an international, but he threw his arm [pointing] to the side. He didn’t say a word, he just pointed.”
Outside the bus, Baille found herself with a group of foreign citizens also waiting at the side of the road. When they asked what was going on, “we were told ‘new rules, new rules,'” Baille said. She was ordered to take her luggage, for a planned trip to northern Israel, Nazareth and the Galilee, off the bus, and watched Palestinian passengers get back on board. She waited again while the driver argued with guards, and heard the bus ordered to leave without the five foreigners. “We were left to walk up the hill” back to Beit Jala, she said.
Others explained how they had to flag down a cab willing to enter a PA area and drive back inside Bethlehem to cross through the Gilo checkpoint there, before ultimately catching another Palestinian bus on the other side of the cement wall. One international who asked not to be named described being left helpless on the side of the busy highway, while Israeli-plated cars zoomed past. “Luckily there was a taxi sitting there. I don’t know what we would have done.”
Baille, the Canadian national, described the guards’ treatment as rude, saying she could not understand what reason Israel would have to target tourists. “Its ironic,” she added. “All over Canada there are signs saying ‘Welcome to Israel,’ but in the end they wouldn’t let us in.” Canada was the test country for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ “Brand Israel” campaign.
Another group of six internationals – four Americans, a Canadian and German national – were warned by the driver of a 21 bus on Saturday that foreigners were no longer being permitted to travel via the tunnel. They said the driver eventually let them on, but that they were indeed refused passage through the checkpoint.
Bad news for Christmas
Reports of internationals being pulled off buses continued throughout the week, and several have noted longer lines at the Gilo checkpoint, making it increasingly difficult to access Jerusalem from Bethlehem.
However, the ban appears to apply only to Palestinian buses in the West Bank. Foreign nationals traveling on Israel’s Egged service, which connects the country’s settlements throughout the occupied territories, including in Bethlehem, into Israel, reported no problems at the tunnel checkpoint. Internationals in private cars were similarly unaffected.
It was not clear if the initiative to limit foreigners’ movement in the region was linked to prior passport restrictions. Mirroring the treatment received by Palestinians already living under the four-decade occupation, similar restrictions on foreigners first came to light in September when Israel began issuing visas that permit travel only in PA-controlled areas.
Israel, meanwhile, has sought to reassure Palestinian Christian leaders that it would facilitate the movement of congregants and tourists as Christmas approaches. Security authorities recently invited the leaders of local churches to a meeting on a military base, where army officials promised to help ease closures, for example, by granting permits for Christians from Gaza to visit Bethlehem for the holiday.
Tens of thousands of foreign-passport holders enter Bethlehem every Christmas to celebrate along with the local Palestinian population, attending mass at the Nativity Church and other annual festivities. Some 60,000 internationals made the pilgrimage in 2008.
No freeze on Palestinian suffering
Seth Freedman | guardian.co.uk
14 December 2009
Within minutes of our arrival in Tuwani, in the south Hebron hills of the West Bank, an army Jeep rolled into the village and shattered the mid-morning tranquillity. “We’re turning this place into a closed military zone,” announced the stern-faced commander to anyone within earshot. Brandishing his rifle in one hand and a military document in the other, he proceeded to explain that “I decide who can be here and who can’t, and anyone who isn’t a resident has to leave immediately”.
That meant us – me, my friend and our three guides from the Villages Group – as well as the other activists who maintain a permanent presence in Tuwani assisting the locals in their struggle to survive. The timing of the closure was no accident: earlier in the morning NGO workers and locals had taken part in a solidarity march to highlight the hardships suffered by the village children who run the gauntlet of the neighbouring settlement every time they walk to and from their school.
Anything the activists could do the soldiers could do better, it seemed. “The IDF [Israel Defence Forces] don’t like us coming to support the residents of Tuwani,” said one volunteer, “so they make it their mission to make everyone’s lives uncomfortable as a result.”
The shutdown of the village and the surrounding farmland was only the latest in a long line of attempts by the Israeli authorities to break the will of the Palestinians living in the area. As we drove out of Tuwani, we were shown the stump of an electricity pylon sawn down by the army after attempts by villagers to connect themselves to the national grid. Elsewhere, dirt mounds and locked gates stopped locals driving to the nearby city of Ya’ta, thus preventing them taking their produce to sell at market, and severely impairing their economic prospects.
Thanks to the army’s exclusion orders, we were forced to walk a treacherous and convoluted route through the rocky scrubland to visit communities living in even deeper seclusion beyond Tuwani. In Tu’ba, the cave-dwelling residents of the village are under no illusion about what the future holds for them, despite all the hype surrounding the much-vaunted settlement freeze.
“The freeze will have no effect round here,” the father of the household told us bitterly. Our guide expanded on the theme, telling us that the “real freeze is on Palestinian construction: 95% of Palestinian applications for building permits in Area C are denied by the civil administration, and for communities in this area they are not allowed to build above ground whatsoever”.
Those people living in caves are, it seems, tolerated by the authorities while they remain underground, but as soon as they put their heads above the surface and attempt to build rudimentary shacks and outhouses, demolition orders are served and the army are quick to enforce the letter of the law with gusto.
Meanwhile, in the neighbouring settlements of Carmel and Ma’on, building work was going on in earnest, and defiant banners on bus stops and fence posts declared the settlers’ intention to “smash the freeze”, and denounced the incumbent government as traitors to the Zionist cause. While government inspectors have been attacked during their attempts to bring settlement construction to a halt, the full force of the settlers’ wrath has – as ever – been meted out against the Palestinians.
The sickening desecration of a mosque on Friday in the village of Yasuf, near Nablus, appears to be the opening salvo in the settlers’ latest battle to force the government to back down over the building freeze, and those we met in the south Hebron hills were wary of similar reprisal attacks being carried out against their communities. “Our children are still attacked on a regular basis,” one local told us, “as well as our shepherds and farmers. Even if we call the police, we know justice will never be done, and the situation is only getting worse now that the settlers are furious about Netanyahu’s decision.”
Ehud Krinis, one of the Villages Group activists, believes that the freeze is “just an act” on the part of the government; having worked in the area for almost eight years and seen the settlers’ above-the-law behaviour first hand, he maintains “there is no effective force that can stop the settlers building more. In fact, as we can see in Susiya and elsewhere, the settlers simply see the freeze as a challenge to construct [at an even faster rate], which is what will happen over the next 10 months.”
As we sat with the head of the Bedouin clan living in Um al-Kheir – a collection of tumble-down tents and shacks literally touching the perimeter fence of the Carmel settlement – the mood of resignation engulfing the encampment’s residents was suffocating. We were shown aerial photos of Um al-Kheir’s gradual demise over the past 30 years, a situation attributable to the encroachment of the settlers and the military on to their ancestral land. It was clear that for those forced to endure the humiliation and hardship on a daily basis, the politicians’ upbeat talk was at best cheap, and at worst a flagrant denial of the facts.
For those Palestinians living under military rule, coupled with indiscriminate and incessant settler attacks against them, their children and their flocks, there is no end in sight to the suffering. While the world might have been convinced that the worm is about to turn in the Israeli political arena, a quick glance at the fevered construction still taking place in the settlements, the oppressive military activity against the Palestinian villagers and the overarching penury in which the Palestinians are forced to subsist should give onlookers food for thought about the true situation on the ground.
Freeze or no freeze, the future looks no brighter for the Palestinian locals today than it has during any of the bitter years and decades gone by.
Rules of human decency apply to Israelis too
A dose of Israel’s own (academic) medicine might help the message sink in
By Stuart Littlewood
The People’s Voice
12 December 2009
Stuart Littlewood argues that an academic boycott of Israel is now urgent in the light of an Israeli High Court ruling that the Israel occupation forces acted within their rights when they abducted, blindfolded, handcuffed and dumped in Gaza 21-year-old Palestinian student Berlanty Azzam just weeks before she was due to complete her degree at Bethlehem University in the occupied West Bank.
Poor Berlanty. What did she do to deserve this crushing blow to her hopes and life chances?
The Israeli High Court has denied Berlanty Azzam justice – again – and prevented her returning to Bethlehem University for the final few weeks to complete her degree.
On 28 October this Christian student at the Vatican-sponsored Bethlehem University was abducted by the “Israel Defence Forces”, “the world’s most moral army”, after attending a job interview in Ramallah, then blindfolded and handcuffed and dumped in Gaza. She had lived in the West Bank since 2005 after being granted a permit.
There was only one kind of permit available in 2005 – an entry permit to Israel. But the Israeli state claimed that this permit was insufficient and Berlanty should have obtained some other permit, even though the state admits that none existed at the time.
State representatives took her permit, a key piece of evidence, and never produced it to the court. After six weeks of double-talk the court accepted the state’s claim that Berlanty entered the West Bank illegally. We hear a lot about how independent Israel’s justice system is. Here’s proof, if any were needed, that it is simply a tool of the military.
To avoid accusations that her residence was not Bethlehem, Berlanty had for the last four years resisted the temptation to return to Gaza and visit her folks. She and her parents submitted numerous applications to change the Gaza address recorded on her identity card to her actual place of residence, Bethlehem, but to no avail. Israel controls the Palestinian population registry and refuses to register changes in address from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank – another example of how Gazans are effectively imprisoned.
This, of course, is in breach of her human rights. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are internationally recognized as one integral territory and under international law everyone has the right to freely choose their place of residence within a single territory. In 1999 Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) signed an agreement establishing a 28-mile road corridor giving Palestinians safe passage between the two parts of Palestine – yet another empty gesture.
“We are disappointed that the Israeli military and High Court have interfered with the Church’s educational mission at Bethlehem University by denying Berlanty to be brought back to Bethlehem to complete her studies,” said Brother Peter Bray, the vice chancellor, on hearing the court ruling. “We realize that Berlanty is one of the many people in Gaza who suffer so unjustly.”
Indeed. Since 2000 Israel has implemented a sweeping ban, preventing youngsters from Gaza from studying at Palestinian universities in the West Bank. A 2007 High Court decision determined that students from Gaza wishing to study in the West Bank should be allowed to do so “in cases that would have positive humanitarian implications”.
However, to the best of her legal team’s knowledge, since that judgment was handed down Israel hasn’t issued a single entry permit. Only last summer 12 students from Gaza were refused permits to study at Bethlehem University. Back in the late 1990s, about 1,000 students from Gaza studied in the West Bank, most of them in disciplines that are not offered in the Gaza Strip.
Like Berlanty, an estimated 25,000 people currently living in the West Bank have been declared “illegal” by Israel solely because the address on their identity card is in the Gaza Strip. Some of them have lived in the West Bank for decades but Israel simply does not recognize their right to be there. They are extremely limited in their daily movements and live in fear of being detained and “deported”, just as Berlanty was. Consequently they have very limited opportunities for employment, business and studies. This policy not only breaches Israel’s obligations under international to treat the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a “single territorial entity”, but it also chokes any prospect of healthy development in Palestinian society.
It is no use pretending that things will change – unless other countries give Israel a dose of its own medicine. How does the Berlanty case and the thousands like it sit with the great and the good who piously reject the idea of an academic boycott against Israel?
All political parties fight against such a boycott for muddle-headed reasons. The recent Channel 4 Dispatches programme uncovered the influence of the Israel lobby and its money on the Conservative Party. Another particularly obnoxious group that’s hopelessly out of touch with reality is the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel (LDFI). At their party’s conference they tabled a motion squashing an academic boycott, saying that “Israeli universities are centres of free debate and discussion and that the universities contain Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israelis and Palestinians. Furthermore, a boycott does nothing to resolve a negotiated solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and is indeed counter-productive as it discourages dialogue.” This motion against the boycott was passed with an overwhelming majority.
The aim of the Liberal Democrats Friends of Israel is to “maximize support for the State of Israel within the party and Parliament” and “encourage a broad understanding of Israel’s unique political position as the only democracy in the Middle East”.
Their stated purpose is:
- To influence the party’s Middle East policy so it places a high priority on Israel’s right to peace and security.
- To provide parliamentarians with briefing material for parliamentary debates, questions to ministers and public appearances.
- To rebut attacks on Israel in the media, Parliament and the party.
- To liaise with Israeli politicians and government.
- To arrange and accompany LDFI delegations to Israel.
- To keep in regular contact with the embassy of Israel.
In other words, they act as a prop within the British Parliament for this racist military regime.
Such blind allegiance and bizarre conduct contribute to the tragedy of Berlanty and countless other Palestinian youngsters. Without these beacons of misplaced support across the Western world lawless Israel would be sunk.
President Obama ‘creating torture impunity’
Press TV– December 11, 2009 06:20:21 GMT
A US civil rights group says that President Barack Obama by creating impunity is following his predecessor into allowing torture policies to continue in the country.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said on Thursday that the US president has failed to provide accountability on torture.
Director of ACLU’s National Security Project Jameel Jaffer said “the Bush administration constructed a legal framework for torture and now the Obama administration is constructing a legal framework for impunity.”
“We’re frustrated by the growing gap between (the) Obama administration’s rhetoric on accountability and the reality,” Jaffer added.
In April, Obama said that CIA interrogators who had used waterboarding on suspected militants would not face prosecution. He also released Bush-era memos specifying that the practice did not constitute torture.
Republicans, however, criticized Obama for leaving the door open for the prosecution of former Bush officials who authorized harsh CIA interrogations due to releasing the memos.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were among those accused of masterminding the Bush-era torture policy.
Jaffer noted that “on every front, the administration is actively obstructing accountability by shielding Bush officials from civil liability, criminal investigation and even public scrutiny for their role in authorizing torture.”
“It’s the last month of 2009, and not a single torture victim has had his day in court,” ACLU Attorney Ben Wizner said. “Not a single court in a torture case has ruled on the legality of the Bush administration’s torture policies.”
Outdoing the Kafkaesque: Egypt’s new US designed underground Gaza wall
December 11, 2009 — People’s Geography
Just when you thought things could not become more Kafkaesque comes apparent confirmation that the US-backed Egyptian government is building an underground steel barrier designed to cut off one of the few lifelines sustaining the Gaza Ghetto, the tunnel economy. The BBC reports that the huge underground wall will be 10-11km (6-7 miles) long, will extend 18 metres below the surface and will take 18 months to complete. The project has been shrouded in secrecy with no official confirmation from the Egyptian government, but it is understood that the design is commissioned by US army engineers, at the behest of Israel, Ann Wright surmises.
The ‘impenetrable’ barrier is made of super-strength steel manufactured in the US, according to the BBC. It will likely not succeed in halting all smuggling but will force Palestinians to dig deeper.
Conditions are worsening in this nightmare siege. The Israeli regime has prevented EU officials from entering the besieged strip, Gaza’s water is contaminated and creating a public health disaster and the israeli blockade that prevents vital reconstruction continues unabated.
This is a new low in the levels of inhumanity, absurdity and wretchedness to which the Israeli regime, with active Egyptian and US ZOG complicity, are subjecting the beleaguered Palestinians of Gaza. Only a just political resolution will put an end to the tunnels.
On a note of black humour, Gilad Atzmon wrote a great satirical piece a few years ago, Operation Security Roof which is relevant here.
Retired US Army Reserve Colonel and former diplomat Ann Wright rightly castigates this development and calls it a laughing stock:
Just as the steel walls of the US Army Corps of Engineers at the base of the levees of New Orleans were unable to contain Hurricane Katrina, the US Army Corps of Engineers’ underground steel walls that will attempt to build an underground cage of Gaza will not be able to contain the survival spirit of the people of Gaza.
America’s super technology will again be laughed at by the world, as young men dedicated to the survival of their people, will again outwit technology by digging deeper, and most likely penetrating the “impenetrable” in some novel, simple, low-tech way.
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From the Archives
How 1960’s French Nuclear Tests Are Still Claiming Lives in Algeria
Sputnik – 15.02.2018
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … continue
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