Category: In the Media

Ynet: “Look who’s been kidnapped”

Hundreds of Palestinian ‘suspects’ have been kidnapped from their homes and will never stand trial

Israeli reservist Arik Diamant | Ynet

It’s the wee hours of the morning, still dark outside. A guerrilla force comes out of nowhere to kidnap a soldier. After hours of careful movement, the force reaches its target, and the ambush is on! In seconds, the soldier finds himself looking down the barrel of a rifle.

A smash in the face with the butt of the gun and the soldier falls to the ground, bleeding. The kidnappers pick him up, quickly tie his hands and blindfold him, and disappear into the night.

This might be the end of the kidnapping, but the nightmare has just begun. The soldier’s mother collapses, his father prays. His commanding officers promise to do everything they can to get him back, his comrades swear revenge. An entire nation is up-in-arms, writing in pain and worry.

Nobody knows how the soldier is: Is he hurt? Do his captors give him even a minimum of human decency, or are they torturing him to death by trampling his honor? The worst sort of suffering is not knowing. Will he come home? And if so, when? And in what condition? Can anyone remain apathetic in the light of such drama?

Israeli terror

This description, you’ll be surprised to know, has nothing to do with the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. It is the story of an arrest I carried out as an IDF soldier, in the Nablus casbah, about 10 years ago. The “soldier” was a 17-year-old boy, and we kidnapped him because he knew “someone” who had done “something.”

We brought him tied up, with a burlap sac over his head, to a Shin Bet interrogation center known as “Scream Hill” (at the time we thought it was funny). There, the prisoner was beaten, violently shaken and sleep deprived for weeks or months. Who knows.

No one wrote about it in the paper. European diplomats were not called to help him. After all, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the kidnapping of this Palestinian kid. Over the 40 years of occupation we have kidnapped thousands of people, exactly like Gilad Shalit was captured: Threatened by a gun, beaten mercilessly, with no judge or jury, or witnesses, and without providing the family with any information about the captive.

When the Palestinians do this, we call it “terror.” When we do it, we work overtime to whitewash the atrocity.

Suspects?

Some people will say: The IDF doesn’t “just” kidnap. These people are “suspects.” There is no more perverse lie than this. In all the years I served, I reached one simple conclusion: What makes a “suspect”? Who, exactly suspects him, and of what?

Who has the right to sentence a 17-year-old to kidnapping, torture and possible death? A 26-year-old Shin Bet interrogator? A 46-year-old one? Do these people have any higher education, apart from the ability to interrogate? What are his considerations? I all these “suspects” are so guilty, why not bring them to trial?

Anyone who believes that despite the lack of transparency, the IDF and Shin Bet to their best to minimize violations of human rights is naïve, if not brainwashed. One need only read the testimonies of soldiers who have carried out administrative detentions to be convinced of the depth of the immorality of our actions in the territories.

To this very day, there are hundreds of prisoners rotting in Shin Bet prisons and dungeons, people who have never been –and never will be – tried. And Israelis are silently resolved to this phenomenon.

Israeli responsibility

The day Gilad Shalit was kidnapped I rode in a taxi. The driver told me we must go into Gaza, start shooting people one-by-one, until someone breaks and returns the hostage. It isn’t clear that such an operation would bring Gilad back alive.

Instead of getting dragged into terrorist responses… we should release some of the soldiers and civilians we have kidnapped. This is appropriate, right, and could bring about an air of reconciliation in the territories.

Hell, if this is what will bring Gilad home safe-and-sound, we have a responsibility to him to do it.

Arik Diamant is an IDF reservist and the head of Courage to Refuse.

Ha’aretz: “UN aid chief warns Gaza is on the verge of humanitarian crisis”

by the Associated Press, 30th June

Gaza is three days away from a deadly humanitarian crisis unless Israel promptly restores fuel and electricity to the densely populated area after its offensive to free an abducted soldier, the United Nations aid chief warned on Thursday.

“They are heading for the abyss unless they get electricity and fuel restored,” said Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland, who also urged the Palestinians to free the soldier and clamp down on militants firing rockets into Israel.

Without clean water in the hot summer weather, “we would in days see a major humanitarian crisis,” he said. Military action targeting innocent civilians violates international humanitarian law, he added.

“I am confident that neither of the two want to see a massive increase in mortality in the Gaza,” where children make up about half of the area’s 1.4 million people, Egeland told a small group of reporters.

At the heart of the crisis, he said, was Israel’s bombing of Gaza’s sole power plant, which supplies about 40 percent of the area’s electricity. The remaining power comes from Israel.

An estimated 130 Gaza wells require electricity to pump water, and while some have backup pumps that run on diesel fuel, Israel has allowed no fuel to flow into Gaza for four days, leaving it dependent on emergency supplies expected to last another three days.

Egeland, who as Norway’s deputy foreign minister helped orchestrate secret 1992 talks between Israel and the Palestinians that led to the Oslo accords, lamented that both sides in the conflict appeared intent on perpetuating an endless ‘cycle of violence’.

“They are locked in a situation where they do their utmost to cut the bridges between them and create hatred that bodes ill for the future,” he said. “Why do they do things that are so counter to their own interests?”

Red Cross looks to send medical supplies to Gaza

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), concerned about escalating Middle East violence, called on Friday for Israel to allow urgent medical supplies into Gaza.

Dorothea Krimitsas, ICRC spokeswoman, said that Israel is obliged under international law – including the Geneva Conventions – to ensure that humanitarian supplies reach Palestinian civilians.

Israel Air Force fighter jets pounded Gaza on Friday, setting ablaze the Interior Ministry office of the Hamas-led Palestinian government in a widening military … [campaign].

“We are negotiating with Israel to allow in humanitarian aid. These are essential medicines and medical supplies for the Palestinian Red Crescent,” Krimitsas told Reuters.

“We are concerned at the humanitarian consequences of the escalation of violence and closure of crossing points to Gaza, especially the Karni crossing,” she added.

The ICRC is also anxious to deliver food packages and household items for Palestinian families, some of whom have had their homes destroyed, according to Krimitsas.

“Under international law, Israel has the obligation to allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza. It also has the duty to ensure that the vital supplies for the population, including food and medicine, are adequate,” she said.

Israeli strikes have knocked out bridges, water systems and a major power transformer in the densely populated Gaza Strip, home to 1.4 million Palestinians.

Hospitals, hard-hit by the loss of electricity, have to use generators for power, consuming precious fuel, Krimitsas said.

“We are worried about the fuel stocks. Palestinian authorities have estimated that they have enough for about 7 to 10 days,” she added

Independent: “Gaza: ‘The children wake up screaming. I am worried it will damage them'”


Palestinian boy looks at the destruction of a school in Gaza after an early morning Israeli strike July 5th. (AP Photo/Laura Leon)

by Donald Macintyre, 3rd of July

Mahmoud Mughari speaks bluntly. “I normally wash and shower twice a day. Now I can only do it every four or five days. The children smell. We all smell. We are worried that this will cause diseases.”

Outside the home in central Gaza he and his own family share with his elderly parents, five married brothers and their children – 48 in all – Mr Mughari was describing the impact made by Israel’s air strikes in Gaza last week, one of which severed the water pipe serving this refugee camp of 57,000 people.

The first problem, Mr Mughari, says, is that power – which would normally be running, among much else, refrigeration and fans in the current 91F (33C) temperatures – has been cut from 24 hours a day to eight hours a day.

This is itself a function of Palestinian engineers reallocating some of the electricity half of Gaza takes from Israel to the other half previously dependent on the Gaza power station whose transformers were destroyed in Wednesday’s missile attack. The second is that water previously available two days out of three is now available for only four to five hours every third day. And the third is that the impossibility so far of ensuring electricity and water coincide makes it impossible to pump the water up to the roof tanks and provide a steady supply through the taps.

They have been storing their rationed supplies in two blue 250- litre barrels, saving most of it for drinking and – when it is possible – for cooking. And to escape the heat, he says, members of the family have started sleeping on mattresses on the pavement outside the house. The latest crisis has compounded the problems of the Mughari family ever since the international economic blockade of the Palestinian Authority started.

Mr Mughari, one of only two brothers working – the other three are unemployed tailors – has not received the £134-per-month salary for three months from the job creation scheme on which he works. While the family are eligible for UN food aid, he says their meat consumption has fallen from three or four times a week to once a fortnight.

The family is also coming to terms with the resumption of the deliberate sonic booms, or “bombs”, generated by Israeli F-16s overflying Gaza, starting in the predawn hours. “The children wake up screaming and run into my room,” he says. “Some of them understand that this is just a very loud noise, but Mai, my four-year-old daughter thinks it is a real bombardment. I am worried that it will affect them psychologically in the future.”

If the purpose of Israel’s military campaign so far is to secure a major shift in Palestinian public opinion, it does not appear to have worked. Flanked by his parents and many of his own and his brothers’ children, Mr Mughari says that even if there is an Israeli ground incursion: “We’ll take it even if it gets worse.”

There are few overt signs of preparations by militants, but Mr Mughari adds: “If [the Israelis] come here they will not get roses. There will be resistance.” He adds of Cpl Shalit’s abduction: “My personal opinion is that there should be a prison exchange.”

Robert Novak: “Holy Land Christians blame Israel”

by Robert Novak, Chicago Sun-Times columnist, 3rd of July

On June 19, two young members of Congress received an extraordinary letter from Jerusalem. On behalf of Christian churches in the Holy Land, they were told a House resolution they were circulating blaming the Palestinian Authority for Christian decline there “is based on many false affirmations.” The Very Rev. Michael H. Sellers, an Anglican priest who is coordinator of Jerusalem’s Christian churches, said the real problem is the Israeli occupation — especially its new security wall.

Prior to hearing this, freshman Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Austin, Texas, and four-term Democratic Rep. Joseph Crowley of New York (Queens) had collected 21 co-sponsors (mainly conservative Republicans) for their resolution. Sellers’ communication was followed two days later by a letter from Rep. Henry Hyde, House International Relations Committee chairman. He told the two congressmen their claim of systematic persecution by the Palestinian Authority is “inaccurate and incomplete.”

McCaul and Crowley put their resolution “on hold” going into the long Fourth of July recess. So apparently ends an audacious effort by Israeli public relations to place full blame for the Christian exodus from the Israeli-controlled Holy Land on Muslims. Instead, problems caused by the security wall have been highlighted once again.

The House was pulled into this issue by Justus Reid Weiner, an Israeli lawyer with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Weiner, who long has blamed Christian misfortunes on the Palestinian Authority, contacted Ari Stein, a staffer in McCaul’s congressional office. Stein in turn brought in Crowley, a prominent Democrat, through his staffer, Gregg Shelowitz.

The result was a “Dear Colleague” letter from McCaul and Crowley blaming the Palestinian Authority for “the systematic destruction of the oldest Christian community in the world.” The staff-written letter asserted: “If we do not act now, Christians around the world risk losing control of and access to the most ancient and holy sites in Christendom.”

Their subsequent resolution spent three pages detailing alleged persecution of Christians by Arab Muslims, even assailing the State Department for failing to put “treatment of Palestinian Christians by the Palestinian Authority” in its annual report on human rights violations. The resolution immediately picked up 16 Republican co-sponsors and five Democrats.

This process was slowed by Sellers’ letter from Jerusalem. He said Christian churches in the Holy Land that he represents can take care of any problems with Muslims and “are not seeking your interference in their internal problems.” Where Congress could help, he added, was influencing Israeli government policy: “Your support for the Christian presence in the Holy Land will best be served by helping to remove the separation wall (which has converted all the Palestinian towns into big prisons for Christians and Muslims alike) and by helping to bring occupation to an end with all its inherent types of oppression and humiliation.”

After his letter to McCaul and Crowley, Hyde made an unscheduled appearance last Friday at an International Relations subcommittee hearing on the plight of religious minorities. He argued the problem for the Holy Land’s Christians is not Muslims but Israel. Long a steadfast supporter of Israel, Hyde testified: “I have been unable to understand how the currently routed barrier in Jerusalem — which rips asunder the existential poles of Christian belief, the Nativity and the Resurrection, and encloses 200,000 Palestinians on the Jerusalem side of the barrier — will improve the security of Israel’s citizens.”

Hyde was followed at the hearing by the Rev. Firas Arida, the 31-year-old Roman Catholic priest in the West Bank village of Aboud. Asserting that the Israeli security wall causes his parishioners to lose water and olive trees, he said “the Israeli occupation must end,” and “there must be no more settlements on Palestinian land.”

McCaul and Crowley did not attend Friday’s hearing and surely have not been to Aboud. Both Catholics, they might well visit the village and talk with Firas’ flock while prudently keeping their ill-considered resolution on hold.

Ha’aretz: “A black flag”

From Haaretz
By Gideon Levy

A black flag hangs over the “rolling” operation in Gaza. The more the operation “rolls,” the darker the flag becomes. The “summer rains” we are showering on Gaza are not only pointless, but are first and foremost blatantly illegitimate. It is not legitimate to cut off 750,000 people from electricity. It is not legitimate to call on 20,000 people to run from their homes and turn their towns into ghost towns. It is not legitimate to penetrate Syria’s airspace. It is not legitimate to kidnap half a government and a quarter of a parliament.

A state that takes such steps is no longer distinguishable from a terror organization. The harsher the steps, the more monstrous and stupid they become, the more the moral underpinnings for them are removed and the stronger the impression that the Israeli government has lost its nerve. Now one must hope that the weekend lull, whether initiated by Egypt or the prime minister, and in any case to the dismay of Channel 2’s Roni Daniel and the IDF, will lead to a radical change.

Everything must be done to win Gilad Shalit’s release. What we are doing now in Gaza has nothing to do with freeing him. It is a widescale act of vengeance, the kind that the IDF and Shin Bet have wanted to conduct for some time, mostly motivated by the deep frustration that the army commanders feel about their impotence against the Qassams and the daring Palestinian guerilla raid. There’s a huge gap between the army unleashing its frustration and a clever and legitimate operation to free the kidnapped soldier.

To prevent the army from running as amok as it would like, a strong and judicious political echelon is required. But facing off against the frustrated army is Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz’s tyro regime, weak and happless. Until the weekend lull, it appeared that each step proposed by the army and Shin Bet had been immediately approved for backing. That does not bode well, not only for the chances of freeing Shalit, but also for the future management of the government, which is being revealed to be as weak as the Hamas government.

The only wise and restrained voice heard so far was that of the soldier’s father, Noam Shalit, of all people. That noble man called at what is clearly his most difficult hour, not for stridency and not for further damage done to the lives of soldiers and innocent Palestinians. Against the background of the IDF’s unrestrained actions and the arrogant bragging of the latest macho spokesmen, Maj. Gen. Yoav Gallant of the Southern Command and Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, Shalit’s father’s voice stood out like a voice crying in the wilderness.

Sending tens of thousands of miserable inhabitants running from their homes, dozens of kilometers from where his son is supposedly hidden, and cutting off the electricity to hundreds of thousands of others, is certainly not what he meant in his understated emotional pleas. It’s a shame nobody is listening to him, of all people.

The legitimate basis for the IDF’s operation was stripped away the moment it began. It’s no accident that nobody mentions the day before the attack on the Kerem Shalom fort, when the IDF kidnapped two civilians, a doctor and his brother, from their home in Gaza. The difference between us and them? We kidnapped civilians and they captured a soldier, we are a state and they are a terror organization. How ridiculously pathetic Amos Gilad sounds when he says that the capture of Shalit was “illegitimate and illegal,” unlike when the IDF grabs civilians from their homes. How can a senior official in the defense ministry claim that “the head of the snake” is in Damascus, when the IDF uses the exact same methods?

True, when the IDF and Shin Bet grab civilians from their homes – and they do so often – it is not to murder them later. But sometimes they are killed on the doorsteps of their homes, although it is not necessary, and sometimes they are grabbed to serve as “bargaining chips,” like in Lebanon and now, with the Palestinian legislators. What an uproar there would be if the Palestinians had grabbed half the members of the Israeli government. How would we label them?

Collective punishment is illegitimate and it does not have a smidgeon of intelligence. Where will the inhabitants of Beit Hanun run? With typical hardheartedness the military reporters say they were not “expelled” but that it was “recommended” they leave, for the benefit, of course, of those running for their lives. And what will this inhumane step lead to? Support for the Israeli government? Their enlistment as informants and collaborators for the Shin Bet? Can the miserable farmers of Beit Hanun and Beit Lahia do anything about the Qassam rocket-launching cells? Will bombing an already destroyed airport do anything to free the soldier or was it just to decorate the headlines?

Did anyone think about what would have happened if Syrian planes had managed to down one of the Israeli planes that brazenly buzzed their president’s palace? Would we have declared war on Syria? Another “legitimate war”? Will the blackout of Gaza bring down the Hamas government or cause the population to rally around it? And even if the Hamas government falls, as Washington wants, what will happen on the day after? These are questions for which nobody has any real answers. As usual here: Quiet, we’re shooting. But this time we are not only shooting. We are bombing and shelling, darkening and destroying, imposing a siege and kidnapping like the worst of terrorists and nobody breaks the silence to ask, what the hell for, and according to what right?