Palestinian children locked in solitary confinement in Israel

The Palestinian children – alone and bewildered – in Israel's Al Jalame jail


Special report: Israel's military justice system is accused of mistreating Palestinian children arrested for throwing stones


Harriet Sherwood in the West Bank
guardian.co.uk 
Sunday 22 January 2012


The room is barely wider than the thin, dirty mattress that covers the floor. Behind a low concrete wall is a squat toilet, the stench from which has no escape in the windowless room. The rough concrete walls deter idle leaning; the constant overhead light inhibits sleep. The delivery of food through a low slit in the door is the only way of marking time, dividing day from night.

This is Cell 36, deep within Al Jalame prison in northern Israel. It is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. One 16-year-old claimed that he had been kept in Cell 36 for 65 days.

The only escape is to the interrogation room where children are shackled, by hands and feet, to a chair while being questioned, sometimes for hours.

Most are accused of throwing stones at soldiers or settlers; some, of flinging molotov cocktails; a few, of more serious offences such as links to militant organisations or using weapons. They are also pumped for information about the activities and sympathies of their classmates, relatives and neighbours.

At the beginning, nearly all deny the accusations. Most say they are threatened; some report physical violence. Verbal abuse – "You're a dog, a son of a whore" – is common. Many are exhausted from sleep deprivation. Day after day they are fettered to the chair, then returned to solitary confinement. In the end, many sign confessions that they later say were coerced.

These claims and descriptions come from affidavits given by minors to an international human rights organisation and from interviews conducted by the Guardian. Other cells in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva prisons are also used for solitary confinement, but Cell 36 is the one cited most often in these testimonies.

Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are arrested by Israeli soldiers each year, mostly accused of throwing stones. Since 2008, Defence for Children International (DCI) has collected sworn testimonies from 426 minors detained in Israel's military justice system.

Their statements show a pattern of night-time arrests, hands bound with plastic ties, blindfolding, physical and verbal abuse, and threats. About 9% of all those giving affidavits say they were kept in solitary confinement, although there has been a marked increase to 22% in the past six months.
Few parents are told where their children have been taken. Minors are rarely questioned in the presence of a parent, and rarely see a lawyer before or during initial interrogation. Most are detained inside Israel, making family visits very difficult.

Human rights organisations say these patterns of treatment – which are corroborated by a separate study, No Minor Matter, conducted by an Israeli group, B'Tselem – violate the international convention on the rights of the child, which Israel has ratified, and the fourth Geneva convention.
Most children maintain they are innocent of the crimes of which they are accused, despite confessions and guilty pleas, said Gerard Horton of DCI. But, he added, guilt or innocence was not an issue with regard to their treatment.

"We're not saying offences aren't committed – we're saying children have legal rights. Regardless of what they're accused of, they should not be arrested in the middle of the night in terrifying raids, they should not be painfully tied up and blindfolded sometimes for hours on end, they should be informed of the right to silence and they should be entitled to have a parent present during questioning."

Mohammad Shabrawi from the West Bank town of Tulkarm was arrested last January, aged 16, at about 2.30am. "Four soldiers entered my bedroom and said you must come with us. They didn't say why, they didn't tell me or my parents anything," he told the Guardian.

Handcuffed with a plastic tie and blindfolded, he thinks he was first taken to an Israeli settlement, where he was made to kneel – still cuffed and blindfolded – for an hour on an asphalt road in the freezing dead of night. A second journey ended at about 8am at Al Jalame detention centre, also known as Kishon prison, amid fields close to the Nazareth to Haifa road.

After a routine medical check, Shabrawi was taken to Cell 36. He spent 17 days in solitary, apart from interrogations, there and in a similar cell, No 37, he said. "I was lonely, frightened all the time and I needed someone to talk with. I was choked from being alone. I was desperate to meet anyone, speak to anyone … I was so bored that when I was out [of the cell] and saw the police, they were talking in Hebrew and I don't speak Hebrew, but I was nodding as though I understood. I was desperate to speak."
During interrogation, he was shackled. "They cursed me and threatened to arrest my family if I didn't confess," he said. He first saw a lawyer 20 days after his arrest, he said, and was charged after 25 days. "They accused me of many things," he said, adding that none of them were true.

Eventually Shabrawi confessed to membership of a banned organisation and was sentenced to 45 days. Since his release, he said, he was "now afraid of the army, afraid of being arrested." His mother said he had become withdrawn.

Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when he was arrested last January, described similar treatment during arrest and detention. He says he was held in solitary confinement at Al Jalame for 17 days in cells 36, 37 and 38.

"I would start repeating the interrogators' questions to myself, asking myself is it true what they are accusing me of," he told the Guardian. "You feel the pressure of the cell. Then you think about your family, and you feel you are going to lose your future. You are under huge stress."

His treatment during questioning depended on the mood of his interrogators, he said. "If he is in a good mood, sometimes he allows you to sit on a chair without handcuffs. Or he may force you to sit on a small chair with an iron hoop behind it. Then he attaches your hands to the ring, and your legs to the chair legs. Sometimes you stay like that for four hours. It is painful.

"Sometimes they make fun of you. They ask if you want water, and if you say yes they bring it, but then the interrogator drinks it."

Ali Qadi did not see his parents during the 51 days he was detained before trial, he said, and was only allowed to see a lawyer after 10 days. He was accused of throwing stones and planning military operations, and after confessing was sentenced to six months in prison.The Guardian has affidavits from five other juveniles who said they were detained in solitary confinement in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva. All confessed after interrogation.

"Solitary confinement breaks the spirit of a child," said Horton. "Children say that after a week or so of this treatment, they confess simply to get out of the cell."

The Israeli security agency (ISA) – also known as Shin Bet – told the Guardian: "No one questioned, including minors, is kept alone in a cell as a punitive measure or in order to obtain a confession."
The Israeli prison service did not respond to a specific question about solitary confinement, saying only "the incarceration of prisoners…is subject to legal examination".

Juvenile detainees also allege harsh interrogation methods. The Guardian interviewed the father of a minor serving a 23-month term for throwing rocks at vehicles. Ali Odwan, from Azzun, said his son Yahir, who was 14 when he was arrested, was given electric shocks by a Taser while under interrogation.

"I visited my son in jail. I saw marks from electric shocks on both his arms, they were visible from behind the glass. I asked him if it was from electric shocks, he just nodded. He was afraid someone was listening," Odwan said.

DCI has affidavits from three minors accused of throwing stones who claim they were given electric shocks under interrogation in 2010.

Another Azzun youngster, Sameer Saher, was 13 when he was arrested at 2am. "A soldier held me upside down and took me to a window and said: 'I want to throw you from the window.' They beat me on the legs, stomach, face," he said.

His interrogators accused him of stone-throwing and demanded the names of friends who had also thrown stones. He was released without charge about 17 hours after his arrest. Now, he said, he has difficulty sleeping for fear "they will come at night and arrest me".

In response to questions about alleged ill-treatment, including electric shocks, the ISA said: "The claims that Palestinian minors were subject to interrogation techniques that include beatings, prolonged periods in handcuffs, threats, kicks, verbal abuse, humiliation, isolation and prevention of sleep are utterly baseless … Investigators act in accordance with the law and unequivocal guidelines which forbid such actions."

The Guardian has also seen rare audiovisual recordings of the interrogations of two boys, aged 14 and 15, from the village of Nabi Saleh, the scene of weekly protests against nearby settlers. Both are visibly exhausted after being arrested in the middle of the night. Their interrogations, which begin at about 9.30am, last four and five hours.

Neither is told of their legal right to remain silent, and both are repeatedly asked leading questions, including whether named people have incited them to throw stones. At one point, as one boy rests his head on the table, the interrogator flicks at him, shouting: "Lift your head, you." During the other boy's interrogation, one questioner repeatedly slams a clenched fist into his own palm in a threatening gesture. The boy breaks down in tears, saying he was due to take an exam at school that morning. "They're going to fail me, I'm going to lose the year," he sobs.

In neither case was a lawyer present during their interrogation.

Israeli military law has been applied in the West Bank since Israel occupied the territory more than 44 years ago. Since then, more than 700,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been detained under military orders.

Under military order 1651, the age of criminal responsibility is 12 years, and children under the age of 14 face a maximum of six months in prison.

However, children aged 14 and 15 could, in theory, be sentenced up to 20 years for throwing an object at a moving vehicle with the intent to harm. In practice, most sentences range between two weeks and 10 months, according to DCI.

In September 2009, a special juvenile military court was established. It sits at Ofer, a military prison outside Jerusalem, twice a week. Minors are brought into court in leg shackles and handcuffs, wearing brown prison uniforms. The proceedings are in Hebrew with intermittent translation provided by Arabic-speaking soldiers.

The Israeli prison service told the Guardian that the use of restraints in public places was permitted in cases where "there is reasonable concern that the prisoner will escape, cause damage to property or body, or will damage evidence or try to dispose of evidence".

The Guardian witnessed a case this month in which two boys, aged 15 and 17, admitted entering Israel illegally, throwing molotov cocktails and stones, starting a fire which caused extensive damage, and vandalising property. The prosecution asked for a sentence to reflect the defendants' "nationalistic motives" and to act as a deterrent.

The older boy was sentenced to 33 months in jail; the younger one, 26 months. Both were sentenced to an additional 24 months suspended and were fined 10,000 shekels (£1,700). Failure to pay the fine would mean an additional 10 months in prison.

Several British parliamentary delegations have witnessed child hearings at Ofer over the past year. Alf Dubs reported back to the House of Lords last May, saying: "We saw a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, one of them in tears, both looking absolutely bewildered … I do not believe this process of humiliation represents justice. I believe that the way in which these young people are treated is in itself an obstacle to the achievement by Israel of a peaceful relationship with the Palestinian people."

Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan, who witnessed the trial of a shackled 14-year-old at Ofer last month, found the experience distressing. "In five minutes he had been found guilty of stone-throwing and was sentenced to nine months. It was shocking to see a child being put through this process. It's difficult to see how a [political] solution can be reached when young people are being treated in this manner. They end up with very little hope for their future and very angry about their treatment."

Horton said a guilty plea was "the quickest way to get out of the system". If the children say their confession was coerced, "that provides them with a legal defence – but because they're denied bail they will remain in detention longer than if they had simply pleaded guilty".

An expert opinion written by Graciela Carmon, a child psychiatrist and member of Physicians for Human Rights, in May 2011, said that children were particularly vulnerable to providing a false confession under coercion.

"Although some detainees understand that providing a confession, despite their innocence, will have negative repercussions in the future, they nevertheless confess as the immediate mental and/or physical anguish they feel overrides the future implications, whatever they may be."

Nearly all the cases documented by DCI ended in a guilty plea and about three-quarters of the convicted minors were transferred to prisons inside Israel. This contravenes article 76 of the fourth Geneva convention, which requires children and adults in occupied territories to be detained within the territory.

The Israeli defence forces (IDF), responsible for arrests in the West Bank and the military judicial system said last month that the military judicial system was "underpinned by a commitment to ensure the rights of the accused, judicial impartiality and an emphasis on practising international legal norms in incredibly dangerous and complex situations".

The ISA said its employees acted in accordance with the law, and detainees were given the full rights for which they were eligible, including the right to legal counsel and visits by the Red Cross. "The ISA categorically denies all claims with regard to the interrogation of minors. In fact, the complete opposite is true – the ISA guidelines grant minors special protections needed because of their age."

Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told the Guardian: "If detainees believe they have been mistreated, especially in the case of minors … it's very important that these people, or people representing them, come forward and raise these issues. The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors."
Stone-throwing, he added, was a dangerous activity that had resulted in the deaths of an Israeli father and his infant son last year.

"Rock-throwing, throwing molotov cocktails and other forms of violence is unacceptable, and the security authorities have to bring it to an end when it happens."

Human rights groups are concerned about the long-term impact of detention on Palestinian minors. Some children initially exhibit a degree of bravado, believing it to be a rite of passage, said Horton. "But when you sit with them for an hour or so, under this veneer of bravado are children who are fairly traumatised." Many of them, he said, never want to see another soldier or go near a checkpoint. Does he think the system works as a deterrent? "Yes, I think it does."

According to Nader Abu Amsha, the director of the YMCA in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, which runs a rehabilitation programme for juveniles, "families think that when the child is released, it's the end of the problem. We tell them this is the beginning".

Following detention many children exhibit symptoms of trauma: nightmares, mistrust of others, fear of the future, feelings of helplessness and worthlessness, obsessive compulsive behaviour, bedwetting, aggression, withdrawal and lack of motivation.

The Israeli authorities should consider the long-term effects, said Abu Amsha. "They don't give attention to how this might continue the vicious cycle of violence, of how this might increase hatred. These children come out of this process with a lot of anger. Some of them feel the need for revenge.
"You see children who are totally broken. It's painful to see the pain of these children, to see how much they are squeezed by the Israeli system."




Cell 36 in Al Jalame prison, northern Israel, is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. Mohammad Shabrawi from Tulkarm, in the West Bank, was arrested last January, aged 16, and Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when arrested, talk about their experiences


Archive footage courtesy of B'Tselem
Harriet Sherwood, Mat Heywood and Mustafa Khalili
guardian.co.uk,
Monday 23 January 2012




UK raises concerns over Israel's treatment of Palestinian children


Foreign Office minister says he has raised concerns about treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli detention


Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Monday 23 January 2012

Israeli soldiers hold Palestinian children under arrest in the West Bank city of Hebron in August 2011. Photograph: Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPA


The British government has raised concerns about Israel's treatment of Palestinian minors arrested and interrogated for stone-throwing and other crimes, highlighted in an article in the Guardian.


Alistair Burt, the Foreign Office minister for the Middle East, urged Israel to address the UK government's concerns when on a visit to the country a fortnight ago.


Burt told the Guardian he had "raised concerns about the treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli detention. I urged the Israeli government to address these concerns."


Burt was also asked in the House of Commons last week about the issue of solitary confinement for Palestinian minors. Labour MP Sandra Osborne called on the government to condemn the practice and demand the release of 106 children detained in the Israeli military prison system.


In response, Burt referred to an earlier statement in which he said the practice of shackling children was wrong. Minors are routinely shackled throughout court hearings in the Israeli military justice system.


Osborne told the Guardian Israel's treatment of Palestinian minors was "unjustified in the context of human rights". She had been appalled and distressed on visits to the Israeli military juvenile court at Ofer, near Jerusalem. "No civilised democracy should treat children in that way," she said.


The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said the state should apply the same protection to Palestinian minors in detention that it allows to Israeli children.


B'Tselem confirmed that descriptions given to the Guardian by Palestinian juveniles of arrest, detention and interrogation under the military justice system were consistent with testimonies it had collected although mostly with over-18s.


"We have also seen long periods of solitary confinement in a small cell, with lights on 24 hours a day, with detainees unable to follow time and disconnected to the rest of the world," said B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli. "We have testimonies of detainees cuffed in painful positions while under interrogation and sometimes left for long periods.


"Throughout the military justice process, the rights of suspects are violated."


B'Tselem, she said, took issue with the claim by Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev that detainees alleging mistreatment would have complaints dealt with fairly. "This is disingenuous at best," she said.


A B'Tselem study last year showed that out of more than 700 complaints of abuse by Israeli Security Agency (ISA) interrogators brought between 2001 and 2011, none resulted in a criminal investigation.


The complaints were examined by an official of the ISA. "It is not surprising that in most cases the inspector determines that the complaint is not true," said B'Tselem.


In a few cases, the inspector found abuse had taken place but the file was closed without the state attorney's office ordering a criminal investigation. B'Tselem said this "transmits a message to … the potential complainants that the chances of measures being taken against the persons responsible is zero".


Regev insisted anyone who had a complaint that an Israeli official had acted in an improper fashion should bring the information to the Israeli authorities and civil courts. "It will be thoroughly investigated," he said.


He added: "Minors deserve special attention, special consideration … The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors."


B'Tselem said the provisions of Israeli youth law should formally be applied to Palestinian minors. Night-time arrests in military operations should cease; interrogations should be video-taped; minors should be questioned in the presence of a parent or lawyer; they should have their rights clearly read to them; and proper options for remand should be put in place.


Unicef, the UN agency for children, also raised concerns following the Guardian's article. Children had the "right to protection against violence and abuse," it said in a statement. Unicef was "monitoring the arrest and detention of children and is currently in dialogue with the Israeli authorities to improve the protection of child detainees … All children, at all times, must be treated with dignity and respect, in accordance with the convention on the rights of the child."


In the first 11 months of last year, 222 cases of stone-throwers were brought before the military court, according to a letter sent by the Israeli foreign ministry to Lady Scotland, who visited the Ofer court last autumn, and is writing a report on her findings.


The period from indictment to the conclusion of proceedings had dropped to an average of 92.5 days in 2011 from 167 days in 2007, the letter said.


It pointed out that "many crimes carried out by minors in [the West Bank] are of a violent ideological nature and pose a clear and imminent threat to the public … Despite the unique dilemmas in the dealing with minor suspects in [the West Bank], Israel makes significant efforts to provide for just and fair treatment throughout the entire military legal process in accordance with international standards."


Human rights organisations say Israel's treatment of Palestinian minors breaches the international convention on the rights of the child and the fourth Geneva convention.

Fake Al Qaeda, Fake Passports, Fake planes

Thought I would start a new list today. Got to love a good list.

April 3 2010

The Phony (Mossad) Al Qaeda Cell in Palestine

Adam Yahiye Gadahn: The Fake Terrorist
The FBI lists Gadahn’s aliases as Abu Suhayb Al-Amriki, Abu Suhayb, Yihya Majadin Adams, Adam Pearlman, and Yayah.
But Adam Pearlmen is his REAL name! Adam is the grandson of the late Carl K. Pearlman; a prominent Jewish urologist in Orange County. Source

Israeli agents accused of creating fake al-Qaeda cell

Was Fake al Qaeda Member Adam Gadahn Arrested In Pakistan

March 8, 2010
By Keelan Balderson
Conflicting reports have emerged out of Pakistan that the alleged American born al Qaeda Member Adam Gadahn has been arrested. What needs to be explained should it actually turn out to be Gadahn, is that he’s already been exposed as an Israeli-Zionist agent through the ADL.
As reported by CBS:
CBS News was told by sources in the Pakistan government that it was Gadahn, even after U.S. officials refused to confirm it was the California native for whom a $1 million reward has been posted.
Later, CBS News’ Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad reported that earlier reports the detained individual was Gadahn proved false. According to a Pakistan security official who spoke with CBS News on condition of anonymity, the arrested individual is in fact “a Taliban militant leader who is known as Abu Yahya.”
The article then continues to reaffirm the deception that Gadahn is a real al Qaeda terrorist, and that the arrest is a severe blow to the terrorists.
WideShutUK exposes Adam Gadahn, otherwise known as Adam Pearlman
In truth this Gadahn fellow, who goes by several aliases like all criminals (Adam Pearlman, ahya Majadin Adams and Azzam al-Amriki) is actually an American born Zionist-Jew with ties to the Anti Defamation League, who has been caught several times putting out fake al Qaeda propaganda tapes. The Zionist movement of course has a religious and ideological motive in targeting Muslims in the Middle-East and on US soil. Mossad agents were present at 9/11, have been involved in the war on terror from the start and are now targeting Iran and pressuring the US to strike. For entire story go to Source

Mossad and al-Qaeda ‘both use fake Irish passports’

And the former US special military aide Oliver North, in his autobiography, said that an Israeli military cargo plane was repainted in Aer Lingus livery to smuggle arms into Iran in 1986 when the US was secretly supplying weapons to Iran as part of a deal to release American hostages. For entire story go to Source

Gee they even fake planes??????  My oh my.  What don’t they fake?

Fake Passports, Fake Al Qaeda, and Fake planes what else does Israel create that is fake?  Was it Israel that created all the fake Bin Laden tapes and videos.

There have been numerous tapes and Video come out with Bin Laden but he died in December of 2001.

CIA and Mossad join forces with AlQaeda for Proxy Terrorist Attacks on Iranian Regime

Video from March 09, 2010

One has to wonder just how many Al Qaeda attacks were actually Done by Mossad.  How many Fake things do we need, before this is investigated.

Maybe Al Qaeda cells are just Mossad fabrications.

We know that Al Quaeda was just a Data Base, created by the CIA.

How did a “Data Base” get turned into a terrorist organization? So did Mossad create Al Quaeda with the help of the US?

Maybe they did. After all the US did need that Pearl Harbor thing.

The Underpants Bomber- Well there to is a few Israeli connections including “Mossad that being  His own Father”. They really wanted to sell those Body Scanners.

How many so called Al Qaeda cells were actually set up by Mossad one has to wonder?

Israel does a lot of fake stuff including False Flags. The USS Liberty, or how about Operation Trojan was one of the Mossad’s greatest successes. The Lavon affair, Etc etc. Then there are all the Assassinations using Fake passports.

Israel does fake stuff all the time.

Nothing new, but should be investigated, as to just how many things that were told to us were done by Al Quaeda ,were really actually cone by Israel.

Fake stuff would help the US keep their wars going. Profit profit profit.

There was never any Al Qaeda in Iraq until the Iraq war. Saddam and Bin Laden never had anything to do with each other. That connection was fabricated y the US gov and the press.

Even the  hijackers on 9/11  could have been anyone. Seems some of the so called hijackers  were actually still alive after 9/11. Seems some of them were fakes as well. Now isn’t that special.  So who created the fake hijackers?

To all the Al Qaeda recruits out there stop working for Israel. Please. Just a point of interest.

We all know if one was set up by Mossad there are more.

Many of the fake tapes come from Intelcenter,
Intelcenter, a group that regularly ‘obtains’ Al-Qaeda tapes. Intelcenter is an offshoot of IDEFENSE, which was staffed by a senior military psy-op intelligence officer Jim Melnick, who has worked directly for Donald Rumsfeld.
Settler even used fake documents to seal Palestinian land.
Officials in Turkey traced the documents the lawyers requested and provided affidavits that the settlers’ land claims were forged. The search of the Ottoman archives, Abu Ahmad said, had failed to locate any title deeds belonging to a Jewish group for the land in Sheikh Jarrah. Source

“Israel Did 9-11″ – U.S. Military Expert Supports Bollyn Thesis April 3, 2010

“What we need to stand up and say is that not only did they attack the USS Liberty, they did 9/11. They did it.  I have had long conversations over the past two weeks with contacts at the Army War College, at the Headquarters Marine Corps, and I have made it absolutely clear in both cases that it is 100 percent certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation. Period . . .
“And the Zionists are playing this as truly an all-or-nothing exercise, because if they lose this one, if the American people ever realize what happened, they’re done.”
For entire story Source

The Lehman Scam and Fuld’s Mossad Connection

It should be noted that Richard S. Fuld is closely tied to Menachem Atzmon, the Israeli Mossadnik who owned the passenger-screening/airport security company that was behind getting the 19 Arab hijackers on the planes of 9-11.  Uzi Ruskin, Menachem Atzmon, and his Mossad-funded comrades took over the failing United Merchants & Manufacturers, Inc. in 1993 – from Fuld’s uncle, Martin Schwab, Richard’s mother’s brother.
I wrote in early October 2008 about the criminal activity of A.I.G. and Lehman, crimes which led to the trillion dollar bail-out: For the rest Source

Fake, fake and more fake slop.

An this, well this is just sad. Almost amusing. Fake Netanyahu. Bibi makes it personal

Laugh if you will but it it true Benzion Netanyahu (born Benzion Mileikowsky, March 25, 1910

Why the Blockade on Gaza the Natural Gas. Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hamas also said no. Could be why all the lies are told about Hamas.

Gaza War Why?: Natural Gas valued at over $4 billion MAYBE?

Dubai police chief to seek Netanyahu arrest

Foreign control of large swathes of the Sinai Peninsula obtained through fraud and Israeli involvement

E-book on Jewish National Fund’s role in colonization of Palestine

Israel “blackmails Gaza’s patients to turn them into collaborators”

Recent

Israel And Apartheid: By People Who Knew Apartheid

Japan Tokunoshima islanders reject US Marines base

Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized by American Depravity

Two-Thirds of Boys in Afghan Jails Are Brutalised, Study Finds

Israel bombards Gaza – and threatens worse

Israel Gags News on Extra-Judicial Killings

Update April 2 2010: Disease Threatens Haitian Children

Mossad using Spanish passport Arrested in Algeria

Source

Israel And Apartheid: By People Who Knew Apartheid

1. André Brink, one of South Africa’s leading authors, whose opposition to the apartheid regime resulted in his novels becoming the first books in Afrikaans to be banned by the government. This extract is from his memoir, A Fork In The Road (in French, from which the excerpt is taken, Mes bifurcations, pub. Actes Sud, Arles, 2010). Translation mine.

[T]he decisive experience of this trip (in 2002) was the visit to the Palestinian University of Birzeit. I’d read a lot about the Middle East conflict; in Salzburg and elsewhere, I had long impassioned conversations with Palestinian writers. I still remember my discussion with Hanan Mikhail Ashrawi, when she visited the Cape years ago. On several occasions before his untimely death, I also benefited from the wisdom and the gentle humanity of Edward Said.
But this immersion in the terrible reality of this tragic place, of this land and its people, felt to me like very few other things in my life. I felt as if I’d rediscovered the hideous heart of apartheid: the way in which Palestinians, including some of the most wonderful people I’d ever met, are subjected to one of the cruelest forms of oppression on earth; the web of hypocrisy and lies through which the Israeli side tries to obscure and twist the truth.  During this visit there was one particularly shocking event: an old Palestinian man had his shack bulldozed by the Israeli army because he had presumed to install a water tank on its roof to catch the few drops of rain that fell there.
I saw the network of modern highways built for the Israelis, and the pathetic little roads to which the Palestinians are confined; I saw olive groves, often the only means of subsistence for Palestinian farmers, uprooted by the Israelis; I saw the proliferation of new Israeli settlements in the heart  of Palestinian land, built there in contravention of all the agreements signed, just to reinforce the presence and the power of Israelis in territory that does not belong to them. I had already seen this, in the era of the oppression of blacks by whites in South Africa. I had already heard the same pious excuses and explanations.
When I look back on it now, I can’t help but remember the terrible images of Dachau and Auschwitz. Even if Israel has not embarked upon a genocide of the same magnitude as the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansing it is inflicting on the Palestinians is morally equivalent to a slower and smaller-scale version of the death camps. I struggle to understand how a people that has found it so difficult to recover from the horrors of the Holocaust can go on to do to others what was once done to it.

h/t Nouvelles d’Orient.

2. John Dugard, South African Professor of International Law; formerly Special Rapporteur on Palestine to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Apartheid was a system of institutionalized racial discrimination that the white minority in South Africa employed to maintain power over the black majority. It was characterized by the denial of political rights to blacks, the fragmentation of the country into white areas and black areas (called Bantustans) and by the imposition on blacks of restrictive measures designed to achieve white superiority, racial separation and white security.
The “pass system,” which sought to prevent the free movement of blacks and to restrict their entry to the cities, was rigorously enforced. Blacks were forcibly “relocated,” and they were denied access to most public amenities and to many forms of employment. The system was enforced by a brutal security apparatus in which torture played a significant role.
…
Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories has many features of colonization. At the same time it has many of the worst characteristics of apartheid. The West Bank has been fragmented into three areas – north (Jenin and Nablus), center (Ramallah) and south (Hebron) – which increasingly resemble the Bantustans of South Africa.
Restrictions on freedom of movement imposed by a rigid permit system enforced by some 520 checkpoints and roadblocks resemble, but in severity go well beyond, apartheid’s “pass system.” And the security apparatus is reminiscent of that of apartheid, with more than 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons and frequent allegations of torture and cruel treatment.
Many aspects of Israel’s occupation surpass those of the apartheid regime. Israel’s large-scale destruction of Palestinian homes, leveling of agricultural lands, military incursions and targeted assassinations of Palestinians far exceed any similar practices in apartheid South Africa. No wall was ever built to separate blacks and whites.
– Israelis adopt what South Africa dropped; Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 29 Nov 2006.

3. Breyten Breytenbach, South Africa’s preeminent Afrikaner poet, who was convicted of treason in South Africa in 1975, and served seven years in jail for his opposition to apartheid.

I’m a writer born in South Africa now living and working abroad. For some time back there I also grew up among a “chosen people” who behaved as Herrenvolk — as all those who believe themselves singularized by suffering or entrusted with a special mission from God.
I apologize if my comparative allusion to Israel as Herrenvolk hurts because of the echoes from a recent past when, in Europe, so many Jews were the victims of a “final solution.” But how else is one to attempt describing the comportment of your armies when one is flooded by the horror of what you’re doing?
These rough equivalences don’t come lightly. As a writer I’m deeply apprised of the need to keep the words uncluttered of any urge to rouse easy emotions. This is what facile comparisons do–they nullify understanding the complexity of the observed phenomena by a rush of outrage heating the throat and staining the adversary with the vomit of borrowed or vicarious condemnation. Apartheid was not Nazism, though to say so was a striking slogan. And the policies now perpetrated by Israeli forces on the Palestinian people should not be equated with Apartheid. Each one of these processes and systems is evil enough to merit a thorough description of its own historical singularity.
And yet… (continues)
– An Open Letter to General Ariel Sharon; The Nation, 10 Apr 2002.

4. Desmond Tutu , former Archbishop of Cape Town; headed post-apartheid South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were the Jews. Jews almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust center in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders.
What is not so understandable, not justified, is what it did to another people to guarantee its existence. I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visits to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us blacks in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about. They seemed to derive so much joy from our humiliation.
…

People are scared in this country [the U.S.] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? This is God’s world. For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosovic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust…

– Occupation is Oppression, 13 Apr 2002.

5. Ronnie Kasrils, South African Member of Parliament. Member of the ANC Executive Committee 1987-2007; South Africa’s Minster for Intelligence Services 2004-2008, Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry (1999-2004), and Deputy Minister of Defense (1994-1999).

May I start by quoting a South African who emphatically stated as far back as 1961 that “The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel like South Africa, is an apartheid state” (Rand Daily Mail, 23 Novemeber 1961). Those were not the words of Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu or Ruth First, but were uttered by none other than the architect of apartheid itself, racist Prime Minister, Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd. (continues)
He was irked by the criticism of apartheid policy and Harold Macmillan’s “Winds of Change” speech and the growing international outcry following the Sharpeville massacre, in contrast to the West’s unconditional support for Zionist Israel.
To be sure Verwoerd was correct. Both apartheid South Africa and Zionist Israel were colonial, settler states created on the basis of the harsh dispossession of the land and birthright of the indigenous people. This is unblushingly documented in Israel’s case from the time of Herzl through Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan to Sharon et al. Both states preached and implemented a policy based on racial ethnicity; the sole claim of Jews in Israel and whites in South Africa to exclusive citizenship; monopolised rights in law regarding the ownership of land, property, business; superior access to education, health, social, sporting and cultural amenities, pensions and municipal services at the expense of the original indigenous population; the virtual monopoly membership of military and security forces, and privileged development along their own racial supremacist lines – even both countries marriage laws are designed to safeguard racial “purity”. The fact that the Palestinian minority within Israel is allowed to vote hardly redresses the injustice in all other matters of basic human rights. In any case those Palestinians allowed to stand for election to the Knesset do so on condition that they dare not question Israel’s existence as a Jewish state…
– Address to the Re-envisioning Israel/Palestine international conference; held in Cape Town on 12 June, 2009.
Source:

Related: Why would anyone think its apartheid?

"The Children of Gaza" From Channel 4 Dispatches

On March 5 2010, Channel 4 aired an episode of Dispatches entitled "The Children of Gaza". It focused on the lives of a few of the children living in that small strip of Palestinian land whose lives were devastated when, 15 months ago, Israel launched its military attack on their homes, killing many of their parents and relatives, and shattering their already fragile existences. It showed how they have bravely tried to deal with their losses and bereavements and have tried to move on with their lives, and simultaneously how Israel has ensured that this is well near impossible as a result of the children’s literal incarceration in Gaza due to Israel’s illegal and ongoing siege. The documentary focused on how they have been struggling to deal with the fallout of their physical injuries as well as their psychological scars which, in all probability, they will never fully recover from. For once, this documentary was an opportunity for the children of Gaza themselves to speak out and to tell their own stories instead of it being told on their behalf by propagandists with a vested interest in how these children are portrayed. Listen to the Children.





Source

Pictures of Gaza during Cast Lead

Israel has been spying in the US for Years

Scratch a counterintelligence officer in the U.S. government and they'll tell you that Israel is not a friend to the United States.
By Christopher Ketcham
March 2010

This is because Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the U.S..  The fact of Israeli penetration into the country is not a subject oft-discussed in the media or in the circles of governance, due to the extreme sensitivity of the U.S.-Israel relationship coupled with the burden of the Israel lobby, which punishes legislators who dare to criticize the Jewish state.  The void where the facts should sit is filled instead with the hallucinations of conspiracy theory -- the kind in which, for example, agents of the Mossad, Israel’s top intelligence agency, engineer the 9/11 attacks, while 4,000 Israelis in the Twin Towers somehow all get word to escape before the planes hit.  The effect, as disturbing as it is ironic, is that the less the truth is addressed, the more noxious the falsity that spreads.

Israel's spying on the U.S., however, is a matter of public record, and neither Israel runs one of the most aggressive and damaging espionage networks targeting the U.S., yet public discussion about it is almost nil. conspiracy nor theory is needed to present the evidence.   When the FBI produces its annual report to Congress concerning "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage," Israel and its intelligence services often feature prominently as a threat second only to China. In 2005 the FBI noted, for example, that Israel maintains "an active program to gather proprietary information within the United States."  A key Israeli method, said the FBI report, is computer intrusion.  In 1996, the Defense Intelligence Service, a branch of the Pentagon, issued a warning that "the collection of scientific intelligence in the United States [is] the third highest priority of Israeli Intelligence after information on its Arab neighbors and information on secret U.S. policies or decisions relating to Israel."  In 1979, the Central Intelligence Agency produced a scathing survey of Israeli intelligence activities that targeted the U.S. government.  Like any worthy spy service, Israeli intelligence early on employed wiretaps as an effective tool, according to the CIA report.  In 1954, the U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv discovered in his office a hidden microphone "planted by the Israelis," and two years later telephone taps were found in the residence of the U.S. military attaché.  In a telegram to Washington, the ambassador at the time cabled a warning: "Department must assume that all conversations [in] my office are known to the Israelis." The former ambassador to Qatar, Andrew Killgore, who also served as a foreign officer in Jerusalem and Beirut, told me Israeli taps of U.S. missions and embassies in the Middle East were part of a "standard operating procedure."

According to the 1979 CIA report, the Israelis, while targeting political secrets, also devote "a considerable portion of their covert operations to obtaining scientific and technical intelligence." These operations involved, among other machinations, "attempts to penetrate certain classified defense projects in the United States."   The penetrations, according to the CIA report, were effected using "deep cover enterprises," which the report described as "firms and organizations, some specifically created for, or adaptable to, a specific objective."  At the time, the CIA singled out government-subsidized companies such as El Al airlines and Zim, the Israeli shipping firm, as deep cover enterprises.  Other deep cover operations included the penetration of a U.S. company that provided weapons-grade uranium to the Department of Defense during the 1960s; Israeli agents eventually spirited home an estimated 200 pounds of uranium as the bulwark in Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program.  Moles have burrowed on Israel’s behalf throughout the U.S. intelligence services.  Perhaps most infamous was the case of Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish-American employed as a civilian analyst with the U.S. Navy who purloined an estimated 800,000 code-word protected documents from inside the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and numerous other U.S. agencies.  While Pollard was sentenced to life in prison, counterintelligence investigators at the FBI suspected he was linked to a mole far higher in the food chain, ensconced somewhere in the DIA, but this suspected Israeli operative, nicknamed "Mr. X," was never found.   Following the embarrassment of the Pollard affair -- and its devastating effects on U.S. national security, as testified by then Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (who allegedly stated that Pollard "should have been shot") -- the Israeli government vowed never again to pursue espionage against its ally and chief benefactor.

Fast-forward a quarter century, and the vow has proven empty.  In 2004, the authoritative Jane's Intelligence Group noted that Israel's intelligence organizations "have been spying on the U.S. and running clandestine operations since Israel was established."  The former deputy director of counterintelligence at FBI, Harry B. Brandon, last year told Congressional Quarterly magazine that "the Israelis are interested in commercial as much as military secrets. They have a muscular technology sector themselves."  According to CQ, "One effective espionage tool is forming joint partnerships with U.S. companies to supply software and other technology products to U.S. government agencies."

Best-selling author James Bamford now adds another twist in this history of infiltration in a book published last October, "The Shadow Factory," which forms the latest installment in his trilogy of investigations into the super-secret National Security Agency.  Bamford is regarded among journalists and intelligence officers as the nation’s expert on the workings of the NSA, whose inner sanctums he first exposed to the public in 1982. (So precise is his reporting that NSA officers once threw him a book party, despite the fact that he continually reveals their secrets.)  The agency has come a long way in the half-century since its founding in 1952.  Armed with digital technology and handed vast new funding and an almost limitless mandate in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Bamford writes, the NSA has today "become the largest, most costly, and most technologically sophisticated spy organization the world has ever known."  The NSA touches on every facet of U.S. communications, its mega-computers secretly filtering "millions of phone calls and e-mails" every hour of operation.  For those who have followed the revelations of the NSA’s "warrantless wiretapping" program in the New York Times in 2005 and the Wall Street Journal last year, what Bamford unveils in "The Shadow Factory" is only confirmation of the worst fears: "There is now the capacity," he writes of the NSA’s tentacular reach into the private lives of Americans, "to make tyranny total."

Much less has been reported about the high-tech Israeli wiretapping firms that service U.S. telecommunications companies, primarily AT&T and Verizon, whose networks serve as the chief conduits for NSA surveillance.  Even less is known about the links between those Israeli companies and the Israeli intelligence services.  But what Bamford suggests in his book accords with the history of Israeli spying in the U.S.: Through joint partnerships with U.S. telecoms, Israel may be a shadow arm of surveillance among the tentacles of the NSA.  In other words, when the NSA violates constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure to vacuum up the contents of your telephone conversations and e-mail traffic, the Israeli intelligence services may be gathering it up too -- a kind of mirror tap that is effectively a two-government-in-one violation.

***

On its face, the overseas outsourcing of high-tech services would seem de rigueur in a competitive globalized marketplace.  Equipment and services from Israel’s telecom sector are among the country’s prime exports, courtesy of Israeli entrepreneurs who have helped pioneer wireless telephony, voicemail and voice recognition software, instant messaging, phone billing software, and, not least, "communications interception solutions."  Israeli telecom interception hardware and software is appraised as some of the best in the world.

By the mid-1990s, Israeli wiretap firms would arrive in the U.S. in a big way.  The key to the kingdom was the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which was Congress’ solution for wiretapping in the digital age.   Gone are the days when wiretaps were conducted through on-site tinkering with copper switches.  CALEA mandated that telephonic surveillance operate through computers linked directly into the routers and hubs of telecom companies -- a spyware apparatus matched in real-time, all the time, to American telephones and modems.  CALEA effectively made spy equipment an inextricable ligature in telephonic life.  Without CALEA, the NSA in its spectacular surveillance exploits could not have succeeded.

AT&T and Verizon, which together manage as much as 90 percent of the nation’s communications traffic, contracted with Israeli firms in order to comply with CALEA.  AT&T employed the services of Narus Inc., which was founded in Israel in 1997.  It was Narus technology that AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, a 22-year technician with the company, famously unveiled in a 2006 affidavit that described the operations in AT&T’s secret tapping room at its San Francisco facilities.  (Klein’s affidavit formed the gravamen of a lawsuit against AT&T mounted by the Electronic Freedom Foundation, but the lawsuit died when Congress passed the telecom immunity bill last year.)  According to Klein, the Narus supercomputer, the STA 6400, was "known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets."  The Narus system, which was maintained by Narus technicans, also provided a real-time mirror image of all data streaming through AT&T routers, an image to be rerouted into the computers of the NSA.

According to Jim Bamford, who cites knowledgeable sources, Verizon’s eavesdropping program is run by a competing Israeli firm called Verint, a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, which was founded by a former Israeli intelligence officer in 1984.  Incorporated in New York and Tel Aviv, Comverse is effectively an arm of the Israeli government: 50 percent of its R&D costs are reimbursed by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade.  The Verint technology deployed throughout Verizon’s network, known as STAR-GATE, boasts an array of Orwellian capabilities.  "With STAR-GATE, service providers can access communications on virtually any type of network," according to the company’s literature.  "Designed to manage vast numbers of targets, concurrent sessions, call data records, and communications, STAR-GATE transparently accesses targeted communications without alerting subscribers or disrupting service."  As with the Narus system, the point is to be able to tap into communications unobtrusively, in real time, all the time.  A Verint spinoff firm, PerSay, takes the tap to the next stage, deploying "advanced voice mining," which singles out "a target’s voice within a large volume of intercepted calls, regardless of the conversation content or method of communication."   Verint’s interception systems have gone global since the late 1990s, and sales in 2006 reached $374 million (a doubling of its revenues over 2003).  More than 5,000 organizations -- mostly intelligence services and police units -- in at least 100 countries today use Verint technology.

What troubles Bamford is that executives and directors at companies like Narus and Verint formerly worked at or maintain close connections with the Israeli intelligence services, including Mossad; the internal security agency Shin Bet; and the Israeli version of the NSA, Unit 8200, an arm of the Israeli Defense Forces Intelligence Corps.  Unit 8200, which Bamford describes as "hypersecret," is a key player in the eavesdropping industrial complex in Israel, its retired personnel dispersed throughout dozens of companies.  According to Ha’aretz, the Israeli daily, "Many of the [eavesdropping] technologies in use around the world and developed in Israel were originally military technologies and were developed and improved by [Unit 8200] veterans."  A former commander of Unit 8200, cited by Bamford, states that Verint technology was "directly influenced by 8200 technology….[Verint parent company] Comverse’s main product, the Logger, is based on the Unit’s technology."   The implications for U.S. national security, writes Bamford, are "unnerving."  "Virtually the entire American telecommunications system," he avers, "is bugged by [Israeli-formed] companies with possible ties to Israel’s eavesdropping agency."  Congress, he says, maintains no oversight of these companies’ operations, and even their contracts with U.S. telecoms -- contracts pivotal to NSA surveillance -- are considered trade secrets and go undisclosed in company statements.

U.S. intelligence officers have not been quiet in their concerns about Verint (I reported on this matter in CounterPunch.org last September).  "Phone calls are intercepted, recorded, and transmitted to U.S. investigators by Verint, which claims that it has to be ‘hands on’ with its equipment to maintain the system," says former CIA counterterrorism officer Philip Giraldi.  The "hands on" factor is what bothers Giraldi, specifically because of the possibility of a "trojan" embedded in Verint wiretap software.   A trojan in information security hardware/software is a backdoor that can be accessed remotely by parties who normally would not have access to the secure system.   Allegations of widespread trojan spying have rocked the Israeli business community in recent years.  "Top Israeli blue chip companies," reported the AP in 2005, "are suspected of using illicit surveillance software to steal information from their rivals and enemies."  Over 40 companies have come under scrutiny.  "It is the largest cybercrime case in Israeli history," Boaz Guttmann, a veteran cybercrimes investigator with the Israeli national police, told me.  "Trojan horse espionage is part of the way of life of companies in Israel.  It’s a culture of spying."

In a wide-ranging four-part investigation into Israel-linked espionage that aired in December 2001, Carl Cameron, a correspondent at Fox News Channel, reported the distress among U.S. intelligence officials warning about possible trojans cached in Verint technology.   Sources told Cameron that "while various FBI inquiries into [Verint] have been conducted over the years," the inquiries had "been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks."   Cameron also cited a 1999 internal FCC document indicating that "several government agencies expressed deep concerns that too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system."   Much of this access was facilitated through "remote maintenance."

The Fox News report reverberated throughout U.S. law enforcement, particularly at the Drug Enforcement Agency, which makes extensive use of wiretaps for narcotics interdiction. Security officers at DEA, an adjunct of the Justice Department, began examining the agency’s own relationship with Comverse/Verint.  In 1997, DEA had transformed its wiretap infrastructure with the $25 million procurement from Comverse/Verint of a technology called "T2S2" -- "translation and transcription support services" -- with Comverse/Verint contracted to provide the hardware and software.  The company was also tasked with "support services, training, upgrades, enhancements and options throughout the life of the contract," according to the DEA’s "contracts and acquisitions" notice.  In the wake of the Fox News investigation, however, the director of security programs at DEA, Heidi Raffanello, was rattled enough to issue an internal communiqué on the matter, dated Dec. 18, 2001.  Directly referencing Fox News, she worried that "Comverse remote maintenance" was "not addressed in the C&A [contracts and acquisitions] process….It remains unclear if Comverse personnel are security cleared, and if so, who are they and what type of clearances are on record….Bottom line we should have caught it."  It is not known what resulted from DEA’s review of the issue of remote maintenance and access by Comverse/Verint.

Bamford devotes a portion of his argument to the detailing of the operations of a third Israeli wiretap company, NICE Systems, which he describes as "a major eavesdropper in the U.S." that "keeps its government and commercial client list very secret."  Formed in 1986 by seven veterans of Unit 8200, NICE software "captures voice, email, chat, screen activity, and essential call details," while offering "audio compression technology that performs continuous recordings of up to thousands of analog and digital telephone lines and radio channels."  NICE Systems has on at least one occasion shown up on the radar of U.S. counterintelligence.  During 2000-2001, when agents at the FBI and the CIA began  investigating allegations that Israeli nationals posing as "art students" were in fact conducting espionage on U.S. soil, one of the Israeli "art students" was discovered to be an employee with NICE Systems.  Among the targets of the art students were facilities and offices of the Drug Enforcement Agency nationwide. The same Israeli employee of NICE Systems, who was identified as a former operative in the Israeli intelligence services, was carrying a disk that contained a file labeled "DEA Groups."  U.S. counterintelligence officers concluded it was a highly suspicious nexus: An Israeli national and alleged spy was working for an Israeli wiretap company while carrying in his possession computer information regarding the Drug Enforcement Agency -- at the same time this Israeli was conducting what the DEA described as "intelligence gathering" about DEA facilities.

***

A former senior counterintelligence official in the Bush administration told me that as early as 1999, "CIA was very concerned about [Israeli wiretapping companies]" -- Verint in particular.  "I know that CIA has tried to monitor what the Israelis were doing -- technically watch what they were doing on the networks in terms of remote access.  Other countries were concerned as well," said the intelligence official.  Jim Bamford, who notes that Verint "can automatically access the mega-terabytes of stored and real-time data secretly and remotely from anywhere," reports that Australian lawmakers in 2004 held hearings on this remote monitoring capability. "[Y]ou can access data from overseas," the lawmakers told a Verint representative during the hearings, "but [the legislature] seems restricted to access data within that system."  The Australians found this astonishing.  In 2000, the Canadian intelligence service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, conducted "a probe related to allegations that [Israeli] spies used rigged software to hack into Canada's top secret intelligence files," according to an article in the Toronto Star.  Several sources in the U.S. intelligence community told me the Canadians liaised with their American counterparts to try to understand the problem.  According to the Bush administration official who spoke with me, "the Dutch also had come to the CIA very concerned about what the Israelis were doing with this."  The Dutch intelligence service, under contract with Verint, "had discovered strange things were going on -- there was activity on the network, the Israelis uploading and downloading stuff out of the switches, remotely, and apparently using it for their own wiretap purposes.  The CIA was very embarrassed to say, ‘We have the same problem.’  But the CIA didn’t have an answer for them.  ‘We hear you, we’re surprised, and we understand your concern.’"  Indeed, sources in the Dutch counterintelligence community in 2002 claimed there was "strong evidence that the Israeli secret service has uncontrolled access to confidential tapping data collected by the Dutch police and intelligence services," according to the Dutch broadcast radio station Evangelische Omroep (EO). In January 2003, the respected Dutch technology and computing magazine, C’T, ran a follow-up to the EO story, headlined "Dutch Tapping Room not Kosher." The article states: "All tapping equipment of the Dutch intelligence services and half the tapping equipment of the national police force [is] insecure and is leaking information to Israel."

"The key to this whole thing is that Australian meeting," Bamford told me in a recent interview. "They accused Verint of remote access and Verint said they won’t do it again -- which implies they were doing it in the past.  It’s a matter of a backdoor into the system, and those backdoors should not be allowed to exist.  You can tell by the Australian example that it was certainly a concern of Australian lawmakers."

Congress doesn’t seem to share the concern.  "Part of the responsibility of Congress," says Bamford, "is not just to oversee the intelligence community but to look into the companies with which the intelligence community contracts.  They’re just very sloppy about this."  According to the Bush administration intelligence official who spoke with me, "Frustratingly, I did not get the sense that our government was stepping up to this and grasping the bull by the horns."  Another former high level U.S. intelligence official told me, "The fact of the vulnerability of our telecom backbone is indisputable.  How it came to pass, why nothing has been done, who has done what -- these are the incendiary questions."  There is also the fundamental fact that the wiretap technologies implemented by Verint, Narus and other Israeli companies are fully in place and no alternative is on the horizon.  "There is a technical path dependence problem," says the Bush administration official. "I have been told nobody else makes software like this for the big digital switches, so that is part of the problem.  Other issues," he adds, "compound the problem" -- referring to the sensitivity of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

And that, of course, is the elephant in the room.  "Whether it’s a Democratic or Republican administration, you don’t bad-mouth Israel if you want to get ahead," says former CIA counterterrorism officer Philip Giraldi.  "Most of the people in the agency were very concerned about Israeli espionage and Israeli actions against U.S. interests. Everybody was aware of it.  Everybody hated it.  But they wouldn’t get promoted if they spoke out.  Israel has a privileged position and that’s the way things are.  It’s crazy.  And everybody knows it’s crazy."

Source

Israel will not restrict building in occupied East Jerusalem

East Jerusalem is Occupied Territory:

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has declared his government will not restrict building in occupied East Jerusalem, despite US condemnation of the recent announcement of 1,600 new housing units.

Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that he would make Israel's position on Jerusalem clear during this week's visit to Washington.

"Our policy on Jerusalem is the same policy followed by all Israeli governments for the last 42 years, and it has not changed," he said.

"As far as we are concerned, building in Jerusalem is the same as building in Tel Aviv."

Netanyahu heads to the US capital on Sunday night to address the influential lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and meet with Barack Obama, the US president.

His visit comes amid heightened tensions between Israel and Washington over the settlement announcement, made as Joe Biden, the US vice-president, visited Israel.

The expansion plan was seen as an insult to the US and frayed Israel's usually strong ties with Washington.

Diplomatic activity

The Palestinians pulled out of planned so-called "proximity" talks after Israeli officials announced that the housing units would be built. They have demanded that all construction be stopped before they will return to negotiations.

In the aftermath there has been a flurry of diplomatic activity as major international powers have struggled to restart a peace process stalled for more than a year.

George Mitchell, the US envoy to the Middle East, met Netanyahu on Sunday, to present him with the official invitation to meet Obama on Tuesday and push for indirect talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.

He maintained pressure for renewed Israeli commitment to peace talks with the Palestinians, but also reassured Israel that the two countries enjoy an "unshakeable bond".

Jacky Rowland, Al Jazeera's Jerusalem correspondent, said: "What we're witnessing is really concerted efforts on the part of the international community to get some sort of peace process going again.

"It's been stagnant; it's been moribund for almost a year and a half now."

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was also in the region on Sunday, criticising Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip during a visit to the Hamas-controlled territory.

Ban said that Israel's policy of closing off the territory is not sustainable and causes "unacceptable suffering".

Israel imposed a tightened blockade after the Hamas movement took full control of the coastal enclave in June 2007.

Ban told Gazans that "we stand with you" as he visited an area damaged by Israel's offensive 14 months ago.

Ban said families were living under "unacceptable, unsustainable conditions".

He saidd that it was "distressing" for him to see houses still damaged, with no reconstruction possible under the blockade.

The blockade has prevented the United Nations from completing housing projects, however, Ban pledged to continue providing aid to Gazans.

"My message to people of Gaza is this: the United Nations will stand with you through this ordeal," he said.

He also called for a prisoner exchange involving Palestinian prisoners and Israeli soldier Gilat Shilad who was captured in 2006.

'Illegal' settlements

The UN secretary-general's visit to Gaza followed a trip to the West Bank the previous day, where he reiterated demands that Israel end settlement building in Palestinian territory.

"Let us be clear, all settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and this must stop," Ban said, speaking at a joint news conference with Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister.

Ban emphasised the commitment of the so-called international Quartet of Middle East negotiators - comprised of the UN, the European Union, Russia and the US - to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

"The Quartet has sent a clear and strong message: we are strongly supporting your efforts to establish an independent and viable Palestinian state," Ban said.

He also met Israeli officials, including Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, as part of his trip.

But the moves on the diplomatic stage were overshadowed by violence on the ground in the West Bank.

Four Palestinians were killed in the past two days in the West Bank.

Source

Map of planned East Jerusalem Housing By Israel March 11 2010



Israel's approval for building 1,600 new housing units for ultra-Orthodox Jews in East Jerusalem has infuriated the Palestinians.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, a Palestinian Authority spokesman, told the AFP news agency: "This is a dangerous decision and will hinder the negotiations."

The Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now condemned the new project, saying it would "widen the gap with the Palestinians and the two-state solution, which risks becoming obsolete".

According to Israel's Haaretz newspaper, some 50,000 housing units are reported to be in various stages of planning and approval on occupied land in East Jerusalem.

Haaretz says plans for around 20,000 apartments are already in an advanced stage.

A spokesman for the Israeli interior ministry said: "The Jerusalem District Planning Committee today approved a plan which has been in the works for over three years.

"This is a procedural stage in the framework of a long process that will yet continue for some time. The committee meeting was determined in advance and there is no connection to US Vice-President Joe Biden's visit to Israel."

There are still various planning hurdles for the East Jerusalem project to clear, and work is not thought likely to start for at least another two years.

Under pressure from the US, Israel has agreed a 10-month suspension of new building in the West Bank. However, the moratorium excludes East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state.

Israel's continued expansion of settlements is one of the biggest obstacles to the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians, now suspended for more than a year despite months of US-led shuttle diplomacy.

Source

Israeli security forces have forcibily evicted two Palestinian families from a contested East Jerusalem neighbourhood.

The families have lived in Sheikh Jarrah since 1956 but an Israeli court ruled that the homes belonged to Jewish families. Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros reports from occupied East Jerusalem.

Obama blocks delivery of bunker-busters to Israel