Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu is one of 18 rabbis who signed a petition in October, urging Jews to refrain from renting or selling apartments to non-Jews.
Safed Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu yesterday boasted that his edict calling for people not to rent apartments to non-Jews was working, while a minster praised his efforts to maintain the Jewish nature of Israel.
“The Jewish law is clear,” Eliyahu said at a conference organized by the rightist religious movement Komemiyut. “In Safed the halakhic ruling worked, people don’t sell land or rent or sell apartments to non-Jews.”
Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz also attended the conference, and awarded Eliyahu a citation for “his devotion to the Jewish nature of the Land of Israel.”
Eliyahu was one of 18 rabbis who signed a petition in October, urging Jews to refrain from renting or selling apartments to non-Jews. The petition was seen as being directed against Arab students enrolled in Safed’s college.
The Minister’s spokesman said: “Hershkowitz expressed a different opinion than Eliyahu’s at the conference and differs with him both on the halakhic and public issues. The award recipients at the ceremony were decided on by the organizers, who invited the minister as a guest of honor.”
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/safed-rabbi-boasts-that-anti-arab-edict-worked-1.358721
Friday, 29 April 2011
Rabbi of Apartheid boasts that anti-Arab edict worked
The legal tsunami is on its way
The significance of a Palestinian state joining the UN is that, for the first time, it will be the Palestinians who will decide what the international legal framework is that is binding in their territory.
Israel’s cautious foreign policy on legal matters over the past 44 years is likely to collapse in September. The mechanisms of legal defense that it built since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to combat the “danger” of international jurisdiction about its conduct toward millions of people who are under its control, are likely to turn into dust at the stroke of the diplomatic moves.
If indeed the international community recognizes a Palestinian state, the question whether officers in the Israel Defense Forces who are involved in assassinations, shooting at unarmed demonstrators and using phosphorus bombs will be interrogated and brought to trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the question of whether international human rights treaties (and other treaties) will obligate Israel during action in the territories, will no longer be decided in the government offices in Jerusalem but rather in the corridors of the Muqataa in Ramallah.
Together with the diplomatic “tsunami” that Defense Minister Ehud Barak has forecast, Israel can expect a legal tsunami, which for the first time will claim a price for violating human rights in the occupied territories.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the prolonged occupation of the Palestinian territories that Israel conquered in 1967, are not an internal Israeli issue. This is an international conflict in which the international community has a legitimate interest.
However, during the years of the occupation the state of Israel has repelled the professional legal mechanisms of the United Nations, that deal with protecting human rights, from discussing its actions there. Thus, for example, Israel refrained from granting authority to the UN Committee on Human Rights to discuss complaints from Palestinians against the IDF.
(The committee is a professional body that consists of world renowned experts in human rights law, as opposed to the Council on Human Rights, which is a political body composed of representatives of countries.)
In a similar vein, in the territories Israel refused to apply the various human rights treaties that deal, inter alia, with discrimination against women; rights of the child; racial and other discrimination; and torture. Some of Israel’s most talented advocates were sent to Geneva to claim that these treaties were not binding on Israel beyond the Green Line.
Israel considers itself the representative of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, and as such was one of the initiators of the establishment of an international criminal court for war crimes. The height of jurisdictional isolation came when Israel decided not to ratify the court’s statute so as not to grant it authority to investigate and discuss crimes that, allegedly, were/are being carried out by Israeli officers and soldiers.
Over the course of 44 years, Israel has succeeded in putting the job of judging its actions in the occupied territories in the hands of the High Court of Justice, which approved almost every policy and practice of the army in the territories, deepening the occupation and making possible massive violations of human rights under its patronage.
Israel succeeded in leaving the investigations of its crimes to military advocates/attorneys who made sure that the policy of investigation would be such that enforcing the rigor of the law on soldiers and officers who had violated it would be a sort of miracle.
All of this is about to come to an end. Judging Israel’s actions in the sphere of human rights is apparently about to be placed in the hands of the nations of the world. To become internationalized.
If indeed Palestine is accepted as a full member of the UN in September, the button controlling jurisdiction over events that will take place in the West Bank and Gaza Strip will, to a large extent, be transferred from Jerusalem to Ramallah, from Benjamin Netanyahu to Mahmoud Abbas − because the significance of accepting Palestine as a member of the UN is that the new member will be sovereign to sign international treaties, to join international agreements and to receive the jurisdictional authority of international tribunals over what happens in its territory.
The young state of Palestine will act wisely if it decides, immediately on joining the UN, to sign all the major human rights treaties and all the clauses or protocols that grant its professional bodies the authority to discuss claims by civilians of violation of their rights.
If the Palestinian government also decides to sign and ratify the international criminal court’s Rome Statute, the territories of the West Bank and Gaza will fall under the international tribunal’s authority to investigate and prosecute.
The significance of a Palestinian state joining the UN is that, for the first time, it will be the Palestinians who will decide what the international legal framework is that is binding in their territory. After more than 40 years in the wilderness of the occupation, the Palestinians will have the possibility of influencing their fate through legal means.
Attorney Michael Sfard is the legal adviser for the Yesh Din human rights organization.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-legal-tsunami-is-on-its-way-1.358758?localLinksEnabled=false
Former U.S. Senator: United States can do without AIPAC
The United States can do without AIPAC, even though Israel most likely cannot.
Take action by attending Move Over AIPAC, a gathering in Washington DC from May 21-24, 2011, to expose AIPAC and build the vision for a new US foreign policy in the Middle East! More information can be found at www.MoveOverAIPAC.org.
Not too many people have heard of AIPAC, which stands for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It is not a PAC, under the standard definition of Political Action Committees, but a lobbying group. Here is how AIPAC describes itself on its website:
“For more than half a century, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has worked to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship. From a small pro-Israel public affairs boutique in the 1950s, AIPAC has grown into a 100,000-member national grassroots movement described by The New York Times as “the most important organization affecting America’s relationship with Israel.”
That goal is one that we would ordinarily admire—American citizens bonding together to let their government know how they feel about issues that are important to them, as Americans. The problem here is that AIPAC is a group of American citizens who have bonded together to influence the American government to work for the interests of a foreign government—Israel.
Years ago, when Wolf Blitzer was an AIPAC employee and we appeared together on a panel discussion, he literally shouted at me that, as Americans, AIPAC members had the right to lobby Congress. My response then was the same as it is now: when lobbying is being done for a foreign government, as AIPAC does, it’s wrong.
I always believed that, as much as I admire the country from which my parents emigrated, Lebanon, I would never put its interests above those of the United States. But that’s what is done by AIPAC whose mantra is that Israel is America’s best ally in the Middle East and therefore needs uncritical support. Let us examine that claim.
During the 1967 Middle East war, our greatest ally, Israel, did its level best to destroy a U.S. Navy ship, the U.S.S. Liberty, a lightly armed intelligence ship ordered by the Navy to sail off the coast of Israel and Egypt to monitor communications during the fighting. That was a simple enough assignment, but the outcome was a bit more complicated. Despite clear markings on the Liberty, and a huge American flag flying from its stern, the Israeli military undertook a sustained and vicious attack on the ship and its crew, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 170 more. After receiving distress calls from the Liberty, the U.S. Naval command in the Mediterranean dispatched two fighter jets to come the ship’s rescue. However, when Lyndon Johnson learned that the attack on the Liberty came from the Israelis, he ordered that the jets be recalled.
The ship didn’t sink, in spite of the attempt by the Israelis to scuttle it, and it limped back to a port in Spain, where the crew was ordered to speak to no one, especially the press, about what had happened. Those able bodied members of the crew were bitter then and remain bitter today about the way the U.S. government abandoned them to the tender mercies of the Israeli military, their bitterness stemming not only from the malicious attack on the ship and its crew, but also from the indifference of their government, which chose Israel’s welfare over theirs. AIPAC has done its best to prevent any investigation of the incident by Congress, mostly by threatening retribution against any committee that would dare to hold hearings on the affair. (See James Scott’s book, Attack on the Liberty. Scott’s father was a young ensign on board the Liberty at the time of the attack).
As a Holocaust survivor, AIPAC does not speak for me
At the end of one of my first journeys to the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2004, I endured a shocking experience at Ben-Gurion Airport. I never imagined that Israeli security forces would abuse a 79-year-old Holocaust survivor, but they held me for five hours, and strip-searched and cavity-searched every part of my naked body. The only shame these security officials expressed was to turn their badges around so that their names were invisible.
The only conceivable purpose for this gross violation of my bodily integrity was to humiliate and terrify me. But it had just the opposite effect. It made me more determined to speak out against abuses by the Israeli government and military.
Yet my own experience, unpleasant as it was, is nothing compared to the indignities and abuses heaped on Palestinians year after year. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is based not on equal rights and fair play, but on what Human Rights Watch has termed a “two-tier” legal system – in other words, apartheid, with one set of laws for Jews and a harsh, oppressive set of laws for Palestinians.
This, however, is the legal system and security state AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) will defend from May 22-24 at its annual conference. And, despite this grim reality, members of Congress will converge to hail AIPAC and Israel . The Palestinians’ lack of freedom is bound to be obscured at the AIPAC conference with its obsessive focus on security and shunting aside of anything to do with upholding fundamental Palestinian rights.
Several years ago near Der Beilut in the West Bank, I saw the Israeli police turn a water cannon on our nonviolent protest. As it happened, I recalled Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 and wondered why an ostensibly democratic society responded to peaceable assembly by trying, literally, to drown out the voice of our protest.
In Mas'ha, also in the occupied West Bank , I joined a demonstration against the wall Israel has built, usually inside the West Bank and occasionally towering to 25 feet in height. I saw a red sign warning ominously of “mortal danger” to any who dared to cross in an area where it ran as a fence. I saw Israeli soldiers aiming at unarmed Israelis, Palestinians and international protesters. I also saw blood pouring out of Gil Na'amati, a young Israeli whose first public act after completing his mandatory military service was to protest against the wall. I saw shrapnel lodged in the leg of Anne Farina, one of my traveling companions from St. Louis . And I thought of Kent State and Jackson State, where National Guardsmen opened fire in 1970 on protesters against the Vietnam War.
So as AIPAC meets and members of Congress cheer, I hold these images of Israel in my mind and fear AIPAC’s ability to move US policy in dangerous directions. AIPAC does a disservice to the Palestinians, the Israelis and the American people. It helps to keep the Middle East in a perpetual state of war and this year will be no different from last year as it keeps up a steady drumbeat calling for war against Iran .
AIPAC pretends to speak for all Jews, but it certainly does not speak for me or other members of the Jewish community in this country who are committed to equal rights for all and are aware that American interventionism is likely to bring further disaster and chaos to the Middle East .
Israel, of course, would not be able to carry out its war crimes against civilians in Lebanon and Gaza without the United States – and our $3 billion in military aid – permitting it to do so. At 86 years old, I use every ounce of my energy to educate the American public about the need to stop supporting the abuses committed by the Israeli government and military against the Palestinian people. Sometimes there are people who try to shout me down and scream that I am a self-hating Jew, but most of the time the audience is receptive to hear from someone who survived the Holocaust and now works to free the Palestinians from Israeli oppression.
The vicious discrimination brought to bear against Palestinians in the occupied territories deserves no applause this week from members of Congress attending the AIPAC conference. Instead, they should raise basic questions with Israeli officials about decades of inferior rights endured by Palestinians both inside Israel and the occupied territories.
Hedy Epstein is a Holocaust survivor, who writes and travels extensively to speak about social justice causes and Middle Eastern affairs. Take action by attending Move Over AIPAC, a gathering in Washington DC from May 21-24, 2011, to expose AIPAC and build the vision for a new US foreign policy in the Middle East! More information can be found at www.MoveOverAIPAC.org.
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/04/as-a-holocaust-survivor-aipac-does-not-speak-for-me.html
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Star of David Tattoo on "Libyan" Rebel
Video footage of a star of david tattoo on an injured Libyan rebel. Never believe Zionist Al-Jazeera again
Dictator of Qatar meeting with War Criminal Tzipi Livni while its aljazeera is inflaming the Arab streets
Qatar-Backed Al-Qaeda Hijack Gadhafi's Phone Network
Al-Jewzeera Propaganda Busted Again
The Qatari-Israeli-Saudi Alliance
.
A closer look at the unrest sweeping the Arab world
The fall of Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak spurred violent uprisings in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen, leaving the fate of the region to be determined by people power. Here's key information about each country and how Turkey fits into the picture.
A closer look at the unrest sweeping the Arab world
The fall of Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak spurred violent uprisings in Libya, Bahrain and Yemen, leaving the fate of the region to be determined by people power. Here's key information about each country and how Turkey fits into the picture.
| Libya | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership Moammer Gadhafi |
| Relations established: 1954 Exports: $1.94 billion | Population: 6,461,454 (2010) |
| Bahrain | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa |
| Relations established: 1973, two years after its independence from Great Britain Exports: $172 million | Population: 738,004 (2010) |
| Yemen | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership President Ali Abdullah Saleh |
| Relations established: 1988 Exports: $329 million | Population: 23,495,361 (2010) |
| Oman | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership Sultan Qaboos |
| Relations established: 1985, when Turkey opened a diplomatic office there Exports: $129.32 million | Population: 2,967,717 (2010) |
| Algeria | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership Abdelaziz Bouteflika |
| Relations established: 1962, after it gained independence Exports: $1.51 billion | Population: 34,586,184 (2010) |
| Morocco | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership King Mohammed VI |
| Relations established: 1956, following independence from France Exports: $624 million | Population: 31,627,428 (2010) |
| Egypt | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership Hosni Mubarak (deposed) |
| Relations established: 1925. First Turkish ambassador sent to Cairo in 1948 Exports: $2.26 billion | Population: 80,471,869 (2010) |
| Tunisia | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (deposed) |
| Relations established: 1956, following independence from France Exports: $714 million | Population: 10,589,025 (2010) |
| Iran | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership Mahmoud Ahmadinejad |
| Relations established: 1639, when the two countries signed a border agreement. First ambassador sent to Iran in 1835 Exports: $3.04 billion | Population: 76,923,300 (2010) |
| Sudan | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership Omar al-Bashir |
| Relations established: 1956, after independence from Great Britain Exports: $228 million | Population: 43,939,598 (2010) |
| Jordan | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership King Abdullah II |
| Relations established: 1947, a year after its independence from Great Britain Exports: $573 million | Population: 6,407,085 (2010) |
| Syria | WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW | RELATIONS WITH TURKEY | BACKGROUND |
  Leadership President Bashar al-Assad |
| Relations established:1946, after Syria obtained independence from France. | Population:22,517,750 (July 2010 est.) |
Monday, 18 April 2011
Samouni Family Responds to Goldstone Backtrack on Israeli War Crimes
During Operation Cast Lead Israel committed massive war crimes for all the world to see. Among these crimes the use of White Phosphorus in densely populated areas, use of Depleted Uranium, bombing civilian targets of all sorts without military necessity, destroying civilian infrastructure with no military justification and the infamous massacre of the Samouni family… among many other crimes.
In the aftermath of Cast Lead, Justice Richard Goldstone, a Zionist Jew, was commissioned by the United Nations to write a report on the alleged war crimes. Although the report did not go nearly far enough in exposing the brutality of all the crimes committed, crimes committed by the fourth largest military in the world against a essentially defenceless and captive population, it did allege that Israel (and Hamas) was almost undoubtedly guilty of war crimes and possibly, crimes against humanity.
But on April 1st, 2011 Justice Goldstone had an apparent change of heart and effectively said that he was wrong. With regard to the Samouni family he said, Israel simply made a mistake. It seems that the world in which we live in, a world of impunity for the favoured Israeli state, is set to continue. Unless of course we the people decide enough is enough. – Ken O’Keefe
Saturday, 16 April 2011
Sarah on the Holocaust
Transcript:
[…]
You know who has a tiny vagina? Barbie. Not Klaus Barbie, the infamous Nazi. Nazis are a-holes, and I'll be the first one to say it — because I'm edgy. Nazis are motherfucking asshole wipes. Dicks.
Oh, they're cute when they're little, I will give them that. They're so cute: Why can't they stay small?
I always know when it's Hitler's birthday, because they announce it on Entertainment Tonight. Right before they go to commercial you see like a silhouette, and then they say, "This man is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews. Is it: Ted Danson, Patrick Duffy …?
My niece … my lesbian niece — their whole family is very Jewy and she goes to Hebrew school, and loves it — she called me up and she's like, "Aunt Sarah, did you know that Hitler killed 60 million Jews?" I corrected her, and I said, "You know I think he's responsible for killing six million Jews." And she says, "Oh, yeah. Six million. I knew that. But seriously, auntie, what's the difference?" "The difference is that 60 million is unforgivable, young lady." Kids. Try to figure them out, you can't: They're kids.
My nana was a survivor of the Holocaust or — I'm sorry — the alleged Holocaust, and she had the tattoo, the number, and thank God she was at one of the better concentration camps. She had a vanity number, it said, "Bedazzled," which is kinda fun.
You know who I don't understand are the Jewish people who drive German cars. It's not a secret that companies like Mercedes and BMW — and Hitler commissioned the Volkswagen — I mean these are companies that built cars for the Nazi war effort. And yet, Jewish people who drive German cars … it's so gay. It's just gay.
And then on the other side of the thing there's Mercedes, companies like that, who — boy — if they could have only had the foresight, if they only could have seen into the future at the kind of business, the amount of money they'd be making from Jewish consumers, they'd … I don't know … maybe they'd help not kill the Jews. But instead, they helped facilitate a genocide of a people who would eventually become their best customers. Any Jew will tell you it's just bad business.
And now I feel preachy, but I really believe this to be true: I believe that if black people were in Germany during World War Two, that the Holocaust would have never happened. I do. Or, not to Jews.
[…]
Friday, 15 April 2011
Let Us Talk About Jewishness
By Gilad Atzmon
One of the main differences between my work and and the writings of other humanists within the peace movement is that I am willing to move beyond the political discussion -- I dig into the ideological and philosophical roots of the Jewish state, Jewish politics and Jewish identity politics. I look into the meaning of 'Jewishness.'
In my work I clearly identify a continuum between Israel and 'Jewish ideology' ('Jewishness'). And since Israel defines itself as the Jewish State, then surely --we must be brave enough to question what Jewishness stands for.
And clearly, Israelis are proud about their Jewishness -- They are far from being shy about it all.
In the following video Judeo-Centric Israeli Law Professor Ruth Gavison spreads some Jewish Tribal ideas at AIPAC conference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrpClg2Tn4A
If you fail to understand what motivates the Israeli pilots to drop bombs on civilians from aeroplanes decorated with Jewish symbols, law professor Gavison provides the answer;
“Israel will do whatever it takes to remain a Jewish state for as long as it takes.”
If you ask yourself, how is it that 94% of Israeli Jews supported the IDF genocidal measures at the time of Operation Cast Lead, then Gavison may have some insights to offer.
“The Jewishness of Israel is the meaning of which the state of Israel is enabling Jews for the first time in many years, to take control of all aspects of their lives”
They certainly do: Israeli brutality is beyond comparison.
Gavison concludes, “Israel is the place where Jewish and Hebrew culture is the majority culture; this is the meaning of the Jewishness of Israel”
We have to agree with the Law Professor -- Hebrew culture is, indeed, a majority culture in Israel -- because the indigenous people of the land are locked behind walls in open air prisons.
If Israel is the meaning of Jewishness, and vice versa, Jews do have a serious ethical problem to deal with.
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
American radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein
American Radical is the probing, definitive documentary about Jewish-American political scientist Norman Finkelstein. A devoted son of holocaust survivors, an ardent critic of Israel and US Middle East policy, Finkelstein has been steadfast at the centre of many intractable controversies, including his denial of tenure at DePaul University. Called a lunatic and self-hating Jew by some and an inspirational street-fighting revolutionary by others, Finkelstein is a deeply polarising figure. From Beirut to Kyoto, the filmmakers follow Finkelstein around the world as he attempts to negotiate a voice among both supporters and critics.
FBI report: Soviet Union likely forged key Demjanjuk evidence
of Justice Feb. 21, 2002 showing annotations
made by the Department of Justice on a section
of a World War II-era SS identity card.
1985 document exposed by AP says KGB may have doctored photo ID used against man suspected to be notorious Sobibor death camp guard 'Ivan the Terrible.'An FBI report kept secret for 25 years said the Soviet Union "quite likely fabricated" evidence central to the prosecution of John Demjanjuk - a revelation that could help the defense as closing arguments resume Wednesday in the retired Ohio auto worker's Nazi war crimes trial in Germany.
The newly declassified FBI field office report, obtained by The Associated Press, casts doubt on the authenticity of a Nazi ID card that is the key piece of evidence in allegations that Demjanjuk served as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland.
Throughout three decades of U.S. hearings, an extradition, a death sentence followed by acquittal in Israel, a deportation and now a trial in Munich, the arguments have relied heavily on the photo ID from an SS training camp that indicates Demjanjuk was sent to Sobibor.
Claims that the card and other evidence against Demjanjuk are Soviet forgeries have repeatedly been made by Demjanjuk's defense attorneys. However, the FBI report provides the first known confirmation that American investigators had similar doubts.
"Justice is ill-served in the prosecution of an American citizen on evidence which is not only normally inadmissible in a court of law, but based on evidence and allegations quite likely fabricated by the KGB," the FBI's Cleveland field office said in the 1985 report, four years after the Soviets had shown U.S. investigators the card.
It was the height of the Cold War at the time, and the ID card from the Nazi's Trawniki training camp had not been as closely examined by Western experts as it has been today. Since then it has been scrutinized and validated by courts in the U.S., Israel and Germany - though experts at the current trial left room for doubt, with one conceding that a counterfeiter with the right materials could have forged the card and other documents.
The FBI agents argued that the Soviets had an interest in faking the documents as part of a campaign to smear anti-communist emigres. Those conclusions contradict the findings of another branch of the Department of Justice, the Office of Special Investigations, or OSI, which was in charge of the overall Demjanjuk probe.
A quarter-century later, Demjanjuk, now 90, is standing trial in Munich on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder, which he denies. A verdict is expected within a month.
The AP discovered the FBI report at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, among case files that were declassified after the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk was deported from the U.S. in May 2009 to face trial in Germany.
It had not previously been seen by defense attorneys in Demjanjuk's trials in Germany, Israel or the United States, and German prosecutors also were unaware of the document. It is unclear whether prosecutors in the U.S. and Israel knew about it.
The FBI report was among more than 8 million pages of records by federal agencies that were transferred to the National Archives in 1998 under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. However, the field office report was excluded from public view by the OSI, which was exempted to protect ongoing investigations and prosecutions. The AP learned late last year that partially redacted Demjanjuk files had been opened up, and recently reviewed them.
Neal Sher, the director of the OSI from 1983 to 1994, called the Cleveland report "replete with errors that completely undermine its credibility." He said in an email that great care was taken to authenticate any documents and not one was found to be forged.
But others involved in the U.S. case say it was a key piece of evidence about which they were previously unaware.
Russell Ezolt, the top lawyer for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Cleveland at the time, said the report could have influenced the outcome of Demjanjuk's denaturalization trial.
"I never saw that," he said in a telephone interview from his home outside Cleveland. "This was the key bit to the trial. ... If you take away his ID card as a guard, what's left?"
Since no known eyewitnesses can place Demjanjuk at Sobibor, the case largely revolves around Nazi-era documents captured by the Soviet Union and provided to American, Israeli and now German authorities.
The March 4, 1985, report, on FBI letterhead and marked "SECRET," says the Cleveland office's investigation strongly indicated a Soviet scheme to discredit "prominent emigre dissidents speaking out publicly and/or leading emigre groups in opposition to the Soviet leadership in the USSR."
In dismissing the claim, former OSI director Sher said Demjanjuk was not an outspoken dissident but kept a low profile. He said the first U.S. judge to rule on the case, as well as an appeals court had declared they believed the ID card was authentic and reliable.
Norman J.W. Goda, one of two main historians to review the vast volumes of material from U.S. investigations of Nazi war crimes declassified over the last decade, suggested both the FBI and OSI could be correct: The Soviets could have used the evidence for its own purposes, but it could also be genuine.
"The Soviets did, in fact, use war crimes cases for propagandistic effect, but it was often the case that Moscow provided valid information as well," said Goda of the University of Florida.
Demjanjuk's defense attorney in Germany, Ulrich Busch, said German investigators have received 100,000 pages of Demjanjuk-related documents from the U.S. for the trial, which began in November 2009, but the FBI report was not among them. He plans to petition the court to introduce it as evidence.
"It's completely new," he said.
He noted as particularly important the way the FBI said the KGB presented evidence to the U.S. Department of Justice: allowing the material to be viewed only at a Soviet embassy or consulate but not examined by document experts.
"It's very explicit, and the same thing happened here," Busch said, noting he could view two Russian-held Nazi "transfer lists" from 1943 only at the Russian Consulate in Munich. The documents indicate a guard named Demjanjuk was sent to Flossenbuerg concentration camp and to Sobibor.
The Russians said we could look at them but that we couldn't do anything with them, couldn't examine them, and then they took them away, Busch said.
The defense has argued throughout the trial that the ID card is a clever fake, noting that Demjanjuk's height and eye color don't match and alleging there are indications the photograph was taken from old identity papers and glued to the card.
The lead prosecutor in the German case told the AP he also was unaware of the FBI report, but said he has no doubts about the evidence. Hans-Joachim Lutz acknowledged the ID card was only shown - not turned over - to American investigators at the time of the 1985 report, but said court experts in Israel and Germany later obtained access to the original, and testified that they believe it to be genuine.
"Now it has been determined to have been genuine, so for us 1985 is relatively uninteresting," he said.
The OSI in the past has been accused of withholding evidence that could have cleared Demjanjuk.
Demjanjuk immigrated to the U.S. in 1952. He was extradited to Israel in 1986, after the Nazi allegations surfaced, and stood trial there on accusations that he was the notoriously brutal guard "Ivan the Terrible" at the Treblinka extermination camp.
He was convicted and sentenced to death - then freed when the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the ruling, saying the evidence showed he had been misidentified by witnesses.
In a 1993 review of the American denaturalization hearing that led to his extradition, a federal U.S. appeals panel concluded that the OSI engaged in prosecutorial misconduct that seriously misled the court.
It said the office failed to disclose exculpatory information - including statements of Ukrainian guards at Treblinka who clearly identified another man as Ivan the Terrible.
A Department of Justice report from 2008 made public last November said the OSI's handling of the Demjanjuk case was the "greatest mistake it ever made."
Demjanjuk returned to the United States after his Israeli release, and German prosecutors brought forward new charges that he served as a low-ranking guard at the Sobibor death camp - once more based mostly on Soviet-provided material received from the OSI.
In Germany, Demjanjuk has again claimed to be a victim of mistaken identity - a Ukrainian Red Army conscript who was captured in Crimea in May 1942 and held prisoner throughout most of the war.
The FBI report accuses the Soviets of anonymously feeding names of emigres to the United States as suspected Nazis. The OSI would then ask the Soviet Union for evidence from captured Nazi records, and the KGB produces a record purporting to tie the accused with the commission of Nazi atrocities.
In court, the KGB officer thereupon 'shows' the documents to the judge but does not permit the documents to be presented in evidence or to be otherwise copied, it adds.
By the time the field report was sent to FBI headquarters in Washington, Demjanjuk had already had his citizenship revoked and was facing extradition to Israel.
It is not clear whether it was forwarded to OSI, though agency director Sher contends it was not.
Calling it "an embarrassment for the FBI," he said in an email: "I would guess that FBI headquarters felt precisely that way when they read the memo and accordingly did not do what the Cleveland FBI office asked them to do: Call OSI about this matter."
The FBI unit chief in Washington to whom the report was addressed, Storm Watkins, said it would have been his responsibility to pass along the information to OSI, but that he does not remember whether he did.
"I'm not aware to what extent an investigation was done," he said, referring other questions to the FBI's public affairs office.
Agent Scott Wilson, now assigned to the Cleveland field office of the FBI, said: "We will let the document stand on its own and would not make any further comment."
Attorney John Gill, who represented Demjanjuk in the 1980s, said the Cleveland field report could have bolstered defense arguments against extradition - and possibly put a quick end to what ended up being another 25 years of legal wrangling.
"Obviously they hid behind the technicalities of two separate investigations," Gill said by telephone from Cleveland. "It's an important document in my opinion that would have showed once again that they've got the wrong guy."
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/fbi-report-soviet-union-likely-forged-key-demjanjuk-evidence-1.355687?localLinksEnabled=false
Monday, 11 April 2011
ISRAEL, A PROMISED LAND FOR ORGANISED CRIME
C O R R E C T E D C O P Y (Wikileaks cable 09TELAVIV1098)
Organized crime (OC) has longstanding roots in Israel, but in recent years there has been a sharp increase in the reach and impact of OC networks. In seeking a competitive advantage in such lucrative trades as narcotics and prostitution, Israeli crime groups have demonstrated their ability and willingness to engage in violent attacks on each other with little regard for innocent bystanders.
The Israeli National Police (INP) and the courts have engaged in a vigorous campaign against organized crime leaders, including the creation of a new specialized anti-OC unit, but they remain unable to cope with the full scope of the problem. Organized crime in Israel now has global reach, with direct impact inside the United States. Post is currently utilizing all available tools to deny Israeli OC figures access to the United States in order to prevent them from furthering their criminal activities on U.S. soil. End
Summary.
Crime War Hits the Streets of Israel
(SBU) In November 2008, Israeli crime boss Yaakov Alperon was assassinated in broad daylight in a gruesome attack on the streets of Tel Aviv, only about a mile away from the Embassy. According to several media accounts, a motor scooter pulled up alongside Alperon's car and the rider attached a sophisticated explosive device with a remote detonator to the car door. The bomb killed Alperon and his driver, and injured two innocent pedestrians. The hit was the latest in a series of violent attacks and reprisals, and indicated a widening crime war in Israel.
¶3. In July 2008, a 31-year-old Israeli woman was killed by a stray bullet on the beach in Bat Yam in front of her husband and two children during a failed assassination attempt on noted crime figure Rami Amira. In a feud between the Abutbul and Shirazi clans, crime boss Shalom "Charlie" Abutbul was shot by two gunmen in September 2008, an attack that also wounded three bystanders. In December 2008, Charlie Abutbul's son-in-law, Nati Ohayon, was gunned down in his car in Netanya. Before the fatal bombing of his car, Alperon himself had survived at least three previous attempts on his life before his assassination, and was engaged in an ongoing feud with the rival Abergil clan (although there are numerous suspects in Alperon's murder). The day after Alperon's death, two members of the Abergil syndicate were sentenced for conspiring to kill Alperon's brother, Nissim, in May 2008.
¶4. (SBU) In response to rising concerns for public safety, former Prime Minister Olmert convened an emergency meeting of top law enforcement officials, cabinet members, and prosecutors in December ¶2008. He promised to add 1,000 officers to the INP and to allocate
approximately NIS 340 million (USD 81 million) to improve the INP's technical capabilities. In general, the rise in OC-related violence has led some public figures to call for emergency state powers to attack criminal organizations, and OC became a minor but important issue in the February 2009 Knesset elections. Former Labor Party MK Ephraim Sneh publicly decried criminal extortion in his campaign ads, only to have his car torched in apparent retaliation outside his home in Herzliya.
Background
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¶5. (SBU) Organized criminal activity is not a new phenomenon in Israel, and major crime families are well known to the Israeli public (the Alperons even featured in a recent reality television program). Five or six crime families have traditionally dominated OC in Israel, although the names and makeup of these syndicates have fluctuated in recent years. The Abergil, Abutbul, Alperon, and Rosenstein organizations are among the most well known, but recent arrests and assassinations have created a power vacuum at the top.
New names such as Mulner, Shirazi, Cohen and Domrani have moved quickly to fill the gap. Other up-and-coming groups include the Harari, Ohana, and Kdoshim families. There are also a number of rival families active in the underworld of Israel's Arab sector.
¶6. (SBU) Traditional OC activities in Israel include illegal neighborhood casinos, prostitution rings, extortion, and loan sharking, with each family controlling a different geographic region. The Alperon family, for instance, dominates the Sharon region, while the Abutbul operation is based in the coastal city of Netanya. The focus is largely on easy money guaranteed by the limited use of violence. Criminal involvement in the recycling business, for example, has been well covered in the press. OC families collect bottles illegally from municipal recycling bins and restaurants, return them at the collection centers claiming twice the actual numbers, and pocket the change for millions in profits.
Not Your Grandfather's Mob
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¶7. (SBU) Despite their notoriety, OC figures have generally been viewed as a nuisance to be handled by local police. Law enforcement resources were directed to more existential security threats from terrorists and enemy states. In recent years, however, the rules of the game have changed. According to xxxxx, the old school of Israel OC is giving way to a new, more violent, breed of crime. xxxxx told conoffs that the new style of crime features knowledge of hi-tech explosives acquired from service in the Israeli Defense Forces, and a willingness to use indiscriminate violence, at least against rival gang leaders. New OC business also includes technology-related crimes, such as stock market and credit card fraud, and operates on a global scale.
¶8. (SBU) As the reach of Israeli OC has grown, so have the stakes. Crime families are working further from home and exporting violence abroad. Older gambling schemes have grown to include sprawling casino franchises in Eastern Europe. The Abutbul family began its gambling business in Romania over a decade ago, and now owns the Europe-wide Casino Royale network. In 2002, Israeli OC turf wars spilled into Europe when Yaakov Abergil and Felix Abutbul were
killed two months apart. Abutbul was gunned down in front of his casino in Prague in a show of force by the Abergils as they attempted to capture a portion of the European gambling market.
¶9. (SBU) Israeli OC now plays a significant role in the global drug trade, providing both a local consumer market and an important transit point to Europe and the United States. In 2004, Zeev Rosenstein was arrested in Israel for possession of 700,000 ecstasy tablets in his New York apartment, destined for distribution in the U.S. market. He was ultimately extradited to the United States in 2006, where he is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence. Two
other crime figures, Meir Abergil and Israel Ozifa, are also facing U.S. extradition charges on charges that include smuggling 100,000 ecstasy tablets into the United States.
¶10. (SBU) The prostitution business has also grown beyond the neighborhood brothel. In March 2009, the INP arrested twelve suspects in what is believed to be the largest Israeli-led human trafficking network unearthed to date. Ring leader Rami Saban and his associates were charged with smuggling thousands of women from the former Soviet Union and forcing them to work as prostitutes in Israel, Cyprus, Belgium, and Great Britain. Some women were flown
to Egypt and smuggled across the Sinai border by Bedouins.
Law Enforcement Steps up the Pressure
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¶11. (SBU) After years of perceived inaction, in 2008 the INP created a new unit called Lahav 433. The elite unit operates under the direct command of the police commissioner, and is charged specifically with infiltrating and eliminating Israel's major crime syndicates. Lahav 433 also cooperates closely with district investigative units to combat smaller criminal organizations, many of which are aligned with the larger crime families.
¶12. (SBU) Following Alperon's assassination, the INP initiated a series of raids that led to the arrests of a number of leading crime figures. Among their targets were Aviv and Adam Abutbul, sons of crime-family head Charlie Abutbul, both charged with possession of illegal weapons. (A third brother, Francois, is already facing murder charges for a nightclub killing in 2004.) Police also arrested gangland figure Amir Mulner for weapons possession and conspiracy to commit a crime. Mulner is known to be an explosives expert by army training, and is a suspect in Yaakov Alperon's murder. He is also believed to be managing affairs for Rosenstein while the latter serves his sentence in the United States.
¶13. (SBU) Yaakov Alperon's brother Nissim was arrested with 18 others in December 2008, in what was reported to be a "mafia meeting" in a Tel Aviv-area caf. According to the Jerusalem Post, the group may have been planning a revenge attack for his brother's recent assassination. Alperon's son Dror, recently dismissed from his army service for disorderly behavior, also faces several counts of assault and was convicted on extortion charges. Also in December, police in Netanya launched several raids on illegal gambling houses and the homes of suspected money launderers with ties to the crime families. In Ashdod, brothers Roni and David Harari were arrested on charges of extortion. Regional police stuck a blow against the Jerusalem Gang, and convicted its leader Itzik Bar Muha.
Skepticism Hovers Over GOI Efforts
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¶14. (SBU)xxxxx told conoffs that "thousands of foot soldiers" remain active on the streets despite these aggressive anti-OC operations. He noted that approximately 2,000 people attended Alperon's very public funeral. xxxxx expressed skepticism that recent arrests will bear fruit in the long term without a sustained commitment to enforcement. He noted that many of the crime leaders remain active while in prison and their operations are not hampered significantly even when they are convicted and jailed.
¶15. (SBU) In December 2008, former Prime Minister Olmert himself admitted that efforts to combat OC have long been diluted among different agencies, and that INP technology lags far behind that allocated to security services for counterterrorism. Given the recent change in government and the current economic crisis, there is public skepticism as to whether GOI promises to remedy the situation will be fulfilled. In 2003, following a failed assassination attempt on Rosenstein, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made similar promises to commit manpower and resources to combating the problem.
¶16. (SBU) It is not entirely clear to what extent OC elements have penetrated the Israeli establishment and corrupted public officials. The INP insists that such instances are rare, despite the occasional revelation of crooked police officers in the press.
Nevertheless, there have been several dramatic revelations in recent years that indicate a growing problem. In 2004, former government minister Gonen Segev was arrested for trying to smuggle thousands of ecstasy pills into Israel, a case that produced considerable circumstantial evidence of his involvement in OC. The election of Inbal Gavrieli to the Knesset in 2003 as a member of Likud raised concerns about OC influence in the party's Central Committee.
Gavrieli is the daughter of a suspected crime boss, and she attempted to use her parliamentary immunity to block investigations into her father's business. (Gavrieli is no longer a member of the Knesset.) Just last month, Israeli politicos and OC figures came together for the funeral of Likud party activist Shlomi Oz, who served time in prison in the 1990s for extortion on behalf of the Alperon family. Among those in attendance was Omri Sharon, son of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was himself convicted in 2006 on illegal fundraising charges unrelated to OC.
Courts Testing New Powers
--------------------------
¶17. (SBU) In 2003, the GOI passed anti-OC legislation that carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment for heading a criminal organization and three years for working in such an organization.
The law defines such a body as a group of people working in an "organized, methodical and ongoing pattern to commit offenses that are defined by the laws of Israel as crimes." The law also allows for property forfeiture, both in the wake of conviction and in cases where it is proven to belong to a criminal organization.
¶18. (SBU) Until recently, xxxxx, judges and lawyers have been slow to make use of this authority, and are hampered by a lack of resources, insufficient understanding of the tools at their disposal, and reticence to mete out tough sentences. A witness protection program for those who testify against OC is just now getting off the ground, and is not backed by any specific
legislation. Nevertheless, on March 16th, a Tel Aviv district court took the important step of sentencing 14 convicted criminals belonging to two mob organizations in Ramle and Jaffa to up to 27 years in prison.
¶19. (SBU) Increased efforts by Israeli authorities to combat OC have engendered retaliatory threats of violence. Recent press reports indicate that as many as 10 Israeli judges are currently
receiving 24-hour protection by the police against the threat of violence from members of crime organizations. Israeli OC appears to be intent on intimidating judges personally, as a way of influencing the legal process. Judges in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa have been assigned police protection, underscoring the depth of the problem.
Israeli Crime Reaches American Shores
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¶20. (SBU) Israel's multi-ethnic population provides a deep well of opportunity for Israeli OC to expand into new territory. Most Israeli crime families trace their roots to North Africa or Eastern Europe, and many of their Israeli operatives hold foreign passports allowing them to move freely in European countries, most of which participate in the visa waiver program with the United States.
Approximately one million Russians moved to Israel following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and Russian citizens no longer require visas to enter Israel. Many Russian oligarchs of Jewish origin and Jewish members of OC groups have received Israeli citizenship, or at least maintain residences in the country. Little is known about the full extent of Russian criminal activity in Israel, but sources in the police estimate that Russian OC has laundered as much as USD 10 billion through Israeli holdings. While most Israeli OC families are native-born and the stereotype that Russian immigrants tend to be mobsters is greatly overblown, indigenous OC groups routinely employ "muscle" from the former Soviet Union.
¶21. (SBU) The profit motive serves as a great unifier among Israel's diverse demographic groups. According to xxxxx, some Amsterdam-based Hasidic groups allegedly are implicated in
international drug smuggling through links to Israeli OC. Arab and Jewish Israeli criminals routinely cooperate and form alliances to expand control of lucrative drug, car theft and extortion rackets.
Even hostile and closed borders pose few obstacles to OC groups. According to the INP, 43% of intercepted heroin in 2008 was smuggled from Lebanon, 37% from Jordan, and 12% from Egypt.
Israeli OC Operating Freely in United States
---------------------------------------------
¶22. (SBU) Given the volume of travel and trade between the United States and Israel, it is not surprising that Israeli OC has also gained a foothold in America. Over the last decade, media reports have detailed a number of high-profile cases involving Israeli OC, ranging from large-scale drug deals to murder. The ongoing Central District of California grand jury investigation against the Abergil family, where a RICO conspiracy case was initiated in December 2007, best demonstrates the full extent of such criminal activity. Investigators have linked Yitzhak Abergil and his entire network to crimes of "embezzlement, extortion, kidnapping, and money laundering." Yitzhak Abergil is currently under arrest in Israel and facing extradition for related charges linking him to the murder of Israeli drug dealer Samy Attias on U.S. soil.
¶23. (SBU) As part of an ongoing effort to track Israeli OC through media reports and police sources, Post so far has identified 16 families and 78 related individuals who are at the center of Israeli organized criminal activity. The consular section has revoked several visas for those who have been convicted of crimes in Israel, but many OC figures have no prior criminal convictions and carry no visa ineligibilities. As a result, many hold valid nonimmigrant visas to the United States and have traveled freely or attempted to travel for a variety of purposes.
¶24. (SBU) In March 2009, Post received information from law enforcement authorities that convicted criminal and member of the Abergil organization, Mordechai Yair Hasin, along with his pregnant wife and child, was intending to flee Israel for Los Angeles on valid tourist visas. Hasin's visa was revoked based on his conviction, as were his family's visas after they were determined to be intending immigrants.
¶25. (SBU) As in the Hasin case, Post is using every available tool to limit OC travel to the United States, but such efforts are not always successful. In June 2008, Post issued Adam Abitbul a valid tourist visa. Abitbul had no prior criminal convictions, and carried no visa ineligibilities. Several months later, Post received information from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) that he had traveled to the United States to carry out a hit. Abitbul returned to Israel prematurely for his father's funeral, at which time Post revoked his visa. (Post can only revoke the visas of Israeli citizens while in country.) In a similar case, in October
2008 Post issued Moshe Bar Muha a tourist visa; he claimed to be traveling for medical treatment. Post subsequently received information from the LAPD that Bar Muha is in fact the brother of Itzik Bar Muha of the Jerusalem Gang (see above) and a convicted criminal.
¶26. (SBU) As recently as March 2009, Zvika Ben Shabat, Yaacov Avitan, and Tzuri Rokah requested visas to attend a "security-related convention" in Las Vegas. According to local media reports, all three had involvement with OC. Post asked the applicants to provide police reports for any criminal records in Israel, but without such evidence there is no immediate ineligibility for links to OC. Luckily, all three have so far failed to return for continued adjudication of their applications. Nevertheless, it is fair to assume that many known OC figures hold valid tourist visas to the United States and travel freely.
Comment: Israeli OC Slipping Through the Consular Cracks
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¶27. (SBU) Given the growing reach and lethal methods of Israeli OC, blocking the travel of known OC figures to the United States is a matter of great concern to Post. Through collaboration with Israeli and U.S. law enforcement authorities, Post has developed an extensive database and placed lookouts for OC figures and their foot soldiers. Nevertheless, the above visa cases demonstrate the challenges that have arisen since the termination of the Visas Shark in September 2008. Unlike OC groups from the former Soviet Union, Italy, China, and Central America, application of INA 212(a)(3)(A)(ii) against Israeli OC is not specifically authorized per Foreign Affairs Manual 40.31 N5.3. As such, Israelis who are known to work for or belong to OC families are not automatically ineligible for travel to the United States.
Cunningham
http://wikileaks.ch/cable/2009/05/09TELAVIV1098.html#par20
The Judeo-Russian Mafia: From the Gulag to Brooklyn to World Dominion
While the FBI and major media obsess about the Sicilian Mafia (the “Cosa Nostra”) a far more powerful and sinister force is in existence that has controlled most of the globe’s organized crime for at least two decades—the Jewish mafia from Russia (a “Kosher Nostra”). Yet there is not even a desk at the FBI for their crimes, which dwarf those of the Italian gangsters in scope, violence and depth.
Dr. David Duke on the racist anti-Semitic Jewish Crime Network
Dr. David Duke exposes the International Jewish Organized Crime as revealed by WikiLeaks Cables which the Jew-Controlled Media refuse to publish. Full Version. Must watch
The Rachel Corrie case revisited
by Hatim Kanaaneh, Via Mondoweiss
I arrived an hour late to court this morning; in my hurry to make it on time I was picked up by the traffic police for speeding. “Winds blow contrary to the whims of ships,” a famous Arab poet once said. As I entered the court a whole new set of actors was there with the exception of the judge who addressed the defense lawyer as ‘Mr. Salameh,’ Arabic for Mr. Safety. I quickly assumed that there had been a change of mind at the highest level and that ‘they’ had decided to give the Corries a sympathetic hearing, switching to an Arab as the defense lawyer and picking one with a symbolic conciliatory name. Alas, the whole thing was a misconception. The judge was handling a totally different case and doing away with a quick procedural issue before starting the Corrie case. I wasn’t all that late, after all.
It is pitiful to see bumbling fools stray far afield and miss their opportunity to prove their point when the answer is right at hand. That was my thought when I read the full text of the Goldstone retraction of his former condemnation of Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the winter of 2008-9 as ‘possible’ war crimes and crimes against humanity. I read the good judge’s retraction in the paper the night before this day, spent in contemplating the charade that passes for proper proceedings in a court of justice in Israel. Had he bothered to attend just one session in the ongoing saga that I have followed for nearly a year, Richard Goldstone would have learned the efficient way for a judge to reach his independent decision regardless of the facts and not to dillydally with assertions, retractions and the like. The man has formulated his foregone conclusion and no marching of evidence to the contrary will make a difference: The Corries will not get their shekel irregardless of facts. You will see.
We all have returned from a four-month hiatus in the proceedings of the civilian case brought by the parents of the late Rachel Corrie, the ISM activist killed by an armored military D_9 Caterpillar on March 16, 2003 while trying to prevent the IDF from demolishing Palestinian homes in Gaza. It happened in bright daylight and Rachill wore a florescent orange vest. But the soldiers in the D-9s simply didn’t see her. The IDF had conducted a “thorough, credible, and transparent investigation” as the Israeli prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, told his friend, President George W. Bush of the USA. The investigation had revealed that the young woman had hid behind, under or over ‘a pool of dirt’ as the various participating soldiers have testified so far. Sharon’s credentials on the matter at hand are beyond doubt: President Bush had dubbed him “a man of peace,” and he was the father of the practice of clearing wide swaths of land of homes in Gaza from the days of the First Intifada. The specific activity that the ISM activists objected to was in the same ‘defensive’ military tradition, involving this time the continued clearance of some fifty-kilometer perimeter road in the Rafah border area known as the Philadelphi Axis, a random computer-generated IDF designation that has come since to signify civilian imprisonment, underground tunnels, F-16 air raids and underground steel barriers. But Rachel’s and her friends’ objection was totally alien to the wholesomeness of the original plan: The axis road had been already established and all the IDF was doing was to “level the ground” alongside the road, including a Gazan shack here and a home or two there to forestall the possibility of terrorists hiding in such incidental geographic adulterations of the purity of the original Sharonian military conception.
With such essentiality of the Philadelphi Axis and the qualifications of its founders, how could any sane person doubt the IDF’s conclusions regarding what had happened to the foreign intruders? Yet, here are these folks from Olympia, USA, claiming that the Israeli Defense Forces were negligent in protecting human life in a case that happened to be that of their 22 year-old daughter, Rachel. But their own lawyer, a Palestinian who is even more intent on discrediting the only democracy in the Middle East, has just heard representatives of IDF declare under oath that as early as 2006 they had used Caterpillars equipped with remote control electronics and bore the exorbitant expenses to avoid the loss of life of human beings that happened to be their soldiers carrying out the cleansing of areas cluttered with Hezbollah and Palestinian terrorists. With such record, how can anyone accuse us of inattention to preserving human life?
No wonder both the judge and the head state defense lawyer seemed disinterested and even a little bored with the proceedings. The lady looked like she had aged a decade or more during my four-months away from her, explanation enough for her limited energy this time around. Every time she stood up to say something she would twirl her two diminutive hands high above her head in a dance-like motion of emphasis of what she said. But the motions were slow, and, in the absence of music accompaniment, seemed a bit silly. As to the judge, he was so relaxed he hardly twitched or strained at all; only a few loosening motions of his necktie and an occasional sipping of his tea. I know he has reached his decision a long time ago and all the proceedings were now a waste of his time. That is perhaps why he interfered to cut the claimants’ lawyer, Husain Abu-Husain, short and to ask him to close his line of questioning so many times. To expedite the process of establishing the facts in his court he had to step in more than once and explain to the badgered witness what he, the witness, had wanted to say. Why all the bother when we already know the facts? And that is what I wanted Richard Goldstone to come see and learn from: consistency; the system had already looked into the case and made its decision. Why confuse everyone and fowl up the case with useless reconsiderations. Get it right on the first try, dude!
The first witness of the day was another army technical expert in charge of D-9 driver training and he stuck to his narrow expertise and avoided treading on relevant case-specific grounds, falling back on failure of memory only when Abu-Husain would edge close to the fatal ‘incident’ itself.
The second witness was much more engaged and engaging, a bright-looking Bedouin man of obvious intelligence. His ready smile, his constant readjusting of his sitting arrangement, and his darting eyes betrayed a level of discomfort akin to that of a caged raccoon. He partially gave away his identity by responding brightly to Abu-Husain’s Arabic language greeting. The thought crossed my mind that the good judge must have thought that the man was dispensable because of tribal considerations: All previous witnesses directly involved in the murder case were shielded from the audience’s evil eyes by a screen. Except for this man who was present at the scene in his armored tank as the units commander protecting and overseeing the work of the two Caterpillars. Was he considered dispensable because of his DNA, ultimately a Bedouin Palestinian, even if an Israeli soldier, a sheep in wolf’s skin? After all, nearly the entire ‘Desert Division’ of the Israeli Army, the division in charge of the Philadelphi Axis, about the most dangerous assignment in Israel’s military adventurism, was mostly made of Bedouins. Arab volunteer soldiers in the Israeli security services, such as these hardy heroes have their reasons, mainly financial, my daughter, Rhoda Ann Kanaaneh, says in her recent well-researched book on the subject entitled Surrounded: Palestinian Soldiers in the Israeli Military. And they do feel altogether unequal in the army, she also found. Might their feeling of unequal treatment stem in part from different levels of exposure to danger?
My irresponsible doubts were later explained away. The man’s identity had been already exposed in the press and it was no use trying to hide it beyond calling him by his initial as Mr. R. instead of using his full name. The man was not your camel-driving Bedouin type; he had used his privileged status with the Israeli armed forces to get a college education and a BA degree. And he used his accumulated acumen and native intelligence to deflect Abu-Husain’s obvious attempts to trip him on his possible involvement in Rachel’s demise. He kept to his former conclusion in his own investigation immediately after the incident, which he had not seen, that a concrete slab must have fallen accidentally on the woman and killed her. And he was alert and committed enough to his IDF identity to insist on correcting loaded terms whenever they were used: His D-9s were involved in ‘leveling the area’ not demolishing homes, he insisted, even if in the process homes were demolished. And all Gazans were terrorists to him not ‘civilians.’ The judge himself, at a later stage in the proceedings had a similar enlightening objection: When Abu-Husain asked another witness if he saw the event of killing the late ISM activist, the judge corrected him rather angrily for his choice of words. He thought ‘killing’ implied guilt and intentionality, as judge Goldstone would have put it.
Despite R’s presence of mind and caginess, qualities that served to make him creative to a fault and oftentimes self-contradictory in reconstructing his role in the fateful day’s events, Abu-Husain managed to show him as an ignoramus. The soldier thought that the court case was being brought by the state of Israel against the late Rachel Corrie. And at one point he seemed to be cowed by the lawyer’s aggressive questioning to where he tried to shift responsibility up to his commander. He admitted to having worried about the safety of the international activist scurrying around in the operational arena to where he considered stopping work. But his commander insisted on continuing the mission despite the disturbance by the pesty ISM group.
Eventually Abu-Husain found a way to bridge the attitudinal gulf that separated the two of them, both lawyer and witness being ultimately fellow Arabs despite the state’s categorizing them differently on its scale of good-to-bad Arabs. The lawyer kept praising the witness’s intelligence and his achievements and high rank and dropping hints about his tribal identity and inclusion in the Bedouin, and hence the Arab, collective till the officer seemed to relent. Quite visibly, he waxed more at ease, nearly closing his eyes in a blissful repose. And Abu-Husain, his former tormentor, flashed a winsome smile at him. From there on the good Bedouin started referring to Gazans as ‘citizens of the area’ and not using the standard term ‘terrorists’ for the entire lot. It dawned on me right then that the young man was having a ‘Goldstone moment,’ an imagined fleeting instant of reacceptance in the fold and of lulling in the warm lap of tribal comfort and solidarity.
Alas, that is when the contradictory identities of the two current antagonists in court, not counting the judge, had to remerge and the separation walls re-erected: As he picked up another line of questioning of this central witness, lawyer Abu-Husain tiptoed gently around the man’s doubtful record of previous arrests and possible falsification of evidence. The judge sprang to the witness’s aid and declared the topic off limits. Abu-Husain relented but only to pursue another suspicious line and question the man about the mysterious bargaining by another free-range Bedouin offering to have the same commander switch sides and testify in court for the claimants against the payment of a certain fee. That line was quickly terminated as well.
April 6, 2011: The Dry Lab Technique
Today the court had a relaxed atmosphere, brimming with palpable leisure and ease. All except for the pimply young Sephardi geek who serves as the technical clerk in charge of all the electronic equipment and who spends a good part of his day dozing off. The defense lawyers were fully at ease: The head of the three-lawyer team seemed to have regained at least five of the ten years in youthfulness I had thought she lost only three days ago. She had a constant bright smile that ebbed and flowed the whole day but never completely faded away. Her facial muscles relaxed and tensed alternatively, like a pretty jellyfish floating in sunny waters, without ever loosing its inner-tickled demeanor. As I secretly enjoyed my inspired analogy, drawn from my years in Hawaii, it dawned on me that the heavy makeup shined brightly in the well-lit court not unlike the sheen of the residue of an oil spill over distant still waters. The lady strode across the room to the door and turned her head to ascertain that the curtain that had been erected to shield the morning’s mystery witness didn’t permit the audience to see him. Her proud stride and threatening deliberate glance over her shoulder reminded one of a lioness in her den. But I have also seen our kitten, Bumblebee, practice the same game with mice he catches in our garden.
The second in command in the defense team, a dark-skinned tense and angry young man, appeared also to be more at ease: He sat calmly with his back to the audience alternatively bending his thick neck forward and straightening it up. For the first time I noticed a well-healed two-inch straight-line scar in the scalp at the nape right where the roundness of his shaven head yields to the muscular com adipose couple of horizontal rolls across the top of his thick neck. It brought to mind an old lawyer at the edge of Little Italy in Lower Manhattan where I used to stop on occasion to buy stamps, to make an additional copy of a key, or to notarize a document. The man was reputed to have been connected to the Mafia in his younger days and his shop, stocking tobacco and various NY memorabilia and offering whatever services were in high demand, was still considered a front for them. He sported many old slashes across his head and face.
The Corries’ attorneys also seemed to be in a relatively relaxed mood: Jamil Dakwar, the second in command, usually constantly on the move like a hyperactive child, running to whisper a suggestion to Abu-Husain, to hand him a document, to fling a photo at the judge’s table, or to operate his laptop and broadcast the soldiers’ famous last words on the audiotape from the murder scene, the incidental exchange of “Did you kill him?” and “God bless his soul!” that no one in uniform seems to have ever heard before, was now rather sated. Likewise, the judge showed no sign of high anxiety the whole day except on a couple of occasions to cut Abu-Husain off. Also on one occasion he noticed someone in the audience drinking from a water bottle and shouted at him rather angrily to cease and desist; only lawyers were allowed to drink in his court, he declared. As if to confirm his privileged position and gain favor with the good judge, Abu-Husain took a long swig from his bottle making loud gurgling noises. It didn’t seem to faze the judge one bit.
The first witness of the day was another post-camel Bedouin, an ambitious one with a master’s level education who had risen to become Deputy Commander of the Desert Division and who happened to have been in charge of the entire arena on the day of Rachel’s demise. A fleeting thought crossed my mind as to how high in the IDF hierarchy was an Arab allowed to rise and whether allegiance to one’s profession can ever trump his allegiance to the tribe. The image of Libyan crowds celebrating the defection of pilots from Gaddafi’s forces to join their next of kin in revolt insinuated itself in my conscience along with the imagined image of Richard Goldstone being chased in the streets of Johannesburg by his tribe, the angry mob emerging from the synagogue where his grandchild’s Bar Mitzvah is being celebrated. I struggled to reign in my wild imaginings from running even more amuck by applying my mental breaks. Alas, they have been worn thin by the regular practice of free association of thoughts at overdrive speed. I never realized before how many blacks have infiltrated Goldstone’s bloodline.
As I rejoined the courtroom proceedings, the soldier was speaking from behind his curtain and seemed quite convinced of his own gravitas, or so the casual observer may surmise from the quality of his voice. To me he sounded like he could benefit from an adenoidectomy. He indicated that on that specific day he sat in his command post some five kilometers from the site of the ‘incident.’ He kept track of what happened all along the fifty-kilometer length of the Philadelphi Axis through the watchful eyes and ears of a series of women soldiers, each in charge of tracking electronically what happened along a certain length of the axis. He admitted to having observed from the safety of his lair the forced evacuation of the same pesky foreign crowd of ten to fifteen activists from the roof of what his soldiers came to refer to as “the yellow house” before they proceeded to ‘level the ground’ on which it stood. Quickly, in my mind, I capitalized the name and populated the house with a dozen screaming children of various ages, four or five women in traditional attire letting out shrill cries of distress, an old lady singing dirges about the precious Yellow House she and her husband had toiled all their life to build and about her dead and imprisoned children, and a stoic old patriarch leaning on his cane and uttering the repetitive brief prayer of “May God punish the oppressors!” And, indeed, a group of foreign young men and women were clambering up and down the stairs to the roof. I couldn’t make out their faces except for that of Rachel Corrie, with the most serene and angelic look of concern and empathy beaming out the pain and suffering of Palestinian civilians to the whole world. Dignity enveloped her head to toe.
Yet the deputy commander had not seen the ‘incident’ of Rachel’s death. When he was informed of it, he reported, he quickly conducted four different investigations among the troops and came to the conclusion that a concrete slab had fallen on the woman and killed her. What irked me most was the diminutive term, betonada, sounding like a romantic term of endearment, that the witness used for the imagined concrete block. I say ‘imagined’ for I understand that no one ever saw such a block being scooped by the D-9 or falling from its blade at that moment. Rather it was the only conclusion that made sense to the investigators. The said commander asked, imagined and came to his conclusion. He and all the other investigators that were to come later never visited the site of the presumed accident. The official military police investigators, as I understand it, didn’t even speak directly to the D-9 drivers. In my college days we had a name for this type of practice: We called it “dry lab.” For example, you were given the assignment in the chemistry lab of identifying a certain substance by analyzing it chemically. You looked at it and knew what it was by right away. You went home and performed the mental exercise, starting with the end result and working backward. You put down all the relevant steps of analysis and the various calculated weights of the intermediary products in the analysis to the level of micrograms. You submitted the details of the presumed process of analysis and got a perfect grade. I was good at dry-labing. That is why you can still find my name engraved on a stone (or perhaps concrete) slab at the entrance to Bilger Hall at the Manoa campus of the University of Hawaii as the top chemistry student of the class of 1964. Unless, of course, if that slab has fallen accidentally and killed someone nice.
By the end of the session everyone was tired and irritable. Abu-Husain wanted to know from the commander how many drug-smoking soldiers were deployed to perform the house demolition in the process of which Rachel’s killing took place, or something to that effect. You would think that after all the judge’s interruptions and admonitions over the past year the man would have learned to watch what he says. It was enough to make one’s blood boil. We all know that the task was ‘leveling’ the area and that Rachel was not ‘killed.’ And now the man is accusing our good soldiers of smoking hash on the job, five or six of them in the same tank with the mission’s commander. The judge had to prohibit that line of inquiry and he did it with the appropriate level of anger and display of tic-fraught irritability.
The next soldier witness apparently was not college material. No use wasting time and precious resources on one whose retentive ability is that limited. In the eight years since he witnessed the event he had forgotten all its details. About the only relevant memory that Abu-Husain could extract from the poor man was that he judged the foreign activists to be American by the lightness of their skin color. He couldn’t even remember if they were men or women, where they stood or anything else about them other than their skin color. I identified him in my mind as Mr. Forgot, another sad case of early onset of Alzheimer Syndrome.
There is more to come in another couple of months. Still, as we left the court, my friend, Mohammad Zidan, Director General of the Arab Human Rights Association in Nazareth, who has followed the proceedings, declared to me: “This all is not in vain. At least now when I read in the papers that the IDF has conducted an investigation I know what that means.”
This post originally appeared on Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh's blog A Doctor in the Galilee.
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