AIPAC spy case dismissed; treason officially legal in US when it involves Israel

Torture and Israeli Law

In 1987, the Israeli government established a commission headed by former Supreme Court President Moshe Landau, to investigate methods of interrogation used by the General Security Services.
The Landau Commission concluded that in cases in which obtaining information is necessary in order to save lives, the investigator is entitled to apply ‘a moderate degree of physical pressure’. However, the guidelines of this accepted form of physical pressure - which per se contradicts article 2(2) of the Convention Against Torture - still remain undisclosed.
In 1996, the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) submitted its concluding observations to Israel’s first report regarding the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The UN HRC stated that ‘... the methods of interrogation, which were described by non-governmental organizations... were neither confirmed nor denied by Israel. The committee must therefore assume them to be accurate’.
Under international law, statements resulting from torture cannot be invoked as evidence in any judicial proceedings. However, under Israeli law, information extracted from detainees by any means can be used freely in trials, except for confessions. In 1999, the Israeli Supreme Court stated that ‘if it emerges that the means of pressure, whatever they were, did not actually influence the interrogee... it should not be said that the confession was the result of the use of improper means’.

Torture

“Israel is the sole country in the world to have legalized the use of torture”

B’Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights

Torture: The Facts

Since the beginning of the Occupation in 1967, over 650,000 Palestinians have been arrested by Israel. Almost 95% of them have been subjected to some form of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
Since 1967, over 105 documented torture techniques have been used by Israel. At least 66 Palestinians have been tortured to death.
To date, no Israeli official has ever been charged and sentenced for torture-related crimes.
Israel justifies torture by designating the Palestinian Territories as being under ‘exceptional circumstances’. But this is a direct violation of the 1984 Convention Against Torture, ratified by Israel in 1991. Article 2(2) states that ‘no exceptional circumstances whatsoever... may be invoked as a justification of torture’.
The right of every person not to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment is one of the few human rights that are considered absolute. It is forbidden to balance this right against other rights and values, or suspend or restrict this right, under any circumstances.

Methods of Torture

Detainees are frequently “softened up” before their interrogation starts. Any examination of torture therefore has to consider the cumulative impact of the conditions imposed on a detainee.
The methods of unlawful treatment include:
• Isolation, including prohibiting meetings with attorneys and relatives to exacerbate the sense of powerlessness;
• Confinement in cells lacking daylight without any items to pass the time, to induce sensory deprivation;
• Weakening of the body by preventing physical activity, sleep disturbance, and inadequate food supply;
• Cuffing in the ‘shabah’ position, i.e. painful binding of the prisoner’s hands and feet to a chair;
• Intimidation, cursing and humiliation by threats, strip searches, shouting and spitting.

Detainees are also subjected to direct physical violence, such as:
• Dry beatings;
• Tightening of handcuffs;
• Violent shaking;
• Sharp twisting of the head;
• The ‘frog’ crouch (forcing the detainee to crouch on tiptoes for extended periods);
• The ‘banana’ position (bending the back of the detainee in an arch whilst they are seated on a backless chair with their hands and feet bound).

Here's the highlights of the protests that will take place at this year's AIPAC Washington DC event. The complete listing can be found at the Stop AIPAC. Please support this protest by your presence or by spreading the word.

Sun., May 3
9-11 a.m.: Peace Cafe -- "Show the Youth of Gaza That a Better World is Possible." Busboys & Poets, 2021 14th St. (14th and V). Medea Benjamin, recently returned from leading a 60-person delegation to Gaza, will speak about CODEPINK's new campaign to pressure both the Egyptian and Israeli governments to open the Gaza border. The campaign includes an ongoing stream of delegations to both the Egyptian and Israeli border crossings, starting in late May, with camps at both borders if they are not allowed in. Medea will also talk about CODEPINK's work with Gazan youth, including plans to build International Friendship Playgrounds in the war-torn region.
Mon., May 4
8:30-10:45 a.m.: Protest in front of the DC Convention Center (555 13th St., NW), just before and during the address to AIPAC by Israeli President Shimon Peres.
11:30-1 p.m.: Wake Up America! A Call to Action -- a discussion of the United States' role in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and what Americans can do to change our foreign policy. Featuring Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK Women for Peace; Cindy Corrie, mother of Rachel Corrie, who was killed six years ago by Israeli bulldozers; and Daoud Nassar, owner of the Tent of Nations and visiting from Bethlehem. Busboys and Poets, 5th and K, NW.
2-5 p.m.: Celebration of the richness of Palestinian culture in Mt.Vernon Square, sponsored by the Ahimsa House (an activist collecctive). The tentative agenda includes both folk and modern Palestinian music, dance troupes and speakers who have witnessed first-hand the human toll of the current devastation in Gaza.
5-7 p.m.: Rally in front of the DC Convention Center (555 13th St., NW), just before and during AIPAC's gala celebration, where all the attendees and their guests will be gathering. Will feature a dramatic reading of Caryl Churchill's "Seven Jewish Children." Organized by the Coalition for Justice & Peace. Dress in black (with a little pink if you want!).

More here.

'Hamas not to blame for Gaza war'

GulfNews - Dubai,United Arab Emirates

We didn't occupy the land of Israel, but they occupied ours. They also turned down a request to renew the ceasefire, so only Israel can be held responsible ...

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Gulf News spoke candidly with Hamas strongman Musher Al Masry on contemporary issues that Hamas faces in the aftermath of the Gaza war. Al Masry stressed that Hamas was not to blame for the latest war on Gaza, which claimed more than 1,300 lives, and said as long as Israeli occupation continues there will be resistance.

Gulf News: Let's start from the year 2006. Hamas won the legislative election fair and square. Why do you think the other parties didn't accept to participate in the government, and why didn't the international community comply with commitments to that government?

Musher Al Masry: The election that took place in 2006 was one of the most transparent elections in the Middle East, as all the supervisors declared, but it seems as though if the results aren't as the Americans and Israelis desire, they will not accept them. The US administration is trying to ignore the fair results that the Palestinian election provided while accepting the last Israeli election, which brought in an extremist government.

Is all of this racist? Of course it is. In fact, those who care to study the UN’s Convention on Genocide, passed in 1948 as Zionist militias were still driving Palestinians off their land and destroying their villages, will see that Israel’s behavior meets some of the criteria of article 2 of the convention which describes genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group:

(a) killing members of the group
(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

Israelis involved in the struggle against racism and occupation are fighting an uphill battle. The structural discrimination of the state against its non-Jewish citizens and against the Palestinians living in the occupied territories (as well as the Syrians living on the occupied Golan Heights) is a motor driving Israel and its people from one extreme to another. Thirty years ago it was regarded as unthinkable that Menahim Begin could ever be Israel’s Prime Minister but Begin was followed by Yitzhak Shamir, Benyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert. All of them come out of the same school of Revisionist Zionism. Now revisionism is the mainstream, the labor movement is marginalized and Israel has again elected Netanyahu as its Prime Minister. He in turn has chosen as Foreign Minister the crude, arrogant, provocative and openly racist West Bank settler Avigdor Liebermann.

Racism in Israel is not like racism in other states, which is usually a matter of changing laws and slowly working on public opinion. In Israel racism is so deeply embedded in Zionist ideology and the structure of the state that without racism Israel cannot remain the state that it has become. Yet there are no signs that the Israeli people or the politicians they are electing as their leaders have any intention of changing direction. When they have a powerful military and when they are under no pressure from the outside world they see no reason to change. In its blockade of Gaza Israel has been supported from the beginning by the US, the EU and the Quartet. None of these venerable authorities could see any reason for Israel to be punished or restrained even after the killing of 1400 Palestinians in Gaza from late December 2008 to mid-January 2009.

Israel

The Kingdom of Lies

Racism is common to most and probably all societies. Laws never seem entirely to eliminate it. It was the essential tool in the creation of modern settler states. The United States could not have come into existence without the obliteration of North American Indian cultures and of large numbers of the people themselves. They had to die so the US could be born. In Australia the indigenous people of Tasmania were wiped out to the last man, woman and child, while on the mainland the tribes were massacred, confined, stripped of their ancestral land and eventually turned into fringe dwellers. Until recently Australia had a prime minister who could deny that aboriginal children of mixed ‘blood’ were taken from their parents up to the 1930s and refused to issue any expression of remorse for their mistreatment. More recent targets of racism have been Lebanese and Vietnamese immigrants, while the Howard federal government’s racist treatment of Iraqi and Afghan refugees and asylum seekers remains one of the most shameful chapters of Australia’s history.

In the US the election of a colored president would have been inconceivable until very recently. It was so unbelievable that people wept when Barack Obama won the elections.

Racism comes in many shades. Discrimination against people on the grounds of skin color, ethnicity or religion is a basic human rights issue, a first cousin to discrimination, harassment and denial of opportunity on the basis of gender. President Mahmud Ahmedinejad, in his recent speech at the Durban Review Conference in Geneva, drew attention to Israel as a racist state but Iran has serious issues of its own to deal with. Homosexuality in Iran is treat

Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman accused of providing US defence secrets to Israeli embassy in Washington

The case has been further complicated by a scandal revealed last month by a political publication, Congressional Quarterly, around a member of Congress, Jane Harman, who was secretly taped telling an Israeli agent that she would pressure the justice department to reduce spying charges against the two former Aipac officials.

In return, the Israeli agent offered to get a wealthy donor who helps funds election campaigns for Nancy Pelosi, the then-minority leader in the House of Representatives, to pressure Pelosi to appoint Harman to a senior position on the congressional intelligence committee.

Never forget