EDITOR: “I did nothing wrong”…
They never do, do they? The French in Algeria, the Americans in Vietnam, and now the UK and US in their assorted neo-colonial wars. Israelis could never do anything wrong, of course – it is against their constitution and principles. The wrong-doing in the Middle East is the specialty of the Palestinians, of course, who excel at it.
So here is another Israeli who did nothing wrong, and if she reminds you of Ms Lindy England of the US at Abu Ghraib, well, that is your problem, not hers.
Israeli woman soldier denies Facebook photos wrongdoing: BBC
A former Israeli soldier who posted pictures of herself on Facebook posing with blindfolded Palestinian prisoners says she did nothing wrong.
Eden Aberjil, 26, said she had had death threats over of the images and was surprised at the backlash.
She said the pictures had been taken to “remember the experience” in the army.
Speaking to the BBC, an army spokesman condemned what he called “shameful behaviour by a young soldier”.
“It’s a compulsory army and part of the soldiers do not understand the seriousness of the situation they are in and the duty they are given in the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces],” Capt Arye Shalicar told BBC World Service.
Israeli anti-torture activists said more needed to be done to teach soldiers respect.
Ms Aberjil said the pictures were not intended to be a political statement and the prisoners had been treated well.
It had “never occurred to her”, she told Army Radio, that there might be a problem with the pictures, and she insisted had been a “model soldier”.
Ms Aberjil has already been discharged from the army having completed her mandatory military service.
The pictures show her in uniform, smiling next to three bound and blindfolded prisoners.
Pictures removed
“There’s no violence or intention to humiliate anyone in the pictures,” she said.
A great many young Israeli soldiers have photograph albums quite similar to Eden Aberjil’s “The army: the best days of my life”.
The only difference is that they do not post them on Facebook.
That explains her remark that she still did not “understand what was wrong” and the comment of Dr Ishai Menuchin of the Committee Against Torture in Israel that “she is a bad apple, but all the box are bad apples”.
The IDF likes to think of itself as the most ethical army in the world and so condemned the photographs in strident terms. (They are also no fools when it comes to public relations).
For most young conscripts, and young Israelis who have completed their military service, I suspect the reaction will not be outrage but a simple shrug of the shoulders.
Anger at Israel Facebook photos
“I just had my picture taken with them in the background. I did it out of excitement, to remember the experience.”
Ms Aberjil had put the images in a Facebook album named “The army: the best days of my life” several weeks ago.
Their existence was reported by media on Monday, and they have now been taken down.
“I find it astounding that there are so many people who want peace and I’m the one ruining it for them,” she said, adding that she had received “loads of death threats” but was not scared.
She said she was disappointed by the army’s response to the pictures.
Condemning the photos, another army spokesman, Barak Raz, said they did not “reflect the spirit of the IDF, our ethical standard to which we all aspire”.
Capt Shalicar said that one of the aims of the IDF was educational, teaching young conscripts what was right and wrong.
If Ms Aberjil was serving in the IDF today, he suggested, “most probably her commander would give her the right punishment and they would maybe put her behind bars for a few weeks”.
‘Humiliating’
Palestinian groups said the images were humiliating and revealed the “mentality of the occupier”.
“This shows the mentality of the occupier, to be proud of humiliating Palestinians,” Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib told the Associated Press news agency.
“The occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting.”
A spokesman for the campaign group the Israeli Committee Against Torture, Ishay Menuchin, said the Israeli military needed to do more to stop the abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
“The problem is that they can condemn her, but they need to work and educate these soldiers that Palestinians are civilians with human rights and they should treat them as human beings, not as a background for a pose,” he said.
Jordan Valley is a microcosm of Israel’s colonisation: The Guardian CoF
Israeli land seizure and ethnic cleansing should be met with arrest warrants – not arms sales and diplomatic games
Ben White
Tuesday 17 August 2010 09.59 BST
The Jordan Valley, stretching all the way down the West Bank’s eastern side, is a microcosm of Israel’s discriminatory policies of colonisation and displacement. For 40 years, settlements have been established, military no-go areas declared, and Palestinians’ freedom of movement restricted. There are now 27 colonies in the Jordan Valley – most of them had been established by the late 1970s under Labour governments. There are also nine “unauthorised” outposts. In the 1990s, the size of territory afforded to the settlements increased by 45%.
As we watch yet another bout of periodic, though tempered, enthusiasm about “direct negotiations”, Israel is doing as much as possible to determine the Bantustan borders – policies exemplified in the Jordan Valley, a substantial area of the West Bank almost isolated from the rest of the occupied territories. In 2006, B’Tselem noted how the Israeli military “made a distinction between the ‘territory of Judea and Samaria’ (ie the West Bank) and ‘the Jordan Valley’, indicating that Israel does not view the two areas as a single territorial unit”.
While there are areas of the West Bank that have witnessed the removal of some checkpoints, according to a senior UN official in June, “it hasn’t improved at all when it comes to moving towards the east” and the Jordan Valley. Without a special permit, Palestinians who are not registered as Jordan Valley residents are prohibited from crossing the four key checkpoints controlling the area north of Jericho in their private vehicles.
The presence of the valley’s Palestinians is a “problem” that Israel approaches with the tools of evacuation orders and bulldozers. Amnesty International, among others, has noticed an intensification of home demolitions and evictions, while B’Tselem sees “the current wave” as “part of Israel’s ongoing efforts to remove” Bedouin Palestinians from the Jordan Valley. As Luisa Morgantini, former vice-president of the European parliament, put it recently, “an area cleansed of its inhabitants today is more easily annexed tomorrow”.
Israel’s strategic objectives mean disaster for the lives of Palestinians on the ground. Sitting next to his wife and children, Omar described to me a visit from the Israeli military to his community of al-Fasayil. “They arrived at 10 in the morning, with around a dozen jeeps and a bulldozer. They wanted to demolish everything immediately, and we were begging for a little time to get things out.”
Other people came running to help, he said, but the soldiers only allowed his two brothers-in-law to help him move out his animals and possessions. “We wanted to save the metal door but the soldiers said, ‘No, it is part of the demolition order’.”
In that particular raid, the Israeli army targeted one structure used for farming and storage. But not far away, other Palestinians last month were left to survey the damage after around 70 structures were demolished, displacing 100 Palestinians. When I visited two days later, all around were piles of debris: heaps of twisted metal, plastic fragments and broken pots and pans. In the words of one Oxfam official, the scene resembled the aftermath of “a natural disaster”.
This is a stark example of Israeli apartheid. Across the Jordan Valley, thriving Jewish settlements – whose very presence is illegal under international law – produce vegetables and fruits for export, their communities integrated into the main infrastructure and communications network of the Israeli state. Afforded generous “master plans” for development by the Israeli state, all around these settlements are Palestinians whose very livelihoods are threatened by the occupation.
Perhaps the main method of making normal life impossible for the Palestinians is to prevent “legal” construction. Back in April, Amnesty International cited an Israeli army spokesperson who said in 1999 that “our policy is not to approve building in Area C” (an Oslo Accords classification applying to almost all of the Jordan Valley). These restrictions, along with the settlements and the 44% designated as an Israeli “military area” or “nature reserve”, mean that “in almost the entirety of the Jordan Valley, Palestinian construction is prohibited”.
These are the realities that persuade many groups who work on the ground to draw disturbing conclusions about Israel’s objectives. Amnesty International has expressed its concern that the home demolitions are “part of a government strategy to remove the Palestinian population from the parts of the West Bank known as Area C”. B’Tselem suggested that Israel’s motive “is not based on military-security needs, but is political: the de facto annexation of the Jordan Valley”.
From the faces of Palestinian families picking over the ruined remains of their simple properties and the prospering Jewish settlements next door, to the declared intentions of leaders such as Binyamin Netanyahu, the Jordan Valley is Israeli rejectionism distilled. Land seizure and ethnic cleansing should be met with arrest warrants and sanctions, not arms sales and diplomatic games.
Governmental inaction makes it even more imperative for citizens to take action: through solidarity with Palestinians defending their community in the Jordan Valley to boycotting products and resisting corporate complicity in a regime of separation and inequality. Once more, the response of civil society shames our elected representatives.
Israel ruled responsible for death of Palestinian girl: BBC
Israel was responsible for the 2007 death of a 10-year-old Palestinian girl, a court in Jerusalem has ruled.
Abir Aramin was shot in the head by a rubber bullet during a clash between border guards and stone-throwing youths in the West Bank town of Anata.
A judge in the civil case brought by her family ruled the killing was “unjustified” and the guards had either been negligent or had disobeyed orders.
The state has been ordered to pay compensation to Abir’s family.
Abir was killed shortly after leaving a sweet shop with her sister and two other girls in the West Bank town of Anata, north of Jerusalem, in January 2007.
The family – including her father who is a prominent peace campaigner – had brought the civil case after Israel’s high court ruled against a criminal trial, saying Abir might have been hit by a rock thrown by Palestinian protesters.
A group of youths had been involved in a clash with border guards nearby over the building of a section of Israel’s controversial West Bank barrier.
But Judge Orit Efal-Gabai dismissed that claim, saying there was “no debate” that Abir had been hit by a rubber bullet and that the shooting “occurred out of negligence, or in violation of the rules of engagement”.
“Abir and her friends were walking down a street where there were no rock-throwers, therefore there was no reason to shoot in their direction,” Haaretz quoted the judge as saying.
“It is clear that Abir’s death, caused by a rubber bullet shot by border guards, was due to negligence by the defendant .”
Security forces surround Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv after shots fired: The Guardian
Palestinian man claims he has two hostages and will blow up building
Israeli security forces were tonight in place around the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv where a Palestinian man was reported to be holding hostages after shots were fired.
Details of the incident were unclear but the Israeli foreign ministry confirmed there was a “hostage situation.”
According to Israel Radio, Turkish officials at the embassy were refusing to allow Israeli forces to enter the building. Relations between Israel and Turkey have been under severe strain since the Israeli attack on a Turkish flotilla heading for Gaza on May 31, when nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed . Tonight’s incident has the potential to further inflame a delicate diplomatic situation.
The Palestinian man reportedly arrived at the embassy in a state of undress, saying he was being persecuted by Israeli intelligence services and demanding asylum. He called an Israeli paper, identifying himself as Nadam Injaz, and saying he had previously sought asylum at the British embassy in Tel Aviv four years ago.
Shots were apparently fired in the vicinity of the Turkish embassy todayand police closed surrounding roads to traffic.
According to some reports, the Palestinian was shot in the legs and then taken inside the embassy. His lawyer, who was in contact with him by phone, said he was armed with pistol and a knife.
An Israeli TV channel played a recording of a phone call it said came from the attacker. “I have two hostages,” he said. “I will blow up the embassy.”
Eli Binn, the director of the ambulance service, who was at the scene, said: “We were called to scene after being informed that someone was barricading himself at the embassy. When we arrived, a Turkish representative said there is no need for us to come in and did not allow us to enter. We know with certainty that there is one gunshot victim but we don’t know his condition.”
“While we were at the site, more shots were fired, but at this time we don’t quite know what’s going on inside the embassy and are waiting outside, along with other security forces, until we get our orders,” he said.
The Palestinian was reported to be demanding to be taken to Ankara. Police said they believed he was mentally ill.
Ex-U.S. diplomat: Israel unlikely to strike Iran nuclear plant: Haaretz
John Bolton tells U.S. television that Iran on verge of establishing second route for developing nuclear weapons, says Bushehr reactor was ‘significant victory’ for Tehran.
Israel is unlikely to attack Iran’s nuclear reactor in Bushehr, which will soon be online, former U.S. envoy to the United Nations John Bolton told the Fox Business Network on Monday, adding that the Russian-built facility represents a major step forward for Iran’s nuclear weapons aspirations.
Russia said Friday that it will begin loading nuclear fuel into the Bushehr reactor, Iran’s first atomic power station, on August 21; this is an irreversible step toward the launch of the Bushehr plant after years of delays.
Russia agreed in 1995 to build the Bushehr plant on the site of a project begun in the 1970s by German company Siemens, but delays have haunted the $1 billion project and diplomats say Moscow has used it as a lever in relations with Tehran.
The United States has criticized Moscow for pushing ahead with the Bushehr project at a time when major powers including Russia are pressing Tehran to allay fears that its nuclear energy program may be geared to develop weapons.
But Western fears that the Bushehr project could help Iran develop a nuclear weapon were lessened when Moscow reached an agreement with Tehran obliging it to return spent fuel to Russia. Weapons-grade plutonium can be derived from spent fuel rods.
Speaking to Fox on Monday, Bolton said that Israel was unlikely to attack the Bushehr reactor, saying that “Israel’s got a problem.”
“Once the fuel rods are inserted into the reactor and attack on the reactor would almost certainly release radiation into the atmosphere, given where Bushehr is located right on the Persian Gulf possibly into the water as well,” Bolton said, adding that “from Israel’s point of view if they were going to do anything militarily about Bushehr you got a few days until the fuel rods are inserted.”
The former UN envoy also said Israel would not attack the reactor since it was interested in the bigger picture of Iran’s nuclear aspirations, saying that Israel has “the rest of Iran’s nuclear program, the Iranian enrichment facility and so on to worry about too and I don’t think Israel has the luxury to attack in the next few days, wait a few months and attack again.”
In the interview, Bolton also said that the completion of the reactor was a “significant victory for Iran.”
“They will be beginning the process of brining online a 1000 megawatt reactor. When it becomes fully operational the spent fuel coming out of the reactor will be plutonium which could be reprocessed chemically and used for nuclear weapons,” Bolton said.
The former ambassador to the UN added that Iran was “on the verge of achieving something that Saddam Hussein was not ale to achieve, Bashar al-Assad in Syria was not able to achieve and that’s getting a second route to nuclear weapons.”
“It’s a very very significant step forward for the Iranian nuclear program,” Bolton said.
Israel should not keep its history behind lock and key: Jonathan Cook
The National, August 17. 2010
History may be written by the victors, as Winston Churchill is said to have observed, but the opening up of archives can threaten a nation every bit as much as the unearthing of mass graves.
That danger explains a decision quietly taken last month by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to extend by an additional 20 years the country’s 50-year rule for the release of sensitive documents.
The new 70-year disclosure rule is the government’s response to Israeli journalists who have been seeking through Israel’s courts to gain access to documents that should already be declassified, especially those concerning the 1948 war, which established Israel, and the 1956 Suez crisis.
The state’s chief archivist says many of the documents “are not fit for public viewing” and raise doubts about Israel’s “adherence to international law”, while the government warns that greater transparency will “damage foreign relations”.
Quite what such phrases mean was illustrated by the findings of a recent investigation by an Israeli newspaper. Haaretz revisited the Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel seized not only the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, but also a significant corner of Syria known as the Golan Heights, which Israel still refuses to relinquish.
The consensus in Israel is that the country’s right to hold on to the Golan is even stronger than its right to the West Bank. According to polls, an overwhelming majority of Israelis refuse to concede their little bit of annexed Syria, even if doing so would secure peace with Damascus.
This intransigence is not surprising. For decades, Israelis have been taught a grand narrative in which, having repelled an attack by Syrian forces, Israel then magnanimously allowed the civilian population of the Golan to live under its rule. That, say Israelis, is why the inhabitants of four Druze villages are still present there. The rest chose to leave on the instructions of Damascus.
One influential journalist writing at the time even insinuated anti-Semitism on the part of the civilians who departed: “Everyone fled, to the last man, before the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] arrived, out of fear of the ‘savage conqueror’ … Fools, why did they have to flee?”
However, a very different picture emerges from Haaretz’s interviews with the participants. These insiders say that all but 6,000 of the Golan’s 130,000 civilians were either terrorised or physically forced out, some of them long after the fighting finished. An army document reveals a plan to clear the area of the Syrian population, with only the exception of the Golan Druze, so as not to upset relations with the loyal Druze community inside Israel.
The army’s post-war tasks included flushing out thousands of farmers hiding in caves and woods to send them over the new border. Homes were looted before the army set about destroying all traces of 200 villages so that there would be nowhere left for the former inhabitants to return to. The first Jewish settlers sent to till the fields recalled seeing the dispossessed owners watching from afar.
The Haaretz investigation offers an account of methodical and wholesale ethnic cleansing that sits uncomfortably not only with the traditional Israeli story of 1967 but with the Israeli public’s idea that their army is the “most moral in the world”. That may explain why several prominent, though unnamed, Israeli historians admitted to Haaretz that they had learnt of this “alternative narrative” but did nothing to investigate or publicise it.
What is so intriguing about the newspaper’s version of the Golan’s capture is the degree to which it echoes the revised accounts of the 1948 war that have been written by later generations of Israeli historians. Three decades ago – in a more complacent era – Israel made available less sensitive documents from that period.
The new material was explosive enough. It undermined Israel’s traditional narrative of 1948, in which the Palestinians were said to have left voluntarily on the orders of the Arab leaders and in the expectation that the combined Arab armies would snuff out the fledging Jewish state in a bloodbath.
Instead, the documents suggested that heavily armed Jewish forces had expelled and dispossessed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians before the Jewish state had even been declared and a single Arab soldier had entered Palestine.
One document in particular, Plan Dalet, demonstrated the army’s intention to expel the Palestinians from their homeland. Its existence explains the ethnic cleansing of more than 80 per cent of Palestinians in the war, followed by a military campaign to destroy hundreds of villages to ensure the refugees never returned.
Ethnic cleansing is the common theme of both these Israeli conquests. A deeper probe of the archives will almost certainly reveal in greater detail how and why these “cleansing” campaigns were carried out – which is precisely why Mr Netanyahu and others want the archives to remain locked.
But full disclosure of these myth-shattering documents may be the precondition for peace. Certainly, more of these revelations offer the best hope of shocking Israeli public opinion out of its self-righteous opposition to meaningful concessions, either to Syria or the Palestinians.
It is also a necessary first step in challenging Israel’s continuing attempts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians, as has occurred in the last few weeks against the Bedouin in both the Jordan Valley and the Negev, where villages are being razed and families forced to leave again.
Genuine peacemakers should be demanding that the doors to the archives be thrown open immediately. The motives of those who wish to keep them locked should be clear to all.
Jonathan Cook is The National’s correspondent in Nazareth. His latest book is Disappearing Palestine
Politruks in academia: Haaretz Editorial
The preoccupation with syllabi at Tel Aviv University is nothing more than a cover for a dangerous worldview, which says academic research must comply with the winds blowing in the Knesset and the street.
It is to be hoped that Tel Aviv University President Joseph Klafter’s decision to examine senior researchers and lecturers’ syllabi was indeed intended – as Prof. Yehouda Shenhav was quoted by Or Kashti as saying (Haaretz English Edition, August 15 ), “to protect academic freedom from McCarthyism,” and does not indicate a surrender to the Institute for Zionist Strategies.
Those who issued the report titled “Post-Zionism and Academia” (which deals only with sociology courses ) can only be defined, to put it mildly, as “politruks” (Russian for political commissars ). The report, which was distributed to university heads and senior lecturers, is a sanctimonious paper, apparently a tedious expansion of a previous, no less shameful report, submitted by the Im Tirtzu movement to the Knesset and education minister.
Implementing the report – by examining syllabi – would be foolish and troubling. It will make it impossible for academics to do any research unless it is in line with the representation determined by the report, which resembles something taken out of an old Jewish National Fund propaganda movie. This narrow-minded demand could damage Zionism research even more.
But the preoccupation with syllabi is nothing more than a cover for a dangerous worldview, which says academic research must comply with the winds blowing in the Knesset and the street.
The report claims there is a prestigious, influential academic elite that trains generations of young researchers and personnel for public administration, and that maintains and runs research centers with considerable influence on the state’s decision-makers. “This elite, which represents Israel in the international academic community, advocates radical leftist positions that would doubtfully pass the broader (Jewish ) public test – in the polls,” says the report.
These crude statements expose the principles of the new politruk activity and make its intentions clear. Evidently the report has the goal of spreading fear in the universities, further deligitimizing Israeli intellectuals, and undermining the freedom of expression, research and thought. It aims to do these things by means of populistic denunciations and an irrelevant, illegitimate ethnocratic distinction (“the Jewish public” ).
As the rector of the University of Haifa said, this is a McCarthyist report, which academia must reject out of hand.
Harvard University fund sells all Israel holdings: IOA
In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University’s endowment.
IOA Editor:The Harvard Management Company — a subsidiary of Harvard University charged with managing the university’s endowment, pension assets, working capital, and non-cash gifts — is best known for managing the university’s $26 billion endowment, the largest endowment in US higher education. Historically, the HMC has been the leading university investment management company, receiving a great deal of attention from all other university funds. More on the HMC on Wikipedia.
This is probably the first reported university endowment divestment from all Israeli holdings. Coming from Harvard, it sets a very important precedent: it is likely to be reviewed, scrutinized, and possibly followed, by other universities. Because Harvard, or HMC, has yet to make a public statement on the decision, one can only assume that it took place as a preventive measure, to avoid becoming the “next Berkeley.”
By Hillel Koren, Globes – 15 Aug 2010: Globes
No reason for the sale was mentioned in the report to the SEC.
In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University’s endowment.
Harvard Management Company stated in its 13-F Form that it sold 483,590 shares in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Nasdaq: TEVA; TASE: TEVA) for $30.5 million; 52,360 shares in NICE Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE; TASE: NICE) for $1.67 million; 102,940 shares in Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) for $3.6 million; 32,400 shares in Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE:CEL; TASE:CEL) for $1.1 million, and 80,000 (Nasdaq: Partner Communications Ltd.PTNR; TASE: PTNR) shares for $1.8 million.
Harvard Management Company’s 13-F Form shows some interesting investments. Its two largest holdings, each worth $295 million, are in iShares ETFs, one on Chinese equities, and the other on emerging markets. Harvard also owns $181 million in a Brazilian ETF.
‘Facebook photos of soldiers posing with bound Palestinians are the norm’: Haaretz
Rights group Breaking the Silence refutes IDF claim that photos posted by female soldier under the heading ‘the time of my life’ are an anomaly.
Facebook photos depicting Israel Defense Forces soldiers pictured alongside handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainees represent the norm, not the exception, in IDF conduct, an Israeli human rights group said on Tuesday, thus refuting an official army statement claiming the opposite.
Photographs uploaded by Eden Abergil released earlier this week and labeled “IDF – the best time of my life,” sparked massive public outrage. The photos depicted Abergil smiling next to Palestinian prisoners with their hands bound and their eyes covered.
A comment attached to one of the photos of the soldier smiling in front of two blindfold men and posted by one of Abergil’s friends read “That looks really sexy for you,” with Abergil’s response reading: “I wonder if he is on Facebook too – I’ll have to tag him in the photo.”
An IDF spokesman had issued a response on Monday, saying that “on the face of it the behavior exhibited by the soldier is base and crude.”
In a statement released Tuesday by Breaking the Silence, an organization that collects testimonies of Israeli soldiers on alleged abuse of Palestinians in the territories, the group said that while the IDF claimed to be “shocked” by Abergil’s photos, it did not represent “the ugly behavior of just one person.”
The statement released in a Facebook page called “The Norm that IDF Spokesman Avi Benayahu Denies,” also included several graphic photos depicting soldiers posing next to the bodies of suspected militants as well as next to handcuffed detainees [viewer discretion is advised].
In the Facebook page, Breaking the Silence said that the norms the photos allegedly expose were the” necessary result of a long-term military control of a civilian population.”
“We suggest that the IDF Spokesman not insult the intelligence of the Israeli public, and clarify that it is a widespread phenomenon, not an aberration caused by a single soldier,” the statement said, adding that the enclosed photos were taken at several times during the last ten years and represented only a “preliminary batch.”
Speaking to Army Radio earlier Tuesday, Abergil, whose Facebook photos caused a worldwide media storm, said she still couldn’t see what was wrong with the images, saying the “pictures were taken in good faith, there was no statement in them.”
Referring to the possibility that the images could injure Israel’s image in the international arena, Abergil said: “We will always be attacked. Whatever we do, we will always be attacked.”
Arab world ‘disgusted’ by IDF Facebook photos: YNet
Syrian press: Soldier’s pictures with bound Palestinians ‘express sadist culture of occupation’
Arab media outlets expressed outrage Tuesday over at the publication of controversial Facebook photos showing an IDF female soldier posing next to cuffed and blindfolded Palestinians.
Al-Jazeera said the soldier, Eden Abergil, “intentionally degraded the detainees on Facebook,” while the Syrian press condemned “the sadist culture of the occupation army.”
Defense
‘I actually took care of the detainees’ / Boaz Fyler
Ex-soldier from Ashdod who caused worldwide stir by posting photos of herself posing with cuffed Palestinian detainees taken during her army service says she received death threats on Facebook. ‘The IDF let me down, I wish I never served in such an army,’ she says. Meanwhile, PA planning to take legal action against her
For Full Story
A Palestinian lawyer from east Jerusalem told Al-Arabiya network that he planned to appeal to human rights organizations abroad and demand an international investigation into the photos.
“I wonder how it is that the soldier’s Facebook page was open for a month on a social networking site boasting 500 million users, yet the Israeli army never knew about it,” he said, asking to remain anonymous.
The Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel also said it would demand a probe.
“The pictures are disgusting,” said one of the center’s attorneys, Hanin Noema. “These pictures are immoral, inhuman, and illegal. The Israeli army is a type of school for soldiers of this sort.”
Many Arab press agencies also quoted the Palestinian Authority’s response to the photos.
Web abuzz over soldier’s photos with bound, blindfolded inmates: Haaretz
Photographs by a former female IDF soldier put on Facebook several days ago, have stirred up a web storm.
Photographs by a former female soldier put on Facebook several days ago, have stirred up a web storm. Among the photographs put up by Eden Aberjil, under the title “The army: the best time of my life,” are ones in which the soldier is seen smiling near Palestinian prisoners whose hands are tied and eyes covered.
Responding to Aberjil’s photographs, one friend wrote her: “You are most sexy like that.” Referring to one of her prisoner subjects, the photographer mused in response: “I wonder if he is on Facebook?! I must tag him in the photograph.”
The photo album has since been removed from the social network.
Also visible in the former soldier’s photographs were the field headquarters where she was stationed, with military maps and documents on the walls, including what appears to be classified material.
Aberjil was discharged from the IDF a year ago, and the army has no legal means of prevent her from posting her photographs.
Last year the army issued instructions to troops forbidding the publication of any photographs showing operational activities or from the inside of field headquarters. The Field Security section includes a unit whose task is to keep tabs on such incidents and, when sensitive information is identified, to bring in the Military Police.
The IDF spokesman said in response to the photographs that, “on the face of it the behavior exhibited by the soldier is base and crude.”
The head of the Public Committee Against Torture, Ishai Menuchin, said that “these terrible photographs reflect a norm in the way Palestinians are viewed, as an object and not as humans. It is an attitude that ignores their feelings as humans and their individual rights.”
According to Menuchin, “it looks like the soldier who put up the photographs on Facebook enjoyed the humiliation of the Palestinians and ignored their right to privacy, while in humiliating postures …. We call on the commanders of the IDF to issue an order forbidding such humiliating behavior toward a population under occupations, and invest in educating the IDF soldiers to view the individual Palestinian citizens as having human rights.”
Similar reactions were made by the Palestinian Authority official government media center, stressing that “the photographs reflect the behavior of the occupier who prides himself in humiliating Palestinians …. The occupation is not just, it is immoral, and as is shown in these photographs, it also corrupts and must be brought to an end.”
Is Canada passing information on its citizens to Israel?: The Electronic Intifada
Yves Engler, 17 August 2010
On 7 April, Freda Guttman, a 76-year-old Jewish Montrealer, received a visit from agents of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). She slammed the door on them so it’s not clear if the visit was related to her role in Tadamon!, a Middle East solidarity collective, or her friendship with Canadian activist (and occasional contributor to The Electronic Intifada) Stefan Christoff. A tall, mild-mannered 29-year-old, Christoff has been one of Montreal’s most effective grassroots activists for the past decade. Involved with various issues recently he’s devoted himself to Palestinian solidarity work, including the highly successful Artists Against Apartheid (AAA) campaign. Over the past three years AAA has organized a dozen concerts and in February they brought together 500 Quebec artists in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign, which supporters of Israel view as a major threat.
In the past eight months at least seven of Christoff’s friends have been visited by CSIS agents. These unannounced visits usually take place early in the morning. The agents ask questions about Christoff’s trips to the Middle East or AAA and in some instances, they’ve feigned concern for the Palestinian cause, implying Christoff’s radical activist roots might hurt it.
The CSIS’s interest in Guttman and Christoff represents a departure for the agency in targeting Palestinian solidarity activists. During the 1990s as Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were engaged in negotiations many Palestinian Canadians accused the CSIS of intimidating opponents of the Oslo accords. The CSIS allegedly offered cash in exchange for information on those opposed to the PLO’s compromise. A Washington Report on Middle East Affairs article published in 1994 after the initial peace accord was signed, explained that “CSIS is carrying out a political agenda by targeting only those who are aligned with non-Fatah groups of the PLO — those who oppose the accord signed by the PLO. More than 20 PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] supporters have come forward alleging that they have been interrogated by CSIS.” In contrast, both Guttman and Christoff are white and are not affiliated with a Palestinian political party.
As a national intelligence organization shrouded in secrecy, it is hard to know if CSIS has been mandated to target Palestine solidarity activists. In the current political climate, however, it’s not surprising that CSIS officials view anyone defending Palestinian rights as a threat.
The ardently pro-Israel Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper has repeatedly equated expressions of support for Palestinian rights with extremism. In March 2009, Ottawa barred British parliamentarian George Galloway from Canada for delivering humanitarian aid to Hamas officials who were the elected administration in the Gaza Strip. At the start of this year the Conservative government attempted to pass a condemnation of Israeli Apartheid Week in Parliament. Six weeks ago, Harper accused Libby Davies, Member of Parliament for the New Democratic Party (NDP), of making “extremist” statements because she gave halting support to the BDS campaign and said Israel had been occupying Palestinian territories since 1948. Demanding Davies be fired as the NDP’s deputy leader, Harper told the House of Commons, “She made statements that could have been made by Hamas, Hizballah,” which Canada considers terrorist organizations.
The Conservatives have also strengthened Canadian intelligence cooperation with Israel. In early 2008 Ottawa signed a wide-ranging “border management and security” agreement with Israel, even though the two countries do not share a border. The agreement is rather vague, but includes sharing information, cooperating on illegal immigration, cooperating on law enforcement, etc. This agreement is an attempt to formalize some aspects of the CSIS’s relationship with the Mossad, Israel’s international intelligence agency.
Canadian-Israeli intelligence relations date to the 1970s if not earlier. Norman Spector, Canada’s ambassador to Israel, has admitted that there was a CSIS operative working for him at the Canadian embassy in Tel Aviv (“Mossad’s Use of Canadian Passports: Two Reports,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1998). He also acknowledged, as quoted in Paul McGeough’s 2009 book Kill Khaled, that there was “very close cooperation” between the Canadian and Israeli spy agencies (p.222).
This relationship is also active inside Canada. In his 1990 book Official Secrets: The story behind the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Richard Cléroux noted that “Mossad agents are located in every major [Canadian] city, working closely with CSIS, to protect El Al aircraft and airline installations and watching PLO political activities, especially those of Arab and Iranian students (p.278). Israelis are CSIS’s prime source of information on a number of suspected terrorists and spies.” The CSIS also passes information to Mossad. Spy Wars (p.250) describes how CSIS “told him [an unnamed Palestinian] explicitly they were gathering information for the CIA and Mossad.”
According to former Ambassador Spector, as reported in Washington Report in 1998, the Mossad’s relationship to CSIS “goes beyond information sharing. There are joint operations.” Although Spector did not elaborate, it is public knowledge that Mossad agents have used Canadian passports to carry out numerous foreign assassinations. “A member of an Israeli hit squad that mistakenly killed a Moroccan waiter in Norway in 1973 had posed as a Canadian,” reported the Canadian Jewish News.
Until 1997, the repeated use of Canadian cover by Israeli agents received little attention. That changed when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to a Hamas offer for a 30-year truce (relayed by Jordan’s King Hussein) by trying to kill Khalid Meshal, then chairman of Hamas’ political bureau. The Israeli agents, who were captured after dropping poison in Meshal’s ear, entered Jordan on Canadian passports.
Spector claimed CSIS and Mossad agents met days before the attempt to assassinate Meshal. He said Ottawa wanted to cover up Israel’s use of fake Canadian passports. “Canadian authorities knew, in general, that passports were being used by Mossad,” Spector noted. “It was known to people at the embassy and they essentially turned a blind eye to it.” According to Spector, CSIS supported Mossad missions in exchange for intelligence. “Israeli operational agents have been given to understand that the use of Canadian passports is the quid pro quo [for information on Arab immigrants].”
While Ottawa officially protested the Meshal incident, it apparently didn’t affect the Mossad-CSIS relationship. A Canadian working for Mossad, Jonathan Ross explained in his 2008 book The Volunteer: A Canadian’s Secret Life in the Mossad that the CSIS “was sympathetic, and it was business as usual with them despite the diplomatic flap. During a liaison exchange by our [Mossad] counterterrorism officers to Canada soon after the affair broke, many CSIS members mentioned that their only regret in the whole affair was that we didn’t succeed [in assassinating Meshal].”
The close ties between Canadian and Israeli intelligence agencies — strengthened with the recent border security agreement — means that some of the information CSIS collects on pro-Palestinian Canadians is probably passed on to their Israeli counterparts. In 2003, Stefan Christoff was barred by Israel’s interior ministry from entering the occupied Palestinian territories. Was that decision based upon information from CSIS?
As Palestinian solidarity activism further challenges Canada’s pro-Israeli establishment, CSIS harassment will likely increase. The way to deal with these threats is to expose them and to build a broad movement that makes them ineffective.
Yves Engler’s most recent book is Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid. He will be on tour in Ontario with the book in early October. To help organize an event or for more info visit http://yvesengler.com.