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December 24, 2001
Sam Bahour
It
Happened One Morning
Yair Khilou
Why I Resisted
Being Drafted into the Israeli Army
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
December 21, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
War
Good for Bush
John Chuckman
The
First Victim in the
War on Terror
December 20, 2001
Lawrence
McGuire
Killing
Other People's Children
Miriam Rozen
Foundation
Without Representation?
Kenneth
Roth
A
Letter to Rumsfeld on
Military Tribunals
William Blum
Casualties:
Theirs and Ours
December 19, 2001
Marjorie
Cohn
Don't
Pre-Judge John Walker
Sam Bahour
Palestine
and You
December 18, 2001
Shahid
Alam
Clash
of Civilizations?
Carl Estabrook
Who
Opposes This War?
December 17, 2001
Edward
Said
Mahfouz
and the Cruelty
of Memory
December 16, 2001
Amira Howeidy
Dangerous By
Definition?
Bahour
and Dahan
Zinni's
Doomed Mission
December 15, 2001
John Isaacs
Bush's 12
Lumps of Coal
for Christmas
Dana Cook
The
Execution of bin Laden
Yusuf Agha
Tale of the
Tape:
Osama Gump?
December 14, 2001
Don Atapattu
A Conversation with
Norman
Finkelstein
December 13, 2001
Trojanow and Hoskote:
Nonsense
Mantras of Our Times
Dr. A.
Tajudeen
Afghanistan
and Zaire
Michael Williams
Prohibit
Prohibition
December 12, 2001
Jack McCarthy
Hitchens,
Walker
and Osama's Tape
Laura W. Murphy
Ashcroft's
Jihad
Shahid
Alam
Race
and Visibility
December 11, 2001
Joshua Orton
University
of Wisconsin
Won't Aid FBI Interviews
Philip
Farruggio
Cleansing
the Nation's Soul
Robert Fisk
Why I Was
Beaten
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published Oct. 15, 2001
8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
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December 24,
2001
Open Secrets:
The State Department's
Human Rights Reports on Israel and the Occupied Territories
By Jennifer Loewenstein
On Saturday, 15 December 2001, the United States
vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would
have cleared the way for international monitors in the West Bank
and Gaza Strip. Many believe that such monitors would help end
the increasingly bloody low-intensity war Israel is waging against
Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, as well as the
devastating suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.
Among the reasons the US gave for its
veto was that the United Nations is not the proper forum for
resolving Middle East violence. The US prefers to see itself
as the sole arbiter in this conflict despite or perhaps because
of its marked pro-Israel bias, all the more evident of late in
its backing of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's public condemnation
of PA President Yasser Arafat, and in its refusal to challenge
Israel's appropriation of the Bush administration's language
regarding America's "War on Terror."
We are expected to accept that Israel's
policies and strategy towards the Palestinians are analogous
to US policies and strategy towards al-Qa'eda in Afghanistan
and elsewhere.
Most people in the Arab and Muslim worlds
know that this is a standard example of US hypocrisy and support
for unjust regimes. The United States Government is well aware
of Israel's poor human rights record both towards the Palestinians
living under its 34-year-old occupation and towards Palestinian
citizens of Israel itself.
Our politicians and pundits regularly
distort the reality of the situation, however, ignoring or overlooking
carefully documented records of Israeli human rights abuses.
To highlight this point one need not only quote from the extensive
reports of Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. The US
State Department has yearly, detailed reports of Israeli human
rights abuses available for anyone interested.
The State Department's "Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices 2000: Occupied Territories"
(February 2001) states unequivocally that "Israel's overall
human rights record in the occupied territories [is] poor."
It goes on to report that:
Israeli security forces committed numerous
serious human rights abuses during the year.... Since the violence
began, [September 2000] Israeli security units often used excessive
force against Palestinian demonstrators. Israeli security forces
sometimes exceeded their rules of engagement, which provide that
live fire is only to be used when the lives of soldiers, police,
or civilians are in imminent danger. ...Israeli security forces
abused Palestinians in detention suspected of security offenses.
... There were numerous credible allegations that police beat
persons in detention. Three Palestinian prisoners died in Israeli
custody under ambiguous circumstances during the year. Prison
conditions are poor. Prolonged detention, limits on due process,
and infringements on privacy rights remained problems. Israeli
security forces sometimes impeded the provision of medical assistance
to Palestinian civilians. Israeli security forces destroyed Palestinian-owned
agricultural land. Israeli authorities censored Palestinian publications,
placed limits on freedom of assembly, and restricted freedom
of movement for Palestinians.
Often lauded as the only democracy in
the Middle East, Israel nevertheless appears to have difficulty
applying its high human rights standards to non-Jews. One might
plausibly argue that these standards are, out of necessity, suspended
in areas under military occupation were it not for the fact that
the Jewish settler population in the territories benefits from
the same rights and privileges accorded their counterparts within
Israel's internationally recognized borders.
One might also argue that Palestinians
with Israeli citizenship are equal participants in the country's
democratic social institutions were it not for certain serious
problems such as the fact that nearly 70,000 Arab Israelis live
in legal limbo: the more than 100 villages they live in within
Israel are unrecognized by the government. As a result these
residents pay taxes to the government but are "not eligible
for government services...."
"Consequently, such villages have
none of the infrastructure, such as electricity, water, and sewers,
provided to recognized communities. The lack of basic services
has caused difficulties for the villagers in regard to their
education, health care, and employment opportunities. New building
in the unrecognized villages is considered illegal and subject
to demolition."
Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices 2000 [CRHP 2000]: Israel,
US State Department, February 2001.
(The Israeli government has yet to resolve
the legal status of these villages and their inhabitants.)
In addition, the report continues, Palestinian
citizens of Israel are continually subjected to discrimination
in education, housing, and employment and are underrepresented
in most of the professions and in government. Arab land ownership
remains problematic owing to policies prohibiting the transfer
of land to non-Jews.
In 1996 Arab Israelis challenged a state
policy known as the "Master Plan for the Northern Areas
of Israel" which "listed as priority goals increasing
the Galilee's Jewish population and blocking the territorial
contiguity of Arab villages and towns" on the basis that
it discriminated against Palestinian citizens of Israel. The
government continues to use this document as the basis for its
planning in the Galilee.
This is but a small sample of the abuses
listed against Arab Israeli citizens. The report documenting
Israeli human rights abuses in the Occupied Territories is still
more extensive and not limited to Israeli security forces such
as the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). The settler population, whose
presence in the territories contravenes international law, serves
as a daily provocation to Palestinians living under the occupation.
"Israeli settlers harass, attack, and occasionally kill
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza," the report informs
us.
"There were credible reports that
settlers injured a number of Palestinians during the 'al-Aqsa
Intifada,' usually by stoning their vehicles, which at times
caused fatal accidents, shooting them, or hitting them with moving
vehicles. Human rights groups received several dozen reports
during the year that Israeli settlers in the West Bank beat Palestinians
and destroyed the property of Palestinians living or farming
near Israeli settlements. For example, according to Palestinian
eyewitnesses, a group of Israeli settlers beat a 75-year-old
Palestinian woman in April (i.e., 5 months before the uprising
began). ...Settlers also attacked and damaged crops, olive trees,
greenhouses, and agricultural equipment, causing extensive economic
damage to Palestinian-owned agricultural land. The settlers did
not act under government orders in the attacks; however, the
Israeli Government did not prosecute the settlers for their acts
of violence. In general settlers rarely serve prison sentences
if convicted of a crime against a Palestinian. According to human
rights organizations, settlers sometimes attacked Palestinian
ambulances and impeded the provision of medical services to injured
Palestinians."
- CRHRP-2000: Occupied
Territories,
US State Department, February 2001.
The US State Department report takes
note of the fact that "Settlers convicted in Israeli courts
of crimes against Palestinians regularly receive lighter punishment
than Palestinians convicted in Israeli courts against either
Israelis or Palestinians." It also notes that Palestinians
accused of security offenses (defined so broadly as to include
almost everything) in the Occupied Territories are tried in Israeli
military courts, whereas Jewish settlers accused of security
and other offenses are tried in Israeli civil courts.
That this point is noted in a report
on the human rights abuses of another country may interest Americans
recently informed that non-US citizens accused of terror-related
crimes will now be tried by US military tribunals. A US State
Department-issued human rights report on the United States could
prove highly instructive.
The litany of abuses conducted by the
Israeli government, security forces, and civilians against Palestinians
in the Occupied Territories goes on for twenty pages of tiny,
single-spaced print. The list includes home demolitions; lengthy
and damaging military "closures" on Palestinian cities,
towns, and villages; the restriction of freedom of worship and
of travel; the arbitrary closing of schools and universities;
the state-sponsored destruction of olive and citrus orchards;
censorship of Palestinian media; restrictions on freedom of assembly;
extradition of Palestinian prisoners to prisons in Israel and
the difficulty of obtaining proper legal counsel; it takes note
of the IDF killings of hundreds of demonstrators and of the policy
of assassinating terror suspects without ever attempting to bring
them to trial.
The State Department report on the Occupied
Territories details the human rights abuses committed by both
the Palestinian and Israeli regimes, but makes clear that the
international community considers Israel's authority in these
areas not only abusive but also illegal. In the report on Israel
we are reminded that "the international community does not
recognize Israel's sovereignty over any part of the Occupied
Territories," and any mildly critical glance at the body
of international law dealing with this subject, including the
1949 Geneva Convention relating to the Protection of Civilians
in Time of War (to which Israel is a signatory), will reveal
the full extent of Israeli legal and human rights violations.
According to government documents on
US Foreign Military Assistance, Israel will receive $720,000,000
in economic support (allowing it to free up money for military
expenditures), and $2,040,000,000 in foreign military aid for
fiscal year 2002. Congress approved this aid package on 24 October
2001, eight months after the US State Department published its
latest human rights report on Israel and the Occupied Territories.
Because it is no secret that Israel commits
serious human rights abuses (indeed, Senator Russ Feingold [D-WI]
called the most recent State Department human rights report on
Israel "disturbing" in a letter to me dated 31 October
2001) one has to wonder how it is that this public record is
virtually unknown to, or ignored by, our major media and intellectual
classes.
Could it be that our reasons for supporting
Israel have nothing to do with valuing those who believe in "progress
and pluralism, tolerance and freedom"? (George W. Bush;
20 September 2001) We may need to redefine what "civilized"
means. Or perhaps we should simply urge Attorney General Ashcroft
to suppress such information in the future.
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