SITUATION-2
INFORMATION
ABOUT ISRAELI USE OF TORTURE IN INTERROGATION
"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency may be invoked as a justification of torture.'' -- UN Convention against Torture
  • Mohammad Hamdan Issued with Administrative Detention: After 62-day interrogation, Hamdan ordered detained without charge -- Public Relations Press Release (UPDATE) 26 December 1996
  • Mohammad Hamdan Returned to Russian Compound after Two Days at the Lebanese Border -- Public Relations Press Release (UPDATE) 30 November 1996
  • Birzeit University Gravely Concerned about Safety of Student Mohammed Hamdan: Israeli High Court Permits Use of Violence in Interrogation -- Human Rights Action Project Press Release - 7 November 1996
  • Three Years after Oslo: Israel's Ongoing & Arbitrary Detention and Harassment of Birzeit University Students Contradicts Peace -- Human Rights Action Project Update - 18 September 1996
  • "From the Road to Athens to a Concrete Dungeon."

    • Reflections written by Mohammed Abu Obeid.
    Birzeit Human Rights Record No. 17 (April-September 1996)
  • "High Court Allows Physical Pressure in Interrogation"

    • Birzeit Human Rights Record No. 16 (August 1995-March 1996)
  • "Khalid Yassin Farraj"

    • Birzeit Human Rights Record No. 15 (April-July 1995)
  • "Torture and Ill-Treatment"

    • Birzeit Human Rights Record No. 14 (June 1994-March 1995)

    LINKS

  • Concluding Observations - Eighteenth session : Israel. UN Committee against Torture (04/11/97).
  • Oral Statement to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on the Israeli Occupied Territories. A statement by Amnesty International (11 March 1997).
  • Israel's Interrogation Policies and Practices. Israel's Response to Concerns about Interrogation prepared by Adv. Tamar Gaulan, Director, Human Rights and International Relations Department, Ministry of Justice, State of Israel (December 1996).
  • Committee against Torture, Consideration of reports submitted by States Parties under article 19 of the Convention, Israel, UN Doc. A/49/44 at 24 (Forty-ninth session, 1994). 
  • Stop Torture Now! Amnesty International's Ongoing Campaign 
  • B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Ocupied Territories) Publications on Torture & Ill-Treatment Regularly updated.
  • Torture and Ill-Treatment: Israel’s Interrogation of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories Human Rights Watch/Middle East Report (June 1994)

    • Derechos Links on Human Rights in Israel, the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Authority
    Exposing a Provocateur Dennis Eisenberg and Uri Dan, June 25, 1997

    Incitement, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder. The recent purportedly objective TV documentary financed by David Mosevics and directed by Michael Karpin harped constantly on one theme: that right wing provocateurs, influenced by Binyamin Netanyahu, then leader of the then Likud party, created the climate for Yigal Amir to murder Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995. 

    Likud leaders branded as Hamas supporters

    As Rabin's popularity sank lower and lower in polls, the Premier and his ministers made reckless claims that Likud leaders were on a par with Hamas suicide bombers who killed some 200 Israelis at the time. 

    In a bid to drive home the wickedness of the right wing militants, Rabin said that he personally did not care, but that his wife Leah was affected when the right wing fanatics screamed their taunts on Friday afternoon's in front of their Ramat Aviv apartment.

    Shin Beth operative Avishai Raviv's Involvement

    That's a reasonable enough complaint. However, one must remember that the leader of the screaming banshees giving Mrs. Rabin a headache on Sabbath eve was a certain Avishai Raviv whom Mosevics\Karpin conveniently forgot to interview for their documentary. 

    For those who might have forgotten, Raviv was a General Security Service operative who was ordered by his handlers to create phony, violent rightist gangs, whose members were ideally wearers of kippot. This order was decided upon after it became clear that no such gangs existed at the time. Raviv's creation, named Eyal, specialized in chanting "traitor, liar," etc.on Fridays as well as other days in other places. 

    Raviv's boss

    The Shin Bet boss then was Karmi Gillon, who, despite opposition by high-ranking officials, had been personally appointed by Rabin. As head of the organization, Karmi Gillon must surely have known about Raviv's dangerous game. Let us remember the relationship between Karmi and Rabin.

    The makers of Ilana Dayan's "respected" Fact TV program, who presented the film, were well aware of Raviv's controversial role. Yet they ignored this key player!

    The bigger the lie, the more people will believe you

    Which leads us to an obvious conclusion. Mosevics and Karpin set out quite deliberately to mislead the public on the basis that the bigger the lie and the more often you repeat it, the more people will believe you. By inciting the left against the man who is the democratically elected prime minister and leader of the entire Israeli national camp, Mosevics\Karpin are guilty of the very same crime for which they condemn Netanyahu. 

    Let us take our case one step further. The film makers were doing nothing less than inciting to murder - of Netanyahu. If this sounds too harsh, let us look at the facts.

    Warnings of attacks against Netanyahu

    It is no secret that there have been warnings of attacks against the prime minister ever since he came to power. To forestall such an eventuality, extraordinary steps were taken by the security services to protect him. Jerusalem motorists snarled in traffic are only too aware of just how professionally the prime ministers body guards ensure his safety.

    When the premier went to the cinema in Tel Aviv recently, dozens of surrounding seats were filled with sharp-eyed security men who never once glanced at the screen. In Tel Aviv, a few days later, one of the busiest nights of the week, there was a massive traffic jam along the main sea-side road - all because Netanyahu was dining in a nearby restaurant.

    Left wing journalists and politicians mock Netanyahu's intense security measures

    In recent months, left wing journalists and politicians mocking these super safety precautions have displayed the hypocrisy typical of our "free-thinkers." These are the very same scribes who bitterly attacked the secret service for being so slack in guarding Rabin as to allow Yigal Amir to shoot him from point blank range.

    It is worthwhile looking at the mindset of Mosevics, financier of the documentary. 

    Mosevics' fanatical left wing background

    So outraged was he when Netanyahu won the election by a landslide of Israeli votes, that he paid for a prominent advertisement in Ha'aretz.. It quotes the biblical story of how the profit Elijah, speaking for the Almighty, said to King Ahab, who had murdered Naboth, then seized his vineyard: "Have you killed and also inherited?"

    Within a day or two, "Have you killed and also inherited? appeared in black and white graffiti on walls in the Ramat Aviv area: It was repeated in the chic cafes, Mosevics frequents to this day. 

    So we see why it was inconvenient for "M&K to include Raviv - became many of the incitement incidents blamed on the national camp and Netanyahu were in fact instigated or encouraged by the Shin Beth provocateurs.

    Raviv acting as an agent provocateur 

    It was Raviv for instance, who arranged for and directed the video in which an "armed right wing militant student group" took aim at a dummy of "Rabin the traitor. The clip was repeatedly shown on TV. And the provocative poster of Rabin dressed as Nazi Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler was created by two youngsters who took part in a summer camp run by Raviv on the shores of the Kinneret. They handed the posters, mounted on broom handles, to Raviv at the Zion square rally held in Jerusalem a month before the assassination.

    It was Raviv who brought one of the posters to the attention of TV reporter Nitzan Chen, pressing him to air it that very night.

    The damning evidence of teenage girl witnesses. 

    The opprobrium heaped on Netanyahu by this shameless film cannot go unanswered. The prime minister should act boldly and insist that the Shamgar Commission's findings be presented in full - and specifically that the blanket of secrecy surrounding Raviv's evidence be removed. Teenage girls who met Raviv at the settlement of Ma'ale Yisrael told the commission that they had heard him urge Amir: "Be a man! Kill Rabin!" 

    Mr. Netanyahu: Let the Truth Be Told

    Netanyahu who knows more about Raviv's role as an agent provocateur, has been openly challenged and demeaned by this slanted and misleading film. We appeal to Mr. Netanyahu as Shin Beth boss: Given the film's distorted conclusions, you must demand that you be given the film revealing Raviv's activities, how he operated and who were the top men who approved the whole scurrilous operation. Failure to do so would be to allow Mosevics/Karpin to get away with perpetuating nothing less than a most inept piece of journalism.
     

    Spying on Friends Dennis Eisenberg and Uri Dan, May 18, 1997

    The National Security Council is working so hard eavesdropping on Israel that it neglects its real job: Tracking the West's enemies

    The bungled attempt by US security circles to smear Israel’s good name has boomeranged, following the Washington Post’s "disclosure" of a high level mole working for Israel in US intelligence circles. As a result, senior American intelligence officers are deeply dismayed at the results of a botched hatchet job against the Jewish state. As a result of the newspapers "leak" one of the National Security Agency’s most precious secrets has been blown: The world now knows that the agency has perfected a superbly efficient and complex intercept technique, one beyond even the imagination of spy thriller writers. 

    A catastrophic blunder by the NSA 

    Shock waves of seismic proportions were felt by officials at agency headquarters when they read in the paper and read all about their interceptions of a phone call between a senior Mossad agent in Washington and his superior in Tel Aviv. Israel and European security chiefs alike were astonished by this eye-opening and startling revelation "They thoughts somebody at NSA must have had a brain storm," said a now retired senior intelligence official with much experience in US security matters. "The NSA does not disclose anything about their activities." When the Washington Post initially thundered abroad the world shattering tidings that a Israeli code named `Mega’ had been asked to procure a secret letter of assurance sent former secretary of state Warren Christopher to Yasser Arafat following the Hebron withdrawal, Israel intelligence chiefs could hardly believe their ears. 

    The lion that roared gave birth to a timid mouse 

    For the lion that roared forth from the Post’s printing presses gave birth to nothing more than a timid mouse. In truth the Hebrew paper the Ha’aretz published the letter shortly after it was sent to Arafat. In truth it mattered little.

    Of far greater importance than the amateurish scoop that would have shamed the editor of a comic book, was the fact that there WAS an intercept.

    It had only one meaning...That Israel’s highly vaunted electronic code system, Silon (geyser in Hebrew) had been broken by NSA specialists. 

    The catastrophic blunder by the NSA NSA has been spying on Israel

    A French diplomat with strong connections in Israeli military and security circles, related to his colleagues in Paris, "The Israelis have such a wealth of computer and electronic experts that it was clear to me without anyone giving away secret blueprints, that their variable silon (geyser) coded telephonic system was foolproof and totally secure."

    This continues to be the opinion of specialists we have spoken to, one of whom told us: "The Americans are terrific in the sphere of interception.. But even so there was only one way they could have broken Silon. And that is if the NSA had a mole working in Israeli defense establishment..I am certain that the Israelis are right now working full blast weighing the consequences of the NSA interception."

    European intelligence services fear that NSA planted moles in their security services

    The very same thoughts are buzzing among intelligence services in Europe. They have begun to suspect that the NSA has spent millions of dollars bribing men and women operatives within their ranks to sell their top-secret cipher system codes.

    For the clue to the secret of NSA penetration we need to go back for over 15 years when the Russians shot 25 CIA local communication The culprit who betrayed the senior CIA agent was Aldrich Ames, who hid his own treachery by claiming that it was Jonathan Pollard who had passed on the information via Israel to the Soviet Union 

    The possibility of an Israeli traitor selling secrets to NSA

    Foreign newspaper report that in 1986 an Israeli intelligence officer was sent to prison for selling secrets to the Americans. Four years earlier during the Lebanese war another Israeli was jailed for doing the same thing. The government at the time decided to keep the matter secret so as not to jeopardize relations between the US and Israel.

    Mordechai Vanunu also betrayed his country by selling atomic secrets for a large sum of money, later dwarfed by the 12 million dollar plus which Brigadier general Rami Dotan was bribed by American aircraft manufacture to purchase jet engines which were not necessarily the right ones for Israel’s needs.

    The Sad Truth: There ARE native born Israeli traitors selling their souls for money

    The top priority for Israeli and European intelligence chiefs to date following the Washington Post fiasco, is to weigh the situation where their own codes are now an open book to the US. It is almost certain that these will have to be changed. There will also be a fresh screening operation involving their staff, all of which involves much work and heavy expense.

    True attempts have been made to try to play down the incident, by saying that the mega call was done on an ordinary line. The Washington Post insists that that a FBI investigation was launched after the NSA intercepted a secure Israeli telephonic communication. 

    The Post’s blunder is causing even greater damage to NSA

    All this is but a drop in the ocean compared to the massive upheaval now clearly rocking NSA HQ, as a result of which all the billions spent by the NSA will have to be written off. They will have to start all over again if they want to recreate fresh, even more sophisticated interception techniques.

    It is said that the FBI is conducting an investigation into the Mega mole theory, yet an even more thorough investigation is almost undoubtedly underway to investigate the "brains" who bungled the entire anti-Israeli operation. The so-called "serious" Washington Post has unwittingly given away one of NSA’s top ranking intelligence secret. As a result, it is likely that the hopping mad NSA bosses will want to know who botched a simple "smear" campaign against Israel.

    The NSA has forgotten that its job is to spy on enemies - not friends.

    The real problem, however, is that the NSA seems to have been diverted from its main task - that of keeping an electronic eye on countries hostile to the US and the western world. By focusing on spying on friendly nations like Israel, it is alerting its enemies to its activities, which will be more difficult to carry out after a mega-scare on this scale.

    An Immoderate Death

    At 2.00. a.m. on 22 April 1995 a 30-year-old Palestinian computer expert, 'Abd al-Samad Harizat, was arrested at home in Hebron - suspected of being a member of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. He was in good health. By that afternoon, he was in a coma; three days later he was dead.

    An autopsy confirmed that 'Abd al-Samad Harizat died of a brain haemorrhage, caused by violent shaking (tiltul) at Jerusalem's Moscobiyyah detention centre. A British forensic pathologist who attended the autopsy concluded: "there is no doubt whatsoever about the cause of death ... he died from torture".

    An official Israeli investigation confirmed that he had been violently shaken. But it exonerated his interrogator - claiming that he could not have expected that violent shaking would have "a fatal outcome".

    Torture of detainees is a matter of routine in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Over recent years, thousands of Palestinians have been tortured. Methods include hooding with dirty sacks, shackling in painful positions, beatings, sleep deprivation, confinement in dark cupboard-sized cells and violent shaking.

    There are even rules about which methods of torture can be used. Secret guidelines issued by the Landau Commission in 1987 allow the Israeli General Security Service to use "moderate physical pressure" against detainees. Violent shaking of prisoners is officially permitted - in the full knowledge that it can cause brain damage and death.

    Even these guidelines have been "relaxed" since October 1994, in response to suicide bus-bombings by Hamas. The Israelis claim that the use of "physical pressure" and "special interrogation methods" are necessary to extract confessions and information about terrorist attacks.But there can be no justification for torture.

    In July 1995, the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin admitted that shaking had been used against "eight thousand prisoners" but claimed "nothing wrong happened".
    Something wrong did happen. 'Abd al-Samad Harizat was killed by violent shaking. Neurological problems have been found in other detainees who have been violently shaken.


    "An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture." 

    Article 2(3), UN Convention against Torture. 

    ABOLITION OR ABSOLUTION?

    Torture could be abolished in Israel. It is carried out by disciplined forces that would obey any instruction to stop.

    But torture continues in Israel. Following suicide bomb attacks in February and March 1996 - which killed 58 people and were strongly condemned by Amnesty International - there have been multiple reports of torture and ill-treatment of detainees held by the General Security Service. 'Adnan Yunis 'Abd al-Majid Abu Tabaneh was tortured in Hashikma Prison and threatened that he would leave in a wheelchair -or meet the same fate as 'Abd al-Samad Harizat.

    The Israeli Government could put an end to torture, but it has lacked the political will to do so. Instead, there is a proposed law that seeks to formally legalise the use of pressure by the General Security Service during interrogations. There are fears that secret guidelines and a clause granting immunity to inter-rogators from criminal liability could effectively legalise torture.

    ISRAEL, TORTURE AND INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS

    In 1991, Israel ratified the United Nations International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights and the UN Convention against Torture. The UN Convention against Torture states: "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture". In April 1994, the UN Committee against Torture found Israel's authorisation of "moderate physical pressure" to be "completely unacceptable" and expressed concern at the "large number of heavily-documented cases of ill-treatment in custody".

    The excuses given by the Israeli authorities for the use of torture are not acceptable and should not be tolerated.

    TURNING A BLIND EYE

    Torture committed anywhere