Video: PROOF: Israel DID use Human Shields in Gaza
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=52976
March 28, 2009
Evidence is mounting into a landslide regarding War Crimes commited by Israel in Gaza, from illegal weaponry to the use of Drones for killing civilians and a Religious book that stated that Palestinian lives are worth less than Israelis. NOW however teh sevidence pointing at Israel using Human Shields one of their strongest arguments regarding the high death rate amongs civilians during the Cast Lead operation. How interesting that the guilty accuse the those of commiting the crimes they commit!
Monday, 30 March 2009
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Testimonies
- Routine
http://www.shovrimshtika.org/testimonies_e.asp?cat=22
building slowly
Name: ***
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Nachal
Description: My Company commander that always tried strive for contact. Meaning, also when there wasn't and it was boring, he would find places to make contact. If it was a gathering of a lot of people, he would purposely drive slowly with the Jeep, wait until they would stone him, get out wit the guys , and start shooting rubber bullets. Also seperate the rubber bullets in the canister, so as to shoot single rubber bullets, which is really dangerous.
And he was allowed to do what he wanted?
That was the period, it was the wild west. The Battalion Commander would tell the Company Commander: your guys are in the territores, there is a "code red", what the say today in the US, and mangae. What do you mean "manage"? There still wasn't a seperation into areas, no rules of engagement. Everything is built slowly. How you deal with the fact that the arabs in the area are getting to you. It's like you decide, that until there isn't a constitution, then there is survival of the fittest. Who is giving orders, that doesn't matter. Whatever is decided will happen. If you are at a point when you think something is rigth, fire a round into Nablus, so you tell your Commander that you were fired at, and you shoot back. Tha'ts how your commander works as aweel, and he passes his ideas to the Battalion Commander, who probably also thinks that that is the right way to act.
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pictures of taliban
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal
Description: When we got back from that operation, we had loot so to speak. There were IDs confiscated, uniforms, Kalachnikovs. For army intelligence. I only remember that our staff – another thing that really annoyed me – I remember them being photographed with those Kalachnikovs, the sort of 'Taliban' pictures. I don't know what the sense of it was.
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tanks on cars
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal
Description: With us, there were tanks that entered the village, and ran over cars.
Just like that?
Yes. I saw it from the APC we were in. I peeped out. We were closed inside, the commander was in the cabin. I peeped out from the driver's seat. Suddenly we heard a car being crushed. I looked. I don't know if it was on the side of the road. Anyway I can't understand why a tank should run over a car when the road's open.
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waqaf boom
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal elite unite
Description: Did you have missions that were explicitly meant to harass the population? To train you?
We did, in Area B. Not often, practice maneuvers. Arrests. When there was still Area B and Area A and they were kept distinct. We'd walk along inside a village, I think we did not enter houses, but I don't recall exactly. As practice, yes, it happened a lot.
You didn't enter houses?
I think not. We also did this in Israeli areas. I mean, it wasn't done specifically against Palestinians.
Did you have open-fire instructions that seemed crazy to you?
At various points while closing in on a house there are varying open-fire instructions. When the whole house is surrounded, crews placed all around it, the guy who runs out of the house is considered an 'escaper' and must be stopped. If he exits running in a suspect manner, he is considered an 'escaper' and must be shot to kill. Shot to be stopped: in other words, shoot to kill. Waqaf-boom, that's what it's called. Waqaf means 'stop' in Arabic, and boom is for shooting. So Waqaf-boom literally means 'stop and release bullet'.
And for the protocol, waqaf?
No, you say waqaf. And when you say waqaf your catch is already released, let's put it that way.
And in general, entering a village?
When you enter a village, Palestinian policemen were armed at certain points in time so they were also considered enemy troops. At other times, they were not. At some points, when Palesitnian policemen participated in terrorist attacks, they were enemy troops and we had to shoot to kill if we saw any. At other times, we had to stop them, or something in that nature.
Unarmed Palestinian policeman – shoot to kill?
No. Just armed. But you have no idea whether he possesses a pistol or not.
So what do you do?
Shoot.
Did you experience such cases?
Yes, I think so. Don't remember exactly. I don't want to say this without certainty.
I think I did but I don't recall them.
In Balata (refugee camp), in the Nablus casbah, there are 'disturbances' – what are the open-fire instructions for these instances?
Shoot in the air. Deterrent fire only. (…)
Did you witness cases of prevention of medical care or delaying ambulances, refusal to evacuate casualties?
No. There was a case in which we took down several armed militants in Ramallah in a special operation, and an ambulance arrived, and instead of taking them it took away their weapons. It was then that I began to understand the sense in delaying ambulances, I beg your pardon.
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kill kill kill
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal elite unite
Description: What was the atmosphere like in your unit? How did the commanders talk?
Kill, kill, kill, kill. We want to see bodies.
What do you mean?
I mean that in our briefing before going home on leave, we're told: don't accept rides, but if you do get a ride and someone tries to kidnap you, get back with two bodies. Or before entering on an operation in Balata (refugee camp in Nablus), then during our preliminary talk with the unit commander, right there already wearing our bullet-proofs and all our sophisticated gear, with people looking on, in a tight circle, he's telling us that we might sustain casualties and we should handle it properly, and on the other hand, he wants to see bodies. We should bring back dead terrorists. And there's no smell he likes better than a freshly fired gun. And something else about how he likes the smell of burnt flesh. But I don't remember it exactly so I wouldn't swear on it.
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driving on cars
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal elite unite
Description: Tanks and armored vehicles crush many things. I happened to be present… The last time a friend of mine drove an APC was in basic training. We were already in a very advanced phase of our service. This was during Operation Defensive Shield, in Ramallah, I believe. Until then, for transport, we had all sorts of special vehicles in our unit, but no APCs. So they told him: You've had experience driving APCs, you're authorized, right? He says yes. And what can he do, it had been two years since he last drove one of those things. You can imagine how he drove that APC. Not out of any evil intention or anything like that. Here and there he ran over cars. At the entrance to Ramallah as well as to Jenin we had incidents of running into electricity poles. Again, this was not intentional for it hurt us, it slowed down our advance. It was a result of a certain lack of skill during this operation. We were required to enter in APCs and didn't really know how.
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'neutralized'
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal elite unite
Description: What did they teach you in anti-terrorism training?
'Terrorist in sight', that's what it's called, when you run into them. It's some sort of code. It used to be 'hostages'. So you reach the terrorist, you confirm the kill. You don't confirm the kill, you confirm the guy has been 'neutralized', no chance of his getting back to you because he's been shot in the head. That's confirming he's neutralized.
You ran into him, pushed him down to the ground, get close and shoot him at close range?
No. It wouldn't be fair to say this. Especially not in my unit. I don't remember which case it was. I think it was Beit Rima, my first entry into the Occupied Territories. A Palestinian policeman arrived, I don't remember whether he was armed or not, he was shot in the legs. There was no reason to kill him because he was neutralized, he did not lie there with a weapon in hand or anything. He surrendered. Raised his hands. He was screaming with pain. He crawled over to a paramedic or a medic to get medical care, and he did. That's not murder. In combat you must make sure that you come out alive. So you confirm that he's neutralized.
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The Day-to-Day
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Givati
Place of incident: Gaza
Description: What is important to me to emphasize is that at a conceptual level I don't think that from this entire testimony it would be possible to deduce too many rare instances of folks who went wild, that would really make headlines. But I think that it is exactly in the quiet things, the day-to-day, the orders, the security approach, that is perhaps necessary-- I think that here is the problematic thing, exactly the point. That in order to really make possible a normal life, it is necessary to enter into these things, most of which, as much as it doesn't sound nice to say, I think are necessary. I think that in order that the lives of Israeli actors will not be in danger, it is necessary to operate the checkpoints. In order that a soldier's life will not be in danger, we will make noise and throw shock grenades and even shoot towards suspicious points to get heads down because at the end of the day it is necessary to understand that an officer who has entered with soldiers into the Strip is responsible for their lives and that is something he will never forget and a person who has never taken on such a responsibility does not know what it is about and as soldiers and as officers we will prefer to make noise and case damage rather than at the end of the matter go to the funeral of our soldier or friend and that is the point. This is what I think-- the bad is good and the good is bad. At the moment, this is the reality in Gaza from what I know it is less about the rare instances than the routine, the routine itself, this day-to-day, and this day-to-day has its own logic, is necessary, and cannot be ignored.
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Sets of car-keys piling up
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Engineering company, Nahal brigade
Place of incident: Jericho
Description: I served in the Jericho area. There was a curfew at the time. There was a flat plateau – a sort of field – through which Palestinians would go out and break the curfew. The IDF dug sort of moats there afterwards to prevent the egress.
I was commanding a jeep patrol whose task was to catch the curfew breakers. It was like a game. We would apprehend them in the field, bring them back, and they would return… because the sector was a few kilometers long they would pass and we managed to apprehend about one in five. If we stopped a vehicle, we would take the keys. These were our orders. They would tell us: take the keys and "dry up" the people for a while. The time it took us to "dry up" the people was decided upon arbitrarily, according to our shift changes and meal times, and it could take between 2 hours and a whole day.
After some time there were a few dozen sets of keys piled up in the jeep… I remember that it got me so mad, that I would stop a taxi driver for the hundredth time - after telling the driver a number of times there's a curfew and he can't pass – until I got highly motivated to confiscate car keys. I felt I was punishing them.
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Keys
Rank: Staff sergeant
Unit: Battalion 202, paratroopers brigade
Description: Was the process of confiscating the keys organized?
What do you mean organized!? And even if it were organized once, it would eventually disappear… you would change it… when we were in the deserted house, it was forbidden to pass there. A car would pass-" hey'! That! Why?' and we would take the keys, the spare keys. ‘Go home on foot, your car is here, come back in two days.’ We would put the keys upstairs in the deserted house, and than another guard would come, and take their ID card. They took a lot [of ID cards].
Did they get their keys back?
Many times they didn't.
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"I did not think"
Rank: Staff Sergeant
Unit: 401 Armor unit
Description: What does “crazy mess in the territories” mean?
Crazy mess…I was in a combat division in which – how to say it in Hebrew? - "there was neither law, nor judge" in this division. Everybody does whatever he wants. And I, specifically, did whatever I wanted. And ‘to do what you like in Rammalla’ means, for example, that you have the possibility to drive on the road… you drive on the road and there are cars on the sides and you intentionally drive over the car. But I am not talking about 1 or 2 tanks. I am talking about a lot of tanks. I had a lot of commanding officers and many of them were like this. And in Rafiach , when I used to come there, I would just wake up and shoot 2000 cell.
What is 2000cell?
2000 cell are 2000 machine-gun bullets. Out there they used to shoot at us a lot. Really: every day. Grenades, missiles, everything. So there was this order that every once in a while all weapons have to shoot towards a wall, so it doesn’t hit the houses or anything else. But the freedom that we’ve had…we fired a lot. And 2000 bullets, automatic fire, directed at the whole city, at houses and at doors, was something that everybody did, not just me. I do not know why I did it.
What were you thinking when you did it?
I do not know. I was with the gun. I did not think. In the army I never thought. And I used to come home and tell about it to my friends, which means I was not ashamed of it. Nothing. I did what I was told to do. And besides, everybody did it. That was the custom - officers and such, everybody knew. It never happened that they had told me to shoot here or there… and I would stop to think ‘what if’… First I took the shot; later, if I thought at all, it would always be too late. I never thought while I was doing that.
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it has to be normal
Rank: Officer
Place of incident: Gaza
Description: 2002
I would visit many times in the situation room and in the rooms the lookouts and see all this footage. The first time i was shocked, I saw a movie from the lookout, it showed some old Palestinian farmer that got near, probably by mistake, to the fence. You just see a tank shell that hims him and blows him up. I watched the Palestinian and looked at the soldier who was looking at it and i thought of the soldiers in the tank. When you are out of it it seems illogical, nut when you are inside...
Did anyone say anything about it, anyone who was watching the movie?
No.
It seemed normal?
Yes. When you are inside, it has to seem normal, otherwise, you can't cope.
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Preventive Fire
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Battalion 55, Artillery corps
Place of incident: Telem area
Description:
Incident description: In the Telem region there was often information about possible terrorist activity in the area and we would go out and fire “warning” shots. I remember one instance when we fired blindly on an olive grove without checking out the area first.
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Stun and Smoke in the Bakeries
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Battalion 55, Artillery corps
Place of incident: Telem area
Description:
In the Telem region when we would return from operations we would throw stun and smoke grenades into the bakeries that opened between 4:00 and 5:00am in Tarqumia because people in the village threw stones.
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1500 rounds
Rank: First Sergeant
Place of incident: Rafiach
Description:
Often we received orders to fire warning shots every quarter of an hour in the direction of the city of Rafiach. Once I fired over 1500 rounds from a machine gun at the houses in the city.
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Insufficient range
Unit: 50th battalion, Nahal
Place of incident: Hebron, Avraham Avinu neighborhood
Description:
In the Avraham Avinu neighborhood there are military posts on the roofs facing the Abu Sneina neighborhood. Before we manned the post we were instructed not to shoot towards Abu Sneina, and that even if we identify the source of fire, shooting will only be done with permission from the local commander. The Sachla"v unit post fired that night from their personal weapons to a range in which they are inefficient, and without any identification of the fire sources.
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Aimless
Unit: 50th battalion, Nahal
Place of incident: Hebron
Description:
An outpost in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood, a whole floor in a Palestinian house.
In the post are a commander, two soldiers from the Hebron troop and two snipers.
During a reconnaissance of the Border Police 3 policemen arrived at the post and out of boredom shoot 3 gas grenades aimlessly into the town.
.
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The Sniper
Rank: First sargent
Unit: Givati brigade
Place of incident: Gaza strip
Description:
end of 2003
We sat at the post in Girit [a military post] with the truck and there was a sniper there, a Palestinian sniper, who shot at us every day. Every day he shot a bullet at our post. At one occasion, a deputy to a company commander’s hand was wounded; he got hit by a bullet in his hand. On another occasion, someone got hit by fragments. This was an excellent sniper, a good sniper. We couldn't get him, we didn't know where he was shooting from. He would shoot three times a day: in the morning, the afternoon and the evening. Each time he shot only one bullet. The orders were that each time there is fire on the post, you do…I forgot the name…a fire ball, a fire balloon.
Fire hit?
No. yes, a fire hit, in principal, there is another name for that... I forgot. Everybody stands in firing position and shoots. The Girit post is a post that overlooks the whole area of Philadelphia and Rafiah, that is, the whole residential area.
What is the distance between Girit and Rafiah?
800 meters. Something like that from the houses. You stand above and see all that. The orders were not to shoot into the houses. They said: Tell the soldiers not to shoot into the houses because somebody could get hurt.. they didn't put too much time or attention to it. I confess that me too, when the sniper would shoot, I would start to spray, I wouldn't exactly see, you're with your M16 or with the Machine gun, you don't check, you simply fill the place up with holes. They would fill up the place with holes, shoot into windows, there were soldiers who would aim especially into the windows.
Did the commander know this? The officers?
Yes. Me too. I won't say that I planned to shoot into windows but I would shoot. You shoot, you don't look.
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Never Tampons
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Artillery, unit 55
Place of incident: The villages of Silat and J'aba, the area of Homes
Description: There is something that I know is not legal but everybody does, and it is supported from the level of Platoon Commander and downwards and nobody will be trialed for it. When the intefada broke out I was in Homesh. We had a confrontation with the villages Silat and Dahar and J'aba. In this area they never shot tampons. They always shot singels.
A Tampon is actually a package of rubber bullets. It comes in packages of three rubber bullets that is put into a Roma, and placed on the rifle barrel. It is a known fact that is explained in the briefings, that shooting a single rubber bullet is the same as live shoot (whereas shooting a package of three is less harmful). But they always shot one at a time. They never shot in threes. First of all it was a pity to waste bullets and also because it was harder to aim a package of three especially at short range. There was an incident with our battalion commander when it was said that he shot a single bullet and killed a child at a demonstration. There was an inquiry about it and I don't know what happened in the end. What I do know is that in the IDF they don't shoot tampons. They always shoot singles. I can say this with certainty from the highest ranks to the lowest. Everybody.
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Shooting in order to identify armed hostiles
Rank: First Lieutenant
Unit: Artillary corps, 55 Battalion
Place of incident: Shaked Checkpoint
Description: The company commander and the patrol would occasionally go to Ibed in order to blow up TV antennas. Just a routine activity. Just to show that the IDF is there. To show presence. I never understood what this could be good for. It wasn't something that came as an order from above, but it was just something the battalion commander and company commander allowed themselves to do. To shoot TV antennas and street lights and blow them up.
Once, there was a mission in the village and there was nothing going on. They (the commanders) were told that there were armed people (in the village). So in order to flush out the armed people they sprayed all the flower pots in the neighborhood and then the armed people in the village started to shoot at them and that was how they knew where the armed people were.
http://www.shovrimshtika.org/testimonies_e.asp?cat=22
building slowly
Name: ***
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Nachal
Description: My Company commander that always tried strive for contact. Meaning, also when there wasn't and it was boring, he would find places to make contact. If it was a gathering of a lot of people, he would purposely drive slowly with the Jeep, wait until they would stone him, get out wit the guys , and start shooting rubber bullets. Also seperate the rubber bullets in the canister, so as to shoot single rubber bullets, which is really dangerous.
And he was allowed to do what he wanted?
That was the period, it was the wild west. The Battalion Commander would tell the Company Commander: your guys are in the territores, there is a "code red", what the say today in the US, and mangae. What do you mean "manage"? There still wasn't a seperation into areas, no rules of engagement. Everything is built slowly. How you deal with the fact that the arabs in the area are getting to you. It's like you decide, that until there isn't a constitution, then there is survival of the fittest. Who is giving orders, that doesn't matter. Whatever is decided will happen. If you are at a point when you think something is rigth, fire a round into Nablus, so you tell your Commander that you were fired at, and you shoot back. Tha'ts how your commander works as aweel, and he passes his ideas to the Battalion Commander, who probably also thinks that that is the right way to act.
[Print Version] [Close]
pictures of taliban
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal
Description: When we got back from that operation, we had loot so to speak. There were IDs confiscated, uniforms, Kalachnikovs. For army intelligence. I only remember that our staff – another thing that really annoyed me – I remember them being photographed with those Kalachnikovs, the sort of 'Taliban' pictures. I don't know what the sense of it was.
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tanks on cars
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal
Description: With us, there were tanks that entered the village, and ran over cars.
Just like that?
Yes. I saw it from the APC we were in. I peeped out. We were closed inside, the commander was in the cabin. I peeped out from the driver's seat. Suddenly we heard a car being crushed. I looked. I don't know if it was on the side of the road. Anyway I can't understand why a tank should run over a car when the road's open.
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waqaf boom
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal elite unite
Description: Did you have missions that were explicitly meant to harass the population? To train you?
We did, in Area B. Not often, practice maneuvers. Arrests. When there was still Area B and Area A and they were kept distinct. We'd walk along inside a village, I think we did not enter houses, but I don't recall exactly. As practice, yes, it happened a lot.
You didn't enter houses?
I think not. We also did this in Israeli areas. I mean, it wasn't done specifically against Palestinians.
Did you have open-fire instructions that seemed crazy to you?
At various points while closing in on a house there are varying open-fire instructions. When the whole house is surrounded, crews placed all around it, the guy who runs out of the house is considered an 'escaper' and must be stopped. If he exits running in a suspect manner, he is considered an 'escaper' and must be shot to kill. Shot to be stopped: in other words, shoot to kill. Waqaf-boom, that's what it's called. Waqaf means 'stop' in Arabic, and boom is for shooting. So Waqaf-boom literally means 'stop and release bullet'.
And for the protocol, waqaf?
No, you say waqaf. And when you say waqaf your catch is already released, let's put it that way.
And in general, entering a village?
When you enter a village, Palestinian policemen were armed at certain points in time so they were also considered enemy troops. At other times, they were not. At some points, when Palesitnian policemen participated in terrorist attacks, they were enemy troops and we had to shoot to kill if we saw any. At other times, we had to stop them, or something in that nature.
Unarmed Palestinian policeman – shoot to kill?
No. Just armed. But you have no idea whether he possesses a pistol or not.
So what do you do?
Shoot.
Did you experience such cases?
Yes, I think so. Don't remember exactly. I don't want to say this without certainty.
I think I did but I don't recall them.
In Balata (refugee camp), in the Nablus casbah, there are 'disturbances' – what are the open-fire instructions for these instances?
Shoot in the air. Deterrent fire only. (…)
Did you witness cases of prevention of medical care or delaying ambulances, refusal to evacuate casualties?
No. There was a case in which we took down several armed militants in Ramallah in a special operation, and an ambulance arrived, and instead of taking them it took away their weapons. It was then that I began to understand the sense in delaying ambulances, I beg your pardon.
[Print Version] [Close]
kill kill kill
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal elite unite
Description: What was the atmosphere like in your unit? How did the commanders talk?
Kill, kill, kill, kill. We want to see bodies.
What do you mean?
I mean that in our briefing before going home on leave, we're told: don't accept rides, but if you do get a ride and someone tries to kidnap you, get back with two bodies. Or before entering on an operation in Balata (refugee camp in Nablus), then during our preliminary talk with the unit commander, right there already wearing our bullet-proofs and all our sophisticated gear, with people looking on, in a tight circle, he's telling us that we might sustain casualties and we should handle it properly, and on the other hand, he wants to see bodies. We should bring back dead terrorists. And there's no smell he likes better than a freshly fired gun. And something else about how he likes the smell of burnt flesh. But I don't remember it exactly so I wouldn't swear on it.
[Print Version] [Close]
driving on cars
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal elite unite
Description: Tanks and armored vehicles crush many things. I happened to be present… The last time a friend of mine drove an APC was in basic training. We were already in a very advanced phase of our service. This was during Operation Defensive Shield, in Ramallah, I believe. Until then, for transport, we had all sorts of special vehicles in our unit, but no APCs. So they told him: You've had experience driving APCs, you're authorized, right? He says yes. And what can he do, it had been two years since he last drove one of those things. You can imagine how he drove that APC. Not out of any evil intention or anything like that. Here and there he ran over cars. At the entrance to Ramallah as well as to Jenin we had incidents of running into electricity poles. Again, this was not intentional for it hurt us, it slowed down our advance. It was a result of a certain lack of skill during this operation. We were required to enter in APCs and didn't really know how.
[Print Version] [Close]
'neutralized'
Name: ***
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Nachal elite unite
Description: What did they teach you in anti-terrorism training?
'Terrorist in sight', that's what it's called, when you run into them. It's some sort of code. It used to be 'hostages'. So you reach the terrorist, you confirm the kill. You don't confirm the kill, you confirm the guy has been 'neutralized', no chance of his getting back to you because he's been shot in the head. That's confirming he's neutralized.
You ran into him, pushed him down to the ground, get close and shoot him at close range?
No. It wouldn't be fair to say this. Especially not in my unit. I don't remember which case it was. I think it was Beit Rima, my first entry into the Occupied Territories. A Palestinian policeman arrived, I don't remember whether he was armed or not, he was shot in the legs. There was no reason to kill him because he was neutralized, he did not lie there with a weapon in hand or anything. He surrendered. Raised his hands. He was screaming with pain. He crawled over to a paramedic or a medic to get medical care, and he did. That's not murder. In combat you must make sure that you come out alive. So you confirm that he's neutralized.
[Print Version] [Close]
The Day-to-Day
Rank: first sergeant
Unit: Givati
Place of incident: Gaza
Description: What is important to me to emphasize is that at a conceptual level I don't think that from this entire testimony it would be possible to deduce too many rare instances of folks who went wild, that would really make headlines. But I think that it is exactly in the quiet things, the day-to-day, the orders, the security approach, that is perhaps necessary-- I think that here is the problematic thing, exactly the point. That in order to really make possible a normal life, it is necessary to enter into these things, most of which, as much as it doesn't sound nice to say, I think are necessary. I think that in order that the lives of Israeli actors will not be in danger, it is necessary to operate the checkpoints. In order that a soldier's life will not be in danger, we will make noise and throw shock grenades and even shoot towards suspicious points to get heads down because at the end of the day it is necessary to understand that an officer who has entered with soldiers into the Strip is responsible for their lives and that is something he will never forget and a person who has never taken on such a responsibility does not know what it is about and as soldiers and as officers we will prefer to make noise and case damage rather than at the end of the matter go to the funeral of our soldier or friend and that is the point. This is what I think-- the bad is good and the good is bad. At the moment, this is the reality in Gaza from what I know it is less about the rare instances than the routine, the routine itself, this day-to-day, and this day-to-day has its own logic, is necessary, and cannot be ignored.
[Print Version] [Close]
Sets of car-keys piling up
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Engineering company, Nahal brigade
Place of incident: Jericho
Description: I served in the Jericho area. There was a curfew at the time. There was a flat plateau – a sort of field – through which Palestinians would go out and break the curfew. The IDF dug sort of moats there afterwards to prevent the egress.
I was commanding a jeep patrol whose task was to catch the curfew breakers. It was like a game. We would apprehend them in the field, bring them back, and they would return… because the sector was a few kilometers long they would pass and we managed to apprehend about one in five. If we stopped a vehicle, we would take the keys. These were our orders. They would tell us: take the keys and "dry up" the people for a while. The time it took us to "dry up" the people was decided upon arbitrarily, according to our shift changes and meal times, and it could take between 2 hours and a whole day.
After some time there were a few dozen sets of keys piled up in the jeep… I remember that it got me so mad, that I would stop a taxi driver for the hundredth time - after telling the driver a number of times there's a curfew and he can't pass – until I got highly motivated to confiscate car keys. I felt I was punishing them.
[Print Version] [Close]
Keys
Rank: Staff sergeant
Unit: Battalion 202, paratroopers brigade
Description: Was the process of confiscating the keys organized?
What do you mean organized!? And even if it were organized once, it would eventually disappear… you would change it… when we were in the deserted house, it was forbidden to pass there. A car would pass-" hey'! That! Why?' and we would take the keys, the spare keys. ‘Go home on foot, your car is here, come back in two days.’ We would put the keys upstairs in the deserted house, and than another guard would come, and take their ID card. They took a lot [of ID cards].
Did they get their keys back?
Many times they didn't.
[Print Version] [Close]
"I did not think"
Rank: Staff Sergeant
Unit: 401 Armor unit
Description: What does “crazy mess in the territories” mean?
Crazy mess…I was in a combat division in which – how to say it in Hebrew? - "there was neither law, nor judge" in this division. Everybody does whatever he wants. And I, specifically, did whatever I wanted. And ‘to do what you like in Rammalla’ means, for example, that you have the possibility to drive on the road… you drive on the road and there are cars on the sides and you intentionally drive over the car. But I am not talking about 1 or 2 tanks. I am talking about a lot of tanks. I had a lot of commanding officers and many of them were like this. And in Rafiach , when I used to come there, I would just wake up and shoot 2000 cell.
What is 2000cell?
2000 cell are 2000 machine-gun bullets. Out there they used to shoot at us a lot. Really: every day. Grenades, missiles, everything. So there was this order that every once in a while all weapons have to shoot towards a wall, so it doesn’t hit the houses or anything else. But the freedom that we’ve had…we fired a lot. And 2000 bullets, automatic fire, directed at the whole city, at houses and at doors, was something that everybody did, not just me. I do not know why I did it.
What were you thinking when you did it?
I do not know. I was with the gun. I did not think. In the army I never thought. And I used to come home and tell about it to my friends, which means I was not ashamed of it. Nothing. I did what I was told to do. And besides, everybody did it. That was the custom - officers and such, everybody knew. It never happened that they had told me to shoot here or there… and I would stop to think ‘what if’… First I took the shot; later, if I thought at all, it would always be too late. I never thought while I was doing that.
[Print Version] [Close]
it has to be normal
Rank: Officer
Place of incident: Gaza
Description: 2002
I would visit many times in the situation room and in the rooms the lookouts and see all this footage. The first time i was shocked, I saw a movie from the lookout, it showed some old Palestinian farmer that got near, probably by mistake, to the fence. You just see a tank shell that hims him and blows him up. I watched the Palestinian and looked at the soldier who was looking at it and i thought of the soldiers in the tank. When you are out of it it seems illogical, nut when you are inside...
Did anyone say anything about it, anyone who was watching the movie?
No.
It seemed normal?
Yes. When you are inside, it has to seem normal, otherwise, you can't cope.
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Preventive Fire
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Battalion 55, Artillery corps
Place of incident: Telem area
Description:
Incident description: In the Telem region there was often information about possible terrorist activity in the area and we would go out and fire “warning” shots. I remember one instance when we fired blindly on an olive grove without checking out the area first.
[Print Version] [Close]
Stun and Smoke in the Bakeries
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Battalion 55, Artillery corps
Place of incident: Telem area
Description:
In the Telem region when we would return from operations we would throw stun and smoke grenades into the bakeries that opened between 4:00 and 5:00am in Tarqumia because people in the village threw stones.
[Print Version] [Close]
1500 rounds
Rank: First Sergeant
Place of incident: Rafiach
Description:
Often we received orders to fire warning shots every quarter of an hour in the direction of the city of Rafiach. Once I fired over 1500 rounds from a machine gun at the houses in the city.
[Print Version] [Close]
Insufficient range
Unit: 50th battalion, Nahal
Place of incident: Hebron, Avraham Avinu neighborhood
Description:
In the Avraham Avinu neighborhood there are military posts on the roofs facing the Abu Sneina neighborhood. Before we manned the post we were instructed not to shoot towards Abu Sneina, and that even if we identify the source of fire, shooting will only be done with permission from the local commander. The Sachla"v unit post fired that night from their personal weapons to a range in which they are inefficient, and without any identification of the fire sources.
[Print Version] [Close]
Aimless
Unit: 50th battalion, Nahal
Place of incident: Hebron
Description:
An outpost in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood, a whole floor in a Palestinian house.
In the post are a commander, two soldiers from the Hebron troop and two snipers.
During a reconnaissance of the Border Police 3 policemen arrived at the post and out of boredom shoot 3 gas grenades aimlessly into the town.
.
[Print Version] [Close]
The Sniper
Rank: First sargent
Unit: Givati brigade
Place of incident: Gaza strip
Description:
end of 2003
We sat at the post in Girit [a military post] with the truck and there was a sniper there, a Palestinian sniper, who shot at us every day. Every day he shot a bullet at our post. At one occasion, a deputy to a company commander’s hand was wounded; he got hit by a bullet in his hand. On another occasion, someone got hit by fragments. This was an excellent sniper, a good sniper. We couldn't get him, we didn't know where he was shooting from. He would shoot three times a day: in the morning, the afternoon and the evening. Each time he shot only one bullet. The orders were that each time there is fire on the post, you do…I forgot the name…a fire ball, a fire balloon.
Fire hit?
No. yes, a fire hit, in principal, there is another name for that... I forgot. Everybody stands in firing position and shoots. The Girit post is a post that overlooks the whole area of Philadelphia and Rafiah, that is, the whole residential area.
What is the distance between Girit and Rafiah?
800 meters. Something like that from the houses. You stand above and see all that. The orders were not to shoot into the houses. They said: Tell the soldiers not to shoot into the houses because somebody could get hurt.. they didn't put too much time or attention to it. I confess that me too, when the sniper would shoot, I would start to spray, I wouldn't exactly see, you're with your M16 or with the Machine gun, you don't check, you simply fill the place up with holes. They would fill up the place with holes, shoot into windows, there were soldiers who would aim especially into the windows.
Did the commander know this? The officers?
Yes. Me too. I won't say that I planned to shoot into windows but I would shoot. You shoot, you don't look.
[Print Version] [Close]
Never Tampons
Rank: First Sergeant
Unit: Artillery, unit 55
Place of incident: The villages of Silat and J'aba, the area of Homes
Description: There is something that I know is not legal but everybody does, and it is supported from the level of Platoon Commander and downwards and nobody will be trialed for it. When the intefada broke out I was in Homesh. We had a confrontation with the villages Silat and Dahar and J'aba. In this area they never shot tampons. They always shot singels.
A Tampon is actually a package of rubber bullets. It comes in packages of three rubber bullets that is put into a Roma, and placed on the rifle barrel. It is a known fact that is explained in the briefings, that shooting a single rubber bullet is the same as live shoot (whereas shooting a package of three is less harmful). But they always shot one at a time. They never shot in threes. First of all it was a pity to waste bullets and also because it was harder to aim a package of three especially at short range. There was an incident with our battalion commander when it was said that he shot a single bullet and killed a child at a demonstration. There was an inquiry about it and I don't know what happened in the end. What I do know is that in the IDF they don't shoot tampons. They always shoot singles. I can say this with certainty from the highest ranks to the lowest. Everybody.
[Print Version] [Close]
Shooting in order to identify armed hostiles
Rank: First Lieutenant
Unit: Artillary corps, 55 Battalion
Place of incident: Shaked Checkpoint
Description: The company commander and the patrol would occasionally go to Ibed in order to blow up TV antennas. Just a routine activity. Just to show that the IDF is there. To show presence. I never understood what this could be good for. It wasn't something that came as an order from above, but it was just something the battalion commander and company commander allowed themselves to do. To shoot TV antennas and street lights and blow them up.
Once, there was a mission in the village and there was nothing going on. They (the commanders) were told that there were armed people (in the village). So in order to flush out the armed people they sprayed all the flower pots in the neighborhood and then the armed people in the village started to shoot at them and that was how they knew where the armed people were.
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Magna Carta Clause 61
The most significant clause for King John at the time was clause 61, known as the "security clause", the longest portion of the document. This established a committee of 25 barons who could at any time meet and overrule the will of the King, through force by seizing his castles and possessions if needed. This was based on a medieval legal practice known as distraint, but it was the first time it had been applied to a monarch. In addition, the King was to take an oath of loyalty to the committee.
Clause 61 essentially neutered John's power as a monarch, making him King in name only. He renounced it as soon as the barons left London, plunging England into a civil war, called the First Barons' War. Pope Innocent III also annulled the "shameful and demeaning agreement, forced upon the King by violence and fear." He rejected any call for restraints on the King, saying it impaired John's dignity. He saw it as an affront to the Church's authority over the King and the 'papal territories' of England and Ireland, and he released John from his oath to obey it........
.......John died during the war, from dysentery, on 18 October 1216, and this quickly changed the nature of the war. His nine-year-old son, Henry III, was next in line for the throne. The royalists believed the rebel barons would find the idea of loyalty to the child Henry more palatable, so the boy was swiftly crowned in late October 1216, and the war ended.
Henry's regentis reissued Magna Carta in his name on 12 November 1216, omitting some clauses, such as clause 61, and again in 1217. When he turned 18 in 1225, Henry III reissued Magna Carta, this time in a shorter version with only 37 articles.................
Clause 61 essentially neutered John's power as a monarch, making him King in name only. He renounced it as soon as the barons left London, plunging England into a civil war, called the First Barons' War. Pope Innocent III also annulled the "shameful and demeaning agreement, forced upon the King by violence and fear." He rejected any call for restraints on the King, saying it impaired John's dignity. He saw it as an affront to the Church's authority over the King and the 'papal territories' of England and Ireland, and he released John from his oath to obey it........
.......John died during the war, from dysentery, on 18 October 1216, and this quickly changed the nature of the war. His nine-year-old son, Henry III, was next in line for the throne. The royalists believed the rebel barons would find the idea of loyalty to the child Henry more palatable, so the boy was swiftly crowned in late October 1216, and the war ended.
Henry's regentis reissued Magna Carta in his name on 12 November 1216, omitting some clauses, such as clause 61, and again in 1217. When he turned 18 in 1225, Henry III reissued Magna Carta, this time in a shorter version with only 37 articles.................
Monday, 23 March 2009
Washington DC: Over 3 percent infected with HIV or AIDS
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/aids-m23.shtml
By Ed Hightower
23 March 2009
According to a new report, the HIV rate in Washington DC is the highest in the country. With nearly 3 percent of residents of the nation's capital living with HIV/AIDS, the rate is higher than in some West African countries.
DC Mayor Adrian M. Fenty released the city's Annual HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Report at a press conference last week. The report found that at least 15,120 city residents—about 3,000 out of every 100,000 residents over the age of 12—have HIV or AIDS. While the mayor tried to explain that there was some good news—HIV-positive births are down and more people with AIDS are living longer and better—the fact remains that Washington DC is mired in an AIDS epidemic.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a condition caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV inhibits the body's ability to protect itself from hostile microorganisms. At a certain point after contracting HIV, the number of CD4+ T cells in a person's bloodstream becomes so low that the body cannot fend off otherwise mild diseases. This process can take up to a decade. People suffering from this stage of infection are said to have AIDS and typically die within several months. The World Health Organization estimates that over 33 million people suffer from HIV worldwide.
A demographic breakdown of the epidemic reveals a high frequency of infection in DC residents between the ages of 30 to 59. Among 30 to 39-year-olds, 3.4 percent are infected with HIV or AIDS, as are 5.3 percent between ages 50 and 59. A staggering 7.2 percent of residents between the ages of 40 and 49 are infected with HIV or AIDS.
By ethnicity and gender, black males were by far the most frequently infected group, with a 6.5 percent rate of infection. Hispanic males followed at 3.0 percent. In the white male and black female population, 2.6 percent of residents were infected. Hispanic females were infected at a rate of 0.7 percent and white females at 0.2 percent.
Officials explain that the 3 percent infection rate actually underestimates the number of cases of HIV/AIDS in the city. Shanon Hader, director of the city's HIV/AIDS Administration, told the Washington Post regarding the recent report, "It's not the whole story." Health workers can only record as infected those who are willing to undergo HIV/AIDS testing, meaning there are likely many residents who are unaware they are infected.
There are also known cases of infection that were not counted in the most recent study. Donald Blanchon, operator of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, a large provider of AIDS-related care, stated that two clinics he operates in Washington DC and another in northern Virginia reported 541 new HIV cases last year alone. Blanchon told the Post that more people had been coming in for testing following the mayor's press conference. Forty-four people came in last Monday alone, with three testing positive for HIV.
The District of Columbia provides some funding to distribute condoms and clean IV needles. Recent efforts focus on encouraging the public to get tested for HIV.
Predictably, some politicians and health officials are trying to downplay the seriousness of the epidemic, portraying it as essentially a question of individual behavior. David A. Catania, a DC city council member, lectured, "We have to, as individuals ... love ourselves more and ask important questions about our own relationships." He added, "We cannot protect you if you're not willing to protect yourself."
Mayor Fenty, a Democrat, spoke along the same lines: "We know we have a lot of work to do as a government to educate and get the information out, and as a community to step up and realize how dangerous we are with our sexual behavior."
The revelations of the DC Annual HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Report underscore the fact that workers in the United States confront the same social catastrophe faced by workers in all countries. Infant mortality, child poverty, and unemployment are all on the rise in America. Recently, modern Hoovervilles have formed in several major US cities, a product of the deepening economic crisis.
At the root of the AIDS crisis in the US lies enormous social inequality. The District of Columbia will soon release new information on the correlation of AIDS and poverty. It should confirm what is already obvious: that HIV preys heavily on growing sections of the working class who have diminishing prospects for employment, and quality housing and health care.
By Ed Hightower
23 March 2009
According to a new report, the HIV rate in Washington DC is the highest in the country. With nearly 3 percent of residents of the nation's capital living with HIV/AIDS, the rate is higher than in some West African countries.
DC Mayor Adrian M. Fenty released the city's Annual HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Report at a press conference last week. The report found that at least 15,120 city residents—about 3,000 out of every 100,000 residents over the age of 12—have HIV or AIDS. While the mayor tried to explain that there was some good news—HIV-positive births are down and more people with AIDS are living longer and better—the fact remains that Washington DC is mired in an AIDS epidemic.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a condition caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). HIV inhibits the body's ability to protect itself from hostile microorganisms. At a certain point after contracting HIV, the number of CD4+ T cells in a person's bloodstream becomes so low that the body cannot fend off otherwise mild diseases. This process can take up to a decade. People suffering from this stage of infection are said to have AIDS and typically die within several months. The World Health Organization estimates that over 33 million people suffer from HIV worldwide.
A demographic breakdown of the epidemic reveals a high frequency of infection in DC residents between the ages of 30 to 59. Among 30 to 39-year-olds, 3.4 percent are infected with HIV or AIDS, as are 5.3 percent between ages 50 and 59. A staggering 7.2 percent of residents between the ages of 40 and 49 are infected with HIV or AIDS.
By ethnicity and gender, black males were by far the most frequently infected group, with a 6.5 percent rate of infection. Hispanic males followed at 3.0 percent. In the white male and black female population, 2.6 percent of residents were infected. Hispanic females were infected at a rate of 0.7 percent and white females at 0.2 percent.
Officials explain that the 3 percent infection rate actually underestimates the number of cases of HIV/AIDS in the city. Shanon Hader, director of the city's HIV/AIDS Administration, told the Washington Post regarding the recent report, "It's not the whole story." Health workers can only record as infected those who are willing to undergo HIV/AIDS testing, meaning there are likely many residents who are unaware they are infected.
There are also known cases of infection that were not counted in the most recent study. Donald Blanchon, operator of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, a large provider of AIDS-related care, stated that two clinics he operates in Washington DC and another in northern Virginia reported 541 new HIV cases last year alone. Blanchon told the Post that more people had been coming in for testing following the mayor's press conference. Forty-four people came in last Monday alone, with three testing positive for HIV.
The District of Columbia provides some funding to distribute condoms and clean IV needles. Recent efforts focus on encouraging the public to get tested for HIV.
Predictably, some politicians and health officials are trying to downplay the seriousness of the epidemic, portraying it as essentially a question of individual behavior. David A. Catania, a DC city council member, lectured, "We have to, as individuals ... love ourselves more and ask important questions about our own relationships." He added, "We cannot protect you if you're not willing to protect yourself."
Mayor Fenty, a Democrat, spoke along the same lines: "We know we have a lot of work to do as a government to educate and get the information out, and as a community to step up and realize how dangerous we are with our sexual behavior."
The revelations of the DC Annual HIV/AIDS Epidemiology Report underscore the fact that workers in the United States confront the same social catastrophe faced by workers in all countries. Infant mortality, child poverty, and unemployment are all on the rise in America. Recently, modern Hoovervilles have formed in several major US cities, a product of the deepening economic crisis.
At the root of the AIDS crisis in the US lies enormous social inequality. The District of Columbia will soon release new information on the correlation of AIDS and poverty. It should confirm what is already obvious: that HIV preys heavily on growing sections of the working class who have diminishing prospects for employment, and quality housing and health care.
Sunday, 22 March 2009
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22274.htm
Banned In Canada
George Galloway faces his accusers
To ban me from the country for my views on Afghanistan is absurd, hypocritical, and in vain
See full article below
The decision to ban George Galloway from Canada seems odd, but now it emerges that the Jewish Defence League (JDL) may have pressured the Canadian Government to so the action
Posted March 21, 2009
Canada Can't Muzzle Me
To ban me from the country for my views on Afghanistan is absurd, hypocritical, and in vain
By George Galloway
March 21, 2009 "The Guardian" -- The Canadian immigration minister Jason Kenney gazetted in the Sun yesterday morning that I was to be excluded from his country because of my views on Afghanistan. That's the way the rightwing, last-ditch dead-enders of Bushism in Ottawa conduct their business.
Kenney is quite a card. A quick trawl establishes he's a gay-baiter, gung-ho armchair warrior, with an odd habit of exceeding his immigration brief. Three years ago he attacked the pro-western Lebanese prime minister, Fuad Siniora, for being ungrateful to Canada for its support of Israeli bombardment of his country. Most curiously of all, in 2006 he addressed a rally of the so-called People's Mujahideen of Iran, a Waco-style cult, banned in the European Union as a terrorist organization. On one level being banned by such a man is like being told to sit up straight by the hunchback of Notre Dame or being lectured on due diligence by Conrad Black. On another, for a Scotsman to be excluded from Canada is like being turned away from the family home.
But what are my views on Afghanistan which the Canadian government does not want its people to hear? I've never been to Afghanistan, nor have I ever met a Taliban, but my first impression into the parliamentary vellum on the subject was more than two decades ago. At the time the fathers of the Taliban were "freedom fighters", paraded at US Republican and British Tory conferences. Who knows, maybe even the Canadian right extolled these god-fearing opponents of communism. I did not, however.
On the eve of their storming of Kabul I told Margaret Thatcher that she "had opened the gates to the barbarians" and that "a long, dark night would now descend upon the people of Afghanistan". With the same conviction, I say to the Canadian and other NATO governments today that your policy is equally a profound mistake. From time to time and with increased regularity it is a crime. Like the bombardment of wedding parties and even funerals or the presiding over a record opium crop, which under our noses finds its way coursing through the veins of young people from Nova Scotia to Newcastle upon Tyne. But it is worse than a crime, as Tallyrand said, it's a blunder.
The Afghans have never succumbed to foreign occupation, heaven knows the British empire tried, tried and failed again. Not even Alexander the Great succeeded, and whoever else he is, minister Kenney is no Alexander the Great. Young Canadian soldiers are dying in significant numbers on Afghanistan's plains. Their families are entitled to know how many of us believe this adventure to be similarly doomed and that genuine support for troops - British, Canadian and other - means bringing them home and changing course.
To ban a five-times elected British MP from addressing public events or keeping appointments with television and radio programs is a serious matter. Kenney's "spokesman" told the Sun, "Galloway's not coming in ... end of story." Alas for him, it's not. Canada remains a free country governed by law and my friends are even now seeking a judicial review. And there are other ways I can address those Canadians who wish to hear me.
More than half a century ago Paul Robeson, one of the greatest men who ever lived, was forbidden to enter Canada not by Ottawa but by Washington, which had taken away his passport. But he was still able to transfix a vast crowd of Vancouver's mill hands and miners with a 17-minute telephone concert, culminating in a rendition of the Ballad of Joe Hill. Technology has moved on since then. And so from coast to coast, minister Kenney notwithstanding, I will be heard - one way or another.
© 2009 Guardian/UK
Banned In Canada
George Galloway faces his accusers
To ban me from the country for my views on Afghanistan is absurd, hypocritical, and in vain
See full article below
The decision to ban George Galloway from Canada seems odd, but now it emerges that the Jewish Defence League (JDL) may have pressured the Canadian Government to so the action
Posted March 21, 2009
Canada Can't Muzzle Me
To ban me from the country for my views on Afghanistan is absurd, hypocritical, and in vain
By George Galloway
March 21, 2009 "The Guardian" -- The Canadian immigration minister Jason Kenney gazetted in the Sun yesterday morning that I was to be excluded from his country because of my views on Afghanistan. That's the way the rightwing, last-ditch dead-enders of Bushism in Ottawa conduct their business.
Kenney is quite a card. A quick trawl establishes he's a gay-baiter, gung-ho armchair warrior, with an odd habit of exceeding his immigration brief. Three years ago he attacked the pro-western Lebanese prime minister, Fuad Siniora, for being ungrateful to Canada for its support of Israeli bombardment of his country. Most curiously of all, in 2006 he addressed a rally of the so-called People's Mujahideen of Iran, a Waco-style cult, banned in the European Union as a terrorist organization. On one level being banned by such a man is like being told to sit up straight by the hunchback of Notre Dame or being lectured on due diligence by Conrad Black. On another, for a Scotsman to be excluded from Canada is like being turned away from the family home.
But what are my views on Afghanistan which the Canadian government does not want its people to hear? I've never been to Afghanistan, nor have I ever met a Taliban, but my first impression into the parliamentary vellum on the subject was more than two decades ago. At the time the fathers of the Taliban were "freedom fighters", paraded at US Republican and British Tory conferences. Who knows, maybe even the Canadian right extolled these god-fearing opponents of communism. I did not, however.
On the eve of their storming of Kabul I told Margaret Thatcher that she "had opened the gates to the barbarians" and that "a long, dark night would now descend upon the people of Afghanistan". With the same conviction, I say to the Canadian and other NATO governments today that your policy is equally a profound mistake. From time to time and with increased regularity it is a crime. Like the bombardment of wedding parties and even funerals or the presiding over a record opium crop, which under our noses finds its way coursing through the veins of young people from Nova Scotia to Newcastle upon Tyne. But it is worse than a crime, as Tallyrand said, it's a blunder.
The Afghans have never succumbed to foreign occupation, heaven knows the British empire tried, tried and failed again. Not even Alexander the Great succeeded, and whoever else he is, minister Kenney is no Alexander the Great. Young Canadian soldiers are dying in significant numbers on Afghanistan's plains. Their families are entitled to know how many of us believe this adventure to be similarly doomed and that genuine support for troops - British, Canadian and other - means bringing them home and changing course.
To ban a five-times elected British MP from addressing public events or keeping appointments with television and radio programs is a serious matter. Kenney's "spokesman" told the Sun, "Galloway's not coming in ... end of story." Alas for him, it's not. Canada remains a free country governed by law and my friends are even now seeking a judicial review. And there are other ways I can address those Canadians who wish to hear me.
More than half a century ago Paul Robeson, one of the greatest men who ever lived, was forbidden to enter Canada not by Ottawa but by Washington, which had taken away his passport. But he was still able to transfix a vast crowd of Vancouver's mill hands and miners with a 17-minute telephone concert, culminating in a rendition of the Ballad of Joe Hill. Technology has moved on since then. And so from coast to coast, minister Kenney notwithstanding, I will be heard - one way or another.
© 2009 Guardian/UK
Intelligence made it clear Saddam was not a threat, diplomat tells MPs• Government left 'paper trail' in build-up to war
Intelligence made it clear Saddam was not a threat, diplomat tells MPs• Government left 'paper trail' in build-up to war
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/20/saddam-hussein-iraq-war-legality/print
• More facts still to come to light, says former envoy
David Hencke, Westminster correspondent The Guardian, Friday 20 March 2009 larger | smaller Article historyA former diplomat at the centre of events in the run-up to the Iraq war revealed yesterday that the government has a "paper trail" that could reveal new information about the legality of the invasion.
Carne Ross, who was a first secretary at the United Nations in New York for the Foreign Office until 2004, told MPs: "A lot of facts about the run-up to this war have yet to come to light which should come to light and which the public deserves to know." There were also assessments by the joint intelligence committee which had not been disclosed, Ross told the Commons public administration select committee.
He told the inquiry that the intelligence made it "very clear" that Saddam Hussein did not pose a significant threat to the UK, as was being claimed at the time by ministers, and that tougher enforcement of sanctions could have brought his regime down.
He said he tried to inform ministers about his misgivings over the developing momentum towards war, taking them aside during their visits to New York or having brief conversations in their car to the airport.
But he said he was aware that speaking out too often or too openly - even in internal debates - about his concerns about the government's policy direction would damage his career by winning him a reputation as a "naive troublemaker".
Ross's evidence, by video link from New York, came days after Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time, used the first ministerial veto under the freedom of information act to ban the release of cabinet minutes on the decision to go to war.
"I feel very strongly that there has still not been proper accountability and scrutiny into what happened in Iraq," Ross said.
"There should be a full public inquiry or parliamentary inquiry into the decision-making that took place. Hutton and Butler are by no means sufficient to that purpose and it is disgraceful that the government pretends that they are... if we had those systems of accountability and scrutiny then leaking and other more aberration behaviour from civil servants would be less necessary."
He was one of four "whistleblowers" who yesterday gave evidence to the committee.
They also included Katharine Gun, a former GCHQ translator who revealed the organisation was tapping phones of countries that were against the Iraq war; Brian Jones, the most senior expert on chemical weapons at the Defence Intelligence Staff; and Derek Pasquill, a former Foreign Office official who leaked documents about rendition and Muslim groups who were hostile to the UK receiving government money.
Jones and Ross never leaked any information to the press. Jones instead complained to his superior that he thought the intelligence dossier on weapons of mass destruction was being exaggerated but was told that there was "one secret piece of information which could not be shared with [him]" because it was too sensitive.
He told MPs that when the WMD dossier was published and he saw the difference between the foreword by the prime minister and the contents he "thought the intelligence services were going to be crucified".
But he instead he found that most MPs, with a few exceptions, supported the government. "I feel that you gentlemen [the MPs] have been either deliberately or accidentally misled and these incidents have not been followed up. I think that there has been a great laxity and that won't encourage people like me or my colleagues to come to you," he said.
Tony Wright, the chairman of the committee, agreed with the allegation. "I think you are absolutely right to castigate parliament, which I think has behaved abysmally in this matter - endless bleating about the need for an inquiry but a complete failure to insist upon one," he said.
Gordon Brown has promised to look at an inquiry after all the troops come home from Iraq.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/mar/20/saddam-hussein-iraq-war-legality/print
• More facts still to come to light, says former envoy
David Hencke, Westminster correspondent The Guardian, Friday 20 March 2009 larger | smaller Article historyA former diplomat at the centre of events in the run-up to the Iraq war revealed yesterday that the government has a "paper trail" that could reveal new information about the legality of the invasion.
Carne Ross, who was a first secretary at the United Nations in New York for the Foreign Office until 2004, told MPs: "A lot of facts about the run-up to this war have yet to come to light which should come to light and which the public deserves to know." There were also assessments by the joint intelligence committee which had not been disclosed, Ross told the Commons public administration select committee.
He told the inquiry that the intelligence made it "very clear" that Saddam Hussein did not pose a significant threat to the UK, as was being claimed at the time by ministers, and that tougher enforcement of sanctions could have brought his regime down.
He said he tried to inform ministers about his misgivings over the developing momentum towards war, taking them aside during their visits to New York or having brief conversations in their car to the airport.
But he said he was aware that speaking out too often or too openly - even in internal debates - about his concerns about the government's policy direction would damage his career by winning him a reputation as a "naive troublemaker".
Ross's evidence, by video link from New York, came days after Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time, used the first ministerial veto under the freedom of information act to ban the release of cabinet minutes on the decision to go to war.
"I feel very strongly that there has still not been proper accountability and scrutiny into what happened in Iraq," Ross said.
"There should be a full public inquiry or parliamentary inquiry into the decision-making that took place. Hutton and Butler are by no means sufficient to that purpose and it is disgraceful that the government pretends that they are... if we had those systems of accountability and scrutiny then leaking and other more aberration behaviour from civil servants would be less necessary."
He was one of four "whistleblowers" who yesterday gave evidence to the committee.
They also included Katharine Gun, a former GCHQ translator who revealed the organisation was tapping phones of countries that were against the Iraq war; Brian Jones, the most senior expert on chemical weapons at the Defence Intelligence Staff; and Derek Pasquill, a former Foreign Office official who leaked documents about rendition and Muslim groups who were hostile to the UK receiving government money.
Jones and Ross never leaked any information to the press. Jones instead complained to his superior that he thought the intelligence dossier on weapons of mass destruction was being exaggerated but was told that there was "one secret piece of information which could not be shared with [him]" because it was too sensitive.
He told MPs that when the WMD dossier was published and he saw the difference between the foreword by the prime minister and the contents he "thought the intelligence services were going to be crucified".
But he instead he found that most MPs, with a few exceptions, supported the government. "I feel that you gentlemen [the MPs] have been either deliberately or accidentally misled and these incidents have not been followed up. I think that there has been a great laxity and that won't encourage people like me or my colleagues to come to you," he said.
Tony Wright, the chairman of the committee, agreed with the allegation. "I think you are absolutely right to castigate parliament, which I think has behaved abysmally in this matter - endless bleating about the need for an inquiry but a complete failure to insist upon one," he said.
Gordon Brown has promised to look at an inquiry after all the troops come home from Iraq.
Pakistan: US did deal with army to restore judges
Pakistan: US did deal with army to restore judges
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3129608953
Islamabad, 20 March (AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - Under a deal brokered by the United States and the Pakistani army for the restoration of Pakistan's judiciary, many cases related to forced disappearances and detentions will not be challenged in a court of law, according to a former senior intelligence official.
Retired squadron leader, Khalid Khawaja claimed in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI) that the deal includes those Pakistanis detained by Americans and the Pakistani army and who have disappeared without a trace.
Khawaja is a former official with Pakistan's ISI intelligence service. He is also a leader of the rights organisation Defense of Human Rights which advocates in support of missing people in Pakistan.
"I know on authority that even the Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz group (of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif) is on board on this deal, beside Pakistan Peoples Party led government," Khalid said.
"The main complication is the case of missing people, around 650 people, whether they come from Islamic backgrounds or those Baluchi nationalists who were detained during the military operation in Baluchistan," he said.
"They were killed through torture and therefore the government does not want anybody to challenge those cases and wants the files of those cases to be buried in the files forever."
A spokesman for the Pakistani foreign office Abdul Basit admitted during an interview that the main problem in the release of kidnapped United Nations official John Solecki were the logistics.
Solecki was kidnapped on 2 February by a militant group in southwestern Pakistan known as the Baluchistan Liberation United Front, who want to exchange him in a prisoner swap.
His captors have presented a list of prisoners to be released but the government has not found many of the requested prisoners in jail.
"If Pakistani authorities need to release somebody they do that. The problem occurs when somebody has died of torture or is disabled," he said.
"The best example is of slain Saud Memon. He was released but only because his disappearance was on record. He was picked up from South Africa and then taken to Guantanamo Bay military prison and this way his disappearance was documented.
"He was released from the prison and sent to Pakistan where the ISI (intelligence service) detained him without trial. The case was filed in the court for his release. His detention was so much in black and white that they had to release him.
"When he was released, he had been tortured so much by the ISI, he was a walking talking dead man. He died soon after his release.”
He said when he was released he was presented in front of chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s Supreme Court on a stretcher. The Pakistani government recently announced it would reinstate Chaudhry and other judges sacked by former president Pervez Musharraf.
"Everybody witnessed that he was tortured and was near to death. No court of law took a notice of his 'murder'.”
“Now the problem with other detainees is that either they are in the condition of Saud Memon (near to death due to torture) or they have already been killed in the detention centres. The problem in the case of Saud Memon is that they could not hide his detention.”
He cited the case of Masood Janjua as another example.
"The then president Pervez Musharraf personally assured his family that he would be released then I was personally informed that he was no more,” he said.
“The thing is that there are people who go to Afghanistan and get killed over there. Their family members always got the information about their killings. This is a different issue.
"Masood Janjua was picked up and the intelligence agency people kept assuring his family and his wife not to make fuss and he would return home soon and suddenly after many years they started saying that he was not detained by any intelligence agency but had gone to Afghanistan where he got killed."
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=3.0.3129608953
Islamabad, 20 March (AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - Under a deal brokered by the United States and the Pakistani army for the restoration of Pakistan's judiciary, many cases related to forced disappearances and detentions will not be challenged in a court of law, according to a former senior intelligence official.
Retired squadron leader, Khalid Khawaja claimed in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI) that the deal includes those Pakistanis detained by Americans and the Pakistani army and who have disappeared without a trace.
Khawaja is a former official with Pakistan's ISI intelligence service. He is also a leader of the rights organisation Defense of Human Rights which advocates in support of missing people in Pakistan.
"I know on authority that even the Pakistan Muslim League- Nawaz group (of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif) is on board on this deal, beside Pakistan Peoples Party led government," Khalid said.
"The main complication is the case of missing people, around 650 people, whether they come from Islamic backgrounds or those Baluchi nationalists who were detained during the military operation in Baluchistan," he said.
"They were killed through torture and therefore the government does not want anybody to challenge those cases and wants the files of those cases to be buried in the files forever."
A spokesman for the Pakistani foreign office Abdul Basit admitted during an interview that the main problem in the release of kidnapped United Nations official John Solecki were the logistics.
Solecki was kidnapped on 2 February by a militant group in southwestern Pakistan known as the Baluchistan Liberation United Front, who want to exchange him in a prisoner swap.
His captors have presented a list of prisoners to be released but the government has not found many of the requested prisoners in jail.
"If Pakistani authorities need to release somebody they do that. The problem occurs when somebody has died of torture or is disabled," he said.
"The best example is of slain Saud Memon. He was released but only because his disappearance was on record. He was picked up from South Africa and then taken to Guantanamo Bay military prison and this way his disappearance was documented.
"He was released from the prison and sent to Pakistan where the ISI (intelligence service) detained him without trial. The case was filed in the court for his release. His detention was so much in black and white that they had to release him.
"When he was released, he had been tortured so much by the ISI, he was a walking talking dead man. He died soon after his release.”
He said when he was released he was presented in front of chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s Supreme Court on a stretcher. The Pakistani government recently announced it would reinstate Chaudhry and other judges sacked by former president Pervez Musharraf.
"Everybody witnessed that he was tortured and was near to death. No court of law took a notice of his 'murder'.”
“Now the problem with other detainees is that either they are in the condition of Saud Memon (near to death due to torture) or they have already been killed in the detention centres. The problem in the case of Saud Memon is that they could not hide his detention.”
He cited the case of Masood Janjua as another example.
"The then president Pervez Musharraf personally assured his family that he would be released then I was personally informed that he was no more,” he said.
“The thing is that there are people who go to Afghanistan and get killed over there. Their family members always got the information about their killings. This is a different issue.
"Masood Janjua was picked up and the intelligence agency people kept assuring his family and his wife not to make fuss and he would return home soon and suddenly after many years they started saying that he was not detained by any intelligence agency but had gone to Afghanistan where he got killed."
Saturday, 21 March 2009
War On Terror Within
War On Terror Within
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22259.htm
The End of Jewish History
By Gilad Atzmon
March 20, 2009 "Information Clearing House" --- The issue I am going to discuss today is probably the most important thing I’ve ever had to say about Israeli brutality and contemporary Jewish identity. I assume that I could have shaped my thought into a wide-ranging book or an analytical academic text but instead, I will do the very opposite, I will make it as short and as simple as possible.
In the weeks that have just passed we had been witness to an Israeli genocidal campaign against the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza. We had been witnessing one of the strongest armies in the world squashing women, elderly people and children. We saw blizzards of unconventional weapons bursting over schools, hospitals and refugee camps. We had seen and heard about war crimes committed before, but this time, the Israeli transgression was categorically different. It was supported by the total absolute majority of the Israeli Jewish population. The IDF military campaign in Gaza enjoyed the support of 94% of the Israeli population. 94% of the Israelis apparently approved of the air raids against civilians. The Israeli people saw the carnage on their TV screens, they heard the voices, they saw hospitals and refugee camps in flames and yet, they weren’t really moved by it all. They didn’t do much to stop their “democratically elected” ruthless leaders. Instead, some of them grabbed a seat and settled on the hills overlooking the Gaza Strip to watch their army turning Gaza into modern Hebraic coliseum of blood. Even now when the campaign seems to be over and the scale of the carnage in Gaza has been revealed, the Israelis fail to show any signs of remorse. As if this is not enough, all throughout the war, Jews around the world rallied in support of their “Jews-only state”. Such a popular support of outright war crimes is unheard of. Terrorist states do kill, yet they are slightly shy about it all. Stalin’s USSR did it in some remote Gulags, Nazi Germany executed its victims in deep forests and behind barbed wire. In the Jewish state, the Israelis slaughter defenceless women, children and the old in broad daylight, using unconventional weapons targeting schools, hospitals and refugee camps.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22259.htm
The End of Jewish History
By Gilad Atzmon
March 20, 2009 "Information Clearing House" --- The issue I am going to discuss today is probably the most important thing I’ve ever had to say about Israeli brutality and contemporary Jewish identity. I assume that I could have shaped my thought into a wide-ranging book or an analytical academic text but instead, I will do the very opposite, I will make it as short and as simple as possible.
In the weeks that have just passed we had been witness to an Israeli genocidal campaign against the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza. We had been witnessing one of the strongest armies in the world squashing women, elderly people and children. We saw blizzards of unconventional weapons bursting over schools, hospitals and refugee camps. We had seen and heard about war crimes committed before, but this time, the Israeli transgression was categorically different. It was supported by the total absolute majority of the Israeli Jewish population. The IDF military campaign in Gaza enjoyed the support of 94% of the Israeli population. 94% of the Israelis apparently approved of the air raids against civilians. The Israeli people saw the carnage on their TV screens, they heard the voices, they saw hospitals and refugee camps in flames and yet, they weren’t really moved by it all. They didn’t do much to stop their “democratically elected” ruthless leaders. Instead, some of them grabbed a seat and settled on the hills overlooking the Gaza Strip to watch their army turning Gaza into modern Hebraic coliseum of blood. Even now when the campaign seems to be over and the scale of the carnage in Gaza has been revealed, the Israelis fail to show any signs of remorse. As if this is not enough, all throughout the war, Jews around the world rallied in support of their “Jews-only state”. Such a popular support of outright war crimes is unheard of. Terrorist states do kill, yet they are slightly shy about it all. Stalin’s USSR did it in some remote Gulags, Nazi Germany executed its victims in deep forests and behind barbed wire. In the Jewish state, the Israelis slaughter defenceless women, children and the old in broad daylight, using unconventional weapons targeting schools, hospitals and refugee camps.
Israel's Dirty Secrets in Gaza
Israel's Dirty Secrets in Gaza
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22254.htm
Army veterans reveal how they gunned down innocent Palestinian families and destroyed homes and farms
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
March 20, 2009 "The Independent" -- - Israel was last night confronting a major challenge over the conduct of its 22-day military offensive in Gaza after testimonies by its own soldiers revealed that troops were allowed and, in some cases, even ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian civilians.
The testimonies – the first of their kind to emerge from inside the military – are at marked variance with official claims that the military made strenuous efforts to avoid civilian casualties and tend to corroborate Palestinian accusations that troops used indiscriminate and disproportionate firepower in civilian areas during the operation. In one of the testimonies shedding harsh new light on what the soldiers say were the permissive rules of engagement for Operation Cast Lead, one soldier describes how an officer ordered the shooting of an elderly woman 100 metres from a house commandeered by troops.
Another soldier, describing how a mother and her children were shot dead by a sniper after they turned the wrong way out of a house, says the "atmosphere" among troops was that the lives of Palestinians were "very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers".
A squad leader said: "At the beginning the directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle, to break the door down, to start shooting inside and – I call it murder – to shoot at everyone we identify. In the beginning I asked myself how could this make sense? Higher-ups said it is permissible because everyone left in the city [Gaza City] is culpable because they didn't run away."
The accounts, which also describe apparently indiscriminate destruction of property, were given at a post-operation discussion by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military course at the Oranim Academic College in northern Israel. The transcript of the session in front of the head of the course – details from which were published by the newspaper Haaretz – prompted the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) military advocate general Avichai Mendelblit yesterday to announce a military police investigation into the claims. Haaretz said the airing of the "dirty secrets" would make it more difficult for Israelis to dismiss the claims as Palestinian propaganda. The course principal, Danny Zamir, told the newspaper that after being "shocked" by the testimonies on 13 February he told the IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi he "feared a serious moral failure" in the IDF.
In one account, an infantry squad leader describes how troops released a family who had been held in a room of their house for several days. He said: "The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay... The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him. He shot them straight away. I don't think he felt too bad about it, because, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to, the lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers."
A second squad leader, who described the killing of the elderly woman, says he argued with his commander over loose rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, soldiers had complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the centre of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist." The squad leader said: "To write 'death to the Arabs' on walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics."
Ehud Barak, Israel's Defence Minister, said: "I say to you that from the chief of staff down to the last soldier, the most moral army in the world stands ready to take orders from the government of Israel. I have no doubt that every incident will be individually examined."
But Israeli human rights organisations, including B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, called for an independent investigation and complained that the military police inquiry had only been announced after Haaretz published the story, "three weeks after the relevant materials reached the Chief of the General Staff. This tardiness follows a pattern of failures to investigate suspicions of serious crimes".
Amos Harel, the paper's respected military correspondent who broke the story, wrote that Mr Zamir was sentenced in 1990 for refusing to guard a settlers' ceremony at Joseph's tomb in the West Bank. But he added that a reading of the transcript shows that Mr Zamir "acts out of a deep concern for the spirit of the IDF".
In their own words: Soldiers' stories
Squad leader Aviv
"At the beginning the directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle, to break the door down, to start shooting inside and to ascend floor by floor and – I call it murder – to go from floor to floor and to shoot at everyone we identify. In the beginning I asked myself how could this make sense? Higher-ups said it is permissible because everyone left in the city [Gaza City] is culpable because they didn't run away. This frightened me a bit. I tried to influence it as much as possible, despite my low rank, to change it. In the end the directive was to go into a house, switch on loudspeakers and tell them 'you have five minutes to run away and whoever doesn't will be killed'."
Soldier Ram
"There was an order to free the [confined] families. The platoon commander set free the family and told them to turn right. A mother and two children didn't understand and turned left. [Officers] had forgotten to tell the sniper on the roof that they were being set free and that everything was okay and he should hold fire. You can say that he acted as he was supposed to, in accordance with the orders. The sniper saw a woman and children approaching him, past lines that no one was to be allowed to cross. He fired directly at them. I don't know if he fired at their legs but in the end he killed them."
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22254.htm
Army veterans reveal how they gunned down innocent Palestinian families and destroyed homes and farms
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
March 20, 2009 "The Independent" -- - Israel was last night confronting a major challenge over the conduct of its 22-day military offensive in Gaza after testimonies by its own soldiers revealed that troops were allowed and, in some cases, even ordered to shoot unarmed Palestinian civilians.
The testimonies – the first of their kind to emerge from inside the military – are at marked variance with official claims that the military made strenuous efforts to avoid civilian casualties and tend to corroborate Palestinian accusations that troops used indiscriminate and disproportionate firepower in civilian areas during the operation. In one of the testimonies shedding harsh new light on what the soldiers say were the permissive rules of engagement for Operation Cast Lead, one soldier describes how an officer ordered the shooting of an elderly woman 100 metres from a house commandeered by troops.
Another soldier, describing how a mother and her children were shot dead by a sniper after they turned the wrong way out of a house, says the "atmosphere" among troops was that the lives of Palestinians were "very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers".
A squad leader said: "At the beginning the directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle, to break the door down, to start shooting inside and – I call it murder – to shoot at everyone we identify. In the beginning I asked myself how could this make sense? Higher-ups said it is permissible because everyone left in the city [Gaza City] is culpable because they didn't run away."
The accounts, which also describe apparently indiscriminate destruction of property, were given at a post-operation discussion by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military course at the Oranim Academic College in northern Israel. The transcript of the session in front of the head of the course – details from which were published by the newspaper Haaretz – prompted the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) military advocate general Avichai Mendelblit yesterday to announce a military police investigation into the claims. Haaretz said the airing of the "dirty secrets" would make it more difficult for Israelis to dismiss the claims as Palestinian propaganda. The course principal, Danny Zamir, told the newspaper that after being "shocked" by the testimonies on 13 February he told the IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi he "feared a serious moral failure" in the IDF.
In one account, an infantry squad leader describes how troops released a family who had been held in a room of their house for several days. He said: "The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay... The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him. He shot them straight away. I don't think he felt too bad about it, because, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to, the lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers."
A second squad leader, who described the killing of the elderly woman, says he argued with his commander over loose rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, soldiers had complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the centre of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist." The squad leader said: "To write 'death to the Arabs' on walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics."
Ehud Barak, Israel's Defence Minister, said: "I say to you that from the chief of staff down to the last soldier, the most moral army in the world stands ready to take orders from the government of Israel. I have no doubt that every incident will be individually examined."
But Israeli human rights organisations, including B'Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, called for an independent investigation and complained that the military police inquiry had only been announced after Haaretz published the story, "three weeks after the relevant materials reached the Chief of the General Staff. This tardiness follows a pattern of failures to investigate suspicions of serious crimes".
Amos Harel, the paper's respected military correspondent who broke the story, wrote that Mr Zamir was sentenced in 1990 for refusing to guard a settlers' ceremony at Joseph's tomb in the West Bank. But he added that a reading of the transcript shows that Mr Zamir "acts out of a deep concern for the spirit of the IDF".
In their own words: Soldiers' stories
Squad leader Aviv
"At the beginning the directive was to enter a house with an armoured vehicle, to break the door down, to start shooting inside and to ascend floor by floor and – I call it murder – to go from floor to floor and to shoot at everyone we identify. In the beginning I asked myself how could this make sense? Higher-ups said it is permissible because everyone left in the city [Gaza City] is culpable because they didn't run away. This frightened me a bit. I tried to influence it as much as possible, despite my low rank, to change it. In the end the directive was to go into a house, switch on loudspeakers and tell them 'you have five minutes to run away and whoever doesn't will be killed'."
Soldier Ram
"There was an order to free the [confined] families. The platoon commander set free the family and told them to turn right. A mother and two children didn't understand and turned left. [Officers] had forgotten to tell the sniper on the roof that they were being set free and that everything was okay and he should hold fire. You can say that he acted as he was supposed to, in accordance with the orders. The sniper saw a woman and children approaching him, past lines that no one was to be allowed to cross. He fired directly at them. I don't know if he fired at their legs but in the end he killed them."
Friday, 20 March 2009
UK economic links with Israeli settlements
A total of 27 Israeli companies operating in settlements and exporting to the United Kingdom have been identified:
Fruit, vegetables and fresh herbs: Agrexco, Arava, Flowers Direct, Hadiklaim, Mehadrin Tnuport Export
Other food products: Abady Bakery, Achdut, Adumim Food Additives/Frutarom, Amnon & Tamar, Oppenheimer, Shamir Salads
Beverages: Adanim Tea, Soda-Club, Tishbi Estate Winery
Cosmetics: Dead Sea Laboratories, Intercosma
Pharmaceuticals: Fermentek
Plastic products: Keter Plastic, Tip Top Toys, Twitoplast
Metal products: DiSTeK, Mul-T-Lock, Yardeni Locks
Textile products: Caesarea Carpets, Dispobud, Ofertex
Other products: Greenkote
For 25 of these 27 companies a total of 51 British trading partners were found: 12 British marketing subsidiaries of the Israeli companies concerned and 39 British importers and retailers. Fruit and vegetables exported by these settlement companies are sold by major UK high street retailers, such as Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose and Somerfield. Other products exported by settlement companies are sold by well-known British retail chains, such as Marks & Spencer (M&S), John Lewis and B&Q.
The following British companies sell products from more than one Israeli company linked to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank:
Just Kosher is linked to six companies: Abadi Bakery, Achdut, Adanim Tea, Amnon & Tamar, Oppenheimer, Shamir Salads.
Tesco is linked to four companies: Arava, Hadiklaim, Mehadrin-Tnuport, Soda-Club.
Sainsbury's is linked to two companies: Hadiklaim, Soda-Club.
John Lewis (including its supermarket division Waitrose) is linked to two companies: Ahava, Hadiklaim
Argos is linked to two companies: Keter Plastic, Soda-Club.
Three British companies with investments in settlements in territories occupied by Israel have been identified:
Hanson UK is a supplier of heavy building materials to the construction industry. It has a subsidiary in Israel which owns factories and quarries in the West Bank. Hanson UK was acquired in September 2007 by German company Heidelberg Cement.
British Israel Investment is an Israeli property company owning a shopping mall in Maaleh Adumim, a settlement in the occupied West Bank. The major shareholder of British Israel Investment is the British businessman Leo Noe, the executive chairman of F&C REIT Asset Management.
Unilever is a major Anglo-Dutch food, detergent and personal care company which owns a 51 percent share in Beigel & Beigel, a pretzel and snacks factory located in a settlement in the occupied West Bank. Unilever recently announced that it will sell its stake in Beigel & Beigel.
One British company offering products or services to Israeli settlements has been identified:
Power tools from British manufacturer Record Power are imported from the United Kingdom to Israel by Israeli company D.N.M. Technical Equipment and Tools, which has a branch located in the Barkan Industrial Zone, in the West Bank.
The British bank HSBC is involved as underwriter in financing the Israeli state budget by helping the Israeli government to issue bonds on the international capital markets. On its own there is nothing wrong with this; it is only where such funds are used to support prohibited activities, such as the establishment of settlements in occupied territory and their associated infrastructure in breach of Israel's obligations under international law, would this raise concerns.
In addition, we found nine British financial institutions owning bonds issued by the State of Israel, which are used to fund activities undertaken by the government of Israel. Again, it is only where such activities are in breach of international law that this becomes a cause for concern:
Artemis Investment Management
Ashmore Investment Management
Barclays Global Investors
Capital International Ltd, part of Capital Group (United States)
Fortis Investments (United Kingdom), part of Fortis (Belgium)
Investec Asset Management
Morley Fund Management
Pictet Asset Management (UK) Ltd, part of Pictet (Switzerland)
State Street Global Advisors UK Ltd, part of State Street Corporation (United States)
Two large Israeli banks, Bank Leumi and the Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, have subsidiaries in the United Kingdom. These two banks also have branches in settlements in the occupied territories. Their Israeli parent banks engage in mortgage and other lending activities that include financing the construction and acquisition of settlement housing and commercial properties and lending to settlement-based Israeli businesses. Bank Leumi is also a lender to the Jerusalem light rail project which links settlements in the occupied West Bank with Israel proper and thus consolidates the existence of these settlements.
The British investment company CSS was involved in several financing rounds for Greenkote, an Israeli company exporting coating with a plant and main R&D centre located in the Barkan Industrial Zone.
Fruit, vegetables and fresh herbs: Agrexco, Arava, Flowers Direct, Hadiklaim, Mehadrin Tnuport Export
Other food products: Abady Bakery, Achdut, Adumim Food Additives/Frutarom, Amnon & Tamar, Oppenheimer, Shamir Salads
Beverages: Adanim Tea, Soda-Club, Tishbi Estate Winery
Cosmetics: Dead Sea Laboratories, Intercosma
Pharmaceuticals: Fermentek
Plastic products: Keter Plastic, Tip Top Toys, Twitoplast
Metal products: DiSTeK, Mul-T-Lock, Yardeni Locks
Textile products: Caesarea Carpets, Dispobud, Ofertex
Other products: Greenkote
For 25 of these 27 companies a total of 51 British trading partners were found: 12 British marketing subsidiaries of the Israeli companies concerned and 39 British importers and retailers. Fruit and vegetables exported by these settlement companies are sold by major UK high street retailers, such as Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose and Somerfield. Other products exported by settlement companies are sold by well-known British retail chains, such as Marks & Spencer (M&S), John Lewis and B&Q.
The following British companies sell products from more than one Israeli company linked to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank:
Just Kosher is linked to six companies: Abadi Bakery, Achdut, Adanim Tea, Amnon & Tamar, Oppenheimer, Shamir Salads.
Tesco is linked to four companies: Arava, Hadiklaim, Mehadrin-Tnuport, Soda-Club.
Sainsbury's is linked to two companies: Hadiklaim, Soda-Club.
John Lewis (including its supermarket division Waitrose) is linked to two companies: Ahava, Hadiklaim
Argos is linked to two companies: Keter Plastic, Soda-Club.
Three British companies with investments in settlements in territories occupied by Israel have been identified:
Hanson UK is a supplier of heavy building materials to the construction industry. It has a subsidiary in Israel which owns factories and quarries in the West Bank. Hanson UK was acquired in September 2007 by German company Heidelberg Cement.
British Israel Investment is an Israeli property company owning a shopping mall in Maaleh Adumim, a settlement in the occupied West Bank. The major shareholder of British Israel Investment is the British businessman Leo Noe, the executive chairman of F&C REIT Asset Management.
Unilever is a major Anglo-Dutch food, detergent and personal care company which owns a 51 percent share in Beigel & Beigel, a pretzel and snacks factory located in a settlement in the occupied West Bank. Unilever recently announced that it will sell its stake in Beigel & Beigel.
One British company offering products or services to Israeli settlements has been identified:
Power tools from British manufacturer Record Power are imported from the United Kingdom to Israel by Israeli company D.N.M. Technical Equipment and Tools, which has a branch located in the Barkan Industrial Zone, in the West Bank.
The British bank HSBC is involved as underwriter in financing the Israeli state budget by helping the Israeli government to issue bonds on the international capital markets. On its own there is nothing wrong with this; it is only where such funds are used to support prohibited activities, such as the establishment of settlements in occupied territory and their associated infrastructure in breach of Israel's obligations under international law, would this raise concerns.
In addition, we found nine British financial institutions owning bonds issued by the State of Israel, which are used to fund activities undertaken by the government of Israel. Again, it is only where such activities are in breach of international law that this becomes a cause for concern:
Artemis Investment Management
Ashmore Investment Management
Barclays Global Investors
Capital International Ltd, part of Capital Group (United States)
Fortis Investments (United Kingdom), part of Fortis (Belgium)
Investec Asset Management
Morley Fund Management
Pictet Asset Management (UK) Ltd, part of Pictet (Switzerland)
State Street Global Advisors UK Ltd, part of State Street Corporation (United States)
Two large Israeli banks, Bank Leumi and the Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, have subsidiaries in the United Kingdom. These two banks also have branches in settlements in the occupied territories. Their Israeli parent banks engage in mortgage and other lending activities that include financing the construction and acquisition of settlement housing and commercial properties and lending to settlement-based Israeli businesses. Bank Leumi is also a lender to the Jerusalem light rail project which links settlements in the occupied West Bank with Israel proper and thus consolidates the existence of these settlements.
The British investment company CSS was involved in several financing rounds for Greenkote, an Israeli company exporting coating with a plant and main R&D centre located in the Barkan Industrial Zone.
Saturday, 14 March 2009
Monday, 2 March 2009
USA China 2009 Feb
USA : G D P (0.9%); Trade Balance ( -$833bn); Current Account Balance ( -$697bn); Industrial production ( -7.8%)
CHINA : GDP (9.1%) ; T B ( + $295BN); C A B ($371bn.);)+ I P (5.7%)
CHINA : GDP (9.1%) ; T B ( + $295BN); C A B ($371bn.);)+ I P (5.7%)
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