Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Thanks to Oren Persico of the extraordinary Israeli media watchdog NGO, 7th Eye, who reported that Yediot Achronot columnist Sever Plotzker revealed that senior IDF officers vocally opposed the Israeli Navy’s attack on the Gaza flotilla. Yet no one in the Israeli media could report this:

Yediot Achronot and other [Israeli] media outlets were prevented from reporting that senior echelons in the military establishment opposed a military operation to stop the ship flotilla headed for Gaza.

““In quite a few newspapers in the State of Israel, we had preliminary information…that there figures in the defense establishment, very powerful and very significant figures, who objected to using the army to prevent the flotilla’s sailing into the State of Israel. This was not published in the newspapers.”

In the 7th Eye report, Plotzker does not make clear whether this was due to self censorship or IDF censorship. I would guess that it was the latter. If it was the former then the Israeli media has done a deep disservice to the nation by not reporting fully and fairly on the diversity of opinion within the IDF about this operation. If only the IDF itself had listened to those senior officers instead of going with a harebrained scheme that ended with such disastrous results.

In fact, if there is an inquiry into this tragedy this entire question should be aired. Who opposed the operation and on what grounds. Who supported it and on what grounds. Why were the opponents, whose power was quite strong according to Plotzker, overruled and by whom?

The IDF since 2006 has now faced three serious military disasters: Lebanon, Gaza, and now this. Israel refuses to learn the lesson that military force cannot end the conflict nor can it even get the result Israel sought last night. And in fact, the massacre last night will harm Israel’s interests. The worst thing a major power can do is overplay its hand, which is precisely what Israel did last night. A more nuanced approach would have succeeded where this one failed.

Palestinian representative debates Security Council resolution condemning Israel's attack on Gaza flotilla (Xinhua)

Ehud Olmert allowed the first Free Gaza ship to dock there. What would have been lost if Israel had allowed the ships to get to Gaza more than a little face on Israel’s part?

The Times reports that the Security Council, besides dealing with the attack itself, is coalescing around an approach which would call for Israel to end its blockade of Gaza. This is a call that is long overdue and a constructive outcome to this terrible mess:

Security Council members, who had broken off from their spring holiday to hold an emergency session prepared a draft document calling on Israel to lift its blockade and immediately release the ships and hundreds of international activists arrested on board them.

…The focus was shifting to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, the assistant Secretary-General of the UN Security Council, told council members that the bloodshed would have been avoided “if repeated calls on Israel to end the counterproductive and unacceptable blockade of Gaza had been heeded.”

Sir Mark Lyall Grant, Britain’s Ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council: “These events are clearly very serious, but we cannot view them in isolation . . . Israel’s restrictions on access to Gaza must be lifted. The current closure is unacceptable and counter-productive.”

I find it heartening that a Conservative led British government is making such a forthright statement.  It compares unfavorably to the feeble comment from Pres. Obama who could only muster vague concern and a desire to get to the bottom of the matter, whatever that means.  I find it hard to believe that my president will muster the courage and fortitude to either vote for or abstain from such a resolution.  I foresee a U.S. veto.  But does the Obama administration stop to think how this will look to Turkey and the rest of the Arab world, let alone to the western world which observes this mess with horror?

Read this and weep:

Behind closed doors, U.S. diplomats sought to prevent the council from authorizing a U.N. investigation into the Israeli raid, saying Israel should be given a chance to conduct a credible investigation first.

Just like the Goldstone commission gave Israel and Hamas an opportunity to conduct a credible investigation of their respective behavior during the Gaza war.  Look at the credible investigations they both conducted.  I’m sorry, but such behavior by U.S. diplomats is beyond pathetic.  They must know that we need a credible INDEPENDENT investigation, not a whitewash of the type that the IDF ALWAYS conducts in such circumstances.  The Netanyahu government has absolutely no motivation to conduct a viable inquiry.  None.  And delaying a UN investigation to give time for Israel to investigate itself is a means of obfuscation, hoping that the world’s attention will be deflected in the meantime.

What the U.S. should consider is whether it is willing to dispense with its good relations with Turkey.  I can’t see how a U.S. veto will do anything but place our country in the doghouse in the same way that Israel is.  In the long run is it not more important to have good relations with Turkey than with an obstructionist, off the rails Israeli rightist government?

Regarding the possible provocation posed by members of the flotilla who may’ve attacked IDF marines when they attempted to board the ship, frankly I don’t understand, if what the IDF survivors say its true, how they could’ve landed on a ship with only paint ball guns.  Did they think they’d be welcomed with open arms?  Why didn’t they attempt to make any contact with the ships before they landed on them?  Why didn’t they explain what they wanted to do if it’s true that those rappelling only wanted to try to persuade the ships to follow Israeli directives.

If the IDF-provided video is accurate (and we must keep in mind that they are only offering us their version and not video that undoubtedly was filmed by those attacked), there was an attack on its soldiers.  But that in no way justifies the killing of up to 20 of the protestors.  While the attackers were violent, they could have been overcome with better preparations including stun grenades, a smokescreen and other procedures.  That the IDF supposedly went from an unarmed approach to lethal fire bespeaks an impoverished tactical plan for the operation.

Ameer Makhoul, tortured during three weeks of secret police interrogations

Yesterday night, the Israeli secret police and their judicial subordinates announced the indictments of Ameer Makhoul and Omar Said.  And I’m sorry to say both for the victims and the State of Israel that the bill of particulars is a laughingstock.  Nevertheless, the Shin Bet, with these lurid, barely supportable charges has put blood in the water of the body politic.  Now Israelis, prone to see “the Arabs” as a fifth column already, will be like sharks circling for the kill.  Get them, burn them, hang them, expel them.  You will hear all this and more from Israeli Jews.

You’ll see from the breathless account below, the news media (and Haaretz is unfortunately about as good as you’re going to get in the Israeli Jewish media) have convicted them both before trial or conviction.

But let’s let Jack Khoury, the Shin Bet’s reporter-stenographer, report it as the Shin Bet wants you to hear it:

…Ameer Makhoul, has been charged with secretly meeting Hezbollah agents in Denmark in 2008. There, prosecutors allege, Makhoul agreed to spy on Israel for the Shi’a Muslim group, which gave him specific missions and equipped him with computer programs to send encrypted information over the internet.

One task was to gather information on bases of the Shin Bet security service in the north of Israel.

In other missions, Makhoul was allegedly asked to supply details of security surrounding Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, a Mossad base in central Israel, a defense factory owned by state arms manufacturer Rafael and a Haifa site hit by Hezbollah rockets during its month-long war with Israel in 2006.

Makhoul is also accused of carrying out reconnaissance on an IDF base.  Prosecutors say the suspected spy passed his Lebanese contacts a list of names of six Israeli citizens, marked as potential agents, as well as providing Hezbollah with analysis on trends in Israeli politics and society. The IDF’s information security unit claims Makhoul delivered high-value material to his Hezbollah handlers.

A senior Shin Bet official told Haaretz: “Part of the information that Makhoul transferred could be delivered by anyone with a pair of eyes and Google Earth.

For further entertainment read the breathless charges of treason by the Jerusalem Post’s security stenographer er, correspondent, Yaakov Katz. Note we’ve dispensed with alleged or purported or any language that presumes the possibility of innocence:

Makhoul was recruited as a spy for Hizbullah and transferred, via a specially-designed computer encryption system, strategic intelligence information on Israeli security services to the Lebanese guerrilla organization.

…During his interrogation with the Shin Bet…Makhoul confessed to having met a Hizbullah operative during a trip to Denmark in 2008. During the meeting, Makhoul agreed to become an agent for Hizbullah in Israel and to begin collecting what was described as “strategic intelligence” on Israeli security services.

He later received an encryption system so he could transfer the information by computer to Hizbullah.

Per request of his Hizbullah handlers, Makhoul, the Shin Bet said, transferred names and details of additional men and women throughout Israel who he believed could also serve as spies for Hizbullah.

Makhoul received a list of topics that he was asked to collect intelligence on. During his period of operations, Makhoul allegedly transferred details and the exact location on two Shin Bet facilities in the North, including the security arrangements surrounding them, reporting on security arrangements at Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin’s house as well. He also provided Hizbullah with details about the Rafael defense industry facility in the North as well as a Mossad office located in northern Israel.

He was also asked by Hizbullah to collect information on the security surrounding the convoys of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, although, according to a senior security official, he did not succeed.

Hizbullah also tried to use Makhoul to gather accurate information on the effect its rocket attacks against Israel had during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. The group was mostly interested in the targets that were hit by the statistical Katyusha rockets of which it fired some 4,000 into Israel during the month-long war.

This was done as part of Hizbullah efforts to more effectively utilize its rockets in a future war.

During his interrogation, Makhoul said that the connection with the Hizbullah operative was made by Hassan Jaja, a Lebanese businessman who lives in Jordan and who he has been in touch with for a number of years. In 2008, Makhoul accepted Jaja’s proposal to meet with the Hizbullah operative in Denmark.

Makhoul said that he took extra precaution after a number of other Hizbullah agents were captured in Israel

If Makhoul met with a Hezbollah operative in Denmark, that country’s intelligence services should know about it. I’d much prefer hearing what they have to say about such a meeting, if it occurred.  Further, the “senior Shin Bet official” himself conceded that a good deal of the supposedly secret information Makhoul collected for Hezbollah “could be delivered by anyone with a pair of eyes and Google Earth.”  So what do they have?  Evidence that Makhoul or someone in his family using Google Earth on his computer looked up a location in Israel that might have some security significance.  Or might have passed such a location on the road once.

As for the “highly incriminating” information about top-secret espionage equipment, let’s hear from Israeli journalist Dimi Reider in his blog today:

It strikes me there’s a familiar feature running through the indictments of Rawi Soltani (a Balad activist who got 5 1/2 years for bragging to a “Hezbollah recruiter” [that] he worked out in the same gym as the Chief of Staff), Omar Said and Ameer Mahoul. All three are Palestinian Israeli activists, which means most tourists visiting Israel would have better access to state secrets than they do. Nevertheless…they are all approached by a “Hezbollah agent” who installs or tries to install an “encoding program” on their laptops. The laptops are then seized several months later.

Is it me, or could a set-up have been started a lot earlier than the “investigation” by the GSS?…Planting evidence on political activists – physical, forensic, digital or otherwise- is a secret police trick hundreds of years old, if not older; and the fact the Shin Bet already said it intends to subvert political activity and activists [who are] in favor of a less exclusivist “Jewish” Israel.

So to sum up, this sounds like an open and shut case. The evidence is overwhelming. The suspects have betrayed the State, their homeland. They are guilty. Guilty as sin. No doubt about it.

But let’s take a step back. What have the authorities proven? That they can tell a good story. Let us see evidence. And I don’t mean the kind of “evidence” secret police habitually offer in such cases. I mean real evidence. Evidence that could not have been tampered with. Evidence that proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

I would place the likelihood of these two individuals being guilty of the crimes they’re charged with as being infinitesimal. It’s very important to note that Yuval Diskin publicly told Haaretz in 2007 that he would use EVERY MEANS AT HIS DISPOSAL to destroy the Arab nationalist movement in Israel. Every means. Not every legal means. Every means. And that is what he’s done here. These are the Israeli equivalent of Malcolm X’s ugly chickens coming home to roost. I have no doubt of it.

Returning to Israel’s yellow journalism in this case, it is the height of journalistic irresponsibility to refuse to carry any current statement from the accused in the face of such charges. Instead, Khoury makes do with this bit of rhetorical imprecision to describe the gag placed on the defense:

The sensitivity of the case has prevented the suspect’s lawyers, Hussein Abu Hasin…Hasan Jabareen and Orna Kohn of the civil rights NGO Adalah, from commenting on the matter in closed forums due to strict confidentiality limitations imposed by the courts.

NO, the “sensitivity of the case” hasn’t prevented the lawyers from speaking. It is the goons of the secret police and their accomplices in the judiciary who have taped their mouths shut. Let’s tell it like it is and not sugar coat things as Khoury does. The defense is gagged. They cannot defend their client properly either in court or in the court of public opinion. Not to mention Makhoul was subjected to conditions and treatment illegal even under Israeli Supreme Court rulings, let alone international law.  This is a travesty. This is not democracy. This is what we expect in Iran or North Korea, not (or at least many of don’t) Israel.

As conservative an Israeli columnist as Matti Golan in the finance-economics internet portal, Globes, points out that what Makhoul is charged with is something that virtually any good journalist does regularly:

If all of these are considered crimes, we’d have to bring all the Israeli media to justice.

A final note on Omar Said’s indictment. Even the Shin Bet admits that when Said was alleged recruited to spy he refused to do so. So the Shin Bet is making do with criminalizing a meeting at which an Israeli citizen refused to betray his country. Yes, there is a claim that Said offered the names of others who might spy in his place, but as none of us were there, the Shin Bet can characterize a conversation any way it wishes. I’d like to hear the video or audiotape which the Shin Bet undoubtedly has of the occasion before accepting the secret police version.

Further, the Shin Bet alleges the meeting occured in August 2008!  Why did it take nearly two years to charge Said with a crime when even the spooks confirm that he took no further action after the meeting that would lead them to believe he was willing to spy for Hezbollah?

Read the Hebrew indictments for Omar Said and Ameer Makhoul and the English indictments for Omar Said and Ameer Makhoul.