Tonight, Diane wrote about a particularly nasty 2003 incident first reported in the New York Times, in which Israeli Border Police picked a 17 year-old Hebron boy at random, threw him in the back of their jeep, drove him to the town’s deserted industrial zone and beat him up along the way. An officer in the front seat filmed a trophy video of the beating while his colleagues in the back seat did the deed. When they tired of the beating they physically threw him from the speeding jeep. The boy died when his head hit the ground with the jeep traveling roughly 40-50 mph.

The reason Diane wrote about this story is that this month one of the four perpetrators was convicted of the killing (his three colleagues remain on trial). But after reading the defense lawyer’s claim that these men were only acting according to standards set for them by the Border Police itself, she began to realize that a litany of similar prosecutions against other Border Police personnel for similar abuse proved the lawyer correct. In other words, both the Border Police–perhaps explicitly–and Israeli society tacitly want their police to terrorize the Palestinian population treating it in a brutish, bestial manner. So why prosecute individual officers for doing what they were taught to do?

I’m not sure whether Diane believes the four policemen should be set free. But she certainly does want to focus attention on the institution of the police itself and its history of sadistic treatment of Palestinians.

Among her litany of similar cases was this one. It’s the one that broke my heart.
B’Tselem reports that Nazih Salah ‘Awad Damiri, a 24-year old Palestinian shepherd living near Tulkarem came upon Israeli Border policemen while moving his flock through a fence. After they detained him and forced him to humiliate himself in their presence, the officers had far worse in store:

Then he told me to ride to the nearby grove. I asked him about my ID card. He told me that we hadn’t finished, and that he would be behind me. He and the other policeman followed me in the jeep. When we reached the grove, he tied the donkey to a tree and told me to fuck it. He repeated his demand a couple of times. He also told me to lift up the tail of the donkey and tie it around my head. I told him that the tail was too short, and that I wasn’t able to do it. He stood facing me and aimed his weapon at me. The other policeman was in the jeep, watching what was going on.

I stood behind the donkey, took out my penis, and told him “enough.” He said, “I’ll tell you when it is enough.” I was frightened to death, and I couldn’t get an erection, so I couldn’t do anything. He made me continue, and I pretended that I was doing what he wanted me to do. I tried to look over at them, but the policeman yelled at me and told me not to look, and that if I did, he would shoot me. This went on for about thirty minutes, before he told me to stop. He tightened the saddle on my back and gave me back my ID card. Then he told me, “Ride over to the flock, fuck them, and I’ll chase you.” I rode away, the saddle still on me, and he watched me go. After I got some distance away from them, I untied the saddle and walked over to my brother, who was on the land west of the fence, and told him what happened.

I post these stories not to single the Israeli side out for special opprobrium. I make clear regularly when I write about this conflict that there is degradation, brutality and humiliation on both sides. Perhaps the Israelis have more power and opportunity to inflict a greater share on the Palestinians, but that doesn’t mean the latter get off scot free either. For what is Palestinian suicide bombing other than the utmost torture? It’s the Occupation, stupid. It destroys humanity for both Israelis and Palestinians. And we can expect such bestial behavior to continue till there is a breakthrough for peace.

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‘Equal justice for some’ (cartoon: Ann Telnaes/CWS-NYTS)

Slate features a Washington Post article noting that senators have come up with a compromise that will restore to enemy combatants the right to appeal their sentences to U.S. courts. After voting 49-42 for an amendment by Senator Lindsay Graham that would’ve denied them access to U.S. courts, a few of those on the winning side must’ve come to their senses and realized what a constitutional monster they’d created. Because Sen. Carl Levin has crafted a compromise that would essentially eviscerate Graham’s provision:

Levin’s language would grant any detainee sentenced to death or at least 10 years of prison by a military trial an automatic appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The court would review guilt or innocence and could also determine the constitutionality of the entire process case by case, Graham said. Those sentenced to less than 10 years could petition the appeals court for review.

What I don’t like about the Levin proposal is that it in effect endorses the Bush Administration concept of military tribunals as the means by which such detainees will be tried for their alleged crimes. I don’t believe that the Congress has ever weighed in on this subject and I wish they’d left it for the Supreme Court to rule on this matter as they’d signaled they were inclined to do in recent cases.

But one good thing about the Levin proposal is that it is tied to John McCain’s bill banning use of torture by the U.S. against enemy combatants so that the two may not be unbound when considered by a House-Senate conference committee. Dick “Mr. Torture” Cheney has been lobbying Republican House leaders to get rid of the McCain provision. Even conservative Republicans in the Senate are signaling that this a “no deal” item which they won’t drop.

Keep the heat on these senators by visiting the Center for Constitutional Rights website to send letters to the “swing votes” on this proposal.

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