Police arrest fourth suspect in case of espionage against Israel
blares a Haaretz headline about the arrest of an Druze mother living in the Golan, whose son had earlier been arrested as part of the same alleged spy conspiracy:
Israeli authorities arrested a fourth suspect on Monday as part of an investigation into suspected espionage against Israel…Mona Sha’ar was arrested on Monday in the northern Druze village of Majdal Shams for allegedly committing crimes against the security of Israel.
….Her son, Fada Sha’ar, was the first in this case to be arrested several weeks prior for alleged espionage and committing crimes against Israeli security. Her husband was also been arrested in connection to the case.
…According to the attorney, the first suspect’s father was detained for questioning following his son’s arrest, and released several hours later.
Police arrested a Mahmoud Masarwah of Baka al-Garbiyeh earlier in the month over suspicion of espionage and contact with a foreign agent.His attorney, Jalal Abu-Vassal, said that he could not comment on the suspicions against his client because he had not been allowed to meet with the suspect and has no knowledge of the alleged crimes.
Masarwah is a well know political activist who has been active over recent years on behalf of political prisoners held in Israel. He has been arrested in the past and has spent some time in prison.
There are two serious problems with this article journalistically. First is the headline, which presumes the guilt of the suspects before they’ve even been indicted, let alone tried. Yes, the rest of the article uses words like “alleged” and “suspected,” but really why are these terms any better? Of what are they suspected? Jack Khoury doesn’t know. Not even one of the victim’s lawyers knows, as is proven by the penultimate paragraph. So let me ask a serious rhetorical question: why does the Israeli media even have the right to allege anything about the nature of these so-called crimes? They’ve been told the little they do know about the Shin Bet, whose record in these matters is less than stellar.
And even if you do wish to use terms like “alleged” connected to the accusations, why not admit in the body of the article that neither the reporter nor anyone who should, knows anything about the nature of the crime, evidence, etc. Why not say “The intelligence services refused to provide any detail to support their claim concerning the charges.” If you don’t do something like this then you’re buying into the Shin Bet’s narrative of Israeli Palestinian perfidy.
I’ll tell you what’s far more likely than the cockamamie story the Shin Bet dreamed up in this case which would explain why a father and mother were both arrested. How likely is it that a young man would enlist both his parents to commit espionage? I’d say it’s so unlikely as to be able to rule it out as being even remotely credible. What really happened here, and this is a commonly exploited tactic by the Shabak, is that the secret police are exerting pressure on the man through his parents. They presume that by shaming the parents with arrest and the concomitant abuse they will undergo as security detainees in an Israeli prison, that this will make the victim more amenable to whatever plan they have concocted for him.
It’s also highly likely that Fada Sha’ar is in jail for perfectly legal nationalist political activity which the Shin Bet opposes. The spying charge is a convenient smear tactic used religiously in Israel as in similar cases against Ameer Makhoul, Omar Said and many others.
Arresting his mother is not that far removed from what the FBI did in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case. They knew Ethel was guilty of nothing but felt that Julius’ loyalty to her might make him more cooperative. Little did they bargain for the fortitude of two committed American Jewish Communists. The strategy backfired. I only hope that Fada Sha’ar can stay as strong as Julius Rosenberg did (not that I’m acknowledging guilt on Sha’ar’s part).
im a bit confused at your outrage
calling someone a suspect in a crime does not assume guilt
The headline doesn’t use the term “suspect” or “alleged” as I noted in my post. But even using those terms when we don’t know the evidence or anything about what happened is giving the Shin Bet far too much credence.
Police arrest fourth suspect in case of espionage against Israel
as i read that headline, it means to me that a person suspected of espionage has been arrested
i see nothing in that headline or in the body of the article (that you have posted) that presumes guilt
The headline states affirmatively that there is a case of espionage. Which couldn’t be farther fr the truth. There is no case of espionage unless the prosecution proves that there is–& it hasn’t. Plain & simple.
No. There is a case of espionage which begun already and which will eventually end in either a conviction or acquittal. But the case is ongoing, and Haaretz correctly states that a new suspect was arrested in this case. And why would you assume that the allegations involve the son enlisting his parents in the espionage as opposed to the other way around. We don’t know that yet, but either way I don’t find it unlikely at all that it is a family affair.
YOu haven’t a clue about how the law or journalism works. In all democratic countries, the press reports on a legal prosecution based on actual evidence & proof offered. It doesn’t accept the state’s claims absent all infortion except the vague claims of the state. So there is a state claim that this is an espionage claim. A claim. No proof. No evidence. At least none that the press can see. And the defense isn’t allowed to know the charges or evidence against their client. In any other democratic country this would raise all sorts of red flags. Not for you though.
The son and the other victim are political activists. That’s why they were arrested.
Of course you don’t. And if you were a spy you would enlist both your dad & mom in yr scheme as well so that they could share a life in prison with you. C’mon. Don’t be ridiculous.
In a prior post you accused a commentator of ignorance for conflating Moslem with Arab. Well several times you refer to this women as a Palestinian. So how ignorant are you? She’s a Druze from Majdal Shams. If anything she’s Syrian, not Palestinian.
That was a mistake as I didn’t realize Majdal Shams was in the Golan. I corrected the error before you published this comment. I do make mistakes. But I acknowledge & correct them, which is more than I can say for Zvi, who made the error to which you refer. And I also don’t claim to be an expert in the Druze ethnic minority or Golan as Zvi does concerning Islam.
Declared guilty before their trial?
Have any of these people worked for BP?
PS:
Richard: One of the Likudites has attacked David Cameron for describing Gaza as a prison camp, claiming it is “double standards” to be fighting the Taliban and criticising Israel for the way it’s handling the Gaza strip.
This presupposes two things: that Hamas and the Taliban are the same sort of thing, and that British forces in Afghanistan are behaving like Israeli forces in Gaza and elsewhere.
Hamas have not, to my knowledge, sent armed men to apprehend and pour battery acid onto the faces of little girls for daring to go to school, nor has Hamas ever shot or flogged anyone for listening to pop music on a cassette tape machine.
With the sole exception of Heroin, It is not British policy to blockade Afghanistan and prevent the movement of goods, essential or otherwise. The British army actually measures its success in terms of how many markets are open, how many people come, whether or not they can buy and sell all that they want to do. Not even the Americans are working at cross purposes with British forces when it comes to enabling Afghans to trade with each other and the outside world!
And if Hamas ever developed the same intensity of operations, the same ruthlessness, skill and, yes, the same bravery as the Taliban, it would be very interesting indeed to see how long the self-vaunting IDF lasted.
“nor has Hamas ever shot or flogged anyone for listening to pop music on a cassette tape machine”
unless the commentary in this vid is wrong….they have indeed done what you say they havent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1M4eH9Kk7I&feature=PlayList&p=68B88E3A520DD616&playnext=1&index=13
they have also burnt down un summer camps
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100628/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_gaza_summer_camps
and have banned women from smoking in public
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38296242/
maybe they are closer to the taliban than you suppose
What lunacy. You’re making the claim w. a straight face that Hamas=Taliban. That displays for all to see yr lack of credibility. “Hamas” hasn’t banned women from smoking. A division of its morality police have made such a pronouncement which isn’t being enforced as far as I’ve heard. You know, quoting fr. Jerusalem Post reports & the like doesn’t give you an accurate picture of Gaza or Hamas. And again, “Hamas” did not burn down any summer camp. In fact, Hamas (without quotation marks–in other words the REAL Hamas) denounced this act of vandalism perpetrated by some Islamist cretins.
One thing that will happen after NATO withdraws from Afghanistan, is that Taliban fighters at a loose end and with no marketable civilian skills, will do what various IRA bomb-makers did, and look for other conflicts where they might be paid to take part.
So Hamas might get an influx of Taliban, just as the Bosnian army received an influx of the Taliban’s predecessors -and FARC benefited from IRA inventiveness in the matter of blast incendiaries and explosive blackmail collars. (If you don’t know about blackmail collars, then you’re probably happier not knowing.)
The best way to avoid this might be to reach some kind of settlement with the Palestinians BEFORE thousands of Taliban become migrant terrorists.
Hamas are not the Taliban. Yet. But if the Palestinians have a choice between hiring the Taliban, becoming like the Taliban themselves, or being slowly pushed and blockaded to extinction, they will probably do what they have to do to survive.
Israel’s policies don’t resemble Hitler’s, but they DO begin to resemble what Lubendorf did in Belgium and Occupied France back when Hitler was still an impressionable young corporal. (There was a fence the length of the Dutch-Belgium border to stop anyone escaping.)
The key difference between British policy and that of Israel, is that the British army is striving to secure commerce so that Afghans can improve their own situation. This can work, and in Sierra Leone it did work. (Local militias had made it impossible to even grow vegetables let alone trade. Of course, there was no need for a five-year political struggle with a neo-con madman in the Pentagon before a sensible policy was initiated in Sierra Leone.)
Blockades are a form of warfare: they should not be seen as anything less. Indeed, this is why I’d oppose economic sanctions against Israel, because by any 19th or early 20th century reading of international law, these would have qualified as acts of war. But by the same token, the Gaza blockade is warfare.