31 thoughts on “Here We Go Again, Another Day Another Gag: Shabak Holds Israeli Palestinian Incommunicado on Espionage Charges – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. Great piece, Richard. Thank you for reminding everyone that despite the great victory won by Egypt, the battle to end the occupation of Palestine continues.

  2. This morning I had an argument with someone on Twitter whose point was that Israel is a democratic country because her parents spent time in gulags due to attempting to change the Soviet regime.

    This post marks a pretty good proof of the point that I made in that argument.

      1. I guess you know why there are no suicide bombs in israel.
        And yes also a 16 year old can be ticking bomb and there where cases like this here and all over the world.

        1. Avi, in a genuine democratic country a person is arrested only if there is evidence to support their arrest (a genuine criminal charge). They aren’t snatched in the middle of the night without a reason being given. They aren’t denied access to lawyers. And they aren’t tortured.

          “Maybe the police have got a special security reason for what they do, a reason that the rest of us mustn’t know about.” This is an excuse that shares a lot in common with the old fable ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, and it’s the reason why abuses such as torture and detention without trial are so rampant in Israeli prisons.

          As for why the suicide bombings have ceased, I’m interested to know what your explanation is. It had better not involve the wall, which is porous. Hundreds of Palestinians cross it illegally every day in order to work in Israel. If they were inclined to set off bombs, they could do so. It’s also important to remember that the first suicide bombing took place in 1994. Arrest without charge or trial was happening for decades before that – in fact, before any form of Palestinian terrorism had surfaced. So the ‘but these arrests are essential to prevent terrorism’ argument just won’t wash.

          Anybody who is tempted to believe that the Shabak’s actions are justified by security concerns should think about what sort of twisted ‘security’ they are actually getting here. Safety that is contingent on secret arrests, administrative detention, and torture isn’t safety at all.

          1. Well from our point of view in the current events.
            all that must be done must be done, if my childr’n maybe in danger .
            I work with muslims I’m a photographer and do wedding and events and shoot at all kind of events jew & muslim & druz
            any one how wants to live in peace here in israel without turning on us and helping the enemy is welcome

          2. Avi, you don’t even know who your enemy is. That is what is so sad. You’re caught in a mindset which believes that Israel is under constant threat from the “neighbors,” yet do you realize that most of Israel’s problems are of its own making?

            Get back behind the armistice line, give back what you stole in 1967, and maybe you’ll be a little safer. And while you’re at it, become a truly democratic country and allow Arabs to enjoy the same rights as Jews.

          3. Vicky:

            Wrong on a few facts here:

            The first suicide bombing was in 1993 not 1994.

            Palestinian terrorism started decades before 1994 (not as you claim) – there were terrorist attacks on both sides since the 1920s, and post 1948 the Fedayun continued their terrorism.
            The PLO was founded in 1965 and there were countless terrorist attacks since them both in Israel and abroad by Palestinians and those working on their behalf.
            Palestinian terror has no direct link to any significant historical date such as 1948, 1967, etc but was and is ongoing.

          4. Shmuel,

            I thought the first suicide attack took place on 16th April 1994, but you’re right – it was a year earlier. However, that doesn’t detract from my main point: suicide bombing is a recent phenomenon in this conflict, and one that has now ceased (hopefully permanently). Abuses of the sort described in this blog entry are not recent – they have been occurring since the establishment of the State of Israel. It is not possible for Avi to claim that they are the result of suicide bombing – and even if they were, how do indefinite detention without charge and depriving someone access to a lawyer contribute to national security?

            As for the history of terrorism, I would be extremely cautious about grouping together the haphazard attacks on the civilians of the yishuv with the organised terror that was epitomised by the years of the Second Intifada. The two are qualitatively different things. During the Mandate years, there was no central Palestinian leadership and nothing resembling one. There was no military or paramilitary apparatus of the sort that was later afforded by the PLO. The one thing that attacks on the yishuv’s civilians and the terrorism of the Intifada years share in common is that both were reactive – the first a reaction to inequality and the threat of dispossession, the second a reaction to decades of actual dispossession itself. Of course this doesn’t make it right. But it does undermine arguments of the sort put forward by Avi. Without the dispossession and the ethnic cleansing, there would have been no terrorism; and the way to protect people from future terrorism is not to maintain the very conditions that gave birth to it in the first place.

          5. I remember reading in a former edition of a Begin-autobiography (‘The Revolt’, I think) a short quote saying something like ‘ A people who’s fighting for their national rights and against foreign oppression can never be called terrorists’. He was of course mentionning the Jewish “national struggle” against British colonialism, but I didn’t find the quote recently when I was looking for it. It has maybe been ‘disappeared’ as Ben Gourion’s approval of the Lydda expulsions, described in Rabin’s autobiography, and later censored.

  3. mary please tell me where do you live in the world ?
    I guess you think also egypt problems are because of israel ?
    jurdan, siria, iran, tunis all becasue of israel sure.

    1. Yes, Avi, Israel is the cause of all the problems in Egypt and most of the other countries you mention. You’re probably less than 3o yrs old, but you should know that it was the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt that made Egypt a client state of the US and allowed Mubarak to amass his billions at the expense of his people. I could give you the reasons for the other countries, too. Yes, “all becasue of israel sure”(sic).

      Mary obviously lives in the world. You apparently don’t.

      1. Well gene I just can feel happy for you that you don’t live here in this area and for sure its a shame that you think israel is the problem for the Arab world problems.
        Just Continu to live in peace in your country and let us deal with our problems.
        and for sure all the bombs in Europe are also our falt sorry for that to.

        1. Ah, Avi, if it were only that simple. Unfortunately, it is we outside Israel who have to pay for the problems you create.

          I suggest you read Kathleen Christison’s article today at http://www.counterpunch.org. Perhaps it will help you to understand what I mean.

          I haven’t noticed any bombs in Europe lately, so, no, I can’t fault you for that.

        2. I live in the West Bank, in Bethlehem. I work with a charity here, and every day I see the price that the Palestinians pay for this supposed ‘security’ – the bad living conditions, the trauma-related illness, the lack of freedom, the stripping of dignity.

          It doesn’t make you any more secure. It just makes millions of people suffer needlessly.

      2. So it is Israel’s fault for all the dictatorships around?
        Israel is at fault that the illiteracy rate in Egypt today is about 25%? It was much higher before Egypt become a “client state”.
        Israel is responsible for the state of women’s rights in Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen etc.? Half of the potential work force is barely allowed to go out of their home and its Israel’s fault?
        What about any other minorities rights in these countries? Everything bad over there is rooted by the existence in the existence of Israel?
        This doesn’t sound very intelligent to me.

        1. No, of course not, Israel is not responsible for backward cultures in the Arab world, the Arabs themselves are, the lack of democracy and freedom is actually a reason for Arab weakness, but now, hallelujah, the Arabs are doing something about it!

          Israel is, however, responsible for expelling a large part of the Palestinian population from their land and keepìng millions under the military boot with no civil rights over the courts and soldiers who rule them, and also for keeping Palestinians locked up in refugee camps and behind barbed wire. Want to stop the Hamas rockets raining on children in Sderot? Very well, the tear down the wall and prison watch towers, let the children of Gaza go home, let them play with their Jewish peers on the playgrounds of Sderot.

    2. @ Avi)
      You must be a new right-wing Israeli propagandist. Always the same procedure. You start by the normal Hasbara: you want peace, everybody is welcome to live with you, you work with Arabs – you just forgot to tell us HOW MUUUCH you love them.
      And when Mary gives you a very good reply, you start out by asking her where she lives and acuse her of thinking Israel is the origin of all evil in the world. You’re neither the first nor the last following exactly the same procedure.
      Fortunately one of your compatriots recently explained to us how some Israelis perceive the rest of the world through the myth of Amalek. You really exemplify that pathology perfectly. And on your first day around. ‘mabrûk aleik’.

      @ Shmuel. Thanks, you made me understand a certain Israeli paranoîa that I never managed to theorize. If you have other myths that’ll give us an anthropological understanding of that ‘bunker-mentality’.

      1. Yassin all of us have our crazy people .
        I’m not Religious I just know where I live and its not Switzerland and I also know how is my enemy this days thank you very much.
        I will continue to think what I think and you what you think
        and we just can sit and look what happens in the middle east.
        have a great day.

      2. Deir Yassin:

        I see that even when I don’t write on this thread I’m still wrong in your eyes!

        So who’s in the bunker now? :>)

        1. @ Shmuel)
          I’m sorry. Maybe I didn’t express myself clearly. I was in fact thanking you for making me understand the Amalek-metaphore that you explained to us on a prior file, and that Avi is exemplifying here. You explained that Amalek was attacking the Jews for no other reason than being Jews, and that it symbolizes a certain Israeli attitude towards the world.
          fahimta ? 😉

    3. I think Egypt and most of the Arab world’s problems are largely the fault of the US and Israel, absolutely I do.

      The US and Israel support dictatorships while mouthing platitudes about democracy. They pour money into the pockets of dictatorships. Any idea of how Mubarak became possibly the world’s richest man?

      Dictatorships can be bribed and controlled. Democracies cannot. When western hegemony ends in the middle east, there will be peace.

      1. Most of the human rights problems are created by the countries themselfs. “No they made me do it” dont work very well. When a politician or a private person commits a crime against its own population you can to always a toss a scapegoat but it aint gonna change the fact that you committed a crime.

        Mubarak being richest man alive. Yes I heard rumors that he is twice as is rich as bill gates. I seriously doubt it 🙂 billionaire propably, worlds richest, fairy tales.

        All of talk that Israel controls US through Aipac, US controls somehow Europe, ergo Israel and Aipac controls both. so you don’t believe that democracies can’t be controlled or is Aipac controlling western foreign policy, which is it?

      2. Sure, the US and Israel support China, Burma, North Korea, Lybia, Saudia, Iran, Afganistan, Syria, Venezuela and many other dictatorships.

        Mary, are we living on the same planet or did I miss Aipac lobbying for all these countries?

          1. If the freedom of the press is your primary concern, you should have mentioned Colombia ranking 145 instead of Venezuela ranking 133. I wonder why you didn’t ….
            maybe you were applying the good old Reagan-distinction between authoritarian (i.e. pro-American) and dictatorial (i.e. anti-American) regimes ?
            Take a look at Israel’s ranking: no. 86 just before the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. And extra-territorial Israel is ranked 132, just before Venezuela ! Palestine is ranked no 150.
            http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2010,1034.html

            I see you’re concerned about human rights in Venezuela. That’s fine, but why look that far, it’s just in front of you:
            http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/12/18/israelwest-bank-separate-and-unequal

          2. Deir Yassin, Chavez may still have majority support, but it is not democracy when opposition figures are sent to prison, when local governments of the opposition are deprived of all powers and resources, or when the parliament is suspended in favour of rule by decree. That is DICTATORSHIP, dear Deir Yassin, and the Venezuelans are beginning to regret it, though it may be too late.

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