One thing you have to say about Israeli torturers, you can’t keep a good one down. I reported here some time ago about one Doron Zahavi aka Captain George, an infamous commander of the IDF intelligence unit 504. Until my report, his real name was secret and no publication has reported it. I was delighted to bring his brutal acts into the public light and attach a real name to the torturer. Zahavi and his boys specialized in “interrogating” (i.e. torturing) foreign security suspects captured by the IDF abroad.
One of them was Mustafa Dirani, who Israel suspected of having held the MIA airman, Ron Arad. Zahavi subjected Dirani to the “royal treatment” which included sodomizing him with a billy club. We know this because Dirani sued the State and is attempting to hold it accountable for what its represenative did to him. One of the reasons Dirani exposed methods of torture used by Unit 504 is that the Supreme Court forced the State to allow him to proceed with his claims against it. In the process, Zahavi’s commander, a colonel whose first initial is Het, had a bout of conscience and spilled the beans. Here are some of the Zahavi’s patented methods (in Hebrew):
Het said Captain George played a role in every interrogation. “He would just come in, burst into the room, grab the suspect, shake him, get him onto the floor, punch him in the chest, yell and threaten,” Het said. Het added that George would enter with a baton, hit the suspect and threaten to insert it into his rectum if he “continued to lie or not talk.” Het also recounted an interrogation in which George allegedly stripped a suspect naked and forced him to drink tea or coffee from an ashtray full of cigarette ashes and then forced shaving cream or toothpaste into the suspect’s mouth. “I simply walked out,” Het said. Het said George dealt with almost every case involving an infiltrator into Israel from a neighboring country, including Iran, Iraq and Syria, but also in special circumstances such as the interrogation of Dirani. Het recalled an instance in which he inserted a baton into a suspect’s rectum and asked him [Het] to sit on the baton unless the suspect was willing to speak.
The Hebrew version is even more graphic. It describes further brutality by Zahavi:
He always employed brutality. I was shocked. I would sit in the room and watch [shocked]. He would come into the interrogation room, knock the detainee off the bench, jump on him, kick him, threaten that he would fuck him, or that others would fuck him and rape him. The detainees were afraid of him.
Het said that the reason Zahavi was never charged with any violation was that his superiors didn’t want to deal with investigations or committees of inquiry:
When you have dirty laundry you don’t want to wash it outside because everyone [in the unit] could be hurt by it. That’s why everyone tried to close it internally, within the family and not to take it outside.
Het continued that though everyone knew that Zahavi had gone “bad,” no one wanted to deal with it because he got results:
It didn’t matter that those results might do a grave injustice to some of the detainees because results were obtained under threat or torture. Maybe the suspect was even completely clean and had no connection whatever to the incident being investigated.
Note that Het exposes precisely the problem with CIA waterboarding and other forms of torture: you extract information from the victim, but is it good information or stuff he made up to stop the suffering? The reason this story has come back into the news is that the State has now warned Het that he may be subject to criminal prosecution for his previous testimony. On the face of it, they may be charging him with some of the crimes he admitted to participating in under Zahavi’s command. Of course, though the IDF fired Zahavi after this nastiness was exposed, it never prosecuted him.
This allowed him to rise to his level of brutality in another capacity: the Israeli police hired him to be the “liaison” with the East Jerusalem Palestinian population. Don’t you dare think of community policing when you think of what this guy does. He yells and screams at Silwan community activists and threatens them unless they offer intelligence or become spies. This is how the Zahavis of the world operate. So in this best of all possible world for torturers called Israel, Doron Zahavi lands on his feet in a cushy new job while Het, the soldier with a conscience, may end up in jail. The reason? You don’t wash the IDF’s laundry in public. If you do, they’ll come after you too. “Vengeance is mine,” saith the IDF.
Though the army closed Unit 504 after Dirani’s expose caused great embarrassment, a few months ago it brought the unit back apparently by popular demand. Now that the CIA has cut down on water boarding and other forms of torture I guess there’s high demand for the services of animals like Zahavi.
Zahavi is suing the IDF for wrongful termination. He claims that his superior officers knew everything he did and approved it. He’s likely correct and figures that they’ll settle with him rather than drag guys who may even now be cabinet ministers of members of the senior IDF command into court. Those officers may even be pressuring the State not to fight Zahavi and to prosecute Het, the source of their woes to their mind.
After reading your post about Doron Zahavi it reminded me of the IDF torturer in the film ‘Incendies’ .
These bastards leave a stain on that 1/2 acre of Zionist hell that cannot even be bleached out. Wish him good-bye and good riddence – and may he and Ariel Sharon ‘share a bunk’ for all eternity.
RE: “Captain George (aka Doron Zahavi) Rides Again”
MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT: Rawhide – TV – opening – ending (VIDEO, 02:27) — link to youtube.com
P.S. CORRECTION: I’m sorry, but that “Rawhide – TV – opening – ending” appears to have been recently removed.
HERE’S ANOTHER: Frankie Laine: Rawhide [VIDEO, 02:02] – link to youtube.com
1. Dirani didn’t win his law suit against the state of Israel.
The Israeli Supreme court ruled in 2011 that even though Dirani was an enemy he can sue the state.
2. I Suggest you’ll see the UNTHINKABLE with Samuel L. Jackson
3. link to mako.co.il
This link shows tapes from Dirani’s interrogation in unit 504. it shows’ the humiliation Dirani Experience (being naked infront of the interrogators) and threatened that his nude pictures will be sent to his wife.
The commander of unit 504 threatened Dirani, that if he will not cooperate they will shove a billy in his ass.
With all the respect, Dirani drove for days with Ron Arad (by own admission) in the trunk of his car. Dirani sold Ron Arad (by own admission) to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Applying emotional pressure on Dirani, doesn’t even compare.
You would confess to carrying Arad in your car if you were raped & sodomized as Dirani was. No one knows whether anything Dirani or any other prisoner they tortured contained valid information. That’s the problem with torture.
Allegedly Sodomized and Raped, you mean.
I know you think Driani won a law suite and you are basing your post on that fact, as you wrote it yourself, but he never did.
As for Diran’s involvement with Arad, read Ronen Bergman.
I believe Het’s testimony on the matter & on that basis Zahavi is a rapist-sodomist. I know Dirani didn’t win his case (yet). But I think Zahavi is crooked as a bent stick.
The Mako reporter received the tapes from the interrogation and watched all of it. If there was a rape they would have exposed it, the fact that they didn’t = you are wrong in your allegations.
YOu have no idea what tapes the reporter watched and whether there were tapes even made of a rape. Do you think Aman officers would allow themselves to be filmed doing such a thing? You are incredibly naive or an apologist for Israeli intelligence or both.
Yehh those interrogation’s are being filmed, The entire thing.
Many people are watching it after.
No one raped Dirani, and the fact that you continue arguing on behlaf of one who joined Hezbollah upon his return to Lebanon despite signing an agreement he will not do so, is a bit strange.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. It would be as easy as pie for the interrogator or other Aman officer to turn the tape off. And even if they didn’t there’s no reason to believe that Het would’ve been able to provide the tapes to a reporter since he didn’t yet supervise Zahavi when he attacked Dirani.
You’re done on this subject because you’re repeating yrself, which is a comment rule no-no. Write again on this & you’re gone.
My God, you think that after Zahavi raped this guy that Dirani owes Israel anything on releasing him? You’re delusional.
once you revealed his identity its only a matter of time b4 the muslim ayrabs will kill him – then his family will sue you for damages
I’ve been exposing the identity of killers, torturers & rapists here for some time. None have been harmed and few, even, have been prosecuted for their actions. Gimme a break.
I’m wondering how come you missed the headline, It’s bold and in big font.
“IDF officer retracted allegations of torture upon facing criminal charges, Haaretz learns”
The officer is the one who accused Capt. Gorge of all the wrongdoing. He was found to be lying.
Of course, you can chose to continue to believe Dirani.
Once again, you’ve completely missed the nuance. Het was not lying as you mendaciously claim. He retracted the claim because the State threatened to prosecute him. It did so because if his claims stand the State will appear to be excusing torture (which of course it IS). He insisted the lawyer tape record his confession precisely in case he felt compelled to retract it later as he indeed did. The State is looking for a way NOT to investigate or prosecute Zahavi because it knows that his superiors approved of the torture & it would have to prosecute them as well.
You’re excusing torture which tells us a lot about you.
Worthy of legal condemnation as they are, Israel’s Captain Georges are not the problem. It’s the unavoidable need to suppress Palestinian resistance to Israeli continuous unashamed robbery of their human rights and property that creates them in the first place. If there weren’t this sadistic individual to commit these horrors, they’d employ ten others to commit them bit by bit.
In legally persecuting the whistleblower rather than the criminal perpetrator, Israel’s in a pretty good company.
Private Bradley Manning, a true American hero of truth, is court-martialed these days for spilling the bloody beans. Plenty of them. While he was lately allowed, most humanely, to resume wearing his undies overnight, none of the war crimes he’s exposed will likely bring a perpetrator to criminal justice.