30 thoughts on “Shabak Torture Drives Israeli Palestinian Lawyer to Suicide – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. RS: Your problem is that you lack imagination. You are too down to earth. Put your feet up (in the clouds) a little.

    Israel has always prided itself on its inventiveness, and what could be more inventive than a so-called “security service” composed of goons who can say what they like, never have to present evidence to be checked in a adversary legal system, etc., blah blah!

    So these guys who all had thwarted literary careers got into goonishkeit and became “auteurs” of improbably stories, with a prize given each year (in a secret ceremony, of course) for the most far fetched story that the Israeli news media would swallow.

    And the Israeli media, for its part, has a prize (also secretly given, but for another reason) for the reported who has shown the greatest ability to swallow these goonish “security services” stories. The losers just spit out the stupidest stories.

  2. His name is Amjad al-Safadi (“from Safad”…. as Mahmoud Abbas) according to Palestinian media.
    Non-Arabic speaking Israelis have the (bad) habit of transcribing the definite article ‘al’ as ‘a’ (ex. A-Tur, A-Ram instead of al-Tur, al-Ram) when it’s followed by a ‘sun-letter’, that is a consonant where the ‘l’ is assimilated with the initial consonant of the noun. In Arabic you write ‘al-safadi’ but pronounce ‘as-safadi’.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_and_moon_letters
    It’s not only nitpicking 🙂 but often has it’s importance when you search informations on the net.

      1. Proof would have been offered had he not taken his life. He was indicted and released to house arrest pending trial. No evidence of torture was claimed by him or by his attorneys at the arraignment hearings as would be expected.
        You are purely speculating torture, we’re there to have been torture one would have assumed there were to be a coerced confession which there was not, if there was a confession he would not have been remanded on bail!

        1. No, I’m not “speculating.” Speculating would be saying he was tortured without having any basis or evidence for doing so. But a man doesn’t commit suicide upon release from prison unless there are some terrible things bearing down on his soul. As he said he was brutally tortured, I believe him. He’s dead. You might have the decency to accord some credibility to the statements of a man just before he’s decided to end his life after a stint in a Shabak torture chamber.

          As for why he didn’t allege torture during the judicial process: I’d suggest you try to arrange for a Shabak torturer to give you a dose of his “treatment” (with no deference for your status as a lawyer or an Israeli Jew) & then place you before a judge & see how eager you are to publicly detail what you suffered. I’m virtually certain that one of the tricks of the trade is to threaten the victim that if he does describe his treatment in court the prosecutor will ask to extend his remand, only to start the torture process all over again–and with a vengeance since you’ve defied the torturers.

  3. Richard.

    Tortured? Beaten? Electric shock.
    Where is your proof. All you have is a desperate, and now dead, lawyer’s claims.
    And you had the gall to accuse Newsweek of ‘sensationalism’ in reporting European anti-Semitism.

    Why does the Maan article you link misplace the body?
    “He was found hung in his Jerusalem apartment early Tuesday, the group said.”
    “An Israeli police spokesman confirmed a suspected suicide victim found in a car but had no further details. ”

    How odd.

    1. ““He was found hung in his Jerusalem apartment early Tuesday, the group said.”
      “An Israeli police spokesman confirmed a suspected suicide victim found in a car but had no further details. ”
      How odd.

      Odd, seeing as you can’t hang yourself in a car.
      Did someone find the body and place it in a car, or did someone attempt to drive the victim to a hospital.
      Odd.

    2. I am surprised you have the gall to still comment here after all your examples of gruesome anti-semitic attacks in France turned out to be made up…

        1. Really? You just defended Newsweek against the charge of sensationalism, remember? (“And you had the gall to accuse Newsweek of ‘sensationalism’ in reporting European anti-Semitism.”)
          At least be consistent in the nonsense you publish here.

          1. @Elizabeth

            I didn’t defend Newsweek, I accused Richard of hypocrisy.
            Now go and tell Newsweek about their shoddy reporting. Newsweek may be more interested in what you have to say than I.

    3. There is a legal concept called death-bed utterance. That is that a dying man’s near death words have special legal standing. Hence Amjad’s accusation of torture has great weight. Not to mention that PCATI has documented for decades precisely the sort of torture Amjad claimed. So if you ask why we know he received electric shocks, it’s because such torture practices are well & fully documented.

      As for as Israeli police claim that a man committed suicide in a car, you’d have to ask the police where they came up with that one. They’re excellent fiction writers. No doubt they can explain the discrepancy. But if you ask me who I believe, a Palestinian human rights group and independent Palestinian news agency or the Israeli police, that’s easy.

      1. Death bed utterance? Please.

        A death bed utterance is just that. It is a heresay exception based on the fact that witness believes himself to be dying.
        Amjad al-Safad wasn’t dying when made the torture claims. He may have been contemplating suicide, but he wasn’t dying.

        This story, and Richard’s reportage, don’t add up.

        1. The man committed suicide. As far as I’m concerned he had made the decision to die and his claim deserves exceptional weight. As for you, you neither have any weight nor “add up.”

        1. Jackdaw you are indeed a pride to your “nation”.

          Ma’an News says about theincident says:
          An Israeli police spokesman confirmed a suspected suicide victim found in a car but had no further details.
          Times of Israel says:
          Amjad al-Safadi was found hanged in his East Jerusalem apartment on Tuesday, police said.

          How Jack does a person who had made suicide by hanging at his home manages to transport himself to the car? Do you believe in zombies? On the other hand if somebody “unknown” has transported the body to the car, how does the police know, that the person made suicide at his home. What if a Israeli assassination group hanged the layer and then brought the body to the car?

  4. A few years back there was a discussion here about how to transliterate Arabic words like hummus/hummous/khummus etc.
    as far as I am aware there is no international standard as to whether letters should be transliterated exactly or written as pronounced. The same applies to Hebrew.
    Often in both languages familiar colloquialisms trump exact grammar.
    For example, no one writes Ram Allah but rather Ramallah. Similarly Nazerath for Nasrat or Natzeret. Gaza for ‘azzah.

    1. I remember that discussion. Some Michael Shubitz wanted to tell Richard how to spell al-Mabhouh (with ‘kh’ he claimed which is wrong ! ) and how I should spell my pen name too.
      Though there is a certain liberty in transliterating Arabic letters to European languages (such as concerning letters that don’t have the equivalent sound), dialect vs MSA etc) and transliteration to English and French differ slightly: the letter ‘shin’ is mostly transcribed ‘sh’ in English and ‘ch’ in French), ex. Darwish/Darwich, the ‘waw’ ‘oo’ or ‘ou’ but there are rules. And as I said back then, Hebrew-speaking people are not yet the ones to decide how to transcribe Arabic to European languages.

      An Arabic word starting with a sun-letter and wih the definite article ‘al’ should either be transcribed gramatically or phonetically correct that is Al-Safadi/as-Safadi, al-Tur/at-Tur, al-Ram/ar-Ram but never a-Safadi, a-Tur-, a-Ram.
      And khummous in NOT correct, as ‘kh’ transcribes the khā’ خ (with a dot) and not the ḥā ح (without dot) which is the first letter in حُمُّص like in ‘hubb’, ‘habîbî’, ‘hayât’
      http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet
      When a foreign journalist pronounes Khamas, Fatakh, Makhmoud, Mukhammad, we know where he spents his time and gets his informations…
      PS. Nazareth is internationally used for an-Nāṣira, Gaza for ‎ Ġazzah/Ghazzah. A-Tur/a-Ram/a-Safadi are all Israeli-only inventions that no Arab would ever use !

    2. I remember that discussion. Some guy named Michael Shubitz wanted to tell Richard how to spell al-Mabhouh (with ‘kh’ he claimed which is wrong ! ) and how I should spell my pen name too.
      Though there is a certain liberty in transliterating Arabic letters to European languages (such as concerning letters that don’t have the equivalent sound), dialect vs MSA etc) and transliteration to English and French differ slightly: the letter ‘shin’ is mostly transcribed ‘sh’ in English and ‘ch’ in French), ex. Darwish/Darwich, the ‘waw’ ‘oo’ or ‘ou’ but there are rules. And as I said back then, Hebrew-speaking people are not yet the ones to decide how to transcribe Arabic to European languages.

      An Arabic word starting with a sun-letter and wih the definite article ‘al’ should either be transcribed gramatically or phonetically correct that is Al-Safadi/as-Safadi, al-Tur/at-Tur, al-Ram/ar-Ram but never a-Safadi, a-Tur-, a-Ram.
      And khummous in NOT correct, as ‘kh’ transcribes the khā’ خ (with a dot) and not the ḥā ح (without dot) which is the first letter in حُمُّص like in ‘hubb’, ‘habîbî’, ‘hayât’
      http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet
      When a foreign journalist pronounes Khamas, Fatakh, Makhmoud, Mukhammad, we know where he spents his time and gets his informations…
      PS. Nazareth is internationally used for an-Nāṣira, Gaza for ‎ Ġazzah/Ghazzah. A-Tur/a-Ram/a-Safadi are all Israeli-only inventions that no Arab would ever use !

    3. @ Shmuel: I’ve learned to my chagrin that this not true and that there are standardized orthographies for transliteration of Hebrew to English & certainly Arabic to English. Before I learned this, I named this blog “Tikun Olam.” But an expert later told me that the Hebrew koof is transliterated with a double “k.” So “Tikkun” Magazine spells the word correctly and I don’t. But frankly to English speakers seeing Tikkun spelled with two k’s makes little sense. So stylistically I prefer one k. So I guess I’m saying that I agree with you in some sense. But we have to understand that there are orthographical standards.

      1. If you started to talk about how to write the name of your blog then the double k is not because of the koof but rather because the koof has a dagesh (stress mark) which is written as a double letter when transliterated.
        To represent the koof ( as opposed to kaf) one ought to use q. Thus your blog might be tiqqun olam…
        A rose by any name…

  5. The Israeli torture “authorities” are experts on driving people to suicide. They probably used on Amjad whatever they used on Ben Zygier. It’s not so hard to guess what some of the specialty cocktails could be. Something rtells me it wasn’t all a “psychological” factor.

    It’s nice that they have so many guinea pigs for their little “experiments”. I can think of at least one other individual who would have been proud.

    Too bad I haven’t figured out yet is what drove Michael hastings to drive into a tree (well, glance it) and have the car’s engine ejected 10’s of feet. It certainly wasn’t a “mental” condition. More like a “metal” one, coupled with a conveniently administered hallucigen. One that was not meant to be found.

    The shabaks of this world all have their tricks. But some countries perfected them more than others..

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