המשטרה החשאית עצרה פעילה איסלמית ,איה חטיב, בחשד שהיא מימנה טרור פלסטיני. השב”כ הטיל צו איסור פרסום על התיק
Israel’s secret police (aka Shabak) this week arrested an Israeli Palestinian activist for “funding Palestinian terrorists.” The arrest is under judicial gag order and Israeli media may only report the detention, but not the detainee’s identity. I am reporting that here for the first time. She is Aya Khateeb from the village of Ar’ara (near Haifa) and she is affiliated with the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, an Islamist group that has been banned by the State.
If past is any guide here (and the Israeli Secret Police are nothing if not formulaic), Shabak will dribble out lurid claims in coming days that Khateeb raised funds to support acts of terror in Israel or the West Bank. And that these funds were to be passed on to bombers and used to facilitate their dastardly acts.
If we take a step back here to analyze how this entire process works…first you declare Islam and expressions of Islam to be extremist. Israel is not alone in its criminalization of Islam. China has done the same to the Uighurs, and India, the same in Jammu and Kashmir. Nations at war with captive minority populations tend to adopt similar strategies, and even learn from each other.
The second step is to declare Islamist groups to be supporters of terror. You gin up charges against leaders like Sheikh Raed Salah, that he himself incites terror. That, in turn allows you to pursue any Palestinian Muslim as an enemy of the State.
You’ve no doubt heard how Muslims are radicalized and gradually transformed from innocents into terrorists. Well, it’s instructive to track how the national security state transforms legitimate religious worship into anti-state terrorism. The process isn’t all that different, except that the radicalization doesn’t happen in prison cells. Instead it happens in prime minister’s offices and Shin Bet headquarters.
In the Ynet report linked above, you can see the feeble attempt at censorship in pixellating all images of Khateeb so that no viewer or reader may see her. It’s a version of media ethnic cleansing which I’m combatting here by featuring her full image. I feature an uncensored, unpixellated image here.
Palestinians who protested outside the court where she was arraigned claimed her real offense was that she offered “aid to needy families. ” As Bibi Netanyahu has falsely claimed that the Joint List supports terror, you can imagine how vivid an imagination you would need to paint her as a funder of terrorism. By the definition of a police state, offering humanitarian aid to security detainees and their families would be an act of terror. I don’t know specifically what landed her in the hell of a Shabak interrogation room. But likely it’s something quite similar.
Note that there are several Israeli Jewish terror-supporting NGOs which offer aid to Israeli terrorists and their families, including legal representation. Not only are these groups not treated as terrorists, they are considered non-profit organizations recognized by the State. Donations to them are tax-deductible. Yet another example of the Apartheid at the heart of the Israeli regime.
It would clarify your view of matters if you could get over the preconception that Israel is a society in which the rule of the law applies. In twenty years of following matters Israeli, everything I have read confirms me in the opinion that in that state, ‘law’ serves purely as a fig leaf to disguise what would be the otherwise open oppression of a criminal, unjust regime. To be frank, ‘law’ in Israel seems to enjoy about the same status it did in Nazi Germany. There’s even the same weird compulsion to cook up some legalistic folderol to cover up the essentially arbitrary and morally indefensible actions of the regime.
@Colin
Will you be closely watching the trial of Prime Minister Netanyahu?
@ Lemontree: Really? You want to go there? Offering hasbaroid praise for one of the most dysfunctional, corrupt legal systems in the so-called western world? After I posted about the buying and selling of judgeships? And the fraud engaged in by security services to extort prisoners into plea bargainging in return for “only” getting 10 yrs in prison? Where a president was offered a deal in which he would not be charged with rape if he accepted guilt on a lesser charge (and only when he refused the plea deal was he prosecuted on the rape charge)? Where a senior minister engaged in corruption gets off with no charges while witnesses in the case disappear or die mysteriously? After it’s taken years to even indict this particular asshole, let alone try and convict him? Where the AG dithered for years about whether to even charge him and then let his wife off with a slap on the wrist?
Puh-leeze!
@Richard
No, Richard. Honenu, which provides law services for accused right-wing Jewish extremists, does not offer monetary aid to the families of those accused Jewish terrorists.
https://www.haaretz.com/ngo-halts-support-for-jewish-terrorists-1.5379941
Accuracy in reporting, please.
@ Lemontree: I wouldn’t trust a word that scabrous group says. But at the very least they did offer financial support to the families of Judean terrorists until recently.
״ media ethnic cleansing ”???
At this point the words ethnic cleansing lost all meaning. Just call it “media Holocaust”. It is as catchy
@ Dina Schaiek: Speak for yourself. The phrase ‘ethnic cleansing’ has profound meaning, especially for the victims. Not so much for the perpetrators: catch my drift??
I’d venture to say if it was you, your spouse or child who was arrested and mouldering in an underground Shabak cell, and the news of your interrogation and torture was prohibited from being reported, you’d change your tune.
Remember the story about God hardening Pharaoh’s heart? You ain’t no Pharoah, but your heart is sure hard as stone. Wonder why that is?
Guess I’m going to have to mail a print-off of this to the Pope, because there is no way the Hungarian Crook (Netanyahu) or his funder, the Orange One (Trump) would listen to me. Who else has pull over the Jewish Prussia? I’ll mail them too.
Aya Khatib was arrested 2 months ago and admitted during her questioning to having helped the terror group Hamas by diverting aid funds for terror projects and gather intelligence,
She’s accused of scamming aid organizations she worked for, as well as civilians who donated money to the needy population in Gaza.
https://www.richardsilverstein.com/2020/03/13/israeli-secret-police-arrest-israeli-palestinian-activist-under-gag-order/#comments
Butter wouldn’t melt, Richard.
Butter wouldn’t melt.
@ Lemonade: First, you seem to be on the Shabak email list as you’re almost literally quoting its press release bragging about capturing a dangerous terrorist financier. Why is that? Must have a special pipeline to the secret police, huh?
Second, you misquoted Shabak’s own press release to give it credit for something even it didn’t claim. The press release does not say that Khatib confessed to anything. It says that in the course of her interrogation it was discovered that she did blah, blah, blah. In order words, Shabak wanted you and other Israelis to think that she confessed to these things. But she didn’t. What actually happened is that during interrogation her torturers presented her with their own charges. Then in the press release they concealed the fact that the charges were ginned up by Shabak itself.
Further, either you didn’t read the press release thoroughly or you don’t know Hebrew, because Khatib has only been under arrest for 3 weeks, not 2 months as you claimed.
Third, Shabak has a long history of criminalizing humanitarian relief in Gaza. It has arrested other Palestinians working for international aid groups claiming they stole funds meant for relief and gave them to Hamas. The last time Shabak tried this the Australian government called its bluff and did its own investigation and announced publicly that there was no proof or evidence that the charges were valid. Yet still, the poor Palestinian aid worker languishes in an Israeli jail for years. In other words, Shabak has found that criminalizing humanitarian relief is a convenient way to impeach Hamas.
Fourth, and most damaging is the f*king nerve Shabak has to complain about someone exploiting humanitarian relief to engage in “terrorism,” when it’s own IDF commando did the very same thing in Gaza in order to execute spying and intelligence work there. The disastrous Sayeret Matkal operation exploited the cover of humanitarian relief in order to plant spy gear in Gaza. Doing so violated international law and endangered legitimate humanitarian aid organizations operating there.
Balls baby, you and your Shabak pals have balls. All I can say.
OH and thanks, you’ve just helped me write my next blog post on this sham.
I have no more contact with Shabak, than you do.
Rather, I read today’s YNet News article, but failed to link it. That article stated that Ms Khateeb, arrested two months ago, “admitted during her questioning to having helped the terror group divert aid funds for terror projects and gather intelligence.
Now as far as I know, Richard Silverstein is the only person claiming Khateeb’s interrogators are her ‘torturers’.
Anyway. “The findings of the Shin Bet investigation indicate that Khatib also provided information for Hamas about the movement of military forces during one of the fighting rounds with the Gaza Strip,” the agency said.
Providing Hamas with information about Israeli military movements can hardly be confused with providing humanitarian relief in Gaza.
Right?
@ Lemontree: Your first mistake: believing what you read in Ynet. Your second, not reading the original statement released by the SHin Bet which clearly did not say she “admitted” anything.
I do have to thank you for one thing. You proved what I wrote in the post itself: that Israeli media would claim that she “admitted” or “confessed” to her crimes during interrogation, when she did nothing of the sort, as even the Shabak statement reveals.
As far as torture, if you’ve ready any coverage of SHin Bet treatment of detainees like her (I presume you have), what is the one theme you’ll find in every case? Torture and abuse. The Shin Bet is a creature of habit. If they torture one security detainee, they torture all of them.
No, that’s again not what the Shabak’s statement actually said. And again, I read the actual statement and linked to it in my post. Now you read it. Try doing that before you believe the lying Israeli media. Actually, it may not be lying. It may just be ineptitude or stupidity. Take your pick.
She didn’t do that. THe Shabak statement claims she did. THere’s a difference.
Ok, here are some facts yes facts!! I am a native arabic
1. She has been arrested since 17.2.2020 at 2 am!! With 7 elongations so far!! Between these elongations other islamic caracters that were arrested and questiond about her, seemingly their names were mentioned during her arrest .all of them were released.
2. Reading her facebook , everyone can understand that she just posted cases of children and students who needed help including food,milk,medicine and surgery operation payments. She attached details and how to pay not by her but by formal israeli banks. When asked in comments about more details about operations for example she asked the commenters to ask the patient’s doctor.
3. Reading her facebook, everyone can understand that she studied deeply the human cases so that the money reaches the most urgent case. With screenshots of the medicine papers, messages, and sometimes videos. In addition she posted warnings of false cases of people that wanted to steal money .
4. Reading her facebook, there are updates of the cases including videos of children she helped , videos that were sent to her from there parent to thank her
5.she was interviewed once, the interview is on youtube, explaining how she works and helps. It is obvious that she is very real smart and human . According to her verbal and non verbal language.
6. People who know her,friends,former teachers,relatives in addition to many whom she helped and saved , all of them talk about a very respectful woman that all her dreams were to help poor people and children and she worked for that without a reward. All of them are shocked that such a woman gets such a creul punishment
7 she is 31 ys old has 2 children an occupational therapist not belonging to any organization, but just volunteering as helping to post cases of formal israeli charity organizations like ” lemaan haaher”.
I don’t know her personally but i believe that the facts above show that she is not a secret terror girl but someone that everyone and every country should admire and learn from.