Copyright (c) 1997 - Ingrid A. Rimland
Paul Findley, a former member of the US Congress, went visiting the then President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, and took the opportunity to make his plea for Human Rights pertaining to the Palestinians.
The dialogue went something like this:
Findley: "Mr. President, the Palestinians are badly abused. They are human beings and have the right to statehood; the right to have their own homeland. I hope you will help them."
President Reagan, genuinely puzzled: "But where will they go?"
Says Findley: "Reagan seemed to imply that the Palestinian, not the Israelis, were the intruders in the occupied territories."
Now this was our President. And are we any more informed? Even two years
ago, the point of this story would have escaped me totally - so little did
I know about the conflict in the Middle East pertaining to the Israeli state,
and so ingrained was my impression that Israelis were ENTITLED.
Not only did I think so, the majority of 3,700 Israeli high school students
who were polled on an important "Human Rights" issue, thought
so, too.
Two-thirds of the young Israelis surveyed in 1994 stated that they do not
believe Arabs should be given equal rights in the Jewish state. Since about
one-fifth of the respondents presumably were Arabs, this indicated that
an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jewish secondary school students think
that discrimination against the Arabs is okay - and "Human Rights"
be damned.
I bet you that practically all Americans are in this state of blissful ignorance
- this even though we dish out to the state of Israel more than $15.5 million
every day, 365 days a year - and even though we are quite willing to drop
a bomb a minute on hapless Arabs on behalf of Israel, as we did in the shameful
100 hour ground war that took place in 1991, now known as the Gulf War.
This aid to Israel has been described as amounting to the largest voluntary
transfer of wealth and technology in history - far more than all American
aid given to rehabilitate Western Europe after World War II under the Marshall
Plan.
If we dish out that kind of money and manpower equipped with the most technologically
advanced weaponry that fiendish minds could have devised to kill folks who
have never harmed us in the least, what do we get for it in so-called "Human
Rights" coin in exchange from Israel, a country that judicially fixed
the price of an Arab/Palestinian life at one-third of a penny, as I reported
in a previous ZGram?
Here's what we get, for instance, as documented in two 1997 issues of The
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs:
· ". . . an Israeli Supreme Court decision granting the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, the right to use "heightened physical pressure" when interrogating Palestinian prisoners suspecting of planning terrorist attacks. (Date of this decision: November 13, 1996)
This, of course, is just a slight upgrading from the long-standing Israeli order permitting "mild physical coercion" to be used against any Palestinian prisoner at any time, and regardless of whether criminal charges have been levied.
That order assures Israeli prosecutors that they can start each trial of a Palestinian with a confession by the defendant, and that they can generate an endless supply (of convicted Palestinians) by simply torturing detainees until they name someone - anyone - for the Israeli police to go out and arrest." (Jan-Feb issue, p. 22)
· The torture methods which do not require special approval, termed "moderate physical pressure", include tying up prisoners in twisted positions for up to five days continuously, sleep deprivation, covering detainees's heads with filthy cloth sacks for days, light body shaking, and keeping the prisoner in a small windowless cell for weeks with music blaring 24 hours a day.(Jan-Feb issue, p. 86)
· Israeli attorneys confirm that nearly every Palestinian who is interrogated is tortured in this manner. Judges routinely permit this torture by extending the interrogation period and (by not specifically) prohibiting torture.
A normal interrogation period is at least one month and is generally extended for an additional 30 days. (Jan-Feb issue, 86)
· More intense torture method such as hanging for long periods in contorted positions - which causes permanent internal organ and joint damage - and severe body-shaking, which caused the death of one Palestinian detainee last year, require the approval of the head of the secret police. Permission is generally given, say attorneys with access to Israeli-held Palestinians.
In an attempt to stop the tortures, the handful of Israeli attorneys willing to represent Palestinian prisoners must appeal to the Israeli High Court, where their petitions generally are rejected.(Jan-Feb issue, 86)
This is what US aid to Israel will buy - barbaric oppression of the native
population by Jewish invaders and offspring.
Tomorrow I will give you some specifics.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day:
"The announced wish of the Israeli government . . . to restore 'law and order' . . . has been accurately translated: 'to erase the smile from the face of Palestinian youth'."
(Israeli philosopher Avish Margalit)