Cynthia McKinney Detained (Again) by Israeli Defense Force; Israeli Protesters Brutally Beaten in West Bank

Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 4:15 PM on July 1, 2009.

The Israeli right is moving U.S. perceptions of the I-P conflict to a tipping point. Among Americans -- and especially the Jewish community -- Israel had long enjoyed the moral high ground. But sentiment is shifting, in large part to the terror wrought by the settler's movement, the unyielding stance of the Netanyahu government, and stories such as these ...

A boat carrying aid to pro-Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip was surrounded and boarded by Israeli forces off the coast of the Gaza Strip Tuesday. Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was one of the 21 people on board who were taken into Israeli custody and held at the port of Ashrod in Israel.

McKinney is quoted as saying that the confrontation was "an outrageous violation of international law," and she claimed the boat was on a humanitarian mission and was not in Israeli waters.

The Israeli military said the boat tried to violate Israel's security blockade and enter Gaza illegally.

The 21 passengers and crew on the Greek-registered ship "Arion" was working for the U.S.-based "Free Gaza Movement." Among them, besides McKinney, was 1977 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Mairead Maguire.

Israeli forces have maintained a blockade on the Palestinian territory since 2007, partly to prevent smugglers from delivering weapons and munitions to Gaza.

It's a farce to claim that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza resulted in some semblance of sovereignty when its military controls Gaza's airspace, waterways and land routes, and Israeli forces continue to strike targets within the canton.

Israeli forces in the West Bank have long reacted violently to Palestinian protests, even peaceful ones. But recently, they used similar tactics on Israeli protesters -- an unusual occurrence ...

I am reporting the testimony of Dr. Amiel Vardi, and many other supporting testimonies. There is graphic photographic documentation, including a live video clip, which can be seen here. The pictures seen here are part of a series that can be viewed at this Flickr site...

The activists arrived in the morning at al-Safa to accompany Palestinian farmers to their fields, since it is nearly impossible for these farmers to work their land without the physical protection of Israelis: violent settlers from nearby Bat 'Ayin invariably attack the farmers and chase them away. This time, however, the army and Border Police were waiting, in force—dozens of soldiers (the Border Police are part of the army), including two Brigade Commanders. As usual, they declared the area a Closed Military Zone.

But they also immediately arrested the activists and then attacked several of them brutally with fists, rifle butts, and other weapons.

They rammed their heads repeatedly against the sides of the military jeeps (you can see this clearly on the Walla video). They severely beat the detainees while the latter were hand-cuffed and defenseless. Even worse, they continued to beat them while transporting them to the police station—stopping the jeeps on the way and attacking their helpless prisoners with clubs. One Palestinian activist, Yusuf Abu-Maria, suffered a broken leg. An Israeli activist, Sahar, had her armed savagely twisted, though fortunately not broken. Many were injured.

Incidentally, while this was going on, settlers from Bat 'Ayin set fire to Palestinian olive trees only a few hundred yards away; but of course the soldiers saw no reason to interfere.

This was not random violence. It’s the kind of thing that is directed routinely at Palestinian detainees, but this is perhaps the first time Israeli activists have been assaulted so brutally. The sense is that the Border Policemen were acting under direct, premeditated orders. The two Brigade Commanders—the senior officer in this zone, commander of the Etzion Brigade, and the commander of the Kfir Brigade— stood there overseeing the assault. Perhaps they had their orders from above.

Perhaps they did. And that kind of over-reach continues to reverberate through the ranks of the IDF ...

A soldier was sentenced to 30 days in military prison after telling his commanders he would refuse to continue participating in his unit's operations in the territories...

D. announced his refusal after taking part in a March 26 operation in the village of Kifl Hares, in the northern West Bank. The soldier, several of his friends and several Palestinians present said Palestinian prisoners were abused during the operation...

In his letter, D. described how his friends abused and hit Palestinian detainees, destroyed property and harassed Palestinians at roadblocks.

"Their weapons give them the feeling of control and power, and therefore they allow themselves to humiliate those passing through the roadblock in order to ease the boredom and pass the time," he wrote. "The common opinion among Haruv Battalion soldiers is that Arabs are wild animals who should be destroyed, and not people ... They have full opportunity to verbally abuse and beat bound people who cannot protect themselves," wrote D.

He also accused officers of knowing the problem existed but not addressing it.

D., whose family immigrated from Russia, said these things reminded him of his relatives' stories about pogroms.

Despite his letter and his conversations with his commanders, D. was not tried immediately, but only after he and his unit returned from a vacation. The unit began preparing for another round of duty in the territories, and he refused to take part.

Only then was he tried by his battalion commander, Lt. Col. Ilan Dickshtein, for refusing to perform his duties.

Soldiers from the Kfir Brigade, who do almost all of their military service in the territories, have been involved in a long list of violent incidents against Palestinian civilians.

Col. Itai Virob, the brigade commander, recently caused a storm when he testified in military court on behalf of one of his officers, who was accused of assaulting Palestinians.

Virob told the court, "Violence and aggressiveness to prevent the situation from escalating, and the need for stronger violence, is not only allowed, but sometimes required. A hit, a shove, even when the people are not involved in an operational situation in a manner that could advance the mission is certainly possible."

D. was the second soldier from the Kfir unit to refuse deployment.

"Pro-Israel" hawks -- they're pro-the-Israeli-right -- often make the claim that Israel is a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. It's a non sequitur in response to criticism of Israel's actions in the Occupied Territories (like saying the U.S. is a democracy in response to criticism of abuses at Gitmo, Bagram airbase, Abu Ghraib and so forth), but more importantly it's becoming increasingly clear that the claim is a hollow one.

Today, a brave Israeli peace activist, Ezra Nawi, is expected to be sentenced today on what most consider a bogus charge of assaulting a policeman (Update: sentencing was postponed until October). Neve Gordon offers some background ...

Without international intervention, Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi will most likely be sent to jail.

Nawi is not a typical rights activist. A member of Ta'ayush Arab-Jewish Partnership he is a Jewish Israeli of Iraqi descent who speaks fluent Arabic. He is a gay man in his fifties and a plumber by trade. Perhaps because he himself comes from the margins, he empathises with others who have been marginalised – often violently.

His "crime" was trying to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinian Bedouins from Um El Hir in the South Hebron region. These Palestinians have been under Israeli occupation for almost 42 years; they still live without electricity, running water and other basic services and are continuously harassed by Jewish settlers and the military – two groups that have united to expropriate Palestinian land and that clearly have received the government's blessing to do so...

Most people are not really surprised when they read that human rights activists are routinely arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned and harassed in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and several other Middle Eastern countries. Indeed, it has become common knowledge that the authoritarian nature of these regimes renders it dangerous for their citizens to actively fight for human rights.

In this sense, Israel is different from most of its neighbours. Unlike their counterparts in Egypt and Syria, Israeli rights activists, particularly Jewish ones, have been able to criticise the policies of their rights-abusive government without fear of incarceration. Up until now, the undemocratic tendencies of Israeli society manifested themselves, for the most part, in the state's relation to its Palestinian citizens, the occupied Palestinian inhabitants and a small group of Jewish conscientious objectors.

This is all reaching a tipping point, a degree of injustice that is becoming increasingly difficult to deny, or to meet with the argument that violence perpetrated by Palestinian militants justifies collective punishment as a matter of government policy. Even members of the DC establishment are decrying the continued expansion of illegal settlements. Foreign Policy magazine just ranked Israel-Palestine as the 58th "most failed state" -- beneath a whole host of basket-cases. And, as Ira Chernus recently wrote:

The Israel Project hired pollster Stanley Greenberg to test American opinion on the Middle East conflict -- and got a big surprise. In September 2008, 69% of Americans called themselves pro-Israel. Now, it's only 49%. In September, the same 69% wanted the U.S. to side with Israel; now, only 44%.

This is a blunter than usual post on this topic, because I'm not interested in finessing this conflict anymore. It's not that people, like me, who  reject Israel's various claims to to the moral high ground have a singular and mysterious obsession with Israeli abuses, as its apologists would have you believe, but the knowledge that this state's actions, unlike, say, those of the Iranian regime splashed across our TV screens each night, are defended (and its military supplied) by my government.

Tagged as: israel

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.