Southwest Asia News Digest
Knesset Member: Israel Immoral, Undemocratic
Israeli Knesset member Michael Melchior, commenting on Israel's economic policy which has caused tremendous impoverishment, declared: "Israel, which defines itself as 'a Jewish Democratic state,' has become one of the most immoral states in the Western world. In one field, Israel could win a gold metal, although not in Athens. It is the income gaps between society's top tier and the lower tiers. These gaps compromise human dignity, and cast grave doubt on our right to be called a Jewish democratic society."
Melchior was the leader of the Meimad Party, which was a pro-peace religious party which is now part of the Labor Party. In his commentary, which appeared in Ha'aretz Aug. 20, he detailed the fact that 1.25 million Israelisalmost 25% of the populationlive in poverty, while 40% of these actually work. "This is a society that abandons 366,000 of its children-at-risk and throws them into the street; a society that treats its foreign workers like animals; a society that despises its elderly and sends them to rummage through the garbage.... It is a society among the leaders in the world in trafficking in women. Such a society is neither Jewish nor democratic."
The Knesset member goes on to denounce privatization, making the point that Israel has become a "beggar state" calling on rich philanthropists to fund social programs that should be financed by the government. He writes, "True, charity has always been the main concern of the Jewish community. But this is not what the State of Israel was meant to be. The Jewish state is supposed to, and ought to take care of all its citizens.... [I]nstead of a rule of justice, a rule of charity is being established, based on alms collection and mutual back scratching."
He concludes by denouncing Netanyahu's tax break for the rich: "Instead of reducing taxes, the government would have done better to direct those NIS 2.5 billion to health services, the single mothers, and the children at risk. Had it done so, perhaps the old couple who 'thanked' Netanyahu before committing suicide due to their economic distress could have thanked him in person. Had it done so, the government could have boasted that it was heading a Jewish, democratic state."
Leading American Jew: Sharon Betrays Israel's Founders
Henry Siegman, former President of the American Jewish Congress, warned that Ariel Sharon is turning Israel into a racist apartheid state. Writing in the Aug. 20 International Herald Tribune, Siegman denounces Sharon's so-called disengagement plan as a fraud, saying, "The difference between Sharon and his rightist Israeli critics is largely in packaging, not in the substance of their positions. They differ over whether Palestinians should be allowed to call an apartheid-like arrangement of disconnected and isolated cantons a state. Sharon insists they should be, for otherwise the arrangement would be rejected by the United States."
Siegman goes on, "Sharon and Israel's right wing represent a radical departure from the dominant sensibility of the founders of the Zionist movement, such as Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, Chaim Weizman, and others. These founders were animated by progressive Western democratic concepts and could not have conceived of a Jewish state that would rule over a permanently disenfranchised people.
"It is one of the ironies of history that the Jewish people, who were disproportionately involved in struggles for universal human rights and civil liberties all over the worldand believed the Jewish national return to Palestine to be consistent with those valuesshould now be supporting policies of a rightist Israeli government that are in danger of changing the Jewish state into a racist enterprise. For if Sharonwith the support of Israelis, world Jewry and the United Statesleverages his promised withdrawal from Gaza into an Israeli presence in the West Bank that is impossible to dislodge, a racist enterprise is surely what his policies will produce."
Siegman writes that "it is not true that Palestinian violence represents an existential threat to the state of Israel," and states that it can perfectly defend itself from within the 1967 borders. He concludes, "for its political leaders, and for many Israelis, real estate has become more important than justice, or peace, or the founding principles of Zionism."
Shin Beth Torture of Palestinian Exposed
Lawyers representing Hussam Atef Badran, a prisoner who is allegedly a Hamas operative, showed documents from the Shin Beth itself describing how the prisoner was tortured during interrogation, Ha'aretz reported Aug. 19.
The document, an after action report by the interrogator, read, "Due to the urgency of obtaining information in order to foil a mass terror attack, ... the following measures were taken in [Badran's] interrogation on May 6, 2002, between 10:45 and 18:45: three slaps, three 'hatayat gav' (the first for 10 minutes, the second for 30 minutes and the third 22 minutes).
A slap is a slap, but a "Hatayat gav" is a very painful torture technique in which the prisoner is seated on a stool, with his arms passing under the stool from behind and tied to the stool's front legs. His legs are also tied to the stool's front legs. An interrogator standing behind him then grabs his shoulders and pushes down, forcing the prisoner to bend backward and remain in that painful position for many minutes. This is done several times during the interrogation.
In 1999, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled out torture except in the case of the so-called "ticking bomb" after which "moderate physical pressure" or "necessary defense" could be used. The torturer only has to define his victim as a "ticking bomb," just as every Palestinian killed in the occupied territories is a "terrorist," or "on his way to conduct a terror attack in Israel."
The document was obtained accidentally by attorney Laviv Haviv, who represents Badran. He passed it on to the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, whose director general, Hannah Friedman, asked the Attorney General to open an investigation.
Peres Calls for Early Elections After Likud Votes vs. Sharon
Israeli Labor Party Chairman Shimon Peres is calling for early elections in Israel, reported Ha'aretz on Aug. 20. This followed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's political defeat at his Likud Party's central committee meeting, where party members voted down Sharon's resolution to approve his forming a unity government with the Labor Party. Sharon nonetheless said he would ignore the popular vote, taken on Aug. 19, since a majority of Likud members in the Knesset would support his plan for a unity government.
Another Likud leader, Uzi Landau, who is a minister in Sharon's minority government, had introduced a resolution barring a coalition with the Labor Party, which supports an Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian occupied lands, beginning with the Gaza Strip. Landau's resolution, which called for rejecting a unity government, passed overwhelmingly in the Likud by 843 to 612.
Labor chairman Peres said, "What happened in the Likud is not a simple thing. We cannot entrust the fate of Israel in the hands of 800 to 900 people, when we see that a majority of the country unequivocally supports the disengagement plan, a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and dismantling the settlements. Therefore, in the current situation, the proper thing to do is return to the nation and request a renewed mandate for peace and unity."
Despite these strong words, Peres said that if Sharon reopens negotiations with the Labor party for a unity government, he would accept. "We did not negotiate with the Likud central committee, we negotiated with the Prime Minister. If there is another invitation from him, we will discuss it within the party."
Labor Member of the Knesset Dalia Itzik called on her party to hold talks with the Shinui Party, one of the parties in Sharon's government, to discuss the possibility of holding early elections.
Even though Sharon is choosing to ignore the popular vote of his own Likud, the vote represents a certain instability in Sharon's government that could eventually lead to new elections. This would, of course, would postpone the disengagement (i.e., withdrawal from Gaza) even more.
Sharon's failure to live up to any commitment to withdrawal complicates matters for U.S. President George W. Bush, who vitally needs Sharon to keep up a credible front that there is some kind of withdrawal from the settlementsas agreed toon the books.
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