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Israel's Secret Police Pressuring Sick Gazans to Spy for Them, Says Report
GAZA - Israel's secret police are pressuring Palestinians in Gaza to spy on their community in exchange for urgent medical treatment, according to a report released today by an Israeli human rights organization.
Physicians for Human Rights says the Shin Bet began interrogating Palestinian patients seeking permission to travel from Gaza to Israel for crucial medical help after Israel blockaded and then declared the tiny territory an enemy entity more than a year ago.
Typically, patients are taken to a small, windowless room, underground, beneath the security terminal at Erez, the only passenger crossing that remains open between Gaza and Israel, where they are questioned by Shin Bet agents for hours, the report says.
Refusal to cooperate often results in the denial of medical treatment. Based on the testimonies of more than 30 Palestinians - 11 of which are published - the report says the Shin Bet is using coercion and extortion to force patients to collaborate.
"They took me through underground passages and made me sit in another waiting room for almost 45 minutes. A man approached me and called me to another room for interrogation. He asked me to sit down and presented himself as Moshe," Bassam al-Wahidi, a Fatah-aligned journalist, said in his affidavit to Physicians for Human Rights.
"After all my responses he said to me: 'I want to talk to you openly when you return from Israel so that you will have an acceptable reputation on the Israeli side. Either you make contact with me and agree to my demands, or you will not get any medical treatment which will cause you to be blind and you will become a burden to your family and friends,'" Wahidi said in his affidavit.
But he said he refused and was forced to return to Gaza without receiving any treatment. Now the 28-year-old, who married a year and a half ago, is completely blind in his right eye and losing the vision in his overstrained left eye.
"I might divorce because I can't stand in front of my wife as a disabled person," Wahidi said .
He is one of an unknown number of patients from Gaza who have been denied medical treatment after refusing to inform on their friends, neighbours and relatives. Many patients feel they are being forced to choose between preserving their life or protecting their community. Physicians for Human Rights says such pressure amounts to coercion and extortion.
International law forbids the use of civilians in conflict to damage an enemy state and collaboration in the Palestinian community is a crime punishable by death.
"The patient knows that refusal to respond to the interrogator's questions and demands will ruin his chances to access medical treatment," the report says. While some patients are turned back after they refuse to collaborate, others arrive at the security interview only to be detained and locked in jail, it says.
Applications for help in Israel jumped sharply with Israel's blockade on Gaza.
Decrepit and deficient hospital services in the besieged territory coupled with the closure of Gaza's crossing into Egypt forced Palestinians in the besieged territory to increasingly seek help in Israel.
As a result, the number of requests for medical assistance in Israel - which is funded by the Palestinian Authority - jumped from about 600 a month at the beginning of 2007 to about 1,000 a month by the end of the year. As a result, the proportion of sick Gazans permitted to cross into Israel has dropped sharply from 90% in early 2007 to 62% by the end of the year.
Israel's security services insists that patients are denied entry only on security grounds. It also says that holding Israel responsible for the health of Palestinians in Gaza is "wholly inappropriate and misleading", arguing that it no longer occupies the coastal territory, having withdrawn its troops and settlers from the area in 2005.
However, in a letter to Physicians for Human Rights in June, Colonel Shlomi Muchtar said: "The state's obligations are derived, among other things, from the rules of war and from the scope of its control over border crossings between it and the Gaza Strip."
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
29 Comments so far
Show AllIsraeli/Nazi practices. The Israelis learned well!
The US openly used the same tactics to pressure Iraqi scientists to spy for them: "I see...your wife has cancer...what a shame she cannot get the treatment she needs... you can ease her suffering...".
The word is shameless. Generations will not erase the degradation of having to choose between the suffering of a loved one and betraying one's nation or community. It is similar to forcing a prisoner to witness the torture of a family member.
This is how Haaretz covered the story. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1008357.html
Reminds of the Cheech and Chong skit. "We have the girl. You can save her. Just sign zee papers."
Nice people doing nice things.
Unless, or until, the USA throws off the evil yoke of Khazar Zionism, we will never again be a free people. The USA should ABANDON Israel now. Israel learned well from the Nazis, and the Communists like Radek, Kaminev, Sverdlov,
Yagoda and Kaganovich. And, now, the Israelis practice the same actions that they have whined about since 1945.
Israel, the terrorist state. How repulsive.
WHY AREN'T THE STATE OF THE ART HOSPITAL SHIPS CURRENTLY SOMEHWERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN BRINGING URGENT MEDICAL AID TO GAZA?
"The state's obligations are derived, among other things, from the rules of war and from the scope of its control over border crossings between it and the Gaza Strip."
Then the Shin Bet - Gestapo could get out of the picture!
Zionist settlers have been on the lookout for collaborators almost as long as they've been scheming ways to "spirit the penniless population" to surrounding countries, both activities carried out "discreetly and circumspectly", of course. Here's an excerpt from a review of a recent book that examines the sordid saga of snitching that's central to the Zionist project:
Today a request to exit the Gaza Strip to receive medical treatment, visit a dying relative or study in the West Bank or abroad is often contingent upon one's willingness to collaborate. In early January a number of patients were referred from Gaza--where they could not receive medical treatment--to Maqassed Hospital in East Jerusalem, and received permits to leave the region. At the border, though, they were interrogated by Israeli security service officers, who demanded that they become collaborators. According to Hadas Ziv of Physicians for Human Rights, Israel, those patients who refused had their travel permits annulled and were sent back home. While these patients managed to resist the temptation to collaborate, despite their medical ills, others do not.
Well what do you expect from a people who treat their own kids like crap
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080804/ap_on_re_mi_ea/odd_israel_home_alone
ragdoll,
actually there are hospital ships heading for Gaza, check this link:
freegaza.org
Such Semetic Sweethearts!
Our Congress sends one thousand of our tax dollars to each and every Israeli citizen, man, woman and child, in foreign aid every year. What has Congress or the Israeli tax payer ever done for us? For us not to us.
Just an observation...
but theres a lot of anti-semitism on this site...
Snowwolf,
Don't confuse anti-israeli policies as anti-semitic (which I think is overused and abused), Israel needs to be criticized for their racist and brutal occupation. And BTW, the Palestinians are also semitic, more so that the khazar jews that pretends to be semitic.
There is nothing more committed to force and fraud than a right-wing Jew. It is all about money and media isn't it?
Snowwolf you are the true anti-Semite. The last time I remembered, Arabs ARE Semites.
All Israelis are getting a bad rap because of the reactionary Zionists that are the equivalent of our Republicans.
Voting for conservatives has never brought peace. We may need another Cold War to keep right and left wing conservatives from killing each other and the rest of us with them.
But unfortunately, a Cold War probably won't keep religious conservatives from killing us for their God.
It just goes on and on and on.
Shock Abates.
After Israel's Torturing Of Children (Google 'Khiam').
Pumping their Kosher Feces into Gazan's wells,
Bulldozing Homes,
Stealing A Country,
Running the Largest Concentration Camp In World History,
The USS Liberty
And most of all 9-11 (MoSSad agents filming themselves dancing, cheering triumphantly atop of van in New Jersey as Twin Towers are struck in background) Apprehended and Released. Quietly, 6 months later.
Shock Abates.
When one lays down with Zionist dogs, one arises with Zionist fleas. The only reason Zionists are treating the Palestinians like the Nazis treated jews is because Zionism is Nazi-ism...vicious, racist, back-stabbing, murdering Zionist-Nazis. How in the hell did we come to such a pass that we are financing their torture and genocide with our tax dollars. Why are we electing the sort of people who are loyal to the Jew-state...and the United States? The brave Americans who gave their all at Shiloh, The Argonne, Pork Chop Hill are ashamed of us...and ought to be.
All Israelis are getting a bad rap because of the reactionary Zionists that are the equivalent of our Republicans....unfortunately, a Cold War probably won't keep religious conservatives from killing us for their God.
Religious folks tend to get slandered by liberals for being the source of "primeval hatreds" that lead to conflicts such as the one in Palestine/Israel. But the root cause of deaths of more than 100 million in the last century can be traced back to another religion that is used to mobilize passions, "secular nationalism". That's what Noam Chomsky calls it in this (MP3) interview in which he describes it as a much more dangerous phenomenon than old-time religious traditions that are ridiculed by "militant atheists" such as Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, etc. Mark Mazower also disputes the impression that "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans is a result of religious enmity. He quoted the historian Arnold Toynbee's take in 1922 on the source of ethnic strife (which often falls along the boundaries of religious/sectarian divide) in the Balkans:
The introduction of the Western formula [of the principle of nationalism] among these people has resulted in massacre....Such massacres are only the extreme form of a national struggle between mutually indispensable neighbors, instigated by this fatal Western idea.
The founders of Israel were almost to a person secular nationalists. For the first 30 years of its existence it was led by people who believed in Nationalist Socialism. These non-practicing Jewish leaders manipulated religious myths for purely instrumental reasons (PDF) without believing a word of religious texts. Just yesterday in a debate, an Israeli wrote the following about the type of persons who are the most gung ho members of his society:
I know that for Americans it's very hard to understand, but being a liberal and serving in an elite combat unit goes hand in hand here.
If you don't believe me, just read the news stories, and the bios of the kidnapped soldiers. The front lines are CEOs, lawyers, scientists, mathematicians, accountants and what not. The middle+ class are the people that go to war. The most leftist and liberal leaders were always the best generals--Rabin (Oslo) , Barak (pulled out of Lebanon), and in his last years, Ariel Sharon who pulled out of Gaza. And most importantly, there is not a single religious general, and Israel never had a religious leader.
seems to me that if the Pali's stopped shooting rockets into israel and blowing up buses full of women and children there would be peace...and they could have their own state
but they don't seem willing to do that
SnowWolf, as long as the mistreatment of Palestinians continues, Israel cannot hope that the rockets and violence will stop. Israel can't throw a bit of justice covered in horror, Gaza, into the works to end the hostilities. Why should Hamas stop because Gaza was given when the West Bank occupation continues and the state sanctioned settlers and Israeli soldiers terrorize the Palestinians. My God, the horrors of it should shake the world, yet we hear little or nothing in the press! And yes, why is the US supporting it all??? Money? Votes? There is a human rights movement in Israel, BT'selem is one organization working on these issues. It is a shame they have so little support from the world community. They gave 100 video cameras to Palestinians to document the brutality and managed to get some of the resulting videos onto NBC news in the US last week! We must acknowledge this good work being done by Israelis and help them. Just as abused children often grow up to abuse children, abused people abuse other people. It is all about breaking the psychological cycle. The world community needs to help the human rights movement in Israel to bring about the end to this mess. It can't go on! The world is responsible for letting it continue and we must make our voices SO LOUD that it stops.
That's some pretty sick shit. Pro-Israeli Americans should be outraged, but AIPAC is pretty much soul-less. Good Jews Everywhere--on the other hand--have a quandary on their hands.
Then again, the same scenario presents itself vis-a-vis Good Americans and the fecophile fucktards in Washington.
How will Good Humans Worldwide respond? I'm rather enamored of China and India's scuttling of WTO talks, but I'm hopeful of something more substantive. Allied Europe partnered with American resolve to defeat Hitler. Consumer-driven divestiture toppled South African apartheid. What will it take to combat this latest axis of evil?
Censure is not strong enough, unless the term is extended to apply to economic, political, and social ostracization of America and Israel. There were good Germans. There are good corporations. There are good Americans. There are good Israelis. But I give them all no quarter at all: the Empire must fall.
For the Good of Good Humans. (Oh heck, screw the humans, for the Good of Goodness, for Goodness' Sake!)
Are we sure that Achwitz wasn't just a school to teach Nazism to Jews? They sure picked it up somewhere...and now excelled at it. Hitler would be proud of them.
SnowWolf August 5th, 2008 3:58 am
seems to me that if the Pali's stopped shooting rockets into israel and blowing up buses full of women and children there would be peace…and they could have their own state
but they don't seem willing to do that
_______
I doubt that you will take time to read the following article but I'll post the URL anyway. Maybe others will read it and become a bit more enlightened.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3351.shtml
Peace in the middle east? Not as long as Israel insists on raiding and looting what's left and the US intention of robbing all of the oil and what else is left. The evil men do never stops but evil is present everywhere and what's needed is a change in consciousness throughout the world for humanitarian choices.
SnowWolf: You really have no idea what you're talking about. You're one of those "blame the victim" people. Don't you know that Israel has NO intention of making peace... Look at THIS little piece of reality: http://www.rafahtoday.org/
To Kent Shaw and all....
Thank you Kent Shaw for the link. So freaky. You've seen the video "Loose Change" I take it? I did not realize the Israeli connection. How depressing. Do you think Obama would help, or no? just more hot wind?