The Dominion - Jesse Rosenfeld

See No Evil

hillarybain — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:37:15 +0000

Canada removes Israel from list of countries suspected of using torture

“The Israelis tied my hands, blindfolded and then beat me all the way to the interrogation center. I was then cuffed to a chair for four days where interrogators prevented me from sleeping. I was tied in painful stress positions, and on one occasion the agents grabbed me while I was cuffed to the chair and shook me severely, I passed out when they started shaking me by the head,” said “Samer” a former student union activist at Birzeit University who was arrested in 2006.

This isn’t torture, according to Foreign Affairs Canada and the Harper government. The Canadian government used to list Israel and the United States as countries suspected of using torture in its diplomatic manual Torture Awareness Workshop Reference Materials. On January 19, 2008, though, shortly after this became public, the two countries were dropped from the list with an expression of regret and embarrassment from then-foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier.

For tortured Palestinians, and Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, however, Bernier’s expression of regret and embarrassment should instead be directed at the federal government's weak stance on Israeli torture. Sarit Michaeli, a spokesperson for the Israeli human rights group B’tselem, believes the international community has an obligation to act against torture. “We are very concerned about the Canadian government removing Israel from this list,” she said.

On January 21, B'Tselem sent a message to Bernier protesting Israel's removal from the list of countries suspected of torture. According to Foreign Affairs spokesperson Rodney Moore, the government has no record of receiving B'tselem's letter.

"The minister made it clear that this was not a position of government policy," stated Moore in referrence to Israel being listed in the manual. "The minister said in his statement that this was an embarrassment," he added, refusing to elaborate on why Israel was originally in the manual or the reasons for the country’s removal from it.

B’tselem’s comments were echoed by Amnesty International Canada (AIC), the human rights organization that obtained the diplomatic manual on torture before releasing it to the press. “We are disappointed that Canada would take countries off the list for diplomatic reasons,” said Paul Champ, AIC’s attorney who obtained the document. “Torture is a very serious issue and if there’s evidence, the Canadian government needs to deal with it.” Champ explained the manual was for training consul officers and, in the case of Israel, to bring claims of torture to their attention.

Last year, B’tselem, along with the Israeli individual liberties group HaMoked, released a report which documented the pervasiveness of Israeli torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees. The document reported that two-thirds of interview subjects said they’d experienced beatings, painful binding, humiliation and denial of basic needs at the hands of security forces personnel.

According to Gadi Zohar, the former chief of Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank and former head of the Israeli Army Intelligence’s Terror Research Department, Israelis “have to fight for our lives, not for anybody’s reports.” Zohar contends that Israel shouldn’t be called a state that tortures because of its “special situation in fighting terrorism. When you have to make decisions about saving lives and someone suffering, then one should suffer,” he argued.

In the office of the Israeli prime minister, spokesperson Mark Regev is terse and clear. "Torture is illegal in Israel," said Regev, referring to Israel's 1999 Supreme Court decision. "Nobody, not the Prime Minister's office, the Defense Establishment, nobody is above the law."

Despite Israel’s claim not to torture, the story of violent and tormenting ill-treatment by Israeli officials during detention is common in the Occupied Territories. According to Mahmud Sehwail, the general director of the Treatment and Rehabilitation Center for victims of Torture in Ramallah, there was little change after the 1999 Israeli High Court ruling that partly barred torture. Sehwail said that 90 per cent of Palestinian detainees have been tortured or ill-treated. The main switch after 1999, he explained, was from more physical to more psychological forms of torture. Sechwail also noted the ruling’s torture loophole, allowing for “physical pressure” to be applied in “ticking time bomb” cases.

Samer, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his privacy, also relayed experiences of psychological torture, discussing how Israeli Security Agents (ISA) claimed to have arrested his mother and sister, threatening to rape them if he didn’t confess. Samer said he has suffered from back pain and diminished eyesight as well as psychological trauma since his detention. While his experiences are more severe than most detainees, they are not uncommon.

Hammad Selaman described the Israeli army coming to his door at two in the morning to arrest him when he was 17. Freed as part of Israel’s token release of 429 prisoners in November 2007, he says he was charged with being a member of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas’ political movement considered an illegal organization by Israel. Describing being blindfolded and put on the floor of an army jeep, he said the soldiers kicked and beat him all the way to the detention centre. Selaman highlighted that the soldiers unleashed dogs on him in the jeep.

After arriving at the centre where he said he was held for a month, he described being taken to a small room where soldiers beat him again. “I was then taken to a bigger room where I was blindfolded and cuffed to a chair for 10 hours waiting for interrogation. I could hear other prisoners screaming from the torture.”

While the Harper government is evasive and the Liberals refused an interview, the New Democratic Party’s Foreign Affairs critic Paul Dewar is cautious in his response, primarily targeting the government for not acting on their information.

“The government has to stop shutting up its bureaucrats when they come out with important information,” he said, highlighting that both Canada and Israel haven’t signed the UN convention against torture. Shying away from condemning the Israeli government, Dewar said that Samer and Selaman’s experiences sounded like torture, but he hasn’t seen B’tselem’s report and doesn’t know if Israel’s actions would meet the criteria to be listed as a state that tortures.

While Canadian politicians distance themselves from publicly confronting Israel over its detention policies, many Palestinians who've passed through Israeli custody say that torture doesn't end in the interrogation room but continues in prison after sentencing.

Jihad Maher Shalapi was 16 when he says he was arrested at Nablus' Huwwara checkpoint. He was beaten all the way to interrogation and then severely beaten after refusing to sign a confession in Hebrew which he didn't understand. "The interrogator started screaming at me, beating me and kicking my head against the door. I was forced to stand on my tiptoes squatting in a stress position for half an hour at a time."

A member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine at the time of arrest, he said he was caught with two homemade explosives intended for a retaliation attack after the Israeli military carried out the extrajudicial assassination of his uncle. He was sentenced to a year in prison by an Israeli military court where he says extreme mistreatment continued. Released in October 2007, he described the regular use of tear gas by guards in the prison yard which would blow into the cells. He also highlighted cell block raids where the army would discharge tear gas into cells, then rushing in to beat prisoners with batons. Similar stories of prison were also relayed by Samer and Selaman.

With a Canadian election on the horizon, the NDP has said the issue of torture will be part of the party’s human rights platform. However, Dewar was vague as to how the issue will be addressed. Regardless of the muted response in Canada to the descriptions of Israeli torture, Shalapi, Selaman and Samer have called on the Canadian government to place Israel back in the manual and take concrete diplomatic action to end Israeli torture.

Jesse Rosenfeld is a freelance journalist based in Ramallah. To learn more, check out his blog.

A version of this story was originally published in NOW Magazine.

Protester in Palestine

Grass stains on Canada’s hands

hillarybain — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 13:28:58 +0000

Why are Canadians subsidizing a park built on razed Palestinian towns?

Walking through the peace and tranquility of ‘Canada Park’ with Israeli families picnicking around you, it’s nearly impossible to tell that you’re in the occupied West Bank, treading on the site of two destroyed and evicted villages from the 1967 war.

Established in 1973 through donations fundraised by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in Canada, Ayalon/Canada Park sits on top of the Palestinian villages of Imwas and Yalo, just off the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. Nearby, the Jewish settlement of Modi’in sits on top of the Palestinian village of Beit Nouba, also demolished in 1967. In Canada, the JNF, which enjoys charitable status, is fundraising for "renewal and development" of the park.

Ahmad Abu Gaush is an Imwas refugee and current head of the Imwas association, which demands the right to return for the displaced villagers. In a Ramallah coffee shop, he describes the terror and confusion of the early hours of June 5, 1967.

"My family left an hour before the soldiers reached us... We walked through the mountains for 32 kilometres with no food or water until we reached Ramallah," he says, adding that when the soldiers arrived they ordered everyone to leave the village, firing their weapons in the air.

Now 54, Abu Gaush was 14 when he was forced to flee his home. As we look at photos of Imwas before it was destroyed, he reminisces about the calm beauty of his village and how he feels Israel stole his childhood. He says that when his older brother tried to return with several hundred villagers a week after the war, they were stopped before they got to Beit Nouba and ordered back, after which he maintains the army destroyed what remained of the villages.

Growing up in Ramallah, Gaush says that West Bank Palestinians were able to visit the village until 1991. After the First Gulf War, however, the Israeli military erected a checkpoint, barring displaced villagers from visiting their land.

“When returning to the park, I had mixed feelings. It’s very hard, standing on the ruins of where you used to live while seeing people laughing, eating and enjoying themselves,” he says. Israel’s wall now encompasses the park and it has become virtually cut off to West Bank Palestinian access.

John Reynolds, a legal researcher with the independent Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, argues that displacement and destruction of the three villages located in the Latroun Valley constitutes a war crime. “The forcible transfer of people from their villages and the destruction of those villages are defined as a grave breach of the Geneva Convention, which is in the category of the most heinous war crimes,” he says.

While the maps of pre- and post-1967 Israel indicate otherwise, the JNF has argued that the park was within the borders of Israel in 1948, and donors are not informed of the political controversy surrounding the park. Al-Haq’s claim “is ludicrous and has no foundational basis in law,” Executive Director Joe Rabinovitch says, rejecting the statements and sworn affidavits of displaced villagers. Questioning the need for the park to acknowledge the existence of the villages, he maintains they were destroyed for security reasons. “There were Palestinians lobbing shells onto the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway,” he argues, though asked if this occurred in the 1948 or 1967 wars he answers, “I don’t know.”

Al-Haq has officially released a report about the Latroun Valley and Canada Park, contending that the Israeli government, JNF Canada and the Canadian government bear responsibility in violating international law and human rights. The report, which was shown to villagers on December 3, combines their affidavits, recorded testimony of soldiers serving during the displacement, maps, photos and legal analysis.

“The state of Israel bears the primary responsibility for the human rights violation. The JNF also has legal responsibilities as a charitable organization and NGO, not only to Canadian charitable laws but also international law,” Reynolds argues. He adds that the Canadian government also holds some responsibility because the money to build Canada Park came through government-subsidized tax exemptions.

Looking around the park, the only visible signs of previous inhabitants is a crumbling cemetery with Arabic engraved on the stones and a series of old stone village walls. On some of the walls at the entrance to the park are rows of plaques commemorating Canadian donors such as the City of Ottawa, the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department, former Ontario-premier Bill Davis, and Toronto city councillor Joe Pantalone, who helped make the park possible.

There is no visible sign postage about the villages that pre-date Canada Park or their inhabitants. Eitan Bronstein, however, is not surprised. Bronstein works with Zochrot, a mainly Jewish Israeli organization that educates the Israeli public on the creation of Palestinian Refugees in 1948 and 1967.

“For Israel, it’s better not to show the history because if you know the history, you have to take responsibility. It’s easier for Israel and the JNF to keep the myth about blooming the desert,” says Bronstein. Often, he adds, people get angry when confronted with this history.

Wandering Canada Park, many people I speak with have no idea that villages had ever existed or that the park is officially in the West Bank. Only one person from a nearby kibbutz knew the park's history, acknowledging many of the kibbutz residents boycotted the park because of the evictions, before returning to her picnic.

Jesse Rosenfeld is a freelance journalist based in Ramallah. He writes for NOW Magazine and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs

A version of this article was originally published in the December 20, 2007 issue of Now Magazine

Canada Park 1

Canada Park 2