Israeli Ethnic Cleansing of "Infiltrators", by Which They Mean Palestinian Families

CarolynC has an important diary up at FDL/The Seminal describing the latest legal moves by Israel to remove Palestinians from the West Bank, deporting them to the Gaza gulag, where they are jammed into one of the most densely populated, and immiserated, small regions on the planet.

Binyamin Netanyahu’s project to colonize East Jerusalem gained momentum with the first eviction of a Palestinian, Ahmad Sabah, from the West Bank to Gaza, forcibly separating him from his wife and children. Juan Cole writes that his deportation kicks off Netanyahu’s plan to ethnically cleanse the West Bank of Palestinians, making more room for Israeli colonists. He adds that Gaza, a poverty-stricken region blockaded by the Israelis, appears to have become the chosen dumping ground for the Palestinians Netanyahu plans to deport.

In an article entitled "IDF Order Will Enable Mass Deportation From West Bank," Haaretz confirms that the purpose of the policy is to enable the exile of large numbers of Palestinians to Gaza:

A new military order aimed at preventing infiltration will come into force this week, enabling the deportation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank, or their indictment on charges carrying prison terms of up to seven years.

Despite some tut-tuts by the Obama administration, the Israelis maintain overwhelming support from the U.S. Congress, including key Democrats. In fact, as CarolynC's article points out, Sen. Chuck Schumer went apoplectic over even the most mild-mannered criticisms by the State Deparment about how Israeli actions were harming the "peace process."

On a day in which President Obama again failed to label the 1,500,000 deaths in the Armenian Genocide as “genocide,” this story of ethnic cleansing in another portion of the former Ottoman Empire is an ominous foreshadowing of greater violence and retribution to come. The actions of Congressional Democrats such as Sen. Schumer are despicable.

This is a speed-up of ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Jerusalem that has been going on for some time. One of the most ominous aspects of the new military order is the expansion of who is considered an “infiltrator” — a word meant to conjure up the worse sorts of connotations, and place anyone so labeled as a person that can be treated with extreme prejudice.

From the Haaretz article:

The new order defines anyone who enters the West Bank illegally as an infiltrator, as well as “a person who is present in the area and does not lawfully hold a permit.” The order takes the original 1969 definition of infiltrator to the extreme, as the term originally applied only to those illegally staying in Israel after having passed through countries then classified as enemy states – Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.

The order’s language is both general and ambiguous, stipulating that the term infiltrator will also be applied to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, citizens of countries with which Israel has friendly ties (such as the United States) and Israeli citizens, whether Arab or Jewish. All this depends on the judgment of Israel Defense Forces commanders in the field....

Another group expected to be particularly harmed by the new rules are Palestinians who moved to the West Bank under family reunification provisions, which Israel stopped granting for several years.

The actions of the Israeli government must be condemned, and the military order rescinded. Congress must hear from its constituents that the policy of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank is not supported by the American people.

Keith Olberman on Mukasey, Daniel Levin & Waterboarding

Read this. Watch the video.

"Waterboarding is torture," Daniel Levin was to write. Daniel Levin was no theorist and no protester. He was no troublemaking politician. He was no table-pounding commentator. Daniel Levin was an astonishingly patriotic American and a brave man.

Brave not just with words or with stances, even in a dark time when that kind of bravery can usually be scared or bought off.

Charged, as you heard in the story from ABC News last Friday, with assessing the relative legality of the various nightmares in the Pandora's box that is the Orwell-worthy euphemism "Enhanced Interrogation," Mr. Levin decided that the simplest, and the most honest, way to evaluate them ... was to have them enacted upon himself.

Daniel Levin took himself to a military base and let himself be waterboarded....

MSNBC commentator goes on to call on Democratic Senators Feinstein and Schumer to recant their support for Bush lackey appointee, Michael Mukasey.

Thus Michael Mukasey, on the eve of the vote that will make him the high priest of the law of this land, cannot and must not answer a question, nor even hint that he has thought about a question, which merely concerns the theoretical definition of waterboarding as torture.

Because, Mr. Bush, in the seven years of your nightmare presidency, this whole string of events has been transformed.

From its beginning as the most neglectful protection ever of the lives and safety of the American people ... into the most efficient and cynical exploitation of tragedy for political gain in this country's history ... and, then, to the giddying prospect that you could do what the military fanatics did in Japan in the 1930s and remake a nation into a fascist state so efficient and so self-sustaining that the fascism would be nearly invisible.

But at last this frightful plan is ending with an unexpected crash, the shocking reality that no matter how thoroughly you might try to extinguish them, Mr. Bush, how thoroughly you tried to brand disagreement as disloyalty, Mr. Bush, there are still people like Daniel Levin who believe in the United States of America as true freedom, where we are better, not because of schemes and wars, but because of dreams and morals.

And ultimately these men, these patriots, will defeat you and they will return this country to its righteous standards, and to its rightful owners, the people.

Will Feinstein and Schumer Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?

Before I get to the Feinstein/Schumer imbroglio, let me first introduce Stephen Grey, the well-known author of Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Rendition and Torture Program (read an excerpt at the link), and a reporter for Frontline's upcoming November 9 documentary, Extraordinary Rendition, on PBS. He has a new piece over at Salon.com that's worth reading, "The Extraordinary Truth about CIA Renditions".

Grey points out that as terrible as waterboarding and other forms of torture practiced by the CIA and their foreign partners are, there are some things that are even more terrible. Anyone who has read my articles on sensory deprivation and DDD-style torture will recognize the subject as addressed in Grey's Salon piece.

In the course of investigating the rendition program for the past four years, I have interviewed victims, CIA pilots, case officers who have actually carried out renditions, senior CIA officers who directed such operations and officials at the White House who were involved in authorizing such measures. All of these sources told me in private or on the record that repeated claims by the White House that we "don't send people to countries where they will be tortured" are plain lies....

Inside its own "black site" prisons, the CIA uses interrogation methods that -- while falling short of the medieval techniques used in the Arab world -- still, in the eyes of many within the agency, amount to straightforward torture. It is not only the physical methods like waterboarding (simulated drowning), but also refined techniques of sensory deprivation, that can cripple a prisoner psychologically.

One witness to such abuse was Bisher al-Rawi, a longtime British resident who was snatched by the CIA and held for more than four years, first in Afghanistan, then in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In a recent interview he told me about the "dark prison" where he was held in solitary confinement while being bombarded with strange music. It was freezing cold and so dark, he said, "you couldn't see the end of your nose." Physical torture, like the beatings he later endured, could be overcome, he said, but psychological torture "lives with you all your life."

The biggest news, of course, in the ongoing U.S. torture scandal is the capitulation of Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who announced at the end of last week that they would vote to recommend Bushite right-wing hack, Federal Judge Michael B. Mukasey, to the Senate for confirmation vote as the Attorney General nominee to replace the unlamented Alberto Gonzales. Feinstein has already famously pronounced her rationale for her vote: "Judge Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales." Furthermore, she described Mukasey's replies to the committee's questions to be "crisp and to the point". Mukasey told her that waterboarding (an abhorrent torture technique with roots in medieval torture), with Feinstein quoting Mukasey here, seems

"...over the line or, on a personal basis, repugnant to me, and would probably seem the same to many Americans....

"I do know... that waterboarding cannot be used by the United States military because its use by the military would be a clear violation of the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA). That is because waterboarding and certain other coercive interrogation techniques are expressly prohibited by the Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation"....

Feinstein appears to want to compound her betrayal by rewriting history as well. Does the typical American's memory really only last a couple of weeks? Here's our "crisp" and "to the point" AJ nominee answering the questions of Senator Whitehouse, as reported in the New York Times (though the link is to my previous posting on Mukasey, cleverly enabling you to review my past writings on this issue):

"Is waterboarding constitutional?” he was asked by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, in one of today’s sharpest exchanges.

"I don’t know what is involved in the technique,” Mr. Mukasey replied. “If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”

Mr. Whitehouse described Mr. Mukasey’s response as a “massive hedge”....

“It either is or it isn’t,” the senator continued. “Waterboarding is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, tying them down, putting cloth over their faces, and then pouring water over them to simulate drowning. Is that constitutional?”

Mr. Mukasey repeated his answer: “If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.”

Mr. Whitehouse said he was “very disappointed in that answer — I think it is purely semantic.”

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Mukasey replied.

I guess Mukasey learned a lot about waterboarding after his encounter with Sen. Whitehorse. But Feinstein and Schumer have certainly learned nothing. Perhaps they are unaware that keeping the threat of waterboarding alive enhances fear in prisoners currently held by the CIA, and that such induction of fear is itself a form of torture. Could Feinstein and Schumer be prosecuted themselves someday as accessories to war crimes? It may not be out of the question. But then, I doubt anyone on their staff mentioned that to these quintessential cowards and sell-outs. (It goes without saying that Bush Administration officials deserve such prosecution.)

Here's some of the relevant law:

Torture or inhuman treatment of prisoners-of-war (Geneva III, arts. 17 & 87) or protected persons (Geneva IV, art. 32) are grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and are considered war crimes (Geneva III, art. 130; Geneva IV, art. 147). War crimes create an obligation on any state to prosecute the alleged perpetrators or turn them over to another state for prosecution. This obligation applies regardless of the nationality of the perpetrator, the nationality of the victim or the place where the act of torture or inhuman treatment was committed (Geneva III, art.129; Geneva IV, art. 146).

During the Vietnam War, anti-war protesters used to shout, "Hey hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Will anti-war and anti-torture protesters soon be yelling at Lady DiFi, "Hey DiFi, Di Fi, how many will be waterboarded because of your lie?"