Why does Sir Michael Marmot defend the Israeli Medical Association against accusations of involvement in the torture of Palestinians?

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The World Medical Association's Complicity in Israel's use of Torture 

When you read a description of Sir Michael Marmot's career you realise that he has been showered with honours.  We are told that 'Marmot has a special interest in inequalities in health and its causes'.  Perhaps he considers being tortured to be some form of accolade?

You might have thought that the President of the World Medical Association would be in the forefront of the fight to prevent doctors participating in torture.  Unfortunately this is not the case.  When it comes to Israel Marmot and the WMA have deliberately and persistently acted to support the Israeli Medical Association in its active support for doctors who participate in the torture of prisoners.

As Dr Derek Summerfield shows below, the WMA has persistently refused to look at evidence of the IMA’s culpability.  This is the stuff of Nuremburg and crimes against humanity.

Victor Brack, the SS doctor who headed the 'Euthenasia' T4 Action which murdered up to 3/4 million disabled people, who was hanged at Nuremburg

At Nuremburg in 1946 in what became known as The Doctors Trial 20 Nazi doctors stood trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity and membership of the SS.  7 of them including Viktor Brack, who headed the Euthenasia T4 programme were hanged.  The crimes they committed included performing medical experiments on children, twins in particular, without anesthetic.

You might have thought that the WMA would have taken the lessons of Nuremburg to heart.  In fact as Derek Summerfield, a tireless campaigner and honorary senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry shows, the WMA is complicit in Israel’s use of torture.  Indeed not just in Israel.  It also turned a blind eye to the complicity of American doctors in the use of torture by the CIA as has the American Medical Association. Will the US torture doctors face any consequences?

Even more disturbing is the recent decision of Israel’s High Court (which also sits as the Supreme Court) to effectively approve the use of torture by Shin Bet, Israel’s MI5.  Israel’s courts have a shocking record when it comes to torture.  In previous decisions under the ‘liberal’ Chief Justice Landau, it approved ‘moderate physical pressure’  Under pressure it rowed back on this but still approved torture in ‘ticking time-bomb’ cases i.e. where the bomb was about to go off.

In reality this 'loophole' allowed torture of Palestinian prisoners to be an every day reality.  It was only when the State used torture on a few Jewish terrorists in the wake of the Dawabshh murders in 2015, that the issue became a topical one in Israel.

It is even more ironic that torture as an instrument of state policy has been approved by both Israeli Labour and Likud administrations.  There has been only one exception to this.  When the former head of Irgun and notorious Menachem Begin became Prime Minister he issued strict instructions against the use of torture and Shin Bet officers were even dismissed for torturing suspects.  Today that would be inconceivable.

Now however the High Court, despite the clearest evidence, indeed the admission of the torturers themselves, refused to intervene.  It is indeed a shameful decision but it is in line with the record of this colonial court.  The much vaunted ‘independence’ of Israel’s High Court is a myth.  Today it is stuffed with settler judges but even in the past it rarely if ever intervened to prevent the clear racism inbuilt into the Zionist state.

Tony Greenstein

Global medical watchdog complicit with Israeli abuses

Derek Summerfield The Electronic Intifada 17 November 2017

Activists come together to protest against Israel’s torture on Palestinian prisoners [Friends of Al Aqsa/Facebook]

It is now more than 20 years since Amnesty International first concluded that Israeli doctors working with Israel’s security services “form part of a system in which detainees are tortured, ill-treated and humiliated in ways that place prison medical practice in conflict with medical ethics.”

Since then there have been repeated attempts – of which this author has been part – to have the global medical ethics watchdog World Medical Association (WMA) hold the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) accountable for these practices.

But with the latest attempt foundering last year and despite changes in leadership over the years, the conclusion that now has to be drawn is that, when it comes to Israel, the WMA is not fit for the purpose for which it was created after World War II.

The WMA is mandated to ensure that its member associations abide by its codes, in particular its seminal 1975 anti-torture WMA Declaration of Tokyo. This obliges doctors not just to not participate directly in torture but also to protect the victims and to speak out whenever they encounter it.

The significant precedent for our action against the Israeli association was the expulsion from the WMA of the Medical Association of South Africa during the apartheid era on precisely the grounds that doctors became a part of a system in which torture was routine, just as Amnesty International concluded was the case in Israel.

Since then, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has often stated that if the IMA refused to allow doctors to serve in security units commonly deploying torture the practice would come to a halt. The medical presence in these units offers moral legitimation to Israel’s interrogators.

Global action

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK - MAY 19: Israeli security forces detain to Palestinian protesters during a demonstration to show solidarity with hunger striker Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails at the Ni'lin village in Ramallah, West Bank on May 19, 2017. ( Issam Rimawi - Anadolu Agency )

The first attempt to hold the IMA accountable came in 2009, when some 725 physicians from 43 countries appealed to the WMA, attaching the published findings from a number of human rights organizations including Amnesty, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and the United Against Torture coalition. That effort ended when it became clear that then-president of the WMA, Yoram Blachar, who was also president of the IMA, would not take any action, indeed refused to even acknowledge receipt of the submission.

Rather than investigating the claims made in the appeal, Blachar filed a libel suit in London against the individual who headed the 2009 campaign (and is also the author of this article). We rebutted the suit, which alleged we had duped signatories into signing the petition. Signatories helped us with our successful rebuttal by asserting to the libel lawyers that they were no dupes. Noam Chomsky was among those in public support of our effort.

The latest of these attempts to hold the IMA accountable came last year when 71 UK-based doctors made a fresh appeal to the WMA. This time, the submission also leaned on the 2011 Physicians for Human Rights-Israel report “Doctoring the Evidence, Abandoning the Victim: The Involvement of Medical Professionals in Torture and Ill Treatment in Israel” regarding the work of Israeli doctors in security units where torture of detainees was routine.

Why, the 2016 submission asked, were the doctors posted to these units not protecting detainees and protesting their treatment? And why has the Israeli Medical Association not acted on such reports, as it should according to the standards set down by the World Medical Association?

A boy wears tape on his mouth reading “Break the silence” during a protest against the torture of Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank city of Ramallah in November 2013. Issam Rimawi APA images

A hope dashed

This time, we hoped that the international reputation of prominent British medical academic Sir Michael Marmot, who at the time was WMA president, could be brought to bear on a case that has been a standing reproach to the idea that global regulation of the ethical behavior of doctors is even-handed and effective.

Marmot did send us an acknowledgment of receipt (unlike his predecessor) but within days of receiving this, we were staggered to see a letter from Marmot to the Simon Wiesenthal Center published on the center’s website.

Addressed to Dr. Shimon Samuels, director for international relations at the Wiesenthal Center, the letter startlingly stated that, vis-à-vis past claims, “investigations have revealed no wrongdoing or mishandling of the cases by the Israeli Medical Association.”

This is entirely untrue. For many years, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has tried to get the IMA to conduct such an investigation but found the association consistently unwilling. “Persistently repeated attempts,” the rights group concluded in 2011 in Doctoring the Evidence, “calling the IMA’s attention to cases arousing suspicion of doctors’ involvement in torture and cruel or degrading treatment, have not been dealt with substantively.”

The IMA did in 2009 look into testimonies of victims of torture collected in 2007 by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, but concluded, after a few phone calls, that the accusations were without merit and flawed because they had no evidence “other than the word of the prisoners.” That conclusion effectively delegitimized victim complaints from the outset.

Not fit for purpose

Marmot’s letter to Samuels in effect gifted the IMA a signal propaganda victory. He did not just make inaccurate statements: he effectively offered the IMA instant and public exoneration. Coming from the WMA president himself, presumed to be speaking for the whole organization, this was a real propaganda coup and one taken up by media outlets like The Jerusalem Post, whose report was duly headlined “World Medical Association affirms trust in Israeli doctors in response to BDS campaign.”

With repeated attempts to have the WMA take the IMA to task for a conclusive body of evidence showing the Israeli medical establishment is – at the very least – enabling a system of torture of prisoners, the focus must now shift to the WMA itself.

Unfortunately, as the case with Israel illustrates, the WMA seems unwilling to act against those with powerful friends like the US. It is far less hesitant in raising concerns with other less powerful countries like Iran or Bahrain, to name but two.

We therefore have to conclude that the world’s medical body is complicit with these Israeli abuses and that its purported mission to uphold ethical standards across the globe is a sham.

This is bad news for Israeli doctors thrust into ethically compromised roles. It is worse news for Palestinian detainees with little to protect them.

Derek Summerfield is a London-based medical academic involved in human rights campaigning on Israel/Palestine for 25 years.

al_zubaydah_who was waterboarded 83 times under the supervision of CIA doctors

Sir Michael Marmot, the World Medical Association, the Israeli Medical Association, and medical complicity with torture in Israel

In February last year the British Medical Journal published our letter relating the extraordinary response by UK academic Sir Michael Marmot, President of the World Medical Association (the official organisation monitoring medical ethics internationally) to the submission by 71 UK doctors of an evidence-based appeal about longstanding complicity with torture by Israeli doctors shielded by the Israeli Medical Association (IMA).  

The WMA is mandated to ensure that its member associations, which include the IMA, abide by its declarations- in particular the anti-torture Declaration of Tokyo which forbids doctors any involvement with torture and obliges them whenever they encounter it to protect the victim and to speak out. Within a week of our submission the Zionist organisation Simon Wiesenthal Centre (whose website states "we stand with Israel"), not an involved party in this matter, had published a letter on their website from Marmot on WMA notepaper to their Director of International Relations which claimed that “investigations have revealed no wrong doing” by the IMA. 

This is evidentially untrue, as the evidence base to which we point makes transparently clear. This apparent exoneration of the IMA by no less than WMA President gifted them a signal propaganda victory, widely reported. For example, the Jerusalem Post newspaper report was headlined “WMA affirms trust in Israeli doctors..” 

Indeed our experience since the original submission to the WMA in 2009 signed by 725 doctors from 43 countries, attaching a raft of incriminating evidence from such as Amnesty International, has been that the WMA will speak out about some countries but never about Israel, whatever the evidence. In the present case Marmot has still not replied to the 71 signatories, and has rebuffed 3 requests by the BMJ for a response. How are we then to understand this refusal to justify actions taken in the name of the WMA Presidency? The circumstances related above, not least the immediate endorsement of the IMA sent to the Wiesenthal Centre, suggests a partisan dereliction of duty which violates the WMA’s own mandates. There is no question that so goes to the heart of the global public reputation of doctors as their complicity with torture- this is why the WMA was created after World War 2.

This matter is a litmus test of whether internationally agreed medical ethical codes actually matter, and can hold transgressors to account, even when they have powerful friends. All the evidence suggests that they are largely window dressing: there is no effective and even-handed regulation of the ethical behaviour of doctors worldwide, even about torture.

By way of postscript to the egregious events above, I had the opportunity to attend a public interview at Battersea Arts Centre of Sir Michael Marmot on Monday 11 December by the satirist and commentator Mark Thomas. It was apparently the first in a series of 8 Mark Thomas is doing on "The NHS at 70". At question time I threw in a tightly worded query about his behaviour in the episode above.  Marmot quickly lost his cool and began expostulating loudly, saying: "you have just told at least 6 lies....I have been doorstepped, its all lies, I spoke to Physicians for Human Rights and they said their publications are a bit old and everything is alright now...I spoke to the IMA ..." The best word for his response is venal.

He will of course remain perfectly pleased with the role he played: our campaign created a moment when the IMA had need of some external support, and there was the WMA Pres no less to give it to them, doing his duty: "everything is alright now...". This is what has built impunity in Israel.

Some years ago Noam Chomsky told me that the IMA demonstrated what he called "utter moral degeneracy".

Our campaign continues. An Electronic Intifada article on this issue can be found on this link:

Rights groups slam Israel Supreme Court for giving ‘green light’ to torture

Ben White

December 21, 2017 at 3:33 pm

The Israeli Supreme Court has been accused of redefining torture so as to permit it after a major new ruling was greeted with dismay by local and international human rights groups.

Last week the court – sitting as the High Court of Justice – denied a petition brought by The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) on behalf of Palestinian prisoner Asad Abu Ghosh.

According to the petition, Abu Ghosh was tortured with “severe mental and physical violence” during a Shin Bet interrogation in 2007, including “beatings, being thrown against a wall, stress positions including the ‘banana’ position, sleep deprivation, and extreme mental duress”.

The High Court was presented with high-level and independent legal-medical opinions confirming the physical and mental damage caused to Abu Ghosh at the hands of his interrogators.

While allegations of torture by Shin Bet agents are commonplace, impunity is the norm; more than 1,000 complaints filed since 2001 did not produce a single criminal investigation. What made this case unusual, however, was that the state admitted “certain pressure methods” had been used.

Despite this, and the evidence presented by PCATI, the High Court still threw out the petition, accepting an earlier decision of the Attorney General not to open a criminal investigation against the interrogators, and thus granting the agents impunity for their actions.

For PCATI, how the court reached its decision is as disturbing as the verdict itself – and one paragraph in particular stands out. “The definition of certain interrogation methods as ‘torture’ is dependent on concrete circumstances,” wrote Judge Uri Shoham, “even when these are methods recognised explicitly in international law as ‘torture’ [my emphasis]”.

The High Court’s decision is being described by some as the most important legal development for interrogations and torture in some two decades; as a report in The Jerusalem Post put it, “essentially, the court took the state’s side on all of the key issues before it”.

In 1999, the High Court ruled that Shin Bet agents could not use “physical means” in their interrogations. However, the justices also held that agents who used such methods could be immune from criminal responsibility in the case of a “ticking bomb” scenario.

Unsurprisingly, since then Palestinians have continued to be tortured by Shin Bet interrogators relying on the “ticking bomb” exception – but as Israeli NGO B’Tselem put it, such methods “were not limited to exceptional cases and quickly became standard interrogation policy”.

This state of affairs has been widely documented, including by the UN Committee Against Torture in May 2016, by interrogators themselves, and in studies like the one published by the ‘Reproductive Health Matters’ medical journal in 2015, which found that “Israeli authorities are systemically involved with torture and ill-treatment of a sexual nature”.

As Israeli legal affairs analyst Yonah Jeremy Bob noted recently, Israel’s Supreme Court was “unique” in having established “a category of ‘moderate physical pressure’ that could legally be used on [prisoners]”. He added: “No democratic country in the present era has defended the legality of such methods or established normative legal principles relating to them quite like Israel.”

Now, this latest High Court decision leaves Palestinian prisoners even more vulnerable to abuse. According to PCATI, the ruling “permits de facto use of torture methods”, including even those forbidden in the High Court’s 1999 judgement, and also “blocks the way for victims who have suffered from physical and psychological trauma to seek redress”.

For Amnesty International, whose 2016/17 annual report found that Israeli forces and Shin Bet agents “subjected Palestinian detainees, including children, to torture and other ill-treatment with impunity”, the Supreme Court decision is troubling.

“We have serious concerns that in taking this decision the Court dismisses, yet again, credible and relevant evidence of systematic torture of Palestinian detainees”, said Magdalena Mughrabi, 

Amnesty’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

In doing so, she added, the court is “sending another green light” to Shin Bet interrogators “that it is acceptable to use methods of coercion, including the combined use of stress positions, beatings and sleep deprivation that amount to torture against Palestinian detainees”.

For Dawoud Yusef, head of the Advocacy and Lobbying unit at Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer, “there is very little surprise in regard to the ruling in the case of Abu Ghosh”.

“Not only did the original case in 1999 leave the definitions for ‘moderate physical pressure’ and a ‘ticking bomb’ situation open”, he said, “it also gave the authorities a license to torture”.

Nonetheless, Yusef continued, the new ruling “represents a key legal addition to the 1999 case”, by fleshing out some of the details of what had previously only been implicit definitions.

“From the [Abu Ghosh] case, a ticking bomb situation does not have to mean that an attack is imminent or that the person in question has the direct information to prevent such a situation. Secondly, the case categorises the banana position, pressure on his fingers, and a beating as simply being ‘moderate physical pressure’.”

Thus, Yusef asked, “the question now is: what will the Israeli state actually consider as torture, and how low can the bar go regarding a ‘ticking time bomb’ situation?”

The Supreme Court’s dismissal of PCATI’s petition joins a long list of examples where Israeli judges have declined to strike down legislation and policies which violate international law.

Addressing the Abu Ghosh ruling, a spokesperson for B’Tselem said that “vital to Israel’s ability to act with impunity is the Supreme Court routine of granting a veneer of legality to almost all violations of Palestinian human rights, and in this case, a particularly grave one”.

For PCATI, at the core of this new ruling is “a refusal… to admit that certain methods, which are recognised internationally as torture, are indeed torture in Israel as well”. While this may ultimately “put the court on a collision course with the International Criminal Court”, in the meantime, as PCATI noted, the “torturers” of Palestinian prisoners will continue to enjoy “absolute impunity”.

Israeli Medical Association backs refusing to treat Palestinian 'terrorists'

Israel’s new triage guidelines – purely for international consumption

In my previous post on the extra-judicial execution of a wounded Palestinian it was noticeable that 2 Israeli ambulances did nothing to tend to someone who was clearly severely injured on the ground.   Their only concern was a superficially wounded soldier.

Palestinian Red Crescent

It is clear that the new guidelines from the Israeli Medical Association, whilst formally adhering to the triage rules, whereby you tend to the most severely wounded first, is not in practice being adhered to.

Israeli doctors are complicit in the shoot to kill policies of Israel’s military.  The new guidelines are purely for international consumption.

Tony Greenstein

Israeli medics are leaving wounded Palestinians to bleed to death

Israeli soldiers invade hospital demanding records

Dan Cohen March 23, 2016

Last December, an Israeli medic announced on his Twitter account that he would not treat injured Palestinians he deemed “terrorists.”

“As a ZAKA volunteer for close to twenty years. I am announcing publicly, I will not offer aid to a terrorist/murderer that hurt innocents, whatever his condition may be. Before I treat the victims,” he wrote.

Soon after, he claimed to have carried out his promise. On the scene at Jerusalem’s Jaffa Gate where a Palestinian man who attacked an Israeli was shot, beaten with a metal rod and kicked by civilians, the medic boasted on Twitter that he did not treat the dying Palestinian man.

“For all of those asking, when I arrived today to the scene of the terror attack at Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem. I treated those wounded by stabbing and no! I did not go to give aid to the terrorist may his name be erased! despite the fact that his condition was mortal,” he wrote.

This is not an aberration, rather, it is an instance of increasing turmoil in the Israeli medical community over the concept of triage, the internationally recognized protocol for medical treatment based on severity and likely benefit from immediate treatment. 

Changing Israeli Protocol on Triage

In 2008, the website of the Israeli Medical Association listed a Talmudic dictum in its section on ethics.

“In cases where human caused violence results in casualties for the perpetrators of such violence (the enemy), the obligations towards these parties should be clearly defined. Here, the principle to be implemented is “the poor of your city come first,” it read.

When Hadas Ziv, Physicians for Human Rights Israel’s ethics committee coordinator, found this in October 2015, the committee wrote a complaint to IMA’s ethics committee that “statements from medical teams on the ground indicate that they do not prioritize the injured according to their medical condition,” and requested that the licenses of the offending medical staff be revoked. The IMA does not have the authority to revoke medical licenses themselves, but as a professional organization it is able to make recommendations to the Ministry of Health. After PHRI’s letter, the IMA did remove the directive from its website.

In response to the removal of the instruction breaching triage, the aforementioned ZAKA medic and a handful of others made online announcements that they would continue to discriminate in defiance of the IMA.

Rather than expelling the medic who refused to treat a dying Palestinian, ZAKA, the medical organization he works for, confirmed that this breach of triage is the protocol they are training.

“Usually already in the initial stage the attacker is identified, and our policy is to give precedence to the attacked with medical treatment,” ZAKA wrote on Twitter.

A Twitter poll started after the medic’s announcement indicates public support for attacking triage, with 88% of the 59 polled in support.

On October 18, Ziv filed a complaint over changes to the triage protocol with the Ministry of Health, but more than five months later, she has not received a response and the MOH has been silent on the issue.

A Pattern of Denying Medical Aid to Palestinians

In November 2015, the NGO Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor released a report documenting five separate incidents of denial of medical aid to Palestinians by Magen David Adom, which is officially recognized by the International Committee of the Red Cross, accusing it of violating the Geneva Conventions. “Such discrimination in providing medical treatment, even when a crime has been attempted, is prohibited and illegal under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.”

A video taken after a stabbing attack in the occupied West Bank last Thursday shows Israeli medics treating an injured Israeli soldier while two Palestinians lie on the ground, severely injured. Both Palestinians, Ali Jamal Muhammad Taqatqa, 19, and Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Kar Thawabta, 20, died of their wounds.

In video footage of the killing of 18-year-old Hadeel al-Hashlamoun in Hebron, an Israeli settler named Ofer – who local activists claim has no medical training and operates a fake ambulance – can be seen discouraging Israeli medics from treating her. Other videos show Israeli medical personnel standing idly as she bleeds to death, meanwhile medics from the Palestine Red Crescent Society were refused access to treat her. Amnesty International called her death an “extrajudicial execution.”

In another incident, 21-year old Yasmin al-Zarou was gunned down by Israeli soldiers, who then interrogated her as she bled on the ground. Israeli medics stood over her and even pushed her outstretched hands away as she asked for help.

Widespread Support

Last October, Deputy Minister of the Interior Yaron Mazuz publicly backed the change to triage. “The first priority should be give in to the residents of Israel, mostly to those who were injured from the attacks. Is it unacceptable that we would treat terrorists before residents of the state,” he said on Israel’s Channel Two.

But for Ziv, the MOH’s silence is unusual and deeply troubling.

“Even worse than the right-wing populist politicians who are just looking for headlines – fine, they understand nothing in medical ethics,” Ziv told me in a telephone call. “What worries me is that the Minister of Health [Ya’aldoesn’t see it as its role to say something very clear cut, and I wonder why is that so.”

Attacks on triage are also gaining support in Shaare Zedek, one of Israel’s top hospitals. Speaking at at a conference on the ethics of terror attacks, Dr. Ofer Merin, Executive Director of the Trauma Unit & Deputy Director of Medicine at Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem, told the audience that adoption of this practice was inevitable – however in euphemistic terms.

“When we reach the ‘day of judgement’ in which we won’t be able to treat everyone, I think – and I say this with complete caution – that if it is impossible to treat everyone, I think there is no avoiding the moral statement that we need to give the innocents different rights than the person who harmed them intentionally,” he said.

Writing in the UK medical journal The Lancet, Merin subtly proposed the idea of abandoning triage in April 2015. “The moral issue of concurrently treating a terrorist and his victim is even more complex. Is it actually realistic to expect the staff to disregard the fact that the terrorist intended to kill the innocent person lying wounded in the same trauma unit?”

Ultimately, he concluded that “Punishment is not the role of the medical staff; rather, their duty and obligation is to preserve life and restore health. Judgment should be the exclusive provenance of the legal system and physicians should practice their art without discrimination and with a clear conscience.”

But the recent violence appears to have created the pretext for Merin to warn that the hospital would soon have no choice but to embrace racist medical practices.

Top state-funded rabbis have also endorsed this practice, abandoning the euphemistic terminology of a moral dilemma, and have even encouraged Israeli police and soldiers to execute wounded Palestinians deemed “terrorists” on the spot.

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a top haredi authority, instructed paramedics from United Hatzalah to “not treat injured terrorists,” and that “If the terrorist was in a life threatening condition, they should leave him or her to die.”

“It is forbidden to leave a murderer alive,” Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu told the Galei  Yisrael radio station.

In another instance, Eliyahu said, “Only in a case where you really have no other choice…keep him alive, interrogate him and then send him to hell as soon as possible.”

Rabbi Ben-Tzion Mutzafi, another top haredi rabbi, ordered his students to bludgeon wounded Palestinians to death. “It is commanded to take hold of his head and hit it against the ground until there is no longer any life in it,” he said.

Rabbis Eliyahu and Mutzafi even called for soldiers and police who let Palestinians live to be prosecuted.

“The political situation in Israel is horrific,” Ziv lamented. “The atmosphere, environment and political leadership all influenced other systems in our [Israeli] society. Education has changed, courts have changed – the medical system is not immune to that.”

Attacking NGOs Who Tell the Truth

One of the myths of Israel's right is that the Supreme Court is a liberal Arabist institution - whereas it has presided over waves of confiscations and expulsions

 Israel – the transition from ‘democracy’ to dictatorship

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Noone should be surprised that ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ is fast jetissoning even the pretensions of being a democratic state.  The dictatorship that is the Occupation is rapidly coming home as dissident NGO’s, even the pro-Zionist  Btselem find their funding under attack.

NGO’s will only be able to receive funding from outside Israel with the permission of the government.  Meanwhile Sheldon Adelson’s free paper Israel Hayom, which is subsidised to the tune of $5 million by an   American/Zionist billionaire will be protected, even though it is destroying the rest of Israel’s independent media.

Right-wing Israeli NGO

Israeli hasbara has been going into overtime this week against the group Breaking the Silence, which recorded and publicised the stories of soldiers detailing what really happened in Gaza, the free-fire zones where civilians could be shot without hesitation and the collapse of any semblance of moral values.  The reaction has been to accuse Breaking the Silence of lying, being anti-Semitic (of course!), self-hating Jews etc. etc.  Shoot the messenger rather than deal with the message is the order of the day.

Ayelet Shaked - the 'angel of death' genocidalist and spearheading attack on human rights NGO's as 'justice' minister

Ayelet Shaked, who is on record as advocating the genocide of Palestinian people (or ‘little snakes’ as she terms Palestinian infants) has been appointed ‘Justice’ Minister.  It’s on a par with the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger at the time of the Vietnam War. 

Protest against Israeli apartheid outside new housing block within Arab East Jerusalem

She has Israel’s Supreme Court in her sights.  This is a favourite target of the far-Right.  The Supreme Court has an appalling enough record when it comes to Palestinian rights as it is.  It has ruled that Israeli law trumps International law.  It has given the go ahead for land confiscations, the demolition of villages and much else.  It has a grisly record of deferring to ‘security’ concerns and it is always cognisant of the need to uphold Zionist values (such as ruling that there can be no such thing as a common Israeli Nationality).  Nonetheless, the few liberal decisions it has made have proved irksome for the ‘democratic’ tyrants now ruling Israel.

Tony Greenstein

B'tselem visiting Arab farmer whose crops have been destroyed by settlers - Btselem, although a Zionist group, has been under consistent attack

Is Netanyahu waging ‘war’ on critics at home?

6 June 2015

The Israeli government has indicated it is preparing to take a hard line against human rights groups, the media and Supreme Court

Middle East Eye – 6 June 2015

The Israeli Right objects to foreign funding of NGOs - but not foreign aid for weaponry!

A month into resuming his premiership, Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of an increasingly autocratic rule, as critics warn that his new government is preparing to take a draconian line against Israeli institutions opposing its policies.

Despite its appalling record Israel's Supreme Court under Justice Miriam Naor is under attack from Shaked for not being even more right-wing

Israel’s new rightwing coalition has already indicated it will make a priority of tackling three fronts – human rights organisations, the media and the Supreme Court. All repeatedly clashed with Netanyahu during his previous terms in office.

The leader of the parliamentary opposition, Isaac Herzog, sounded the alarm last month, cautioning Netanyahu not to “raise a hand” against the judiciary, media or the country’s minorities, including its 1.5 million Palestinian citizens. Netanyahu, he added, appeared to have learnt “tricks” from the region’s dictators.

Long-time observers of Israeli politics also fear that the current narrow right-wing coalition will give the prime minister a much freer hand. In his two earlier governments, Netanyahu depended on the support of centrist parties, such as Labor and Yesh Atid. Now he faces no such constraints.

After Netanyahu awarded himself new powers to veto legislation this week, Dov Khenin, the only Jewish member of the Arab-led Joint List party in the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, wondered: “Are we for autocracy?”

Similarly, Uri Avnery, leader of the Gush Shalom peace movement and a former Knesset member, concluded in a recent column entitled “Who will save Israel?” that: “The extreme right has found its self-assurance, and is determined to use its power.”

Concerns mount

Causes for concern have quickly mounted.

They have included the announcement of a government bill to penalise human rights groups working to help Palestinians in the occupied territories, as well as to protect the rights of the large Palestinian minority inside Israel and of African asylum seekers.

In addition, a diplomatic source told Middle East Eye that behind the scenes Israeli officials are trying to browbeat European governments into ending funding for the Israeli human rights community.

Eyebrows have also been raised by Netanyahu’s decision to reserve the communications ministry, which regulates the media, for himself. This is despite his having a shortage of ministerial posts with which to reward coalition partners.

Analysts have warned that Netanyahu is preparing to intimidate parts of the media critical of him and shore up the position of Israel Hayom, a free daily that has become the biggest-circulation national newspaper. Owned by US casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the paper staunchly supports Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, there are fears that the Israeli Supreme Court, which repeatedly came to blows with Netanyahu’s last government over efforts to jail and deport asylum seekers, is in his sights as well.

The prime minister agreed to appoint Ayelet Shaked, of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, as justice minister. Shaked has been a fierce critic of the court, and has previously tried to introduce legislation to neuter it.

“Netanyahu has good as declared war on dissent, whether it’s from human rights organisations or the media,” said Jafar Farah, director of Mossawa, an advocacy group for Israel’s Palestinian minority.

Israel ‘not perfect’

Netanyahu has defended his record against such charges.

Following criticism from US President Barack Obama that his security worldview assumed only the “worst possibilities”, he said on Thursday: “Israel isn’t perfect, but it is on a level with the world’s great democracies and it faces challenges that are much more difficult.”

He added that his government had invested heavily in helping Israel’s Palestinian minority, and he promised to preserve the independence of the Supreme Court, while stressing that his intention was only to open up the media to greater competition, not to control it.

“I believe in competition in products, in goods and also in ideas,” he told a press conference.

But critics are not reassured.

A European diplomat in Jerusalem told MEE that Israel had been waging an aggressive campaign in capitals across Europe to persuade them to stop funding human rights groups in Israel.

“The pressure being exerted on us behind the scenes is intense,” said the source, who wished not to be named, given the issue’s sensitivity.

The diplomat added that Israel wanted in particular to silence Israeli groups whose work might encourage a growing international boycott campaign or assist investigations by the International Criminal Court, which the Palestinians officially joined in April.

The diplomat indicated that B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence – both of which highlight human rights abuses and are funded by European governments – were top of Israel’s hit-list.

Row over soldiers’ testimony

The tensions exploded into public view this week when Israel’s foreign ministry opened a rift with Switzerland over its support for an exhibition by Breaking the Silence.

Yigal Caspi, Israel’s ambassador to Switzerland, denounced the exhibition in Zurich as “slander” for featuring photographs and testimonies from Israeli soldiers alleging violations of Palestinian human rights.

Caspi demanded that the Swiss government immediately stop funding the exhibition. Israel has previously demanded that Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and Denmark also end their support for the group.

The row was immediately followed by a decision from the culture ministry to pull funding from a dance show due to open in Tel Aviv that incorporates video clips from the occupied territories taken by B’Tselem.

Tzipi Hotovely, Netanyahu’s deputy in the foreign ministry, warned on Tuesday that the government would “act against groups that operate against Israel from within the country and abroad”.

Breaking the Silence responded by criticising the government’s “anti-democratic campaign”.

NGO bill in pipeline

The clash with Switzerland looked like the opening round in a more comprehensive move to muzzle human rights groups, said Rina Rosenberg, the head of advocacy at Adalah, a legal centre for Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

“The direction this government appears to be heading in is a cause for great concern,” she told MEE. “It looks like we are in for a big fight.”

The coalition parties specified in their agreement last month that they would advance what is being dubbed an “NGO bill”, targeting groups seen as left-wing and pro-Palestinian. Shaked, the new justice minister, is the driving force behind the measure.

According to Israeli media, the bill is likely to require NGOs to seek the approval of the defence and foreign ministries over funding they receive from foreign governments – a move that is expected to apply to human rights and pro-Palestinian groups exclusively.

If such legislation passes, most of these groups would struggle to survive financially, said Rosenberg.

In the previous Knesset, Netanyahu’s government tried to pass legislation against human rights organisations but froze it following protests from western governments. One proposal was to classify leftist groups receiving overseas funding as “foreign agents”.

At the same time groups like Rabbis for Human Rights and Physicians for Human Rights were rejected for tax-exempt status, limiting their ability to fundraise, while right-wing groups were given the status.

Rosenberg said Netanyahu’s new government appeared to have learnt its lesson and was avoiding overtly politicised legislation.

“This time it looks like they are going to be much smarter – and that makes the situation more dangerous,” she said. “By conditioning funding on permission from the defence ministry or a Knesset committee, they can say they are following practices adopted in countries like Egypt, Jordan and India.”

She feared that Israel would be able to rebuff criticism by claiming it was being singled out.

Communications ‘czar’

Farah, of Mossawa, said Netanyahu was also seeking to “consolidate his power over the media”, as a further way to silence critics.

As well as becoming communications minister, he has placed himself in charge of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, and increased his control of the ministerial committee overseeing legislation.

As part of the coalition agreement, Netanyahu insisted that his partners commit to supporting any communications initiatives he introduces.

Amir Teig, a media analyst, warned that Netanyahu was determined to turn himself into a “communications czar”.

Yossi Verter, a political analyst for Haaretz, argued that this was “payback time” for Netanyahu. Netanyahu was reported to have been incensed by news coverage during the campaign that painted him in an unflattering light.

Threat to TV channels

Netanyahu’s main goal, according to analysts, is to end any threat of restrictions on the national daily newspaper Israel Hayom.

Netanyahu’s coalition partners in the last Knesset denounced the paper as Israel’s “Pravda”, after the official mouthpiece of the former Soviet regime.

Netanyahu called early elections last November shortly after the Knesset passed the first reading of legislation to bar national distribution of a free newspaper to limit Israel Hayom’s influence.

The paper, which loses Adelson an estimated $5m a year, has left the largest paid-for newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, which is critical of Netanyahu, struggling.

Netanyahu has also used his communications role to make life difficult for the country’s two loss-making commercial TV stations, Channels 2 and 10. He has offered no relief on their heavy debts, with Channel 10 in particular in danger of closure.

Farah said Netanyahu’s financial threats were an effective way to intimidate the broadcasters who rely on state advertising.

Judges ready for fight

Concerns for the Supreme Court, the final court of appeal for Palestinians in the occupied territories, as well as for minorities inside Israel, are also mounting.

Netanyahu shocked many in the legal community last month by appointing Jewish Home’s Shaked as justice minister. She has been a fierce critic of the court for being too liberal.

A retired Supreme Court justice was quoted saying of her appointment: “They [the government] are inviting a fight.”

Shaked is known to want to deny the Supreme Court the right to overturn laws and to change the judicial appointments system so that right-wing judges dominate.

“The idea of the court as a liberal institution is a myth,” said Daphna Golan, a law professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem specialising in human rights. “It is actually very conservative and rarely protects the rights of Palestinians, whether in the occupied territories or in Israel.”

“But as far as Shaked and the right are concerned, it is too activist and they want to weaken it.”

This week Shaked introduced her first bill as justice minister, setting a 10-year jail tariff for those found guilty of throwing stones. Observers expect the law to be applied only to Palestinians.

Golan said the danger was that, faced with threats from the government, the Supreme Court was becoming ever more loath to uphold human rights, removing yet more democratic protections.

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