---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2000 15:55:04 +0000
From: MER <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: MER <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Israeli Torture Unmasked Just A Bit
_______ ____ ______
/ |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S
/ /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East
/_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\ ISRAELI TORTURE
http://www.MiddleEast.Org
News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups,
and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know!
- - - - - - - - - -
YOU ARE WHAT YOU KNOW AND WHAT YOU DO WITH WHAT YOU KNOW
To receive MER regularly email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
THE ISRAELIS WANT EVERYONE TO FORGET
"How many drops of blood have been spilt
on our soil – and have not flowered?
Remember me."
19-year old woman prisoner at Khiam
MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.org - Washington - 6/5/00
For decades the Israelis have tortured Palestinians into submission. Torture has
been one of Israel's dirty little secrets for quite some time; and they have perfected
it and given it all kinds of other names hoping to both confuse and sanitize it.
"Shaking", "hooding", "standing"...the terms are all well-known to the experts.
The bottom line is that torture has been one of the most common means by which
the Israelis have neutralized and demoralized the Palestinians; and nearly every
Palestinian home has a story of someone in their family or among their friends who
has directly suffered at these sadistic Israeli practices.
In southern Lebanon torture was also among the means used to perpetuate that occupation
by the Israelis and their surrogate SLA.
The invasion of Lebanon, the occupation that lasted a generation, the tens of thousands
of dead Lebanese, the blood-curdling massacres at Shatilla and Sabra and Qana, and
the torturing of thousands -- these are not going to be so easily forgotten as the
Israelis suggest. The hatred and bitterness created by Israel still has many prices
that are likely to be exacted in the years ahead.
This article by Robert Fisk who recently visited the notorious Khiam Prison in Southern
Lebanon shortly after the Israelis fled tells a small but important part of the
overall story.
INSIDE A TORTURERS' DEN,
MANACLES LIE ABANDONED
By Robert Fisk at Khiam Jail
"This place should be kept forever
as a witness to our history."
THE INDEPENDENT, 25 May:
The torturers had just left but the horror remained. There was the whipping pole
and the window grilles where prisoners were tied naked for days, freezing water
thrown over them at night. Then there were the electric leads for the little dynamo
– the machine mercifully taken off to Israel by the interrogators – which had the
inmates shrieking with pain when the electrodes touched their fingers or penises.
And there were the handcuffs which an ex-prisoner handed to me yesterday afternoon.
Engraved into the steel were the words: "The Peerless Handcuff Co. Springfield,
Mass. Made in USA." And I wondered, in Israel's most shameful prison, if the executives
over in Springfield knew what they were doing when they sold these manacles.
They were used over years to bind the arms of prisoners before interrogation. And
they wore them, day and night, as they were kicked – kicked so badly in Sulieman
Ramadan's case that they later had to amputate his arm. Another prisoner was so
badly beaten, he lost the use of a leg. I found his crutch in Khiam prison yesterday,
along with piles of Red Cross letters from prisoners – letters which the guards
from Israel's now-defunct "South Lebanon Army" militia never bothered to forward.
What is it that makes men do things like this? The prisoners – thousands of them
over the two decades of Khiam'sexistence – included guerrillas, relatives of gunmen,
civiliansby the dozen whose crimewas innocence, who would not collaborate with the
Israelis or the SLA, who refused to join the murderous little militia, who declined
to give the Israelis information about the Lebanese army.
"I was hung here naked for 13 days," Abdullah Attiyeh told me as we walked along
a dirty passage way beside the wall of the old French mandate fort. "They put a
bag on my head and threw cold water over me night and day."
The hoods were still there, big light-blue corduroy sacks with towels inside – some
of the towels bought from Norwegian Unifil soldiers because the UN globe was
embroidered
on some of them – and so was the wire with which other prisoners, including women,
were beaten. Big, thick wire bound in blue plastic. The torturers were sadistic,
often stupid men. There were pornographic magazines and cheap comics and puzzle
books in their filthy quarters. Israel has admitted teaching these men how to do
their job.
In the women's section, we found the mementoes of girls. A drawing of a fish with
a heart attached to it and a painting of six white horses running over a darkened
field. There was a picture of Father Christmas taken from a chocolate wrapper.
And names. "Zeina Koutash, born 3/9/79, arrested 7/5/99, released 3/1/2000." There
were the names of Rana Awada and Ismahan Ali Khalil, only 19 when she was dragged
to this awful place by the SLA. "How many drops of blood have been spilt on our
soil – and have not flowered?" she wrote on the wall. Along with two words. "Remember
me."
And of course, the prematurely old men who languished in Khiam came back yesterday
at the moment of its liberation, to relive their misery.
I suppose evil is always banal but I couldn't fail to be struck how grubby the whole
place was, how unclean, how smelly; as if wickedness had somehow corrupted the prison.
The lavatories stank, the food had been left to rot, the prison cells were covered
in muck. The men's solitary block was a pit in the ground with a concrete hole for
air. A broken wooden police baton lay outside. "Dog Zorro" was written on it in
biro.
There was a little humanity. One ex-inmate recalled the name of Tannious Nahara,
an SLA guard from Qleia who would bring food and cigarettes to the prisoners. He
was fired from his job for being kind, and threatened with imprisonment in the jail
he had worked in.But the cruel men had all fled, pleading their way across the border
into Israel a few hours earlier.
Ibrahim Kalash was allowed a bath once every 40 days. "If we spilt water on the
floor, they used to make us lick it clean," he said.
"You're surprised we didn't escape? Four men did. One made it, another was shot,
another captured and the fourth blew himself up on a mine and lost a leg and an
eye." Around the prison there are minefields galore. "An Israeli officer came here
and told the SLA men 'Destroy everything that is green'," Abdullah Attiyeh said.
"That is why there are no trees, just long grass with mines.
The prison interrogation rooms were as banal as the men who worked them. There were
playing cards scattered on the floor, jars of coffee,helmets, unwashed clothes and
a stack of beer mats bearing the words "Middle East Lutheran Ministry". Ghassan
Abu Aissa, a well-known stool-pigeon – working for the SLA and Israelis but
incarcerated
along with the inmates – even left a notebook of childish love poems, a morbid
complaint
about the hopelessness of passion. Abu Ahlan, a prisoner of more integrity, had
written on a wall: "Lebanon is ours and for our children after us." I suppose that's
why they came back to look at Khiam yesterday.
Abdullah Attiyeh walked me to the prison guardpost on the walls and looked out at
the land and mountains he was never allowed to see during his imprisonment. "This
place," he said, "should be kept forever as a witness to our history."
MID-EAST REALITIES
http://www.MiddleEast.Org
Phone: 202 362-5266 Fax: 815 366-0800
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To receive MER regularly email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subject SUBSCRIBE
To stop receiving MER email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subject UNSUBSCRIBE
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths,
misdirections
and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and
minor
effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said,
CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
<A HREF="http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
