Israeli ambassador furious over torture report

Aftenposten English Web Desk, 7 September 2007
Israel's ambassador to Norway is once again furious at her host country, and demanding that the Norwegian foreign ministry distance itself from a report that expresses concern over claims of torture in Israeli prisons. Ministry officials respond that they have nothing to disavow.

Israel's ambassador to Norway, Miryam Shomrat, is directing new fury at Norway and Norwegian concerns over alleged torture in Israeli prisons.

The Israeli ambassador, Miryam Shomrat, is angry that Norway's embassy in Tel Aviv sent a report home to the foreign ministry in Oslo asking officials there to take up the issue of alleged torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.

The embassy's report was in turn based on reports written by three Israeli human rights groups that were based on surveys of Palestinian prisoners. The Israeli groups -- The Public Committee Against Torture, HaMoked and B'tselem, according to newspaper Aftenposten -- expressed concern that Israeli authorities went too far in their use of physical and psychic pressure on Palestinian prisoners, and that it too often turned into abuse and torture.

Ambassador Shomrat was furious that the Norwegians were concerned about the content of the reports, or the allegations of torture, and also claimed that Norway's own ambassador to Israel was "called onto the carpet" of Israel's foreign ministry and told that Norway was expected to distance itself from the report.

Norwegian officials have a different version, saying the meeting between Norwegian ambassador Jakken Biørn Lian and officials at the Israeli foreign ministry had been planned long in advance, and came at the initiative of the Norwegians.

Raymond Johansen, state secretary in the Norwegian foreign ministry, said the Norwegians had nothing to distance themselves from, because the Norwegian embassy's report was based on Israeli reports. The Norwegians are simply concerned about the torture allegations that those reports contained.

Shomrat nonetheless claimed that the Norwegians' use of the reports "damaged the relationship between Norway and Israel." It's not the first time she has taken offense at Norwegian criticism of Israeli policy. She was forced to apologize last year when her own criticism of Norway was viewed as being offensive to the Norwegian royal family.

Why Israel will never truly let go of Gaza: Tanya Reinhart, Sep 2006

Ramadan in Gaza: no celebrations due to lack of money for gifts and food
Maan News, September 23, 2006
The morning prayer in Gaza, and the first day of Ramadan fasting, were accompanied by flights of Israeli helicopters. It seems that the absence of salaries has deprived Gaza of the possibility of carrying out suitable preparations for this religious month.

In 9 hours in Gaza, IDF kills 5, including 3 children, and injures 7
Press Release, PCHR, September 21, 2006

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Why Israel Will Never Truly Let Go of Gaza
Tanya Reinhart in The Independent Weekly, Adelaide
September 2006
Whatever the fate of the captive soldier Gilad Shalit, the Israeli army's war in Gaza is not about him. As senior security analyst Alex Fishman reported, the army was preparing for an attack months earlier and was constantly pushing for it, with the goal of destroying the Hamas infrastructure and its government. The army initiated an escalation on June 8 when it assassinated Abu Samhadana, a senior appointee of the Hamas Government, and intensified its shelling of civilians in the Gaza Strip.

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Meron Benvenisti on the Lebanon War and the Palestinian Conflict
No war is compelled by circumstances. In this case, the response and its scale were not at all compulsory. But our response is always the same response, which we then make justify itself, calling it a war for existence. And someone like me, after seventy years of sitting in this country, is quite fed up.

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In the name of security, but not for its sake
Amira Hass, Haaretz, 20/09/2006
"...the Israeli security services are careful to act within the framework of a clear political paradigm: maximum weakening, in every possible way, of the Palestinian national collective, so that it will not be able to realize its goal and establish a state worthy of the name, in accordance with international resolutions."

Detainee Paralyzed During Torture in Israeli Prison
Mustafa Sabri - PNN;
translated by Saed Bannoura, September 20, 2006
Every Palestinian detainee has his own story of the horrors of being held in Israeli detention facilities, but in the case of detainee Luay Al Ashqar, 28, from Saida village, near Tulkarem (in the northern part of the West Bank), the result and the outcome are clearly apparent on his body, which has been paralyzed due to Israeli torture.

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COSATU Congress Adopts Middle East Resolution
September 22, 2006
The 1.8 million strong Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) ended its 9th Congress in Johannesburg yesterday (21st September). A resolution on the Middle East sponsored by the National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA), the Witwatersrand and Eastern Cape regions was unanimously adopted.

Student conference calls for Palestine actions
Simon Cunich, Sydney, GLW, 20/09/06
The September 15 Students for Peace and Justice conference, attended by 50 anti-war activists from universities across Sydney and from Wollongong University, called for a week of campus solidarity actions with the Palestinian people on October 9-13.

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Jewish writer's answer to Israel's question
My Israel Question by Antony Loewenstein
reviewed by Kim Bullimore, Melbourne Palestine Solidarity Network, GLW, 20/09/06.

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The Next Palestinian Struggle
Ramzy Baroud, September 22, 2006
If any peace settlement fails to adhere to the democratic concept, according to which Palestinians wish to govern themselves, then Palestinians should ready themselves for another Oslo-style agreement, imposed from the top and rubber stamped by the PLO's Executive Committee, long-devoid of its democratic principles and dominated by the elitist few.
Ramzy Baroud teaches mass communication at Curtin University of Technology.

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I went to Nablus
Sonja Karkar writing from Nablus, September 20, 2006
I only found out many hours later when we had returned to Jerusalem that Nablus had been closed that night and no one could leave or enter. This was the beginning of some of the most invasive sieges by Israel's military to implement ethnic cleansing. I have since learned that public records have been totally destroyed, ground into the dust by bulldozers, leaving thousands of Palestinians without any evidence of births and deaths or the precious travel documents that allow them to go outside and study or visit relatives. Old records documenting the history of generations of Palestinians from Nablus are gone too. All this to make them non-people, sub-human - without a past or present and certainly no future. How much more must the Palestinians endure in their caged existence before the world says this is enough and tells Israel to stop their relentless torture of a whole people?
Sonja Karkar is an activist with Women for Palestine of Melbourne, Australia.