Jim Sensenbrenner dismissed a hearing on the renewal of the Patriot Act calling testimony irrelevant? (Video)
No surprise the person who introduced this bill to the House would do so. Judging by his chins and vagal response to stress, he’s more accustomed to passing the butter than the microphone. Jurist has more.
Joseph Lelyveld wonders in “Interrogating Ourselves” if the United States should mirror Israel’s legislation of interrogation techniques, initiated when its Supreme Court declared all forms of highly coercive interrogation illegal in 1999. As the story goes, while torture remains routine in Israeli prisons, it’s now carried out more professionally. According to Bassem Eid of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, unlike the first intifada no one has died during the second, allegedly due “lite” techniques and stricter monitoring of its use. Lelyveld writes that because the U.S. doesn’t enforce the same standards then any contentions “that the Pentagon has schooled itself on Israeli interrogation methods and manuals” are obviously false. He quotes Danny Rothschild more than once, identifying the president of this council as “a security consultant in Israel and the United States.” Major General (Ret.) Rothschild, who “was coordinator of Israeli government activities in the territories until 1995,” sees no difference between throwing a stone and shooting someone, and considers rabbis who encourage conscientious objection a potential threat to the state. These positions are extremely relevant to his analysis of Israel’s current record.
Four Years of Intifada: Statistical Overview
Press Release, HDIP, 29 September 2004
Death and Injury
In the four years since Sharon’s famous visit to the Haram Al-Sharif we have seen 4,342 Palestinians and Israelis killed. Of those 1,008 were Israeli and 3,334 Palestinian. 82% of Palestinians killed were civilians.
2-3 Palestinians are killed by Israeli soldiers, police or settlers per day. While this number may appear to be low, if this death rate were to be applied to the UK it would be equivalent to 35 being killed per day, and in the US this would be 157 per day.
Since the start of the Intifada on the 28th of September 2000, 621 Palestinian children below the age of 17 have been killed by the Israeli occupation forces. Of this figure 411 were shot with live ammunition and 200 were shot in the head, face or neck. 331 were from the Gaza Strip. 10,000 Palestinian children have been injured.
Dr Barghouthi insisted that there is absolutely no excuse to justify the killing of such a huge number of children. What is equally disturbing is the telling figures of injuries received to the head – Israeli forces were obviously shooting to kill. In fact the majority of Palestinians killed have suffered injuries to the head and upper body.
424 Palestinians have died in extrajudicial executions (assassinations). 186 of those were bystanders or “unintended” victims, killed as they were near the victim. 39 bystanders were children and 26 were women. With regards to extrajudicial assassinations, in Gaza while 72 Palestinians died in targeted killings, a shocking 118 bystanders were additionally killed in these attacks.
Palestinian Prisoners
Israel continues to make use of an old emergency law that dates back to the British Mandate. This law allows Israel to arrest and detain anyone for an unlimited time without charging them. There are currently 78 Palestinian children in administrative detention.
There are also currently 100 Palestinian women and 377 children in Israeli prisons. 80% of the children are routinely tortured or harassed and 31% suffer from disease.
Defence for Children International offers a report (pdf) they requested done by the Swedish section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). Their mission was to “attend trials in Israeli Military Courts in the West Bank regarding cases where Palestinian children were detained for stone throwing, military actions and membership of militant groups.” The report, “Palestinian Children Without Rights”, (and updates) can also be found on the web site: www.icj-sweden.org. See: Publikationer/Rättegångsobservatörsrapporter (uppdaterad 22 feb-05)
“The situation today concerning the procedure in Israeli Military Courts; the system with “plea bargain”, the restrictions on family visits, the harassment and torture which children face during investigations – has not changed at all.”
Lelyveld doesn’t spare a word to mention that during the second intifada, Israel formally adopted “a policy of assassinating Palestinians suspected of membership in armed organizations waging battle against it,” or that the mastermind of the policy now leads Israel’s military. Is there a correlation between the new torture legislation and extra-judicial assassination, a tactic employed by the Bush administration despite its two–faced opposition to Israel’s use of it, but openly defended by Sensenbrenner and his critic, Nancy Pelosi?
There’s no hurry. It’s only Palestinian children being shot in the head for throwing stones.