Two Israeli nonprofit groups that focus on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, HaMoked and B’Tselem, recently reported that Israeli agents have mistreated and even tortured Palestinian detainees. The groups’ findings were based on interviews they conducted with 121 Palestinians who had been held at the Israel Security Agency’s Petach-Tikva interrogation center in the first or last quarter of 2009. The full report, “Kept in the Dark: Treatment of Palestinian Detainees in the Petach-Tikva Interrogation Facility of the Israel Security Agency," can be found here on B’Tselem’s website.
In the report, the authors allege that prisoners were mistreated in a variety of ways, including: Thirty percent of those interviewed reported physical violence being used during their arrest, including beating, kicking, and painful shackling.[...]
The report points out that abuse of detainees is against Israeli and international law. In addition, B'Tselem and HaMoked write that these cases can't be excused as "ticking-bomb" scenarios where police have to get a detainee to talk immediately or disaster will strike -- according to them, most of the detainees "were not suspected of serious offenses." The authors of the report connect the mistreatment of detainees to a wider pattern of prejudice against Palestinians. Detainee abuse, they write, is "made possible due to the dehumanization of the Palestinian population."
Read Dawg's Blawg for an overview of what to expect, and how Stevie Spiteful plans to engineer this feat of sycophancy.
Meanwhile Alison at Creekside proves once more that reality and reason have an anti-rightwingnutter bias.
And also bonus: In The Star's exposé on how the PMO engineered the takeover of Rights and Democracy, Siddiqui notes that Braun and his acolytes' sustained attacks upon Beauregard was key to creating the illusion that the organization was anti-semitic.
The majority voted 7-6 to repudiate three grants of $10,000 each to B'Tselem (an Israeli NGO critical of human rights violations), Al Haq (in the West Bank) and Al Mazen (in Gaza), approved by Remy Beauregard [...].It all fits together. Stevie's monomania, as always, is impeccable.
